The calendar has shed its leaves, and has inexorably led to Campaign Mastery’s turn at hosting the Blog Carnival for 2018. The subject that I have chosen this time around is “Why do you love RPGs? Why do you love GMing?”

I’ve been holding onto this topic for quite a while; it was always my intention to focus on it as part of the buildup to the tenth birthday of the site, coming in December. Picking a June time-frame for hosting, when (traditionally) Campaign Mastery has taken its’ turn later in the year, is also intentional; I always expected that all my time at the tail end of the year would be consumed by the imminent anniversary, trying to fulfill all the plans that I have laid.

I have many different answers to the questions I have posed. Some are indelibly time-stamped by personal experiences, others persist in their relevance to this day. Some will find resonances with other readers, while others will be singular experiences unique to myself.

This brings up an important point: while there is always one reason why we initially fall in love with the hobby, this frequently has a limited lifespan. It’s the right thing at the right time to scratch an itch, sometimes one that we don’t even know that we have. Unless other reasons to enjoy the hobby are discovered, though, the affair will eventually flounder on the rocks of time.

It is even possible that for some people, the answer to the first will be “because I love to GM”, conflating the two questions.

The answers below are not intended, nor expected, to be universal. My experiences are not those of anyone else, and may or may not resonate with others as a motivation for gaming. That’s fine with me; I’m not trying to tell anyone else why they might, should, or do enjoy RPGs, not in this article, at least.

There are seven broad reasons that I love this hobby, and why it dominates my social life..

Escape

This is the reason I fell in love with RPGs in the first place. In 1981, I was in my first year of university studies, at an institution that had fumbled the ball very badly, having completely failed to develop a curriculum for the degree that they were offering for the first time, and cobbling together a mixture of maths, science, and engineering foundations that they thought might be relevant. As if that weren’t demotivating enough, I was in a bad place, emotionally, and more than willing to engage in arguably self-destructive behavior (though I didn’t recognize it as such at the time) in an attempt to assuage the pain from a failed romance, even while putting on a brave public face.

My first RPG session was not a huge success from any point of view except one: for a few fleeting hours, I was walking in someone else’s shoes. I had left that pain behind, escaped from it, and – in the process – started to heal myself.

By the time that this was no longer a motivating factor, other reasons for a love of the hobby had manifested, and been absorbed – to such an extent that I’m still an active participant, almost 37 years after that initial exposure.

There have been occasions when this has re-manifested – when I was exhausted through long months of extreme overwork, when I was in severe financial distress, and the like, RPGs brought relief from those real-world pressures and problems.

As a therapy, it might not work for everyone. But it certainly did for me.

Creativity

RPGs have always provided an outlet for my creativity, whether its as an artist or as a writer. But more than that, they have prodded and prompted that creativity to go further than I ever thought possible. If RPGs hadn’t come along, I’d probably become a frustrated science-fiction / fantasy writer or comic-book writer/artist.

Which might provide some insight into why my oldest ongoing campaign is representative of the superhero genre with heavy lashings of science fiction and high fantasy.

Even today, this continues, through the “pages” of Campaign Mastery.

Stimulation

RPGs have prompted me to look at the world around me in ways that would never have occurred to me. Long-time readers will have seen several examples manifesting in articles here. More to the point, they have provided a framework through which other experiences can be dissected and analyzed.

I’ve been forced to contemplate issues that would never have occurred to me without this stimulation. Philosophical debates such as “If a computer system perfectly simulates sentience, should the system actually be considered sentient – and is that sentience software or hardware in nature?” – which naturally leads to, “What is Sentience, anyway?”

I’m still proud of the “physics” I created to explain Aysle, the flat disk Fantasy world within the original TORG, in which gravity was a measure of thermal differential. A molten layer (with pockets of solidity) sandwiched between the surfaces of the worlds ensured that “down” was uniform across the surface planes because the resulting gravitation followed an inverse-to-the-fourth-power relationship with distance. In places where the gravitation was stronger (including underground) you got short races evolving, in places where it was weaker (including the tops of tall trees and mountains) you got taller races evolving, and a higher internal temperature (closer to that of the magma layer) made flight possible for large creatures like Dragons.

I’ve spent a lot of time examining the fundamental concepts that could underlie time travel and their implications, evolving a vision of a complex multiverse with “traditional” physics embedded as a subset of the bigger picture. I’ve contemplated big bangs and heat death, and the lengths that a society might go to in order to survive – and what they could actually do about it. I’ve examined the differences between ethics, professionalism, morality, and justice.

While it’s possible that these contemplations might have taken place without the stimulation of RPGs, the odds of doing all of them without that stimulus is remote to the point of virtual impossibility.

Self-improvement

I mentioned in the previous section the differences and relationships between morality, justice, ethics, and professionalism. A great game gives you the opportunity to examine conundrums in these spheres that would otherwise never occur to you. Those examinations can’t help rubbing off on you, shaping your personal views on the subjects.

RPGs have nurtured and stimulated my growth as a human being, and continue to do so.

Universality

I have an extremely diverse skill-set and an even broader self-education. RPGs are the only hobby that I’ve ever encountered that not only utilizes everything of which I’m capable, but which encourages further growth.

I’ve employed the analytic and logic skills deriving from my Computer Programming training to analyze game systems and solve problems far outside the programming sphere. I’ve employed my bookkeeping expertise to understand the underlying mechanisms of game mechanics and their flaws.

If you’re an athlete, your expertise in the limits of human capacity can be relevant to your participation in an RPG. If you’re a historian, your knowledge of the past can be relevant. If an engineer… well, you get the point. RPGs are the most inclusive hobby in existence because of the breadth of knowledge and expertise than can be brought to bear within them.

Education

In “The expert in everything?” I provided a very long list of things that RPGs have required me to develop some expertise in – from public speaking to astrophysics.

While some of the subjects involved might have been matters of interest regardless, many, many, more of them have come about purely because of their applicability to RPGs.

And, interestingly, very little of that education holds no relevance to real-world situations, has no practical value. I’ve found that I can speak to just about anyone about just about anything – from a layman’s perspective. Almost everyone I interact with on social media can lay valid claim to being more expert in their chosen sphere, can drown me in technicalities – but I can grasp enough of what most are talking about to at least speak intelligently with them.

This social permeability has made it possible for me to interact in workplaces with everyone from the person who empties the trash bins to CEOs. RPGs may be demanding, but they repay those demands in ample, sometimes subtle, ways.

Friendships

But arguably the best reason of all is the one I’ve chosen to place at the end of the list – the people.

Is it possible for RPG players and GMs to be jerks? To be obnoxious, or possessed of odious practices or personal flaws? Of course. But, as a general rule, the social aspects of gaming teach participants how to get along with others. As a general rule of thumb, an RPG player or GM will be more socially open, friendly, willing to talk, and willing to listen, than people in everyday life.

I’ve seen science fiction fans become frothing evangelists when someone disses their favorite author, or expresses support for an author they dislike, and the bubbling undercurrents of hostility between literary and media sci-fi fans are the stuff of legend. I’ve encountered politicians and artists possessed of so much pretentiousness they should sell it. And, while every profession and group has those who are friendly and approachable, who make friends easily, science-fiction fans are – in general – warmer and more open than those who do not share that appreciation. And gamers are warmer and more open than even science fiction fans, simply because their hobby is a social activity instead of something that can be pursued in a solitary bubble.

The people. That’s the ultimate reason to fall in love with RPGs, and to sustain that love of the hobby..

Over to you

So that’s my two cent’s worth on the subject. That won’t buy very much, these days, but I’m happy to give my readers mate’s rates! This article will serve as the anchor post for other participants to provide links to their posts on the subject.

But I’d like this to go further. RPG Podcasters, if you take up this question, I’d be happy to stretch the definition of “bloggers” to include links to the episode in which you do so.

This month’s Blog Carnival is about the things that unite us. In that spirit, how could I do anything less?

One of the banes of RPGs since time immemorial has been been the seemingly inevitable drift toward out-of-control character capabilities at high levels. It’s something that afflicts almost every campaign that persists for any length of time, regardless of genre, but most notably, the various incarnations of D&D.

This problem is so ubiquitous that there is more than a grain of truth in the suggestion that the number-one design priority of 5e was a solution to the problem. As a general rule, this and all related and similar problems tend to get lumped together under the heading of “game balance issues”.

One of the reasons for this, in terms of martial classes, is the stacking of bonuses from multiple magic items. I have a solution to that problem to offer – one that requires a mental shift on the part of GMs from very early in the campaign, if not from its very beginning – but on its own that solution will not be enough.

The Mage Problem

That’s because of the mage problem.

It’s long been recognized that mages are disproportionately vulnerable at lower levels, but rise to become incredibly and disproportionately powerful at higher levels. And that’s without factoring in magic items!

In order for non-mages to stand a chance against a mage character of high level, they need extreme buffs, and even then, it can be iffy.

It’s worthless to fix the martial power increment problem unless there is some sort of crimp placed on the magic-wielding classes as well.

But be warned – this involves digging deeper and making more fundamental changes to the game system than many will find comfortable.

The Martial solution

When I first started drafting this article, the intent was to do nothing more than present this solution. The rest came about as a result of attempting to place the problem into context.

The solution, ironically, is to have more magic items in the campaign of the martial-buffing variety.

It’s my contention that the problem stems, in large part, from the universality of application of the bonuses and modifiers accruing from the standard magic items of the rules. A +3 weapon confers it’s bonus to every attack, and that universality makes each increase to the bonus exponentially more effective. The same is true of armor and shields – they confer their bonuses to every attack.

(I also believe that this stems from a flawed attempt to address the mage problem I described earlier by elevating potential rivals in effectiveness rather than dealing with the real problem).

The martial problem can therefore be stemmed by adding a clause to the title and description of magic items based on the character level at the time of acquisition.

Here’s a hierarchy to contemplate:

• A specific species
• A group of related/similar species
• All species with a specific trait or common characteristic
• All species not specifically immune* i.e. universal – the current default

* (Some creatures may be functionally immune to certain types of damage; others might only be vulnerable to a weapon of greater bonus than the weapon in question).

And here’s another:

• In a specific environment
• In a specific environmental condition or circumstance, narrowly defined
• In a specific environmental condition or circumstance, broadly defined
• In any environment not explicitly defined as not supporting magic by the GM, i.e. universal – the current default

Here’s a third:

• Magic takes time to build up; in the first round, it’s +1, then +2, then +3, and so on, until achieving it’s ultimate power level as defined by the item description
• Magic is drained by use, starting at it’s maximum (say +3 for the sake of example) in the first round, then +2, then +1, then +0 for the rest of the combat.
• Magic is always on at full power – the current default

(In fact, you can further extend the number of entries in the above list by increasing the number of rounds at full power, or spacing out the number of attacks before a decline in effectiveness, or both).

Now contemplate all of the above in combination.

Each of these lists has something in common: they all make the modifier provided by the magic item conditional in some manner, declining in restriction as you advance down the list, until you end up at the current default.

A fourth list makes all of the above less painful to the PCs and the overall level of magic in the campaign controllable by the GM:

• Otherwise, treat as a normal item;
• Otherwise, treat as a +1 item;
  ….
• Otherwise, treat as a +n item (where n is full bonus -1)
• Otherwise, treat as a +n item (where n is the full bonus – i.e. the current default).

Under this schema, the first magic weapon you acquire might be a “longsword of +1 vs goblins, otherwise +0”. Then you might get a “longsword of +2 vs humanoids, otherwise +0”, then a “longsword of +2 vs underground humanoids, otherwise +1”. And so on. Each of these represents a measurable and quantifiable increase in the value and effectiveness of the magic items at the party’s disposal, while slowing the growth in effectiveness in any given situation to something more controllable.

Ignoring the last part of the list, whose number of entries is dependent on the “full bonus” and so complicates the question, there are 4?=48 combinations (more, if you add entries to the third list), with the current default as the very last of them – every other option is functionally weaker and more restricted.

This degree of nuance means that you can be more generous with magic items, not less (which is the usual advice to keeping Monty haul-ism in check), because there is a practical limit to the number of items that can be carried or at hand.

What’s more, there is an inherent logic in the items available being those that will be most useful in the current adventure. Let’s assume that you knew that you were going to be fighting giant spiders – the weapons that you would be most likely to take into such a battle (assuming you had access to them) would be the ones that gave you the biggest advantage you could find against that enemy. If that wasn’t enough, those are the weapons that will therefore be captured and cached by the enemies – leaving them there to be found when the PCs rock up to pick up where you left off. Of course, if the enemies were actually Dryders and not Giant Spiders, that might leave you in a bit of a pickle…

If the argument were presented properly to the players, you can make a reasonable argument that you are actually being more generous to them. Instead of placing martial equipment with a +1 (universal) bonus, you are giving them a limited +2 item.

The unstated key word to this concept is “containment”. You are containing the bonus in it’s applicability to circumstances that you control.

The ultimate weapon, under this paradigm, might well be a +3 (universal) weapon – which is a lot less effective than a +5 or even a +10.

Another word that comes to mind is “granularity”. You are diversifying the application of magic to ‘buff” martial traits so that there is more room in between the standard magic items with their universal bonuses.

Side-benefits

There are a couple of side-benefits to this approach that are worth noting.

The first is that characters become more distinctive and specialized through the choice of magic items they make. Is a “+3 vs humanoids, +0 vs others” more valuable than a “+1 universal”? A hard choice, isn’t it – very dependent on what enemies you have encountered, and those you expect to encounter. You might be tempted to try carrying both… but then, along comes a “+4 vs reptiles, +0 vs others”, and – as a player – you might start to wonder, “is the GM dropping a hint? Which two should I keep?”

Secondly, it makes the magic items a greater conduit to the history of a location or adventure site or encounter.

Third, it makes the game world more diverse and interesting.

And fourth, it increases the scope of the tactical problems to be confronted by the players. “Hold them off while I get the more effective weapon from the packs!”

The Mage Solution

But that leaves high-level mages unchecked. As such, it’s only part of a solution to the problem.

Right now, the standard rules confer two things (of significance in terms of arcane power) to mages when they gain levels: an increase in the number of spells, and an increase in the spell level that they can cast. What if you didn’t get both by default, but had to choose which form of enhancement you gained?

What do you want: more powerful spells, or more of the spells you can already cast?

Of course, as a mage player, you want both – but you can’t have both.

Then, there’s the question of magic items. Contemplate wands whose caster level declines with the number of charges remaining, or which increase: fully charged, you might get 50 uses at minimum caster level, or 10 uses at caster level +4. Choices, choices, choices.

Choices

That’s the key to solving both problems, really. You are increasing the number of choices that the players have to make about their characters, and increasing their immersion in the game world because that’s the only guideline they have as to which choices are going to be the most useful in their future adventures.

Other Game Systems

Variations on, or combinations of, the principles of these solutions can deal with similar problems that arise in all other genres of game.

What if adding a new superpower to your repertoire required a reduction in effectiveness of all the ones you already have? It’s easy to specify “dead levels” to achieve this.

What if there was a cap to the number of improvements you could make to a skill before you had to start specifying only a limited aspect of the skill that would be enhanced by further skill improvements?

It doesn’t matter what your game system is, the general concepts can be applied to solving your problems with power creep – but you have to start early.

But I’m already In mid-campaign, and while power creep isn’t a serious problem yet….

It’s not too late, provided things are not already out of hand. You simply specify that these effects only apply to equipment/abilities/whatever in excess of the best that the party currently have access to.

It’s easiest to use D&D as the example again: if the best weapon the PCs have is a +2, then weapons are universal up to +2, but any further improvements are to be confined.

A mage’s first 5 levels might proceed as described in the rules, but from his next level onward a mage has to choose.

Remember, too, that these restrictions have to also apply to all NPCs. If you make a ruling such as the one in the previous paragraph, then ALL mages get both benefits (number of spells and spell levels castable) for their first five levels – but then the restrictions come into effect, and you have to choose.

There really is no longer an excuse for power creep to become a problem. There remain reasons why it might happen, but they are all now explicitly mistakes or choices made by the GM – and on his head be the consequences; ye reap what ye sew!

I’m posting this early to beat the kickstarter deadline. If you want to back the project, which has now reached its funding target, you will need to act quickly – you have less than 52 hours!

Background

A week or so ago, relative to the publication date of this article, Campaign Mastery received an invitation to review a ‘new’ product from Signal Fire Studios, “A Delve In The Cave”, a D&D 5e -compatible adventure.

The author, Jamie Chambers, was forced by a health issue within his family to put his 20 years of tabletop RPG creativity on hold for a few years, and finds himself starting over. This is his first product since that career interruption was resolved (happily, all is now well).

I was both flattered and gratified that several fans recommended that Jamie reach out to me for a review or a mention.

Disclaimer: I have backed Kickstarters from Signal Fire Studios in the past. For whatever that may be worth in terms of bias, readers should take that into account.

I’ve always felt that there is a responsibility associated with having been around for this long in the RPG-related blogosphere, part of which expresses itself as a need to do my share to maintain the health of the industry. Even had I not been sympathetic to Jamie’s situation (he shared more details than I have related here), that would have encouraged me to accede to his request.

Of course, I immediately replied that I would be happy to do so, but integrity compelled me to share a couple of caveats.

Caveats

First, this product is associated with a Kickstarter that is due to end in just a few days – so I’m rushing to try and get this article out early.

Fortunately, the pledge levels for the product, while modest, make it seem very likely that the equally-modest target of the Kickstarter will be achieved. So I don’t feel that I have taken on the responsibility of making-or-breaking its success.

Secondly, while I did take part in the play-testing, I don’t have a copy of 5e (Campaign Mastery doesn’t pay enough for that) and have never run a campaign using the system, which would limit the utility of the resulting article in terms of its review content.

(I’m sharing these because I feel the reader should also take them into account when reading the article. Integrity, again.)

I did float the notion of holding off until the Kickstarter had run its course and the product was in its final form – more on that in a moment – and presumably for sale.

Despite these caveats, Jamie indicated that if I could do so, he’d be most appreciative of any additional buzz I could create about his work now, without waiting – even if it couldn’t be published before the Kickstarter campaign closed (Jamie admitted that he’d dropped the ball on the Press/Publicity side of things even before the campaign started – a forgivable mistake, especially under the circumstances, that I doubt he’ll make again).

So here we are…

What Am I Reviewing In This Article?

What I’m looking at is the Early Access version of the product, which premiered at the Origins Game Fair in 2017, and which is now available from DriveThru RPG as a PDF for $3.99 or Softcover B&W book for $9.99 (prices presumed to be US$).

If you buy the PDF, you will automatically be upgraded to the final version when it is released.

I’ll also be looking briefly at the Kickstarter and what has been announced as included in the final version.

Because this is a pre-release version, the artwork is interim, and there will be substantial enhancements to the content, in particular focusing on the story content and the town near the titular cave.

Because I haven’t seen this content, I can’t judge it, and don’t consider it fair to judge the pre-release version on the basis of what’s not there (but will be).

All clear? Good!

The Collision Between Dungeons and Story

Even without the circumstances described in the Background section above, I would have been inclined to accept the offer anyway. Explaining why seems like a good place to start, because it’s from there that the title of this article derives.

“A Delve In The Cave” was described by Jamie as “a D&D 5th Edition compatible adventure published under the Open Game License, one that layers story and mystery with a classic dungeon crawl in a natural cavern. The idea is to be an homage to classic adventures from the early days but with a more modern presentation and style.” The Kickstarter phrases it, “a cavern crawl built to please hack-and-slash groups and storytellers alike!”

The Plausibility Disconnect

Now, every GM has strengths and weaknesses, areas that they know they struggle with. One of mine is rationalizing “dungeons” in terms of verisimilitude.

One or two, I could cope with (and have done so in the past), especially if I broadened the concept of a “dungeon”. But there’s a psychological disconnect in my head between “above ground” and “dungeon” that stretches credibility to the breaking point whenever I think of the latter.

Part of the problem is that there are supposed to be something like three dungeons to a character level, at least in the old school mentality. More if there’s character lethality and characters starting over at 1st level – also a very old-school tenet. Over 20 levels, that’s a minimum of 60 dungeons, probably more – and that just pushes plausibility too far for my comfort.

The Shards Solution

I solved this problem in my Shards Of Divinity campaign by defining dungeons as “Drow Underground Terrorist Camps” – a double-meaning to the term “Underground”, you see. The first dungeon they explored was actually a prison designed by Lolth to contain her ex-lover and stepping-stone to her authority over the Drow, still just a (forbidden) cult within the Elves. She’d have gotten rid of the Drow Prince if she could have, but to get to where she wanted to be, she had needed to ride his coattails and that entailed buffing him up to the point where he was a match for her. When the PCs released him, he was (officially) grateful, and rewarded them with the location of a Drow treasure cache, which was the second dungeon of the campaign. What he didn’t tell them was that their entrance would awaken thousands of his most fanatical followers who had been bound into unnatural slumber by the same Order of Paladins who had been (unknowingly) Lolth’s instruments in confining the Prince.

The Fumanor Solutions

In my Fumanor campaign, most traditional dungeons were the creations of the Chaos Powers, places where they could brew up monstrosities, some of which adapted to the outside world and escaped to become permanent residents. Since these were – effectively – anti-Gods, this ‘divine’ origin sidestepped the plausibility problem.

The other solution implemented in that campaign was to treat each “level” of a dungeon as a society, and the “story” was understanding and relating to that society. So you had the Elves on the surface, and a Troll-Kobold society (Kobolds ascendant and REALLY nasty compared to The Book) residing in abandoned Dwarfish tunnels beneath them (and off to one side a bit), then a Minotaur-Goblin Society (Goblin ascendant), then Dwarves, then Shadow Dragons, then a society of Abberations, and then the Drow themselves. Each of these dungeon “levels” may have contained a number of physical levels, but the narrative thread was all about the society and what the PCs had to do to earn, or force, their way through to the next “level”, which involved understanding the society in question and how they had adapted their living spaces to their needs.

NOT a traditional dungeon-crawl, through it borrowed some elements from them. Again, it was a way of sidestepping the plausibility disconnect.

So you could see why I’m perpetually going to be interested in anything that purports to bridge that divide and bring “story” to the classic “dungeon crawl”. The more credentialed and respectable the source, the more strongly I would be interested.

The Author’s Credentials

So, what are the author’s credentials?

Actually, Jamie’s story could well have been mine, had I been born in the US. He started gaming in 1982 at 7 years of age (I started in 1981 at 19). He “stumbled into a career publishing supplements and adventures along with designing RPG systems” some years later – something that wasn’t an option for me due to geography – but it was at about the same time that I was looking for a change of career.

Jamie is the founder of Signal Fire Studios and the primary writer and project manager of “A Delve In The Cave”. Signal Fire Studios published the card game Building An Elder God, the
parody book The Very Hungry Cthulhupillar, and most recently 5th Edition of Metamorphosis Alpha. Before that he ran Margaret Weis Productions and Sovereign Press, wrote and designed the Serenity Roleplaying Game, Battlestar Galactica RPG, Supernatural RPG, and was in charge of the Dragonlance game line for 5 years.

That gives him a lot of credibility, making interest in the adventure acute. But it also raises expectations, so I guess it’s time to see whether or not the product lives up to them.

A Delve In The Cave

“Something lurks in the shadows inside the caverns under the hill called Brin Brenin. Ancient enemies of mankind have returned for revenge, starting with the tomb of a long-forgotten hero. Somewhere inside are answers to forgotten questions, deadly monsters, and hidden treasures.” Sounds good.

Right away, it becomes clear that the story elements all derive from the treatment of the dungeon as a society that is interacting in various ways with the surface-world, and which has also done so in the past (though the details have largely been forgotten since). Jamie has done a masterful job of conveying a rich palette of choices for plot hooks leading to the dungeon, with some extremely rich characterization to draw from. However, there is an immediate sense of anticlimax as the identity of the “something” in the quoted description can easily be learned within the town. This information would be better moved into a new sub-section dealing with the town’s reaction to revelations by the PCs after they learn the truth – that’s when the backstory can be learned and appreciated by the PCs.

That implies at least two separate expeditions into the Cave – learn the source of the problems afflicting the town, go back to warn them (and get the backstory) only to be disbelieved by the populace, leaving it all up to them to confront the town’s enemies.

Learning that backstory is the next flaw that I observe – while the backstory is interesting, coherent, and relevant to the adventure, discovering it seems to be made too difficult through a series of die rolls. I would have made the backstory more readily available (once the right questions were asked in roleplay) because it has the sort of heroic mythic structure that would preserve it in the minds and lore of the town. Obscure details may have been lost, to be recoverable only with success on die rolls, but there aren’t many of those provided.

Right away, I can see that while the concepts and story are well done, there are some plot elements that I would revise, were I to run this as an adventure. Fortunately, the supplement gives me enough of the information I would need to be able to do so, and the final version will provide still more.

This organic process of revelation conflicts with the section on Random Encounters because it presumes that the cats-paw of the true villains of the adventure (speaking circumspectly to avoid spoilers) has begun his activities by the time the PCs arrive. I would prefer to have preparations still underway during the “first delve” referred to, with the real countdown to disaster starting while the PCs are back in town learning the backstory.

To facilitate that, I would have the crypt of the hero of the backstory accessible very quickly, but for it to have been despoiled and his bones removed to the altar from which he performed the deeds that made him a legend. This would require areas 2 and 3 to refer to different parts of the same cave (currently area 2), so that the existing area 3 can be re-purposed, and the existing area 4 then re-purposed to describe the link between the combined 2/3 area and the new area 3. The reason for all this is so that the PCs have the clues to the right questions to ask back in town so that they get the backstory.

My next quibble is that there doesn’t seem to be enough use of misdirection on the part of the …beings… attempting to prevent disruption of their plans by the PCs. Their goal would be well served by concealing entrances and creating a circuitous path that doesn’t actually take the PCs anywhere near anything “sensitive”. Their primary tactics are to ambush the PCs and then run in the wrong direction, not a very sophisticated solution – in fact, given the sophistication of the rest of their plans, this seems incongruous.

Speaking of which, location 8 involves – amongst perhaps other things – a swarm of bats. I would have the bad guys use illusions to create the impression of a vampire’s ghost to (a) enhance the atmosphere, and (b) make the encounter scarier than it actually is, in hopes (once again) of driving the PCs away.

Later in the module, there’s a Riddle to solve in order to gain the hero’s “most prized possessions” for the “defense of man’s realm”. I hate this approach; the riddles seem altogether too easy, but worse still, a puzzle or challenge that is supposed to be about purpose and intent can be solved with an INT check, or by the players being clever. No, No, No! It should be a moral challenge – a choice between (illusory) wealth or the “treasured possessions” (which appear to be relatively valueless except for their potential to aid in the overarching plotline of the adventure. Choose wrongly (the illusion) and you get nothing; choose rightly and you not only get the goodies (which might be substantially better than the impression given by them) but the real wealth as well. This is all about the Hero perpetuating his victory and preparing the way for those who will need to follow in his footsteps (the PCs); anyone sufficiently prescient to have done that would have done it right.

Finally, the ending of the adventure. While it’s described as possible for the PCs to succeed, the greater probability is suggested that they don’t do so in time or at all, escalating the situation faced to a whole new level. There is nowhere near enough information on what happens then and how things can be set to rights once more. This leaves the adventure feeling like it stops right before detailing the boss encounter that resolves the adventure. In fact, it feels a lot like the first half of an adventure – it feels incomplete.

There’s a lot of good content here to work with. Compared with a number of other adventure modules that I have read from small publishers, it is solid and coherent, conceptually, and contains plenty for the GM to work with. The tweaks suggested above are minor and trivial compared with those that I have had to make in order to render other modules playable – this is already playable, and the tweaks are intended to make it better.

The Kickstarter

On top of that, there are a number of goodies that are part of the basic package through the kickstarter. But it’s the additional content that is going to be most valuable – more details about the town, and its people, and the connections between the town and the adventure. Plus a color map and a t-shirt, if you’re so inclined. And more art, I expect.

Verdict

And so, to the bottom line: Is it worth the price?

Absolutely, an unqualified yes.

The writing is of a very high standard, and most of the plotting exemplary. There is an inherent similarity to a succession of natural caverns that has been overcome very effectively to give each area its own flavor, and the backstory and underpinning narrative are coherent and excellent.

On the plus-side on top of that, what’s provided is surprisingly system-agnostic. I wouldn’t hesitate to run it under any FRP game system, including Pathfinder and 3.x in general. I could even adapt it to a superhero genre on the fly, with minimal prep.

You can access the Kickstarter via the direct link above or by the dedicated url, http://www.delveinthecave.com/. I presume that after the fundraising campaign closes, it will redirect to another site from which the adventure can be purchased. This one’s definitely worth your time and money, people. And a great lesson in how to integrate story and dungeon-bash; it turns out that my Fumanor approach wasn’t so far off the mark, after all. Good to know!

It’s an important question, and one not easy to answer.

Too much description can not only be boring to listen to, it can obscure important details and confuse the players.

Not enough and players will not be able to differentiate between the NPC being described and any others they happen to encounter – or a stuffed manikin, for that matter.

In the past, I have always relied on the literary model*, while acknowledging that it was an inadequate answer. Now, I think I have found a better one.

* Except for occasions and campaigns when I could use a photograph to avoid the need to offer any descriptions at all – but this article is more about D&D/Pathfinder, where the options for this sort of shortcut are limited.

The Difficulty

Trying to assess when you have gone too far is a difficult task.

It requires the GM to do several things simultaneously, and humans are limited in their capacities for that. Specifically, the GM has to:

1. build up a mental image of the character being described from his words alone;
2. ignore any predetermined knowledge of the things that he hasn’t described yet;
3. describe what the character looks like, what he is doing, and his mannerisms;
4. which means deciding and creating those things if he hasn’t done so already;
5. all while keeping control of the game, remembering the purpose that the character has within the plot, and finding a means of achieving that purpose;
6. which may be entirely separate from the purpose that the NPC thinks the he is fulfilling, which also has to be presented indirectly through his words and actions;
7. all while maintaining some standard of “Sufficient” in mind;
8. and comparing the mental image referred to earlier with that standard;
9. while making sure that he leaves out nothing that is important.

That’s nine simultaneous tasks. Small wonder that corners end up being cut and some of these get overlooked, or performed inadequately, from time to time.

A little prep can go a long way to easing this burden. A canned description eliminates 4, and permits 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9 to be done in advance of the game. That’s 2/3 of the task out of the way, leaving the GM free to concentrate on the things that have to be lived “in the moment” due to the dynamic interactions between game and players. And it’s easy to see why the literary standard seems to be a natural “best fit” in terms of the level of description to be provided.

Too Many Words

The literary standard is too much for an RPG situation. It works in that the reader absorbs some (not all) of the description and extracts from them a gestalt impression that can later be modified by reinforcement of the important details; it ensures that there is enough description to accommodate different standards of minds-eye visual acuity, and – of course – if necessary, a reader can flip back a few pages and re-read the description to better absorb it if they find their “picture” to be inadequate.

Too much description gets in the way of distinguishing between NPCs through their interactions with the character. Employing the literary standard ensures exceeding the actual requirements, rather than falling short of them, and until now, there has been nothing better; that’s about all that can be said for it.

The New Standard

While waiting for the bus this afternoon (as I write this, weeks in advance of actual publication), I was practicing the art of describing NPCs by picking people off the street and trying to describe them. Aside from being a good way to fill time, this exercise sharpens your descriptive “vocabulary”.

But, for the first time, I added a new rule to the exercise: “as succinctly as possible”. And I found something remarkable.

To be effective, the minimum explanation is:

• enough description to give an impression of gender, age bracket, and geographic origins;
• plus anything that was sufficiently distinguishing as to be noteworthy;
• plus anything that told me more about the person than just what they were wearing or looked like.

Strip away any verbiage that doesn’t serve the stated purpose from each of these three, and compress and abstract the remainder as much as you can, and that’s all you need. Anything more is excess beyond requirements – for RPG purposes.

Try it: “Male, Curly black hair, well groomed, slightly-olive skin, mole on left cheek, well-dressed, thick glasses, expensive car.” He might be Italian, or Greek or Spanish – but he’s a businessman, accountant, or lawyer from somewhere in Southern Europe. And you could even catenate “well-groomed” and “well-dressed”, using more emotive language, to “impeccably groomed and dressed”.

Or: “Male, very dark-skinned, long black frizzy hair, cap, oil-stained overalls with “Doug’s Smash Repairs” on a breast-patch, t-shirt, heavyset with thick muscles, whole-arm tattoo” – a mechanic of Pacific Islander background, possibly Maori.

By keeping the descriptions simple, you sketch in a general impression and then let the character’s personality, as expressed through what they are doing and their interactions with those around them, do the rest.

Notice that there are no names – quite often, you shouldn’t present a name until after the visual “sketch” has been established so that there is an association between the two – and the name itself will thereafter bring back the impression created.

Let them introduce themselves – the interaction will begin adding personality to the visual as well as providing the name.

From now on, this is the standard that I’m going to apply when describing my NPCs.

I’m interrupting my planned schedule of posts to talk about what happened this weekend past in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, because it will be relevant to all campaigns regardless of genre.

I was notified on Friday Afternoon that one of the regular players could not make it that weekend. My first thought was to whether or not the game could go ahead without him, and quickly came to the conclusion that the current adventure certainly couldn’t proceed, the planned events revolving around his character were too vital to the plotline. The campaign may be an ensemble cast (Ensemble or Star Vehicle – Which is Your RPG Campaign?) but every adventure naturally has some PCs more prominently involved than others, and this just happened to be one driven by the PC whose character was absent.

I momentarily contemplated the many solutions to a player absence that I have discussed here in the past (Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence), and decided that none of them would work.

Which, at first glance, left only the option of canceling the game session – something we had previously done when another player couldn’t make it and the PCs were in-between adventures – when a new idea occurred to me; that new idea is the subject of today’s article. One of the players who wasn’t absent commented, “I certainly think you’re onto something with [this] idea,” – from a player and GM with almost as much vintage as myself, so having a solution to a problem that’s been around almost as long as RPGs have existed that was equally innovative to him definitely counted as a big thumbs-up.

Inspiration: Gotham By Gaslight

My principle source of inspiration was a graphic novel that was originally published by DC comics with the intention of it being a one-off curiosity, in which an alternate-reality Batman in Victorian times found himself in Batman-esque circumstances, chasing down a recently-emigrated Jack The Ripper after his Bruce Wayne alter-ego was framed for the crimes.

It was a surprise hit, and spun off a sequel, and that begat the Elseworlds series – a connection acknowledged when subsequent reprints of the original story featured the Elseworlds Logo.

Pulp By Gaslight

My idea was to recast and reinterpret the existing (and present) PCs (and a couple of key NPCs) to be distant relatives in a different era, and then run them through an appropriately-styled adventure that fitted the game genre but was set in a quite different environment.

The resulting one-off would be an out-of-continuity adventure, in much the same way that comic series often have an Annual that is expressly disconnected from the continuity of the main series. This adventure, which I titled “Pulp By Gaslight,” could interrupt the ongoing continuity without disrupting it.

This could either be a lost part of the background to the main continuity or completely separate from it.

I proposed the solution to my co-GM by telephone when I advised him of the problem, and his response was “If you think we can pull something like that off, let’s go for it!”

Good Genes Breed True

One of the central premises of the solution is that Good Genes would breed through – that the predisposition of their natural traits and abilities could manifest in a blood-related character in a different era.

The practical upshot of this is that the players use the same character sheet that they always use, but various items would be interpreted differently. From my adventure prep, with annotations:

Ian M’s character in the usual campaign, Captain Ferguson, is the owner-operator of a treasure-hunting salvage vessel operating mostly in the Atlantic these days, but originally from the Pacific. In “Pulp By Gaslight”, this character was the first to be introduced, becoming “Captain Ezra Ferguson, master of a Whaling ship running out of Boston in the year 1892. Ezra might be the great great grandson of Captain Ferguson’s Great Great Great Grandfather’s brother. His ship has just made port…” and then it was off into laying foundations for the adventure. Same character sheet, but captain of a completely different type of ship, and any “treasure-hunting” skills mentioned would be reinterpreted as relating to Whales and Whaling.

Eliza Black, a Canadian Intelligence Officer and former Mountie, became a small woman in rugged leather attire and stetson hat, who introduces herself as Mrs Elsa Trulane, nee Black. She was appointed Marshall in the Klondike Gold Fields following the death of her would-be miner husband at the hands of claim-jumpers. She might be Eliza’s great-great-great-aunt. Or not. Same character sheet, but a different background. This would have been before the character’s family came into money, so this was a rougher-and-readier independently-minded pioneer woman – but functionally, mechanically, virtually unchanged.

Father O’Malley, a Roman Catholic Priest from New England, became Father Mallory, an Anglican priest who had emigrated a month earlier from Brighton, England, seeking to trace a lost branch of his family. His great-grandfather’s brother had emigrated to New England in 1810, so far without success – perhaps because Father O’Malley’s ancestor changed his surname for some reason on arrival (which might have happened if they had been disowned from a particularly pious family). Same character, different branch of religion. Unknown to the character, he also possessed Father O’Malley’s abilities to smite supernatural evil etc. – which fits the established campaign background, which states that these are potential capabilities of all Priests, but that some are better at it than others.

The most-changed PC was Steffan Bednarczic, a Polish mining engineer who had fled Nazism and dark circumstances to find work on the English Docks, which was where he encountered the other PCs and signed up with them. This character became Dominikus Bednarczos, a shipwright who was lured to the Americas by the tales of Gold almost a year ago from Pyltin in Russia, his native home, which was once part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before that was partitioned in 1772 by the forcible entrance of Russian Troops. A second Russian land-grab in 1793 further annexed parts of the former independent state, and a third by Austria, Russia, and the Kingdom of Prussia completed the conquest of the once-proud nation. But when you arrived, and before you had earned enough to claim a stake in the goldfields, the gold-rush was over. Since then, he has adapted his skills in order to make a living as a Carpenter. A similar character, but one who was single and not a parent, and one possessed of a different set of practical skills. But so long as you remembered “Carpenter / Shipwright” instead of “Mining / Civil Engineer”, the player could step right into his shoes.

Gathering The Troops

One of the things that made this idea work was that – for this first outing of the concept – I had an idea for how the PCs could be brought together in game time. Now that the principle has been established, next time we need to resort to this solution to the absent-player problem, we can simply make something up and present it to the players as having happened in the past.

Variations On A Theme

While the personalities of the PCs and NPCs were recognizably similar, the variation in “shoes” that they were walking in gave the players license to explore and experiment a little more. I don’t think any of them took great advantage of that, but the potential is there and will undoubtedly be exploited on some other occasion.

Minimal Prep

After getting approval for the initial concept, I spent a couple of hours Friday Night doing some minimal prep – mostly writing and researching the information given about the characters above, a little on the settings (Boston and London, 1892), and jotting down the central premises of the adventure. Everything else was created and run ad-hoc off-the-cuff.

Experience

This was a one-session adventure; the standard XP that we award for those (aside from any bonus extras that are given to individual players) is 1 point. We were a little pressed for time at the very end, so this didn’t actually get awarded, but we had emphasized the principle at the start – any XP you earn with your “alternate character” goes into the original character’s pool of such.

The Verdict

For a hastily-thrown-together filler, it was a remarkable success. Some time was spent chatting during game breaks about the potential for the idea – next time, it might be another Victorian adventure, or it might be Barsoom, or a “Buck Rogers”-style adventure, or the American Civil War, or whatever else takes our fancy as a setting for a genre-appropriate adventure. We can go Steampunk as readily as Medieval.

The technique has definitely taken its place amongst the many solutions to the problem of an absent player, and would even be considered preferable to most of the alternatives henceforth.

It was while returning home afterwards that I realized that it could also be applied generally to other genres. With superheros, it might be less successful, because their abilities tend to be fairly specific, but it should be possible to adapt it without too much trouble to something like D&D.

And so, it is being presented here so that you can add it your repertoires, as well.

Inspiration

I have to be honest and say I’m not completely sure who to thank for inspiring this article. At some point in the last month or so, a tweet appeared in my Twitterfeed proclaiming that the GM sending the tweet always liked to hand out useless magic items – or possibly it was a re-tweet of someone else’s comment.

Unfortunately, I didn’t bookmark it or favorite it and with more than 4000 active to semi-active people in my following list, my timeline gets thousands of tweets every day. I’ve searched for it, without success.

So thanks, mystery person, whoever you are, and hopefully you’ll read this…

Regardless of the source, it sparked a thought. Most of the time, when people refer to “useless magic items” they don’t really mean “useless” – there are a couple of other terms that might be more appropriate to consider…

Useless Magic Items

These magic items have a function that is virtually valueless or impossible to use.

A Nose Ring that when licked, transports the wearer’s belly-button fluff d12 feet to the left. A hair wash that colors the hair in paisley patterns. A button that will only stay done up if the other buttons on a short are unbuttoned. Ink that can only ever be seen by whoever is NOT the intended recipient of the message at the time of writing.

Most “useless” items are placed for their comedic value or because they are expected to be valuable – and aren’t. However, some GMs like the idea of an apprentice’s first creations being trivial items simply because they are a lot easier, just as a lot of computer programmers start their education by writing a program to display the word “hello” on the screen.

Trivial Magic Items

Trivial Magic Items do minor tasks, but do them well. A buckle that polishes your shoes overnight. A backscratcher that always finds the exact right spot. A pen that vibrates when the teacher is watching. A Pillow that guarantees pleasant dreams. Some GMs like these items because they show the integration of magic into the society as a form of technology. Others like the fact that it bamboozles those who cast “Detect Magic” on anyone or anything. And some employ the same logic as given for Useless items.

Conditional Magic Items

Conditional Items only work under specific circumstances or for extremely limited time frames or on very specific targets. The magical effect may be reasonably trivial or may be of considerable functionality within the scope of its limitations. A wand of levitation that only works on hay bales. An oil can that only works on dungeon door hinges. A lantern that will only light when its daytime. A mask that provides three rounds of breathable air when immersed in water. A gem that screams when placed in a bag with gems of lesser value. A scabbard that cleans, polishes, and sharpens any blade placed in it in a month with an R in it. A salt shaker that released the exact right amount of salt required to perfectly flavor a meal, once a week. A sextant that automatically orients on the brightest star that is currently visible.

Some of these items are just plain silly. Some are sensible, but limited. And some are clearly failed attempts at creating something remarkable. Most can be quite useful, but only under the right circumstances.

GMs who like Trivial Magic Items tend to like these because they show a continuity between Trivial Magic Items and normal magic items. As a general rule, they are more useful than a trivial magic item but have similar value because of the restrictions on when they are useful.

Breathless Magic Items

Breathless Magic Items do something useful, but only very infrequently.

A piece of chalk that writes a passage in a language not known to the user – once a month. A token of feather fall that only works under the full moon. A tankard that reinvigorates ale that’s gone flat – but only when the owner has already drunk his fill. A Healing Potion that only works on Acid Damage. A wand of 1d6 Fireballs that automatically recharges itself to three charges when empty – taking a month to do so. A wand that on Mondays, lights every candle within 60′ of the wielder.

Most of these are simply another variant on the Conditional Magic Item.

Restricted Magic Items

Restricted Magic Items are items with all the power of a conventional “listed” item but suffer from Conditional restrictions, or have excessively long or complicated activation procedures. Because of their greater utility when they are useful, these are more valuable than the types of limited item described above.

A wand of Fireballs that can only be used once a week. A sword that summons Lightning Bolts if held overhead for three minutes. Boots of Spider Climbing that will only work if the owner’s feet are wet enough.

Another example might be a variation on the old “luck stone” that confers +2 on all saves and +1 on all skill checks – so long as a 40lb lead ball is held in the off-hand, causing -2 to all attack rolls…

Incomplete Magic Items

This type of magic item is inspired by the Rod Of Seven Parts, and by the Wand Of Orcus. It can be a magic item that is trivial until all its parts are reunited, or it can be useful and combine to become extremely so.

Consider a suit of plate mail that has been broken up and the pieces scattered; each part that is recovered and recombined increases the magical bonus of the whole, for example. Or a wand – each piece of which increases the output of the wand by 2d6.

In the meantime, however, it’s value is limited by the fact that it is only a fraction of what it could become, and by the challenges to be overcome in achieving that potential.

Of course, it’s equally possible that the last parts were never finished….

Incompatible Magic Parts

Nothing works perfectly the first time you attempt it – well, almost nothing. Especially if the task is extremely technical in nature and the principles in back of it are as much about instinct and feeling as they are intellectual analysis.

Let’s take a hit record as an analogy. Let’s say that recording went really well, and only took about four hours, and furthermore, the band had not rehearsed the song previously, crafting it through jamming. Also, for simplicity, let’s say that it’s exactly four minutes long. How many times did the band play it before they got it “down”? Well, if they simply played it all the way through until they got it right, there’s time in that four hours to play it 60 times. If, for three quarters of the time, they only played a minute or two of the track until they got that part of it down pat, that’s three hours of a minute-and-a-half (on average) performances, or 120 – plus the final hour of 15 full run-throughs. And that’s for an unbelievably fast recording.

I recently acquired a copy of a double CD combining the Motels All Four One and Little Robbers albums, with bonus tracks from an earlier album, Apocalypso, that they recorded but didn’t release (because the record company refused, considering it sub-par). Most of the tracks were then re-recorded for All Four One, but a few of them were abandoned in favor of new compositions including the hit single “Take The L”. Two thoughts came to me as I listened to this CD for the first time: Number one, that the polish revealed by comparing the versions of those songs that appeared on both “albums” was the difference between most indie label recordings and the work of the major labels in days past, because it’s too easy to get too close to the trees to see the forest; and number two, that the difference was undoubtedly hundreds of more rehearsals, some rewriting, and – in some cases – an entirely new direction or “take” on the music than the one that the producer of “Apocalypso” provided (which might be because he functioned more as an engineer than a producer, according to the liner notes).

To get the “finished” versions of “Mission Of Mercy” and “So L.A.” on All Four One involved dozens, maybe hundreds, of additional rehearsals and perhaps live performances and tryouts; you can hear the difference that comes from playing around with the music so many extra times and hearing it with fresh ears.

The Beatles multi-CD “Anthology” sets, which are full of rehearsal recordings and alternate versions, further back up this point.

Or you might look at an artist developing a new major artwork. They don’t spend all their time working on the picture directly; instead, they do sketches of the subject, arranging the contents in different ways, experimenting with color and media and technique. A single landscape, done the old-school oil-painting way, might involve dozens of preliminary sketches. And landscapes are easy in comparison with, say, a formal portrait, which is supposed to not only capture a recognizable image of the subject, but often to flatter them and/or say something more about them, through symbolism, representation, and other tricks of the trade.

Incompatible Magic Parts take the principle of “Incomplete” and apply this logic of reality to them. Here, for example, is a Wand Of Lightning Bolt in multiple parts: each part independently does 2d6 electrical in the form of a short “lightning spark”, and they are clearly designed to mate into a larger, more powerful, object. So you put them together only to find that the combined whole does 1d8 electrical in the form of an even shorter and weaker “lightning spark” – the parts are Incompatible.

Have you ever put one battery in a device that takes two or more, back-to-front? For a very short time, you might get the device to function – but (best-case) the batteries will go flat hundreds of times faster than they otherwise would. If the device didn’t short out or explode, or the batteries – and I have seen all the possible outcomes either directly or through reports from electrician friends who had to diagnose and repair the problems.

Of course, even if the intent was to construct a half-dozen of these mated pieces to create something truly epic, after the failure of these two pieces, you would either start over or give up altogether. The results are an object lesson in the crafting of magic items and a curiosity, nothing more.

Or, it might be that the act of creation was interrupted, and the useless can still become the mighty – with research and effort.

There Is Always A Story

There’s always a story in back of one of these items. Sometimes more than one, but let’s not get too complicated.

A Creator

Someone made this. Who?

A Motive or Purpose

Why? What were they trying to achieve?

A Value

Whoever took it to wherever the PCs found it must have had a reason to have taken it there.

A Journey

For that matter, it may have changed hands many times en route. To put it mildly, each of these must have undergone a journey. If these items could only talk… wait, that’s an entirely different subject. What’s it’s history?

This backstory should tie into everything found with or near the item in question, which may offer clues to the answers to those questions for the PCs to speculate over. Or, if they stumble across such an item in a merchant’s tent or bazaar, where did the seller get it? This may obfuscate the question, but it only shifts it and adds a page or two to the story of the item, it doesn’t erase the existence or relevance of that story.

Of course, it goes without saying that con men would love these things. Low cost, but a clever story by a facile tongue could inflate their apparent worth enormously!

It cuts the other way, too – there will be lost treasures out there, valueless in practical terms, but of enormous value because of who made them, or where, or when, or because of their history. But if you don’t know that backstory, you would sell them for coppers on the platinum piece. Even in medieval times, there were wealthy collectors…

Placement: Never Trivial

Magic items such as those described might be trivial or (almost) worthless in comparison with the value of “true” magic items, but their placement should never be trivial. Used properly, they can add coherence and continuity to the concepts of an arcane education, or a campaign history, can put a little mud on the boots of the most revered mages and craftsmen that humanizes the legend, can create quests and anecdotes and mythologies to entertain the players and bring the world to a higher state of both verisimilitude and entertainment value.

They have a huge story potential – don’t waste them.

From a GM’s perspective, used properly, they may be worth several times their weight in rare gemstones!

Every time there’s a fifth Saturday in the month (with the occasional exception), I run my Dr Who campaign. This uses a simple home-brew game system that I’ve been tinkering with for more than a decade. As the game proceeded (a good time was had by both GM and Player), I noticed the way that I was setting difficulty targets for the occasional skill roll required by the PC, and realized that if I described it, and extended the logic to fit other systems like D&D (3.x variety) and the Hero System – because the processes that I use in those cases is very similar – then it would make a good article. So that’s what’s on today’s menu.

The Lovecraft’s Legacy Skill Mechanics

The Lovecraft’s Legacy campaign uses a mechanic whereby the character gets so many dice from his stat, 1 die for each point in an Application Method, and 1 die for each point in a skill. You can assume that the average untrained person will have 2-4 dice to roll, that the typical NPC with a normal skill level has 4-6 dice, and that a typical PC will have 5 or more, possibly considerably more if it’s something that they are good at.

If the total rolled on these dice is greater than or equal to the target, the character succeeds in whatever he was trying to do. Since the average result on a d6 is 3.5, it’s easy to translate average rolls into “50-50 target levels”:

• 2 dice: 3.5 x 2 = 7
• 3 dice: 3.5 Î 3 = 10.5 rounds to 10
• 4 dice: 3.5 Î 4 = 14
• 5 dice: 3.5 Î 5 = 17.5 rounds to 17
• 6 dice: 3.5 Î 6 = 21
• 7 dice: 3.5 Î 7 = 24.5 rounds to 24
• 8 dice: 3.5 Î 8 = 28
• 9 dice: 3.5 Î 9 = 31.5 rounds to 31
• 10 dice: 3.5 Î 10 = 35

… and so on.

Foundation Question

The first half of foundation of any difficulty target is the simple question, “how hard is it to do [x]”, but after that comes any number of often-unwritten assumptions.

“…for a character with typical expertise” is one – alternatives include “…for a character with no training”, “…for an expert”, and “…for a standard character of ability y with a stat of z”.

“…under ideal conditions” is another, vs. “…under typical conditions”, vs. “…under current conditions”, vs. “…under adverse conditions”.

There are others as well, but they all provide context for the initial part of the question, the important part, defining the standards against which the question must be resolved.

Translation

Once you have a sense of the answer to the foundation question, the next step is to translate that into a base difficulty target. This is quite often done almost instinctively, using guidelines provided by the rules and the GM’s experience in running the game as factors. It’s usually unnecessary to actually articulate a specific answer to the foundation question; you can simply use the translation as your solution.

Modifiers

The next thing to do is to take into account any circumstantial modifiers. If the goal under the game mechanics is to roll higher than a target number, then + modifiers added to the die roll represent advantages to the character, while + modifiers added to the target represent disadvantages; if the goal is to roll less than a target number, then these are the other way around. And, of course, any negative modifiers work in the opposite way.

It’s most commonly the case that only one value is adjusted, either up or down, because that makes interpretation simpler, but the exact way of phrasing and applying modifiers in the game system determines the interpretation that attaches to a modifier of “plus-whatever”. In the Dr Who campaign-mechanics, the difficulty target is the value adjusted, so a “+” makes things harder for the character and a “-” makes things easier.

This is for two reasons:

1. As a process, this more accurately reflects the concept of a “Difficulty Modifier”, in my opinion.
2. By modifying a number that the GM doesn’t have to reveal, it means that the GM can also keep the modifier secret. This will soon be seen to be more important than it might seem right now.

The normal process is to consider each of the environmental and circumstantial factors that the GM considers relevant one at a time, compounding them until you get an aggregated total or run out of factors to take into consideration.

Total and Test

The final step is to apply the modifier in the manner proscribed by the game system and have the character make his roll, then interpret the results.

….At least in theory: The Metagame

That’s all well and good, but it isn’t quite the way that I do it in the real world. Instead, I look at a whole range of Metagame considerations. It’s critical that I do so, because when you have only one Player and one PC in the campaign, there is no safety net. When you have multiple characters, one can backstop another.

The Foundation Question, revisited

The interpretational context used for the foundation question is different, for a start, and relies on my understanding of the PC as a character within the game world and his capabilities. The foundation question I ask is “How difficult should it be for this character to do this, under the current circumstances” – actually, strike that – what I ask is “What chance of success do I want this character to have?”

Answering that question automatically takes into account a whole bunch of variables, many of them indefinable or completely unacknowledged by game mechanics. The consequences of failure to the character, how success or failure will impact the plotline, whether or not the character can get a second attempt, whether or not the character can somehow recover from an error before it’s too late, whether or not the time is right for “high drama”, whether or not there is an alternate strategy (that perhaps the player isn’t currently even aware of), whether or not success would be appropriate for the character being depicted, and yes, the difficulty of the challenge.

The interplay of multiple modifiers

Let’s say there are a number of different modifiers that apply to a given check, and that it’s extremely unusual for any one to be a bigger adjustment than What happens when you put these together?

Well, a lot of the time, one will cancel out another, in whole or in part. In effect, you can simulate the range of a single modifier as “d7-4”, and therefore, compound N of these “die rolls” to map out the normal consequences.

This, to me, is a very illuminating graph. It says that most of the time, no matter how many modifiers you have, the net effect of ±1-to-3 will be ±1-to-4-point-something. In fact, it’s a fair statement to say that except in extreme cases, the whole assessment can be be reduced to a single modifier – “will the preponderance of modifiers favor or hinder the character, and to what extent?”

You can also state that if there are N modifiers to consider of equal scale, it’s unlikely (even in extreme circumstances) that the net modifier will be more than 4/3 of the maximum of any single one of those modifiers. Also, even if one of the modifiers has a bigger range, that range will be compromised – evened out – in most cases by other modifiers. In fact, 4/3 of the average will be the boundary value most – say, around 70% – of the time.

So, why not skip the hard work and simply assess where on that ±1-to-4/3-of-the-average-of-maximums range the overall situation belongs? Or even take the next step and decide how hard the check should be based on the plot needs of the moment? Not only do you have a lot less work to perform in determining what a given skill target should be, but the entire basis of the question has been changed from a mechanics-oriented question to a storytelling-oriented basis. The aim of the approach is to permit the PC to succeed – when he has to, and be able to fail when he doesn’t, but always for it to be close enough to be exciting – or trivially easy when the PC is in his element and in a position to show off superior expertise.

Application to Other Game Systems

The same basic approach can be applied to ANY game system that employs a skill check to determine success or failure. My co-GM and I use this basic approach all the time in the Adventurer’s Club campaign; the basic question is always, “What chance should this PC have to succeed at task [x]?” We then consult a copy of the character sheet to determine what the character’s base chance is, and from that, determine what the modifier to his skill check should be in order to achieve the desired outcome, i.e. likelihood of success.

This technique works for 3.x / Pathfinder as well, and I have no doubt that it would function equally-well regardless of the game system. The only difference is in how you approach the problem.

In 3.x, for example, you set a DC that the character has to beat. The number of dice is fixed (one d20), modifiers get applied to that roll, in the form of skill ranks and a stat modifier. Everything else is factored into the DC “target” by the GM. The theory is that this ranges from 5 for the trivially-easy up to 25 for the almost-impossible; but, as I showed in “How Hard Can It Be?” – Skill Checks under the microscope, A fourteenth level character can succeed at a DC 40 task more than 50% of the time. Under reasonable circumstances, he is more likely to succeed than to fail.

Clearly, the scales are out of whack. By the time the character reaches his upper teens in level, it will take a DC of 55 before the character has even a 50-50 chance of failure at any skill he has been improving consistently. In fact, to achieve chances of success that are reasonably accurate to the labels attached to them, you need to apply the corrective calculation, New = 10 + 1.2 x (Old – 10).

I revisited the issue, and the solutions, in Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, looking at the question of the standard of expertise that should be considered when assessing how difficult any given task should be, and acknowledged along the way that Pathfinder does a better job of it than 3.x did, because for every skill, it provides examples of what applications a particular DC represents. The problem is that this leaves the adventure hostage to the game mechanics.

Simulation vs Abstraction… again

This is yet another case of the debate that’s been going on ever since OD&D was published – should you be a simulationist or an abstractor?

Simulationist-styles attempt to quantify every possible variable and take them all into account. Abstractionists toss realism into the waste-bin whenever they deem it necessary or desirable to do so.

The approach I take in the Dr Who campaign, and the Adventurer’s Club Campaign (pulp), and – for that matter – the Zenith-3 Campaign (superheros) – is relatively abstractionist, with varying degrees of pretense to simulationism. Most game systems are so written that the style you choose can be employed equally-well. I choose this approach in those campaigns because they are all cases in which the campaign’s genre sets the desired tone as being larger-than-life.

My fantasy campaigns have been more variable. The Fumanor campaigns and Rings Of Time campaigns were unashamedly High Fantasy, and so benefited from the larger-than-life approach; the Shards Of Divinity campaign was low fantasy most of the time, but high-fantasy in the right environment, a more unusual choice. The Zener Gate campaign is at a mid-point between the two extremes, leaning toward the larger-than-life later in the adventures while being more gritty and realistic in tone early in an adventure. This is all about adventure Pacing, a subject that I’ve discussed here on multiple occasions.

But, as a general rule, slavish adherence to game mechanics can and should be set aside in the interests of making the game more exciting, more fun, for everyone, in my opinion. Make it look harder than it really is – then let the players succeed anyway, if it improves the experience for everyone involved.

In the first half of this two-part article I described a game-show format designed for my use in an RPG. A quick reminder:

The License

The game-show format and key elements thereof, as described in this blog post and its predecessor, are © 2018 Mike Bourke. Licensing is free for any RPG-related purpose. Licensing for any other purpose (but especially for use in an actual televised game show) are negotiable, contact me through the website.

The first part also described the building blocks and pre-scripting prep required – decisions about the host, the contestants, and the questions – and examined briefly how the technologies available in different eras would impact on the implementation of the game show format.

In this part, I will examine the process of writing the “script” for the show, how to keep it dynamically-responsive to what the PC did, how to involve the other players at the table, and will wrap up by sharing the relevant excerpts from the actual adventure.

A brief note on terminology

“Players” is used exclusively to refer to players of the RPG except in the excerpts from the adventure. “Contestants” and “Participants” refer exclusively to the PC and NPCs taking part in the game show. Any references to “the PC” refer to the specific PC who is appearing on the game show.

The NPCs

I listed the NPCs who I chose as participants in the game show in part 1 and noted that they were often chosen because of a perceived difference of opinion on some subject of general interest or other relationship that would make the show more interesting. All but one of these participants were completely fictional; the exception was “Sir Alice Cooper”.

It’s worth noting that the unique game background is reflected in that particular identity – the Kingdom Of The United States (also known as the USK) is part of the British Empire (along with Europe, most of Africa, all of south and Central America, the rest of North America, Australasia and various pacific islands, and the more western parts of Asia like India). That means that he is part of the British honors system, and so was knighted for his work in assisting other celebrities to deal with their problems with addiction, which in turn furnished a number of positive role models for others. This was largely based on the interview segment when Cooper appeared on Top Gear.

I also described the host of the game show that I had chosen – named Stuart Debrassie – and how his personality, abilities, reputation, and style impacted on the game show. Stuart is the “toughest interviewer on TV” in the game era, the host of the most-watched public affairs program in the Empire [‘IBC Tonight’], and uses his knowledge to quickly get to the heart of who players are. “IBC” stands for “Imperial Broadcasting Corporation”, the in-game equivalent of the BBC (“British Broadcasting Corporation”).

The Writing

The first segment of the show is all about introducing the participants and establishing both some baseline scores and the basic relationships between the participants. The style was deliberately modeled on a chat show in which trivia questions were dropped into the conversation – there’s the influence of the host.

To avoid hitting the players with a massive info-dump regarding the participants, I conceived the idea that the show would go to some lengths to avoid the contestants knowing who their fellow competitors were going to be in advance. This let me dole out the background information within the narrative, as though the other players were watching the show (which some of their characters were doing).

Various segments were also seeded with interview periods in which the show gave the participants a soap-box.

During the “writing” of the show, I kept track of a number of things in note form: how the contestants felt about each other, the impression created on the studio audience, the impression that the wider public would have of the contestants, the scores, and the tactics that each participant would employ.

There were three set pieces that the “game show” was to deliver. The first was to inform the PCs (and their players) of a political movement aimed at them that was in its very nascent stages but gathering momentum; the second was to demonstrate the PCs growing level of fame to the players; and the third was to introduce the question of what to do with that fame, if anything.

Three of the participants were present to articulate different points of view on the latter, and two more were present to provide polar opposite perspectives on the first. The second was included primarily to make sure that the players were aware that the third was relevant to them as PCs.

The only fixed outcome was that I wanted the voice of the political movement opposing the PCs to demonstrate both the level of passion felt and the lack of support for the position in the current in-game social climate by deliberately choosing to crash out of the game in order to damage the chances of the PC.

In every other case, the progress of the game was determined by putting myself in the shoes of whoever was driving that phase of the game, at that point. When audiences were a factor, I treated the audience as a single NPC, for example.

Involving the other players

The player is not the character. The character knows things that the player does not, and – in this case – has a greater intelligence than just about anyone.

There are two ways of handling that. First, where the player can identify a specific skill that might provide the answer, they could make a roll (assuming that the player doesn’t know the right answer, of course). High Success gives the answer with confidence, Weak Success gives the answer without certainty that it’s right, Weak failure gives an incorrect answer without confidence, and a Bad failure gives either no answer or an incorrect answer with confidence.

But second, the player of the PC could choose to ask one of the other players at the table, based on his knowledge of that player’s hobbies and fields of interest.

There were limits placed on this that were progressively loosened as the questions grew more difficult. This transformed the position of “Game show contestant” into a collaborative effort by the players, with one official mouthpiece – the player of The PC.

This technique – and various analogues – is a valuable one for a GM to have tucked away in his back pocket, because it transforms a solo situation into a group activity in which everyone can participate. The spotlight remains on the featured PC but everyone else gets stage lighting, to employ a metaphor.

Systematic Writing

The process of writing was a simple set of steps, repeated indefinitely.

1. Decision: who gets the next question? (remembering that in later rounds, this is determined by the audience, who have seen the question in advance).
2. Any pre-question banter, dialogue, or narrative.
3. A segue into the next question by the host.
4. The question.
5. Review the options open to the contestant at this point in the game, review their current score, the identity of the contestants coming first and last, and the tactics of the contestant in question.
6. Does the contestant have any relevant expertise or experience? Does the contestant think they know the answer? Are they correct, and how confident are they that they are right?
7. Which of their options will the contestant choose to exercise?
8. Contestant talks their way through the question. This may be them explaining how they know the answer, or it may be them searching for the answer, or it may be them justifying the action that they are about to take, or it may be them putting their personality on show, or some combination of the above.
9. Contestant either gives their answer or deflects the question if they can. If they deflect, there will be a segue from the host regarding the impact on the scoreline and then repeat steps 5 through 8 for the new contestant targeted.
10. Resolve the outcome, adjust the scores.
11. Determine the contestant’s reaction.
12. Announce the outcome, any post-answer dialogue.

The Adventure Excerpts

Each time a contestant received their first question of the round (or otherwise made a statement for the first time, I displayed an image of the contestant. Unfortunately most, if not all, of those images are copyrighted, so I can’t include them here.

I tracked ongoing scores on a whiteboard. Each excerpt ends with either a segue out of recording/broadcasting of the game show, or with a question being posed to the PC contestant, or with a scene shift to another PC who is involved in their own activities/plotline (which haven’t been excerpted here). Such scene shifts also took place in between segments of the game show.

I occasionally improvised descriptions of reactions by the contestants to the question they were being asked – “[NPC X] looks nervous as [s]he says….” kind of thing.

Act two, Scene five: Games, games, games I

Runeweaver is appearing on the popular 3DTV game show, “Deflection”. This is a highly-tactical trivia quiz format. Viewers are shown a question and decide interactively which participant will be asked to answer it. Popular figures tend to get easy questions, unpopular ones get the harder ones. The player being asked the question routinely talks their way around the problem before deciding whether to answer it (scoring points according to the difficulty of the question) or sacrifice points to “deflect the question” to another player. The number of points to be sacrificed is determined by the current ranking of the players on the scoreboard – so bringing the leader back to the pack on your own also sends you to the back of it, while helping a player who is behind to catch up costs relatively little but risks eliminating them completely, painting you as the villain. The questions themselves vary from the ridiculously easy to the mind-numbingly difficult and obscure. The game is won by the player with the highest score when the final question that will fit within a specified time that gives the show enough highlights to fill a 42-minute program gets asked – typically, 50 or so. This being the celebrity edition, instead of playing for personal cash, you’re all playing for donations to charity.

The host and quiz-master is Stuart DeBrassie, who also hosts the most-watched public affairs program in the Empire [‘IBC Tonight’]. Stuart uses his knowledge to quickly get to the heart of who players are. It’s also suspected that his quiz cards have multiple questions on them and the producers are reputed to manipulate the difficulty to make for a more interesting game. As a general rule, the celebrity edition doesn’t get easier questions than the regular one, and the first third of the recording has easier questions than the last third. As a result, the first 1/3 of the show is about introduction and assessing the strengths of the different players, the second 1/3 of the show is jockeying for position and public perception, and the final 1/3 is the showdown, wherein it is entirely possible for any player still in the game to win. The first half is pre-recorded and edited to time; the second half is live to air.

It’s quite common for players to use their “talk around the question” period to try and charm the audience, or paint themselves as the bad guy or girl if they are confident of their abilities. There are other tactics: snappy answers to get more questions in, or taking your time to get less, trying to prune the field, being friendly or ruthless, attempting to send other players down the garden path by offering a red herring in your dialogue, trying to charm the audience, singling out the weakest player or the strongest…

What is Runeweaver’s basic strategy going to be? What persona are you going to project?
(pause for decision)

Another of the tactics that the show uses to keep itself interesting is not to tell the players who they are up against until filming starts, even to the point of getting additional celebrities into the studio audience as red herrings and deliberately casting celebrities with “histories”.

After going through makeup, deciding to wear his regular costume rather than picking something off the game show’s rack (as his identity is part of the mystique that his appearance here is selling), and enjoying a fruit platter supplied by the studio, Runeweaver is escorted to a tiny cubicle sealed on three sides by curtains. The seat reclines into an easy-chair when the cameras are off, lifts the celebrities up when they are needed, and hides discretely in the studio walls the rest of the time. Two floating cameras continually focus on him. As he waits, he can hear other people being maneuvered into position and various production chatter as lights, camera, comms, and sound are checked one final time.

*** Squawky voice: “Testing Camera One – Testing Camera Two – Testing Camera Three – Host in position – ready lights – ready spots – a reminder to celebrities, the curtains will drop when your name is announced, be ready to smile – roll lead-in – roll title – cue audience – cue host in 3…2…1…”

“Hello, and welcome to the first episode of Deflection for 2056! I’m your host, Stuart DeBrassie, and tonight we have some very special entertainment for you. Tonight, seven celebrities go head to head for charity, chasing a share of a total prize pool of But this will be a game of Deflection unlike any you’ve seen before; we’ve rejigged the rules, and this is our first chance to show them off!

“Round One is where we meet our players for the first time. As usual, each will be asked a question chosen at random from our database to help us establish a base score. Used wisely, an early advantage can be decisive!

“First, please welcome the world-famous actress, star of A Midwinter’s Night, Aladdin’s Cave, and Leaves Of Autumn to name just three, Alison Cash, herself!” Runeweaver, Cash is well-known for being strongly opinionated. “Miss Cash, for one point, Which is the only American state to begin with the letter ‘p’?”

“A pleasure to be here, Stuart, and the answer is ‘Pennsylvania’!”

“Right you are, and we are underway! Next, we have….”

Two unrelated scenes followed in which the game looked in on other PCs.

Act two, Scene eight: Games, games, games II

While we were away,

• Mosul Panasar, a Sikh Comedian who pokes fun at tradition-for-the-sake-of-tradition and racial bias, and who has had several public disagreements about whether or not his comedy is ‘inappropriate’ with Alison Cash, was able to name the Middle Eastern City that is also a variety of Artichoke (Jerusalem);
• Sir Alice Cooper, a semi-retired shock rocker, actor, golfing celebrity, restaurateur, and vintage automobile restorer/customizer, 107 years old and still going strong, who was knighted for his social services in combating celebrity alcoholism knew where to look for the Sea Of Tranquility (The Moon);
  Alison Cash has, in the past, publicly criticized Cooper for being unwilling to mix entertainment and politics, i.e. to utilize the stage given him by his fame;
• “Princess”, a somewhat prissy fashion model and Cooper’s great-granddaughter, couldn’t correctly name the fifth planet of the solar system (she said Saturn instead of Jupiter);
• Congressman Marcel Greene, who “allegedly” contracted with the Circus Of Crime to assassinate a Shock Jock Howard Eskin, who was a thorn in his side – the PCs failed to get sufficient proof of his involvement when they took down the Circus, so he is on the reelection trail – knew that the capital of Spain was Madrid; and
• Chief Oscar Raven, elected head of the NOPD, with whom the PCs have not previously interacted, failed to name Dom Perignon as the legendary Benedictine monk who invented champagne.

“….and last but by no means least, we bring you Runeweaver of The Champions! Runeweaver, welcome, welcome! And if you could, for two points, tell me which word goes before vest, beans and quartet?”
(Pause for reply)

Stuart: “‘String’ is the correct answer! And so, at the end of our warm-up round, the scores are: A three-way tie for first between Mr Panasar, Sir Alice, and Congressman Greene [4-way if Runeweaver got the answer right], all tied on 22; Alison Cash right behind on 21; Princess lagging behind with 18; and Chief Raven in the caboose with only 17 points.”

“We’ll be back with Round Two, when we starting playing seriously, right after these messages…”

*** Squawky voice: ‘….aaaaand we’re clear! Good job, everyone! Assistants, please see to our player’s needs and squawk the booth when everyone’s ready to proceed. The next round’s a long one, so if you need to use the restroom, now’s the time.’

Another scene featuring a different PC followed.

Act two, Scene ten: Games, games, games III

Back at the TV studio, the producer’s voice erupts from the cheap intercom system.

*** Squawky Voice: “Brxzt – Places everyone… Host ready…. cameras…. lights….. we’re recording again in 3…2….1….”

Stuart: “Welcome back to this celebrity edition of Deflection, 2056-style!” beams Stuart DeBrassie. “We’re about to begin Round 2 of our game. This works exactly like round one except that the audience gets to choose which of our players gets asked the question, and – for the first time – if one gets a question they can’t answer, they can Deflect that question to another player. In this round, each question can be deflected only once. It costs three points to deflect a question to the current leader, or the second-placed player if you are the leader, one point to deflect it to the player in last place, and two points to deflect it to someone else. The only other rule is that you can’t be asked two questions in a row.

“We’ll pause to get to know each of our contestants a little better along the way. So let’s get started!

“Congressman Greene, you had a promising career ahead of you before recent controversies erupted. Why are you again throwing your hat into the public arena?”

Greene (Oily voice, trying too hard to be likable): “I’m glad you brought that up, Stuart, because it gives me the chance to clear the air. Let me start by emphasizing that nothing has been proven against me. I am standing for reelection because I believe that I am the one person best-placed to protect the interests of my constituents. And, should they choose to re-elect me, I will continue to facilitate connections between them and the bloated bureaucracy of the Empire.”

Stuart: “A fairly standard politician’s response, Congressman. Can you give our viewers any specific reason to support you?”

Greene: “Yes, Stuart. It’s my opinion that there is insufficient oversight of the law-enforcement organs of the Empire, including the Champions; and should I be re-elected, I will seek to persuade the government of the day to correct that deficiency. Take my own case – unsubstantiated allegations were leaked to the press by parties unknown within Law Enforcement specifically to damage my political standing. They could not prove wrongdoing, so they sought to manipulate public opinion against me. I was never even charged with an offense, but my reputation was publicly eviscerated, nevertheless. Elect me, and I will strengthen the laws that protect everyone – you, me, them, the public – from such unfounded allegations!”

Stuart: “So you seek to restrict what people can say about someone else to provable facts, stifling the expression of opinion and the airing of allegations, as a defense against presumptive judgment.

“But that would also insulate public officials from changing social standards, surely an undesirable outcome, and free speech has proven to be capable of motivating and polarizing oppositions in the past, so I suspect that this is not going to be the last that we hear regarding this debate in the coming months!

“But, in the meantime – Mr Panasar, for 5 points, what color is a Welsh poppy?”

Caught off-balance momentarily by the change of subject, it takes Mosul a second to realize that the game has resumed and the ball is in his court. Thinking hard, and without a great deal of confidence, he answers, “Yellow?”.

Stuart: “That is correct. Sir Alice, what is another word for the formal meaning of ‘lexicon’?”

Sir Alice (scratchy voice): “Ahhh… I’ll deflect that question, Stuart. And since I don’t want to play favorites, let’s go from left to right, so that’s to Police Chief Raven – good luck, Chief!”

Stuart: “And it’s just a coincidence that Chief Raven is currently in last place, making this the cheapest deflection. That costs you one point, Sir Alice. Chief, can you answer the question?”

Raven (deep voice): “It so happens that I can, Stuart – this is one of my favorite crossword clues. The answer is ‘Dictionary’.”

Stuart: “Correct, Chief, five points to your score. And the next question is again to Mr Panasar. Mosul, for 5 points, which Black actress was the first to win an Academy Award?”

Mosul tells a joke about dodging bullets and then announces, (Indian accent) “Deflect, Stuart. And, picking someone at random, let’s say…. Runeweaver! Good luck, Runeweaver!”

*** Roleplay.

*** Correct Answer: Hattie McDaniel in 1939 for her role in Gone With The Wind. [Update scores, -2 to Mosul, ±5 pts to RW]

Stuart: “Our current points leader is Mosul Panasar. Mosul, you and Miss Cash have been engaging in something of a war through Social Media lately.”

Mosul replies, “Well you know, Stuart, during the Palestine Cleansing of ’22, during a particularly fierce battle a general confronted a soldier who was lagging behind his unit when the enemy outnumbered them four-to-one. After giving the soldier a dressing-down, the general asked the soldier what he had to say for himself, to which the soldier replied that he’d already gotten his four.”
(Audience Laughter)

“Miss Cash believes that some subjects are too serious for comedy. She doesn’t seem to realize that there’s a difference between making fun of something and treating it lightly. I believe that those subjects make the best comedy because it enables you to ridicule outmoded ideas and attitudes, which makes people think about avoiding those attitudes, even while you are using laughter to get past their natural cynicism. I support the same causes she does, I just do it in a way that she doesn’t like – which she seems to think more important that the cause itself.”

Stuart: “You consider comedy to be educational?”

Mosul: “If you tell somebody what to think and what not to think, they’ll ignore you unless they already agree with you. Most people who can be convinced by reasoned argument already have been. If you make them laugh while puncturing one of their beliefs, they will start to soften and change those beliefs, because no one likes to identify with the butt of the joke!”

Stuart: “That’s a very interesting point of view, Mosul. I’d ask what she thinks on the subject, but I think it’s more important right now to ask her, for 4 points, who invented rabies vaccinations?”

Cash (feminine but aggressive voice) : “The only person I know of who invented any sort of vaccination was Louis Pasteur, so that’s my answer, Stuart.”

Stuart: “Absolutely correct. The next question, as decided by the audience, goes to Runeweaver, and it’s worth six points. Can you name the only heavyweight boxing champion to finish his career of 49 fights without ever having been defeated?”

*** Roleplay. He can Deflect. Correct answer is Rocky Marciano.
Chances of answering correctly: Congressman Greene: 4+4-5=3/10; Chief Raven: 5+4-5=4/10; Sir Alice: 7+4-5=6/10; Princess: 3+4-5=2/10; Mosul: 4+4-5=3/10; Cash 6+4-5=5/10. Adjust scores appropriately.

Okay, let’s explain those “chances of answering correctly”: the first number is the NPC’s based chance of getting a right answer, a combination of intelligence and breadth of life experience; the second number is a modifier for any special expertise that might apply (+4 is a middling value, slightly worse than neutral), and the -5 is the points value of the question, which is also its obscurity i.e. difficulty. Since I didn’t know who the player would deflect the question to, I needed to work out what each contestant’s chances were of getting it right, which I was willing to adjust on the fly depending on what the PC said – hints or misdirections. As it happens, after several minutes of discussion between the players, he took a punt – what some people might call a flier – on an answer, Mohammad Ali, and got the question wrong.

Announce the adjusted scores.

Stuart: “And our next question is for Sir Alice Cooper. The Rub Al Khali desert in Saudi Arabia is also known as what, Sir Alice?”

Sir Alice: “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea, Stuart, so I’ll Deflect again. This time, to Alison Cash.”

Stuart: “Miss Cash, do you know the answer?”

Cash: “I don’t think it’s right, but the only answer I can think of is the Sahara Desert.”

Stuart: “You have good instincts – if they were telling you that your answer is incorrect. The answer is, ‘The Empty Quarter’. I’m afraid that costs you the points you scored a moment ago and one more for good measure.

“Of course, the feud you’ve had going with Mosul lately isn’t the only one you’ve been involved in. You’ve publicly attacked a number of celebrities, including Sir Alice. Would you like to tell our audience what that’s all about?”

Cash: “It would be my pleasure, Stuart. It’s about responsibility.

“Our fans – and we all have them – go to our movies and concerts and whatever, and that makes those productions more successful, and that makes us Celebrities. We become quite famous as a result; most if us didn’t ask for that fame, considering it to be the price of success, to be minimized as much as possible. But the public at large see the advantages of fame and consider it as much a reward as a penalty. I think of it as a tool that can be used to our advantage or misused to our detriment, and that implies that we have a responsibility to use the influence that fame gives us for positive purposes.”

Sir Alice: “But where do you draw the line?” interjects Sir Alice. “One day you’re supporting a cause you judge to be worthy, the next you’re supporting politicians who say they support that cause, and the day after that you’re supporting politicians who might empower those politicians, maybe, and before you know it you’re supporting political parties in general, and are just another partisan mouthpiece.”

Cash: “I draw the line where I choose to draw the line. If you aren’t comfortable supporting a particular politician or party then don’t do it!”

Cooper: “Our fans come from all different political persuasions,” rebuts Alice. “By taking sides, you’re telling some of them – it might be a few of them or a lot of them – that their opinions and beliefs are wrong. Who are you to make that judgment? And, if you do, will those fans stick around? Back in the 90s, or maybe it was noughties, that girl group – The Dixie Chicks I think it was – found out the hard way that they won’t.”

Cash: “Do you refuse to spend money because you might get cheated? This is exactly the same thing, fame is just a different form of currency. Yes, it can be lost or perverted into infamy – but that only makes it more important to use it while you have it!”

Stuart: “Can you at least agree that it’s an individual choice?” interjects Stuart.

Cooper: “I’ve always thought it so. I’m an entertainer, I’m not Bono, God rest his soul,” replies Alice.

Cash: “No! Because too many people never make the choice, they simply milk their fame for all it’s worth. They have to be forced to pick a cause they can believe in and then to promote the hell out of it!”

Cooper: “And if the cause I choose to promote is my right to privacy, my right to support causes through donations without making a big deal out of it, where does that leave you? Right back where you started. Your problem is that you want to exclude causes that you don’t like. That’s not fair, and it’s not right. I’ve been misquoted and misrepresented in the press so often that I have no confidence that my support would benefit a cause, anyway.”

Cash: “That’s your problem, Sir Alice – but Journalistic Integrity and Standards sounds like a cause worth fighting for.”

Stuart: “I can see that there’s no convincing either of you to back down, so let’s agree to disagree on the issue and get on with the game.

“According to our audience, the next question should go to Princess, for four points – so it’s a fairly easy one. Which kind of bulbs were once exchanged as a form of currency?”

Princess (high-pitched sultry semi-whisper): “I should probably know, but my knowledge about money ends with how to spend it. So I’ll Deflect it, and because he’s lost a number of points, I’m going to send it to Granddad over there.”

Stuart: “I presume you mean Sir Alice, who is in fact your genetic grandfather. Sir Alice, do you know the answer?”

Cooper: “I’ve eaten a few of them in my time, Stuart. The answer is Tulips.”

Stuart: “Correct, taking your score to 23. Next, we have a difficult question worth 8 points, and the audience wants to give it to you, Mosul. So, Mosul Panasar, how many crocus flowers does it take to make a pound of saffron?”

Mosul: “Louise Ericson, star of Ozzy and Harriet, once said about gardening that it ‘requires lots of water – most of it in the form of perspiration’. But about Saffron flowers, I know it’s a lot, but I’ve no idea how many, Stuart. So I’ll Deflect, and because I don’t like his smug attitude, I’ll give it to the low-score holder, Congressman Greene, in hopes that he doesn’t know, either.”

Stuart: “That costs you one point. Congressman Greene, if you don’t get this right, you’ll be in danger of elimination as the game progresses. What is your answer?”

Greene: “I would normally have Congressional Aides to look up this sort of thing for me, Stuart, and make sure that I got it right, so this is a total guess – I’ll say 10,000.”

Stuart: “Just a little wide of the mark, I’m afraid. The correct answer is ‘up to 75,000 flowers’, which (incidentally) is enough to fill an entire soccer stadium. That reduces your score to only 12 points, I’m afraid.

“It seems our audience either loves or hates you, Sir Alice.”

Cooper: “That’s been the reaction all my life, Stuart,” he replies.

Stuart: “Well, whatever their motives, they have thrown the next question, worth a full seven points, in your direction. Ralph Craig ran the 100m for the US in 1912; when did he next compete in the Imperial Games?”

— Side-note: the Imperial Games is a combination of the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, which of course, used to be known as the Empire Games.

Cooper: “Sports was never my forte, Stuart, so I’ll deflect this question. Maybe to Alison, to show that there’s no hard feelings,” he grins.

Cash: “Thanks a bunch, Black Eyes. I don’t know, Stuart, but I’ll take a stab at working out the answer. The Games are every four years. He must have been in his early 20s in 1912. It can’t have been 1916, there would be nothing unusual or noteworthy about that, and the same is true of 1920. So we’re looking at 1924 at the earliest, putting him in his early 30s. Again, I don’t see anything especially noteworthy about that, and the same is true of the 1928 games. By the time of the 1932 games, he’d have been about 40, which is starting to get to a significant age. Were those the ones notoriously held in Berlin, or were they later? I’m going to guess that it was the Olympics after that, when he would have been in his early 40s, which makes my answer 1936.”

Stuart: “I’m afraid that’s incorrect, Alison. The correct answer is 1948, after the war, when at the age of 59, he was an alternate member of the Yachting team. While he didn’t actually get to compete in the games, which were in London that year, he did carry the USK flag at the opening ceremonies.

“And with that, we need to take a commercial break. Round two will continue after these messages. Join us, won’t you?”

*** Squawky Voice: “….and, we’re out. Take ten, people.”
Meanwhile….

Another scene with a different PC took place during the ad break, ending with that PC turning back to their 3DTV set.

Act two, Scene Twelve: Games, games, games IV

Stuart: “Welcome back to this celebrity edition of Deflection 2056,” announces Stuart. “We’re deep in the heart of round two, and the game is starting to take shape.

Princess, you’ve been accused of single-handedly trying to revive the waif look, and also of plagiarizing the look of the Rock performer from the turn of the century, Avril Lavigne.”

Princess: “The look is far more of a Goth Noir revival,” replies the model. “It symbolizes both my heritage,” (and she nods at her Grandfather), “and at the same time looks modern and fresh and attention getting. That’s my job – to attract attention to whatever I’m wearing or appearing in.”

Stuart: “There is one significant difference, however. Please tell us about it.”

Princess: “Well, you wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m naturally a little chubby. In the past, the so-called ‘Waif look’ was achieved by starvation diets and eating disorders. I get there with exercise and hard work and a healthy diet, and I want people to know that if I can do it, they can, too. You don’t have to be a slave to your body chemistry.”

Stuart: “But Obesity hasn’t been a serious problem for most people since the fat-buster pill was introduced in 2040. Why does it matter?”

Princess: “Taking an artificial hormone to accelerate the natural fat-burning processes of the body is way over-used as a treatment and an excuse to live a lifestyle of excess. We don’t know what the long-term effects are, only that if you stop taking it, you’ll balloon up, and in rare cases, risk organ failure. It’s all about taking responsibility for what you put into your body and what you do with it once it’s there.

“I know it’s not a popular movement, but that’s because too many people are lazy and take the easy way out.

“But I grew up listening to Grandpa’s stories of the days of excess in Rock-and-Roll and what they did to everyone else around him, and when I looked around, I saw the same thing happening to half the population in a more general sort of way. The Causes’ time hasn’t quite come yet – but it will, I’m sure of that.”

Runeweaver, the depth of these interviews should be beginning to worry you. Everyone, including that slime-ball Greene, seems to have had something of some substance to say, probably prepared in advance. It will be your turn very soon – what are you going to talk about? While the questions continue, you might want to start making mental notes. Or you might want to pay close attention to the game, where there are a number of personal relationships affecting play – that’s up to you.

The player replied, in character, “I’m feeling way out of my depth and even farther out of my comfort zone at the moment. I’m giving up any thoughts of winning and just hoping not to embarrass the team too much more than I have already. I’m trying to think of something to talk about but I’m coming up blank. But I don’t think DeBrassie is the type not to have a contingency plan prepared, so I’ll let him take the lead and just respond to whatever leading questions he throws my way, and concentrate on the game.”

Stuart: “Our next question is once again for Mosul Panasar. I guess people must have liked what they heard from you Mosul, it seems everyone wants you to have control of the game and the chance to score.”

Mosul: “Either that, or they are trying to knock me out of the game, Stuart!”

Stuart: “Yes, I guess that’s possible, but if that’s what they want, from the looks of the scoreboard, they might be disappointed! Anyway, for 7 points, can you tell me which English town was the first city in Europe to have a street tram system?”

Mosul: “As a matter of fact, I can, Stuart – I happened to tour there a few years back and that’s a bit of trivia that stuck in my head. The answer is Birkenhead, England.”

Stuart: “Well done, Mosul – that takes your score to 32 points. Sir Alice, you seem almost as popular. I guess people don’t like the idea of a thought police.”

Cooper: “They can think what they want, Stuart – I don’t like the idea of a thought police.”

Stuart: “So, can you, for 4 points, name the world’s biggest island?”

It was at this point that the other players started trying to guess at the answers to every question the way they would if they were watching it on TV. This was when I knew that I had them fully engaged as a group in what was going on.

Cooper: “Most people probably think it’s Australia, and I’ve toured there many times, but the correct answer is Greenland – Australia is officially considered a continental landmass, not an island.”

Stuart: “Correct! That takes your score to 25. Mr Greene, the first of our ten-point questions is out, and traditionally, the first ten-point question is a sympathy question directed at the lowest score-holder. Right now, that’s you, Congressman. What was blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield’s IQ measured at? I need the exact number.”

Greene: “I don’t know, Stuart, so I’ll deflect that question – (aggressive tone) to Runeweaver.”

Stuart: “You subtract [two points] from your score, and pass the buck to the superhero. Runeweaver?”

*** Runeweaver must try to answer. Mansfield’s height of fame was the 50s and 60s, so the question is much closer to your time-frame of experience than the contestants think – does that give you a better shot at an answer?

*** Roleplay.

He took a guess, after much debate. The consensus was that it had to be noteworthy, and so either very high or very low, and guessed high, in the 150s.

Correct Answer: 163, well into the “Genius” category. Adjust points accordingly,

Stuart: “The audience haven’t given up on you, Congressman – the next question is also for you. Can you tell me, for two points, is the speed of sound faster or slower in water than in air?”

Greene: “Finally, something I know – my state builds sonar equipment for the navy and has for almost a century. It’s faster, Stuart!”

Stuart: “Correct – sound moves faster in liquids than in gasses, and faster still in solids. In air, it’s 343 meters/second; in water, 1484; in steel, 5120; and in diamond, it’s 12,000, which is better than 43,100 kilometers per hour. So that’s two points, taking your score to 12. You’re still in very dangerous territory, points-wise.”

Suddenly, the spotlight shines on Runeweaver – it’s his turn to face interrogation by one of the sharpest journalists in the Empire! But meanwhile….

To give the player one final chance to get a topic in mind and center himself “in character”, a scene featuring a different PC followed, which had supposedly taken place simultaneously with the segment of the show played so far.

Act two, Scene fourteen: Games, games, games V

Stuart: “Of course, someone who is no stranger to dangerous territory is Runeweaver. Religion has been waning as an influence over people’s lives since the mid-twentieth century, Runeweaver – is your persona merely a reflection of that?”

*** Reply

“You use something you call ‘Magic’. Now, brilliant as some of them have been, I don’t think that’s quite the same thing as stage magic, is it?”

*** Reply – host will push for Runeweaver to define his ‘magic’

“Your accent is slightly Scandinavian. Where do you call home?”

*** Reply

“What’s your opinion of the questions that have been raised about privacy and intensified police oversight? Because I’m detecting something of trend, here.”

*** Reply

“Some of your membership seems more outspoken than others. Vala, your most controversial member, is always quotable; St Barbara seems endlessly popular but watches her words carefully; Blackwing is relatively conservative and tends to stick to the official ‘line’; and your fifth member, Defender, seems almost Diffident, and very hard to get anything out of. Where do you stand in this continuum, and why?”

*** Reply

“So you would probably align yourself more closely with Sir Alice than with the views of Alison Cash. I’m sure that even now, Miss Cash is composing an eviscerating Tweet on the matter, but before you get there, Miss Cash, can you tell me, for 8 points – Costing around $2,600 per pound and made only to order by Knipschildt, what is the name of this chocolate truffle?”

Cash: “The most expensive chocolate I’ve ever heard of is ‘Cornet Port Royal’, is that the answer?”

Stuart: “I’m Sorry – Cornet Port Royal is the name of the dutch chocolatiers appointed to provide exclusive treats for the royal family, but these are even more exclusive than that. The correct answer, I’m afraid, is Chocopologie.

“And, speaking of Sir Alice, we have another question that the audience has chosen to send your way for 5 points – Which is Britain’s oldest Sunday newspaper, published for the first time in 1791?”

Cooper: “My association with the print media being what it is, I have no idea, so I’ll deflect that question. Let me see, who to? I could give it to Mosul, but he probably knows the answer. I think I’ll throw this one at Runeweaver, I’m curious whether or not he does, too.”

*** Roleplay

Another question the PC had to answer, another incorrect guess.

Correct Answer: The Observer. Adjust Scores: Sir Alice, -2; Runeweaver, Announce the scores, as Stuart.

“…and here’s another question that our audience wants to put to you, Alison Cash, possibly since you’re no stranger to controversy. The Amazon is generally regarded as the longest river in the world, but in 2016-7 this view was challenged, and the question remains officially unresolved to this day. For six points, What is the name of the Amazon’s challenger?”

Cash: “As it happens, I do know the answer, we studied this extensively when I was junior high – The river they think may actually be longer than the Amazon, is the Nile. A Brazilian scientists’ 14-day expedition then extended the Amazon’s length by about 284 kilometers, making it 105 kilometers longer than the Nile, but his figure is not accepted by everyone. The problem is that if you follow the edge of any complicated shape, you get a longer measurement than if you measure down the center. Which one is the right figure? Until someone walks the Amazon with a GPS, the way the Nile explorer did, and someone else defines exactly what the length of a river means, the question of which one really is longer can’t be answered – except as you phrased it. Heck, because of the way it twists and turns, it’s even possible that the Mississippi is longer than the official length of the Amazon.”

Stuart: “Completely correct, Miss Cash! Six badly-needed points to your total.

“Our final contestant tonight is New Orleans Chief Of Police, Oscar Raven. Chief Raven, I understand that you don’t have to face reelection this year, unlike most such officials?”

Raven: “That’s correct, Stuart. When my job was established, it was thought desirable to ensure continuity from one administration to another, even at the price of requiring an extra election now and then. As a result, instead of four year terms, the contract is for 5 years of service unless that would result in both elections falling in the same calendar year, in which case it will be for six years.

“The practice is archaic, but traditions are important.”

Stuart: “So it must have been unsettling to have a group of amateurs given police authority within the city. What do you think of the Champions now?”

Raven: “For the first time that I can remember, you’ve been misinformed, Stuart, though it’s a popular misconception. The Champions were slotted into the existing legal and law-enforcement framework of the Empire as a whole. Relations between them and the NOPD started as cordial and have only become more-so as we have grown accustomed to their presence. Their cases and ours rarely intersect, and where they do, we’ve been very grateful for their assistance, and vice-versa, I’m sure.”

Stuart: “You welcome their presence, then, despite the controversies, the public dangers, the social and political attention?”

Raven: “Controversies, Smontroversies. Controversy simply means they’re talking about you, and there are a host of cities who would pay good money for that social and political attention. The last time New Orleans was put on the map, it was due to the disaster of Hurricane Landau. Before that, the explosion of the USKN Birchwood, and before that, the mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

“For the first time in more than 80 years, we’re the focus of attention for a Good reason, and not a disaster. As for the public danger, buying the house next to the fire station doesn’t mean your house is more likely to catch fire, just that if it does,help is closer at hand. Yes, I welcome the Champions to New Orleans, both officially and unofficially.”

Stuart: “You’ve always been one to speak your mind, Chief. Hopefully the right answer will be on that mind when I ask you, for three points, which popular BBC series about old collectibles began in 1979 and is still running to this day?”

Raven: “I’m afraid that my job doesn’t permit much time for television-watching, Stuart, and back when life did, that sort of program would not have been entertaining to me – though it might well fascinate me now that I’m older! The only show on the subject that I know is “Going For A Song”, which I know started a long time ago, so that may as well be my answer.”

Stuart: “I’m afraid that is not correct, Chief. The right answer is Antiques Roadshow. That drops you back to 18 points.

“Alison Cash, the audience has an easy three-point question they would like me to put to you. Who is the most famous Registered Eccentric in the modern Empire?”

Cash: “I really should deflect this to Runeweaver, but I need the points, so – the answer, obviously, is St Barbara, perhaps only by a narrow margin ahead of his other teammate, Vala.”

Stuart: “That is correct, well done. And our last question for this round is to Mosul Panasar, for a massive 9 points. Get this right, Mosul, and you will have something close to an unassailable lead. Aside from being a musical instrument, what does the term ‘piano’ mean in music?”

Mosul: “I don’t know a violin string from a bowstring, Stuart, so I’ll deflect – let’s give it to the musician amongst us, Sir Alice.”

Stuart: “Sir Alice it is, costing you two points. If you can answer this correctly, Sir Alice, you will move into the lead. Get it wrong and you’ll be under great threat of elimination.”

Cooper: “I should probably know this, but I don’t. So, I know this will be wrong, but Keyboards – synthesizers?”

Stuart: “I can only take one answer, Sir Alice, and I’m afraid that both of those are wrong. It’s possibly a foreign concept to a shock rocker like yourself, but the correct answer is ‘to be played softly.’

“Time for a score check (insert Runeweaver’s score in the correct place). Mosul Panasar is on 28 points and leading, followed by Alison Cash on 19, Chief Raven on 18, Princess on 16, Sir Alice is in hot water on 14 points, and Congressman Greene is bringing up the rear on 10 points.

“So, you’ve met our contestants, and our studio audience has set the stage for an exciting game. When we return after these messages, we will be live throughout the Empire, and you at home will have the opportunity to join in the fun! We’ll be right back, so stick around!”

*** Squawky Voice: “And we’re out! Ten minutes, everyone. This will be the last long break before we’re live before the Empire, make the most of it!”

Meanwhile….

This was the first time that the PCs realized that this was an election year despite the hint when Congressman Greene was introduced. The last election the PCs were involved in was both significant and traumatic, and dominated the campaign for months, ultimately leading to the Big Finish of the previous campaign, so they viewed the prospect with some trepidation. At the very least, Greene’s position makes it clear that they will be a political football. This also threw into perspective a number of other background developments – including the relevance of the position advocated by Cash in the game-show.

Attention had slightly drifted after Runeweaver’s interview (which he handled very well, far better than some of the other PCs had done in past adventures when similarly put under the spotlight), but this caused a buzz and a protracted conversation amongst the players as the pieces that I’d been setting up for more than two years real-time began falling into place for them.

This marked a turning-point within the campaign, as it moved from phase I (set-up, i.e. putting those building blocks in place) into phase II (interaction).

Another lengthy scene away from the game-show followed, in which still more building blocks were placed into the emerging broader context, and the players began discussing how they were going to actively respond to the situations I had been setting up.

After that, there was a teaser for future plot developments in another scene, and play ended for the day.

Game Day Two

When play resumed a month later, after a brief synopsis and a reminder of the scoreboard, we moved into the more dramatic segments of the game show, when it definitely goes up a notch in pace…

Act two, Scene eighteen: Games, games, games VI

Stuart: “Welcome to Round Three of today’s celebrity edition of Deflection 2056. I’m still your host, Stuart DeBrassie, and these are our players, and we’re live!

“In round three, a randomly selected member of the audience can offer his best guess as to the answer, but the questions mostly get harder. If they like you, or want to show how clever they are, they might give the right answer, but if not…. You will have to make snap judgments about whether or not to pay any attention to their suggestion. Once again, if you aren’t sure and don’t trust the audience participant, you can Deflect the question, and also once again, you can’t be asked two questions in a row. This is where the game gets tactical, so stay sharp, and good luck to you all.

“To Sir Alice for 8 points: How tall would a double elephant folio book be in old Imperial measurements? The suggested answer is one foot.”

Cooper: “The audience member is wrong. I have several of these – the right answer is 8-and-a-half inches.”

Stuart: “Correct. Alison Cash, for a whopping 10 points, can you tell me what were the Empress Elizabeth and Prince Philip famously given as a present for baby Prince Andrew while on a visit to Gambia? The suggested answer is a Brooch.”

Cash: “Deflect to Mosul, Stuart.”

Stuart: “One point from your score. Mosul?”

Mosul: “An Elephant, Stuart?”

Stuart: “No, I’m sorry, but you were on the right track – it was a baby crocodile. Chief Raven, for six points, this should be right up your alley – it seems the audience out there likes you. Which police departments usually investigate possible suicides? The suggested answer is the Homicide department.”

Raven: “The suggested answer is the right one. In any suspected suicide, Homicide must be ruled out, and that’s the job of the Homicide Department.”

Stuart: “Six badly-needed points to you. Sir Alice, for 7 points, what color is a Himalayan poppy? The suggested answer is blue.”

Cooper: “You asked earlier about Welsh Poppies, and they turned out to be yellow. So I’m betting that this is a trick question. I could deflect, but I’ve made a career out of trusting my audience, so – Blue.”

Stuart: “A good call, Blue is correct, and you’re back in the game. Alison Cash, for 9 very valuable points and potentially the lead at the end of the round, what is the oldest surviving printed book in the world and when was it printed? The suggested answers are The Diamond Sutra and the year 868.”

Cash: “The Diamond Sutra is correct, I think, and it was carbon-dated at something in the 800’s, but no-one’s exactly sure when it was actually printed. So I’ll go with the audience’s suggested answer, 868 AD.”

Stuart: “Correct. Runeweaver, for eight points, name the film noir actress who starred in I Married a Witch, The Glass Key, So Proudly We Hail! and Sullivan’s Travels. The suggested answer is Veronica Lake.”

*** Roleplay. Will Runeweaver take the (correctly) suggested answer? Will he know? Or will he Deflect to someone else?
Chance of answering correctly: Greene: 4+6-8=2/10; Raven 5+6-8=3/10; Cooper 7+6-8=5/10; Princess 3+6+1-8=2/10; Panasar 4+6-8=2/10; Cash 6+6+2-8=6/10. Adjust scores accordingly, RW -2 or +8, other player Alison Cash, it’s you again, this time for 10 points, can you name the first two of Shakespeare’s plays to be translated into Klingon? The suggested answers are Hamlet and A Comedy Of Errors.”

Cash: “What’s Klingon? Deflect, Stuart, Deflect! Looking at the scoreboard, to Congressman Greene.”

Once again, after minimal engagement over the actress, this was when the other players started trying to guess at the answers to every question, recapturing the mood of the previous game session.

Stuart: “As Congressman Greene is in last place, that only costs you one point. Congressman, you need to get this right or you’ll be left a lame duck; succeed and it could be the start of a major comeback. Your answer, please?”

Greene: “Unlike Miss Cash, I doknow what Klingon is. Hamlet sounds about right, but I don’t think A Comedy Of Errors is correct. Henry VIII, Part 1, sounds more up to Klingon sensibilities.”

Stuart: “You’re half right, the answers are Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing. I’m afraid that leaves you vulnerable on only two points.

“And, speaking of two points, Runeweaver, for a deuce, what color jersey is worn by the race leaders of each stage of the Tour De France? The suggested answer is Polka-dots.”

*** Roleplay. This time the audience suggestion is wrong. The right answer is Yellow. He can deflect.

Chances of answering correctly: Greene: 4+6-2=6/10; Raven 5+6-2=9/10; Cooper 7+6-2-2=9/10; Princess 3+6-2=7/10; Panasar 4+6-2=8/10; Cash 6+6-2=10/10. Adjust scores accordingly, RW -2 or +2, other player.

So far, he had gotten nothing right (not even the ones I expected the group to be able to get, collectively), and he was down to just 2 points. But he gave the right answer. None of the players thought too deeply over the fact that the audience had deliberately tried to mislead him, a sign that the PCs were not universally loved by the public.

Stuart: “Yellow is correct. Alison Cash, another hard one being sent your way; for nine points, What is the oldest film ever made, and when was it made? The suggested answers are Bristol Garden Scene and 1889.”

Cash: “Neither of those sound right to me, but I don’t know the answer. I’ll deflect to Chief Raven.”

Stuart: “That costs you two points, go ahead, Chief.”

Raven: “They aren’t quite right, but they are close. My daughter is a student studying the history of film at the moment, and I used to help her prepare. The correct answers are Roundhay Garden Scene and 1888, not 1889.”

Stuart: “Absolutely correct, Chief, and with that answer you are threatening for the lead – not exactly the outcome I suspect Miss Cash was hoping for.”

You can’t completely predict how a game like this will go, when a PC has the ability to alter not only his own scores but those of other contestants. So I next inserted an additional sub-scene, with a question that could be valued at whatever I needed it to be valued at in order to make the pre-planned outcome with respect to Congressman Greene take place as required by the broader plot. I have no problem railroading NPCs when the occasion dictates; it’s PCs that are hands-off!

[OPTIONAL INSERT: NEED TO MAKE SURE GREENE IS ON 2 POINTS:]

Stuart: “Congressman Greene, according to legend, a spectral knight on a horse of what color is sometimes seen riding toward Weichenwang to visit his lover?”

Greene: “It has to be black, doesn’t it?”

Stuart: “I haven’t yet given you the viewer’s answers, Congressman, so I don’t have to accept that as your final answer. One says black, and the other, gray.”

Greene: “I’ll stick with Black as an answer, Stuart.”

Stuart: “I’m afraid that the correct answer is White, Congressman. That costs you [x] points and leaves you with a score of just 2. From their answers, it seems that our audience has not proven receptive to your views.”

“The election is still months away, Stuart, and as was once famously said, ‘I have just begun to fight’. I have no doubt that the public will change their minds when the facts come to light. I’m good at persuading others to see things my way.”

As it happened, the optional extra scene wasn’t required, because (instead of targeting his avowed enemy), Runeweaver had taken the high moral road in an attempt to make the former Congressman look petty and vindictive. This approach was what I had expected the character to choose, so it wasn’t a great surprise to me.

As an out-of-continuity moment, I read the scene to the players afterwards.

Stuart: “Sir Alice, for six points, what is the third most common gas in the Earth’s atmosphere after Nitrogen and Oxygen? The suggested answer is Argon.”

Cooper: “I don’t know Argon. I’m going to say Carbon Dioxide.”

Stuart: “I’m sorry to say,
Argon was the right answer. You should have stuck with your maxim about trusting your audience! Mosul Panasar, for nine points, what was the name of the Italian cruise ship hijacked by Palestinian terrorists in October 1985? The suggested answer is the Good Ship Lollypop.”

Mosul: “Seventy-three years and some months ago, Culture Club were number one with ‘Do you really want to hurt me?” Perhaps I should sing a verse or two to the audience, given that suggested answer. As it happens, though, I think I know the answer. Is it the Costa Concordia, from 42 years ago?”

This had players nodding their heads and making sounds of agreement.

Stuart: “I’m sorry, it was the Achille Lauro, hijacked by the PLO in 1985. Costa Condordia capsized and sank, but terrorists had nothing to do with the disaster. Princess, your fans are thinking of you and would like you to tell them, for 5 points, in which film did Humphrey Bogart say, ‘We’ll always have Paris?’ The suggested answer is Casablanca.”

Princess: “Oh Gee, I should know this one. I think it was actually The Maltese Falcon.”

Stuart: “No, I’m sorry – Casablanca was the correct answer. You’re down to 11 points and living dangerously. Alison Cash, for nine points, ‘May Queen’, ‘Wisley Crab’, ‘Foxwhelps’ and ‘Lane’s Prince Albert’ are all species of what? The suggested answer is ‘Fruit’.”

Cash: “Sounds like I should join Mosul in his singing! Fruit is not a species. The correct answer is Apple.”

Stuart: “Correct, and it’s getting tight at the top! Congressman Greene, the next question is for you. Get it right and with the seven points you earn, you’re back in the game. Get it wrong, and you will be eliminated. You don’t have the points to deflect it to the leaders, but you can deflect it to the last-placed competitor, which at the moment, is Mosul Panasar, leaving you on a single point.”

Greene: “I’d rather go out in a blaze of glory, all or nothing. Ask your question.”

Stuart: “Bray Studios, near Windsor in Berkshire, was home to which famous brand of horror films? The suggested answer is Frankenstein.”

Greene: “I wouldn’t have the faintest — wait, I’ve got two points at the moment? I’ll deflect – to Runeweaver, as personal thanks for the outstanding services he and his teammates have performed for my career.”

Stuart: “If you do that, you will be eliminated from the game, you do understand that?”

Greene: “You heard me, Stuart. It’s a petty revenge, but it will have to do – at least until the elections.”

Stuart: “Very well, you have been eliminated from the game. But we will speak to you again, before the end of the show! Runeweaver, Congressman Greene has attempted to play the role of a spoiler in your game, but if you answer the question correctly, you can turn the tables on him. Your current score is [4*]. Again, for 7 points: Bray Studios, near Windsor in Berkshire, was home to which famous brand of horror films? The audience suggestion is Frankenstein.”

*** Roleplay

*I’ve inserted the score as it was, but in the adventure as played, this simply read [ ]. Now, as it happened, the player of Runeweaver had already burst out with the correct answer as soon as the question was read, as had at least two other players, and as I expected them to do.

Stuart: “The correct answer is – Hammer Horror, or Hammer Studios, or simply ‘Hammer’, though they did make a number of Frankenstein movies, amongst others.” [Adjust RW score

“And the last question of the round goes to Sir Alice: Which parody Heavy Rock band claimed that their drummer spontaneously combusted on stage during a jazz festival? The suggested answer is Spinal Tap.”

Cooper: “I love it! I used to know those guys so well, they really became backdoor icons within the industry. The audience is correct, the answer is Spinal Tap – their drummer spontaneously combusting was a running joke during the original Mockumentary and a gag they kept up when they became a ‘real’ band.”

Stuart: “Completely correct! So, at the end of round three, and with one player eliminated from contention, let’s have a score check: Alison Cash on [33], Raven on [32], Sir Alice up from 2nd-last to [20] points, Runeweaver lurking on [ ] points, Princess on 11, and in last place on 9 points is our Round 2 leader, Mosul Panasar. Congratulations to you all on surviving Round 3, and let me assure you that anyone who’s still in the game can still win from here. (To the audience) I hope you’ll rejoin us after these commercial messages for what promises to be a most exciting conclusion!”

*** Squawky voice: “….and we’re clear. 3 minutes 30 seconds, people. Look sharp! Makeup touch-ups for everybody, hustle, hustle, hustle!”

Another unrelated scene followed, but it gave another player the chance to distract Runeweaver if he chose to do so – it was a matter of great concern to his PC, after all. He didn’t, and I didn’t think that he would.

I’d also like to make the point that both Runeweaver and Greene were on scores of 2 points at one point or another in the game show. While Runeweaver had recovered slightly, his score was not high enough to survive getting his deflected question wrong. Greene’s action was a blatant attempt to knock Runeweaver out of the game show, even if the attempt was a Pyrrhic victory, and I did modify the remarks above on-the-fly to reflect that.

I couldn’t have forecast the situation as I thought Runeweaver would have a higher score at this point, and would merely be crippled,score-wise, but it definitely added to the spiteful persona exhibited by the former Congressman.

Act two, Scene eighteen: Games, games, games VII

*** Squawky Voice: “We’re back live in 3…2….1….Music….Cue Stuart.”

“Welcome back to this celebrity edition of Deflection 2056. Our celebrity guests are playing for pride, ego, and a share of the In the right hands, that money can and will change lives for the better! So, before we get into the final questions let’s hear from each of them one more time as they tell us who they are playing for. As they do so, we’ll flash a phone number up on the screen where you at home can add to the donation pool, so if you like the sound of what you hear – our operators will be standing by.

“Congressman Greene, since you’ve been eliminated, you stand to earn the lowest amount for your chosen charity – maybe the viewers at home would like to express support for the cause, though. Who are you representing?”

Greene: “Stuart, I hoped to bring in plenty of money for Imperial Urban Poor, who do a great job of getting homeless and distressed people off the streets and into productive employment.”

Stuart: “A very worthy cause. Sir Alice?”

Cooper: “The Red Cross’s Blue Shield Appeal, Stuart, who provide the poor and underprivileged with access to state-of-the-art health care.”

Stuart: “An excellent choice! Princess?”

Princess: “The Rescued Pets Foundation, Stuart. They rescue unwanted pets and retrain them to be companions for the sick and elderly.”

Stuart: “Something we all support, I’m sure. Chief Raven?”

Raven: “My Office is tired of convictions being quashed due to inadequate representation, so I have established a new Charity, the Fair Shake Foundation, whose goals are to promote and train the Public Defenders of the Empire in hopes of generating better legal outcomes for everyone who appears before the courts, Stuart.”

Stuart: “And is this strictly a local affair, or will it operate on a larger scale?”

Raven: “Our board is local, because the Foundation is chartered in New Orleans, but the plan is for it to be operating throughout the USK by the end of 2056, to add Canada and Mexico by the end of 2057, England by 2058, and be Empire-wide by 2059. The more funding we raise, the more we can accelerate that program.”

Stuart: “Perhaps not the sexiest of causes, but justice is something we all want to see. I wish you good luck with it. Runeweaver?”

I had expected the answer to come back immediately because in a past adventure each of the PCs had been required to choose a cause and spend a certain amount of time each week working on it’s behalf – but the player had not made a note of his choice, and the cause that he suggested as the most likely answer he would have given was very similar to the one that another player had picked. So there was a few minutes out-of-play while this was discussed and resolved.

Stuart: “Umm-Hmm. And you, Mosul?”

Mosul: “I’m here to support Clown Doctors, Stuart. There’s nothing funny about sick kids, but the Clown Doctors help them forget being sick for a while, which has been proven to speed recovery times – giving the parents something to smile about, too.”

Stuart: “And, finally, Miss Alison Cash?”

Cash: “The Big Screen Relief Fund, Stuart, which helps give actors and production staff who don’t earn the big bucks achieve a secure retirement – and provides a safety net in times of trouble.”

Stuart: “A very worthy cause, I’m sure. So, let’s next have a score-check while you at home decide which of these causes is worth a fully tax-deductible donation of your hard-earned money. Alison Cash [33], Chief Oscar Raven [32], Sir Alice Cooper [20], Runeweaver [11*], Princess [11] and early leader Mosul Panasar bringing up the rear on [9] points, and of course, eliminated contestant Congressman Marcel Greene is also still with us on zero.

“It’s time now for the final round, and we’ve tweaked the rules a little for this last throw
of the dice. The questions are harder, but are worth Double Points if you get it right, you get double the audience suggestions and twice as long to think about your answers, and for the first time, the opportunity for a double-deflection – when someone passes you a question you don’t like, you can now pass it to anyone but the person who gave it to you. They are then stuck with it!

But on top of that, we’re no longer going to tell you how much or how little each question is worth until AFTER it’s answered!

Deflection costs are also doubled, and – for the first time – you can now receive two questions in a row.

“Anyone can still win – or crash out! If your fans want you to win, they, and only they, can give you the opportunity – and it’s up to you to seize it! Who will get the crowd’s support – and, given how hard the questions are, do you really want it? It IS possible to win simply by avoiding every question in this final round – and we’ve thrown in one or two easy questions just to mess with your heads!

“So, let’s get the round underway. Mosul Panasar, where would you find the Beach Of The Cathedrals? Our Audience says Spain or France.”

Mosul: “I’m not sure, Stuart, so I’ll deflect to Miss Cash.”

Stuart: “Four points off your score. Miss Cash?”

Cash: “I have no idea, Stuart, so I’ll also Defect, to Chief Raven.”

Stuart: “Two points off your score. Chief?”

Raven: “I’ve visited there in on Holidays, Stuart. The answer is Spain.”

Stuart: “Correct, for eighteen points, and we have a new leader! Runeweaver, can you name the actor who starred in 142 films including The Quiet Man, The Shootist, The Searchers and Stagecoach before his death in 1979? The audience suggestion is unanimously John Wayne.”

*** Correct Answer: John Wayne. He can deflect.
Chances of answering correctly: Raven 5+9-6=8/10; Cooper 7+9-6=10/10; Princess 3+9-6=6/10; Panasar 4+9-6=8/10; Cash 6+9-6=9/10. Adjust scores: RW +12, -12 or -2; Other contestant.

There was a lot of discussion about this question; the player in the hot seat didn’t know any of the movies, and the biggest movie buff in the group knew only the last one and didn’t remember who starred in it, but didn’t think it was Wayne. In the end, the player chose to deflect and handed the question – and the points, after a correct answer – to Chief Raven.

Stuart: “Miss Cash, what is known as the world’s most dangerous Hiking Trail, where would you find it, and what does the name mean in English? The audience suggest Camino del Ray in Portugal, meaning the King’s Road, or the Huayna Picchu Trail in Peru which is alleged to mean the High Places Trail in English.”

Cash: “The answer is El Camino del Rey, it’s also in Spain, and in English, it means The King’s Pathway.”

Stuart: “Correct for 18 points and leaves you once again hot on the leader’s trail. Mosul Panasar, which chess piece can only move diagonally? Is it a Bishop, as our audience members both think?”

Mosul: “It is a Bishop, Stuart”.

Stuart: “Correct for 4 points. Sir Alice, who invented Television? The audience say ‘Logie Baird’ and ‘Nicola Tesla’, respectively.”

Cooper: “Difficult, Stuart – I think I’ll Deflect to Chief Raven, the points leader.”

This is one question which I expected the players to feel confident of, because Logie Baird is widely known in Australia as “The Father Of Television.”

Raven: “Tesla did a lot, but TV? I don’t know – it’s a bit after his time, I think. No, I’m not sure, so I’m going to play it safe and Re-Deflect to Miss Cash.”

Cash: “Logie Baird sounds right – aren’t the Australian TV awards named after him?”

They are, and every player at the table knew that and was more convinced of the answer than ever..

Stuart: “In fact, George Carey, a Boston civil servant, first thought up television in 1876. John Logie Baird is often quoted as its inventor but his ideas didn’t come along until the 1920’s. These days he is regarded as the inventor of television technology, but not of television itself. I’m afraid that’s a twenty-point hit to your score after a successful tactic by Chief Raven that leaves him way out in front.

“Chief Raven, the next question is for you. Who was the first designer of fashion ornaments in America? I need the full name. The Audience suggest Jeremiah Dummer and Philip Syng.”

Raven: “I know that Jeremiah Drummer was the first America-born silversmith, and that Philip Syng made the inkwell that was used at the signing of the declaration of independence, but did either of them design fashion ornaments? I don’t know. I’m going to offer a third, even more famous name – Paul Revere.”

Player reaction, still recovering from the previous question: ‘Never heard of either of the first two, but we like the third choice,’ followed by groans and ‘of course’ when:

Stuart: “You’re all three wrong. The correct answer is Louis Comfort Tiffany. That costs you 14 points, I’m afraid – [you are still in the lead, but the gap is closing] (VERIFY FIRST). Runeweaver, An absence of the SRY gene means what for a human being? Our audience answers are male and genetically female, respectively”.

*** He can deflect.
Chance of a correct answer: Raven 5+9-10=4/10. Cooper 7+9-2-10=4/10. Princess 3+9-10=2/10. Panasar 4+9-10=3/10. Cash 6+9-2-10=3/10.

This was a difficult question if you got distracted by the technical details; the clue was in the audience suggestion. The players hemmed and hawed for a while but the player on the spot eventually made the call and gave the answer “Genetically Female.” Instead of immediately revealing whether or not it was right – and I have excised that information from my excerpt above, I started to build up the tension:

Stuart: “If you get this right, you will be our new leader. The Correct Answer: That gene is what makes the Y chromosome a Y and not an X, so it makes a foetus male instead of a female. It’s absence therefore indicates that the owner is genetically female. [Points Adjust

“Sir Alice, where would you find the rock formation known as the Twelve Apostles? Is it in Palestine or Australia?”

Cooper hums and has for a while, before answering, “I’m not sure, Stuart. Australia used to have something like that, but most of them have crumbled away. Could somewhere on the Red Sea coastline have stolen the name from them? It’s just possible. I think I’ll deflect – to Chief Raven.”

Stuart: “That costs you 2 points. Chief?”

Raven: “Re-deflect to Miss Cash.”

Stuart: “Alison Cash, if you get this right you could retake the lead.”

Cash: “I think the second audience member was on the right track, but not quite right, so I’ll answer ‘The Middle East’, Stuart.”

Cooper: “Gotcha!”

Stuart: “The Correct answer is Australia, costing you 12 points, and putting Chief Raven back into a strong position. Princess, at the beginning of the 1990s which country had the most camels? Was it Somalia or Egypt?”

Princess: “Deflect, Stuart! It could be anywhere in the Middle East, and Northern Australia has a Camel Problem, too. The 1990s were a long way before my time. Give it to Miss Cash.”

Stuart: “Four points from your score. Miss Cash?”

Cash: “Having gotten one Middle East question wrong already, I’m not confident, Stuart. Re-Deflect – give this question to Runeweaver.”

Stuart: “Runeweaver, is it Somalia, Egypt, or some other country that you care to name?”

*** He can deflect. Correct Answer: Somalia.
Chance of a correct answer: Raven 5+9-2-10=2/10. Cooper 7+9-4-10=0/10. Princess 3+9-2-10=0/10. Panasar 4+9-10=3/10. Cash 6+9-2-10=3/10. Adjust scores, 20 points.

He and the other players weren’t confident of any answer, and were briefly distracted by the fact that Australia had a camel problem at one point before the time-frame of the specific question. He chose to re-deflect it back to Cash, who got it wrong.

Stuart: “Chief Raven, a painting called The Doctor was used to promote state-run healthcare in Britain and to oppose it in the United States. Name the artist – was it Rembrandt van Rijn or Poerawidjaja?”

Raven: “I don’t think it was either of them – something shorter. When I was just a beat cop, it was exhibited at the New Orleans Museum Of Art. No, I’m not sure – Deflect, and I hope he can answer it, to Runeweaver.”

Stuart: “Four points off your score. Runeweaver?”

*** He can re-deflect. Correct Answer: Luke Fildes.
Chance of a correct answer: Cooper 7+9+2-10=8/10. Princess 3+9-10=2/10. Panasar 4+9-10=3/10. Cash 6+9-2-10=3/10. Adjust scores, 20 points.

He did re-deflect, to Sir Alice – who got it right and got himself into the game lead as a result, the fourth different leader in the round, out of six (seven if you count the Congressman).

Stuart: “Just five questions left in the game. Sir Alice, Name three primary colors in an subtractive color space. Are they Red, yellow and blue or yellow, cyan, and magenta, as our viewing audience have suggested?”

Cooper: “That’s got to be a trick question! Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta make white in spotlight terms, or on TVs, I think. So it could be right. But are they called Primary Colors or are they called something else? In paint, red yellow and blue makes a muddy awful brown, but that answer still seems right, but maybe it’s not? The answer has to be in the word subtractive, but I’m not sure what that means. But the answers are so simple, this can’t be worth very many points, so I’ll take a guess – Red, Yellow, and Blue.”

Stuart: “A set of Primary colors are a set of colors that can combine to produce every other color, but in spotlights and television sets they are known as the primary hues. Red, Yellow,
and Blue is the correct answer, 4 points to your total.

“The last four questions are worth 58 points between them, any one of you can still win. Chief Raven, in mythology, Romulus and Remus were brought up by which type of animal? Was it a Wolf or a Bear?”

Raven: “A Wolf, Stuart.”

“Correct, for 12 points. Runeweaver, name the only cricketer in history to get a hat-trick spread over three consecutive overs? Was it Merv Hughes or Shoaib Akhtar?”

*** He can deflect.

This caused quite a bit of consternation amongst the players who couldn’t initially see how such an outcome was even possible. Of course, it’s probably somewhere close to meaningless for anyone unfamiliar with cricket terminology. See hat-trick and then consult The Ashes: Understanding Brit and Aussie Characters to understand what an “Over” is, and you will begin to realize why this is such a memorable feat.

The players were equally uncertain as to who to name as the historical cricket-player in question. Once again the player most in the hot seat made the call, choosing to deflect to Sir Alice, who answered that he had met the man in question and gave the correct answer, taking the lead.

*** Correct Answer: Australian Merv Hughes – the last ball of one over, the first ball of the next to bowl the side out, and the first ball of the Opposition’s second innings.”
Chance of a correct answer: Raven 5+9-2-10=2/10. Cooper 7+9-4-10=0/10. Princess 3+9-2-10=0/10. Panasar 4+9+2-10=5/10. Cash 6+9-2-10=3/10. Adjust scores, 20 points.

Stuart: “Princess, you can no longer win from here, but you can still earn more money for your charity. What was the original name of Shakespeare’s touring company and how was the Globe theater destroyed? Our Audience are suggesting ‘the King’s Men’ and ‘Lord Chamberlain’s Men’ for the name, and that the Globe was destroyed in a fire caused by a cannon shot.

Princess: “Back when I was just getting started, I tried my hand at acting, and even managed to get a bit part as a barmaid on Doctor Who, Stuart, in an episode in which he returned to Shakespeare’s time. It was a remake of an earlier episode from way back in the 2000s or something, but I distinctly remember my line from the show, delivered to a drunken Shakespeare: ‘Get out, you smelly oaf, and take the rest of Lord Chamberlain’s Men with you.’ I thought that was curious, so I looked it up. The correct answer is Lord Chamberlain’s Men, with the name later being changed to The King’s Men, and the Globe was destroyed when it caught fire from a cannon shot during a performance of Henry VIII.”

Stuart: “Completely correct for 18 points. Runeweaver [if he hasn’t been eliminated, ask to the #2 position on the scoreboard if he has been], the final question, get this right and you [win the game]: In the 1935 British adventure film Sanders of the River, what African political leader portrayed a tribal chief? Was it Jomo Kenyatta, as one viewer thinks, or Idi Amin, as another suggests?”

*** Can Deflect.

…and that’s exactly what he chose to do, to Sir Alice, the current points leader, which ensured a respectable mid-field result and a politically-sensitive position one point behind Chief Raven. Sir Alice then re-deflected the question to Alison Cash, costing himself a couple of points but retaining the lead – unless she got the question right.

Chance of a correct answer: Raven 5+9-10=4/10. Cooper 7+9-2-10=4/10. Princess 3+9-10=2/10. Panasar 4+9-2-10=1/10. Cash 6+9-2-10=3/10.

She didn’t.

Correct Answer: Jomo Kenyatta, who later became the president of Kenya.
Adjust scores, 20 points.

*** Final Score-check, last non-eliminated to first.

Stuart: “The charities of the players will receive £2,000 for each point our celebrities scored on their behalf, and the winner earning an extra The remainder of the prize pool will then be evenly divided amongst all seven worthy causes. In addition, we have raised a colossal (Pause to calculate, from low to high), how much each person gets.

*** Ceremonial handing out of the check to the winner “Well, that brings to a close this extra-special Celebrity edition of Deflection 2056. Join us next week when seven ordinary citizens will compete for a share of our usual prize pool of I’m Stuart DeBrassie, and it’s been a pleasure to entertain you.”

***Squawky voice: “And dim lights… roll credits… And cut!”

The final scores, for what it’s worth: Sir Alice Cooper 28; Princess, 25; Chief Raven, 21; Runeweaver 20; Alison Cash 17; Mosul Panasar 9; and Congressman Greene, zero.

There were a lot of techniques employed in this part of the adventure for others to learn from. The use of different voices to establish different speakers; the incorporation of background developments into an adventure, rather than simply telling the players something was happening; and the care used to keep personalities both distinct and to put them on display, to name but a few.

In terms of the game show format, the final tally was five different leaders in the final round, and different six leaders out of seven participants in the course of the entire show. At one point, Mosul Panasar had a lead of more than 30 points, and he ended up coming second-last. It was exciting and tactical and fun, and the players – many of whom were not fans of the television genre – all felt that if this was a real show on TV, they would at least consider watching it.

Parts of the above were planned in advance, but most of it was the result of unplanned reactions to the current situation in this game-within-a-game; the situation was too fluid for anything else.

It’s also worth noting that every time a participant was asked a question, I performed the same calculations to determine their chances of knowing the answer and then rolled to get an outcome; I simply didn’t bother recording those chances except when there was uncertainty as to who would have to attempt to answer the question.

And, most importantly, everyone had fun in a way that was distinctly different to the usual sort of activities in the game.

This series is a concordance of Seasonal Summations for different locales around the world. That serves a number of different functions:

• it provides a climatic baseline from which any number of analogues, regardless of campaign genre, can be generated;
• it compares and contrasts different locations, enabling the reader (and the author) to start getting a grip on the really critical factors in terms of weather generation simulations;
• it acquaints the reader with backgrounds and histories on a heap of locations, each of which can be used as the inspiration for others if not used directly; and,
• it gives a list of the seasonal activities in each location, again providing a rich source of ideas that can be translated into any game genre.

But predominantly, it’s about the weather – and so far, it’s been all about Winter.

Part 1 began with Winter descriptions for McMurdo (Antarctica), Hobart, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Tahiti, and Cairo. It explored, completely as a side issue, the role that latitude plays in the weather.

Part 2 covered Winter in Brazil, Puerto Rico, Miami, New Orleans, and New York City. Or to put it another way, it examined the role of the Western Atlantic and – again as an aside – determined that it wasn’t the water temperature or gulf stream that mattered so much, it was the air above the water and the direction it moved in.

Part 3 began a trek westward across the USA, examining the relevance of longitude, and found that it was rather more important than generally thought – but only in terms of the proximity of masses of water, and the extent to which air currents can carry moisture from a water-source to land. So far, all the locations have been within 4° of latitude, but there have been some locations added to the list in Part 4. This tour started in Washington DC (following New York City in Part 2), and then traveled to Detroit, Chicago, and finally a city fairly close to midway across the US (and perhaps the most surprising one to date), Omaha, Nebraska.

This is the fourth post in the series, and the second half of that American Trek, and the focus this time is on Mountains and the Eastern Pacific. We’ll start in the deserts of Nevada for Las Vegas, then head to just east of the Rockies for Denver, Colorado. I’ll then cross them to find Spokane, Washington. My preliminary research into that location convinced me that I needed northern West-Coast representation, and (with some difficulty) chose Seattle, Washington for the purpose. That will be followed by San Francisco, wrapping up this section of the series.

Part 5 will look at the central and north-Western Pacific with a number of Asian cities chosen to be comprehensive from the many available, on the basis of everything I’ve learned so far working on this series. The current plan calls for Honolulu, Tokyo, Beijing, Bangkok, Shigatse (Tibet), and Kathmandu (Nepal). The only location missing is India, but that would be another deal like Brazil; India contains everything from Himalayas to sub-tropical or even semi-tropical Jungle, and just about anything else you can think of, in-between. A single entry would be inadequate, and anything else wouldn’t add anything you wouldn’t already get from the above. There remains a little uncertainty over Shanghai vs Beijing, and whether or not to include Hong Kong, simply because I think the weather there might be as unusual as the location.

Part 6 is going to deal with Southwestern Europe (plus a Canadian ringer): Montreal, Rome, Madrid, London, Glasgow, Berlin. The most notable omission in this section is Paris, and I’d love to sneak it in.

Part 7 wraps up Winter, dealing with Northern Europe and North-Eastern Eurasia (with an American ringer): Switzerland, Stockholm, Moscow, Siberia, Anchorage, and Reykjavik. All environments that can be characterized as Alpine, or colder.

Thereafter, parts 8-14 will handle Spring (same cities), parts 15-21, Summer, and parts 22-28, Autumn. Currently I’m averaging 13,000 words to a post, or about 2400 words to a city. My revised estimate for the whole series is 250,000 words. It’s my hope and expectation that because I don’t have to do histories etc for each city in parts 7-28, that they will be half as long and can be knocked out almost twice as fast. At the moment, it’s taking 1.7 working days, 4 days a week, per city; if I can get that down to a city a day or better for the latter parts of the series, the whole thing should be complete around December 12, fingers crossed!

But ideally, I’ll get done faster than that, as I have other plans for the last quarter of 2018! In fact, if I’m too far behind schedule when Winter is done, I’ll move on to other things and do a-season-a-year until 2021!

It’s good to have a plan….

This is a Serial Blog Post. That means that I will add to it for an hour or so four weekdays a week, and it will get finished when it’s finished. Come back regularly for an update, or comment on (and subscribe to) this post to never miss being advised of one!

PS: Another change being made from this post forward is that I’m moving this notification closer to the head of each post. Some readers weren’t noticing it. I have also made the decision to save a little formatting time by only posting updates when a city’s entry is finished as an encouragement to keep plowing on as quickly as I can. This posting, which constitutes an advisory notice of the changes, will be the only planned exception.

One more PS before I get started. Sometimes you can see things in a thumbnail that are really hard to spot otherwise. So it was with the source map that I’ve been using for my US Locations, presented below in three forms: Thumbnail Sized, Somewhat larger, and Somewhat larger with notation. Notice the very clear curving line that bisects the continent…

Okay, so maybe it’s old news to everyone else. But I had never noticed it before. Once you become aware of it, it’s easy to see, even in the unmarked map. I’m not even completely sure of the significance – but I thought it worth calling attention to.

17. Winter In Las Vegas

Las Vegas gives the impression of being one of the most unusual settlements in the continental US – no, make that “one of the most unusual settlements anywhere”, period. Most cities have some form of Urban Renewal program, even if it is one dictated by nothing more than economic opportunity. Equally, most cities have a historic restoration and renovation program aimed at rejuvenating and preserving the oldest, most iconic structures within the community’s boundaries. Only in Las Vegas is it deemed acceptable, even sensible, to demolish an iconic structure for which the first blush of fame is beginning to wear thin, in order to construct something even more palatial.

Should something ever happen to wipe out the human race while sparing our structures, it would not be at all unreasonable for alien archaeologists to declare Las Vegas humanity’s capital, based solely on the amazing construction of the Strip and its Casinos. And, from that misconception, a whole raft of even more inaccurate speculations would inevitably flow – “Rulers” viewed as “Gods on earth”, poker machines as devices of worship, and innumerable altars with arcane symbiology as altars, perhaps? Other places like St Petersburg and the Taj Mahal with equal but isolated splendor as the seats of Regional Rulers? Who knows?

This is not a town without history to share; it’s just that the history seems to take a remote second or even third place to the pursuit of gambling revenues.

Or does it? What’s the real story?

The History

A young Mexican scout named Rafael Rivera is credited as the first non-Native American to encounter the valley, in 1829, but it wasn’t named by Westerners until trader Antonio Armijo led a 60-man party along the Spanish Trail – a conflation of trade routes from Santa Fe, to Los Angeles, California – in 1829. The name means “The Meadows”, and it was named for abundant wild grasses and a desert spring that provided much-needed water to westward travelers.

In 1855, eleven years after John C Fremont helped popularize western migration and at the tail end of the California Gold Rush as production of the precious metal shifted from easy surface pickings to more difficult subterranean mining, members of the LDS Church built a fort in Las Vegas as the site was halfway between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. This fort was abandoned several years afterwards, but its remains are still visible, located just north of the Downtown region of the city (which lies East of the northern end of the Strip, something I had always wanted to know).

At the start of the 20th century, the population stood at just 25. In 1905, the city was formally founded when 110 acres (45 ha) of land in what would become the Downtown area, and which were located adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks, were auctioned. Five years later, the population was 800, and by 1930, it was 5,165.

1931 was a pivotal year for what was, then, the town of Las Vegas. Nevada legalized gambling, reduced residency requirements for divorce proceedings to only six weeks, and began the construction of Hoover Dam (completed in 1935). All three had a role to play in creating modern-day Las Vegas, but especially the first and last. Hoover Dam still powers the lights of Las Vegas.

There was an immediate impact; the influx of workers helped the region avoid economic calamity during the Great Depression. In 1941, what is now known as Nellis Air Force Base, and home to the aerobatic team known as the Thunderbirds, was established. By now, the population was more than 8,000.

Following the second world war, lavishly decorated hotels and casinos, providing big-name entertainment, became synonymous with Las Vegas and the population boomed. Nuclear Weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site (105km / 65 miles northwest of what still wasn’t a city in terms of residents, but which may have been after counting temporary visitors) began in 1951 and continued until 1963.

Casinos like the Flamingo, Dunes, Stardust, and Desert Inn made huge profits that were regularly skimmed away by their Organized Crime owners. The government knew some Nevada casinos had legitimate partners fronting for unlisted owners as early as the 1940s, but the May 1957 assassination attempt on New York crime boss Frank Costello blew the lid wide open. “Costello was rushed from the crime scene with nothing more than a severe scalp wound, but inside his sleek suit pocket, the responding officers found a ledger with the previous day’s gaming totals for the Tropicana casino. Even the FBI who had previously denied there was an organized crime group or Mafia had to admit this was a serious link to Nevada’s casinos from known crime families.” – Gambling Sites.com

The Nevada Gaming Control Board, to its credit, insisted that new owners for the Tropicana – which had been open for less than a month – be found. But that didn’t stop the flow of proceeds to known crime families. This was only the beginning of a long campaign aimed at cleaning up Casino ownership in Las Vegas.

In 1959, the iconic “Welcome To Las Vegas” sign was created and located 6.4km (4 miles) south of the actual city limits, a distinction that is ignored by both locals and tourists who refer to the entire Metro Area as “Las Vegas”. A year later, 64,405 people were calling the city home.

Caesars Palace was established in 1966, and it was the beginning of the end for private owners. Designed to be an opulent glitzy experience dedicated to catering to wealthy players, the focus was more upmarket than grassroots. The inauguration party included a feast served by scantily-clad waiters and waitresses who 50,000 glasses of champagne, 300 pounds of chunk crab, 3,500 pounds of filet mignon and enough caviar to fill dozens of bathtubs. More than $42 million in advance bookings had been made for the first months of operation, clearly signaling the way forwards.

When the owners were linked to organized crime figures in New York and New England by a Federal Organized Crime Task Force in 1969, they were forced to sell; the new owners gave the casino a Corporate ownership that led the way into a less seedy business culture. This was a wave of change that had been building for three years, when Howard Hughes moved into the penthouse suite of the Desert Inn and began negotiating for its purchase in 1966. Those negotiations took just four months, and Hughes went on to purchase several other Casinos and Clubs along the Strip such as the Silver Slipper and the Landmark Casino.

A further signpost to the changing times was the opening, also in 1969, of the International Hotel (now known as Westgate Las Vegas)- with 1512 rooms, the first of the Mega-resorts. The first two performers to appear in the International’s showroom were Barbara Streisand and Elvis Presley, and the shows were sold out for 30 days straight; by the time both performers had finished these performances, the ink between Big Entertainment and the Big Casinos had been indelibly forged.

In 1973, the first MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, with 2084 rooms, was opened to become one of the largest Hotels in the world (at the time), and the standard rooms within were up to four times the size of its rivals for that crown. But this was the high-water mark for the era.

By 1970, Las Vegas may have officially become a city, but for the first time in two decades, growth had fallen below 100% a decade. Over the next decade, it continued to slow, as the Strip became increasingly dilapidated (relatively speaking). By 1980, it was down to +30.9% over the preceding decade. The reason: the economy was dependent on the gaming industry, and that industry faced new competitors, both in the form of Off-the-Strip casinos and in cities like Reno. Las Vegas retained the lions share, but the clubs were no longer the dominant force they had been in the late 60s.

Casino owners began casting around for secondary income sources to revitalize the industry; the Circus Circus casino, for example, featured a video-game arcade and a big-top show. Parents found that they could leave their children in the circus area and play for hours in the Casino.

In the decade 1970-1980, existing properties were redeveloped, most notable the Golden Nugget casino in 1973-77, again targeting a wealthier clientele with the help of Frank Sinatra as headliner and promoter, and a few successful new ventures began, such as Binion’s Horseshoe Casino introducing the World Series Of Poker in 1970.

“Still, a single poker tournament couldn’t prop up all of the profits in the Downtown area, and most of the small casinos with lots of nickel slot machines and $2 blackjack like the Bird Cage, Mint, Nevada Club, and Pioneer, were closed by the end of the 1970s.

“Small clubs along Las Vegas Boulevard like the Jolly Trolley, Centerfold, and Orbit Inn also closed during the 1970s as players gravitated to larger properties that featured nearly free meals, $29 rooms and cheap dinner shows with entertainers like Johnny Carson, Don Rickles, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Diana Ross, Bob Newhart, Cher and Paul Anka.” – Gamblingsites.com.

But the glamour had faded, and the mob had been ousted, and the combination of an economy struggling to cope with the changes and Reagan-era conservatism put the city’s future in limbo.

“A lot of the ‘classic’ hotels [had become] rundown shadows of their former selves. A devastating fire in 1980 at the original MGM Grand killed more than 80 people, and just a few months later a fire at the Las Vegas Hilton killed eight more. In some ways these tragedies helped to further the transformation of the public’s view of the entire city. Las Vegas became tacky, desperate, and possibly unsafe.

“Even the showrooms… had become something of a joke. For entertainers, Vegas was where you played when your career was over, not when you were on top.” – History in Las Vegas

Las Vegas was moribund and uncool as a destination for the most part of two decades. It was Golden Nugget owner Steve Wynn who found the solution, raising $630 million (mostly through the sale of Junk Bonds) and building the first of the Modern Generation of Casino-Hotels, The Mirage. It opened in 1989, “fronted by five-story waterfalls, lagoons, and lush tropical foliage – not to mention a 50-foot volcano that dramatically erupted regularly! Wynn gave world-renowned illusionists Siegfried & Roy carte blanche (and more than $30 million) to create the most spellbinding show Las Vegas had ever seen, and he brought in world-class chefs to banish the idea that all you could eat in the town were all-you-can-eat spreads and $4.99 prime rib.”

The immediate success both financially and in terms of rejuvenating the city’s image brought about a new boom. A King-Arthur-themed hotel/casino, the Excalibur, became the world’s largest (at least for a while) when it opened in 1990.

In 1993, The Circus Circus redeveloped itself to incorporate a five-acre amusement park, Grand Slam Canyon.

The same year also saw them complete the Luxor Las Vegas, a modern interpretation of what Ancient Egypt might have looked like, followed in October of 1993. A crowd of 10,000 attended the opening. The pyramid (which cost $375 million to build) was, at the time of the opening, the tallest building on the strip. It contained 2,526 rooms and a 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m2) casino. The hotel’s pyramid is similar in size to the Red Pyramid and Bent Pyramid of Egypt. When the resort opened, it featured a “Nile River Tour” – a river ride that carried guests to different parts of the pyramid, passing by pieces of ancient artwork. The casino also featured “King Tut’s Tomb and Museum”, a duplicate of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, as found in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt, from which the complex derived its name.

Still in 1993, and in between these developments, a new MGM Grand was opened, also backed by a theme park, which ended the Excalibur’s claim to its record.

The year 1995 marked the opening of the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas’s downtown area. This canopied five-block area features 12.5 million LED lights and 550,000 watts of sound from dusk until midnight during shows held on the top of each hour. It also saw the Hard Rock Hotel open, a “Hard-Rock Cafe” styled Hotel-Casino.

1996 brought the French-Riviera-themed Monte Carlo and the Stratosphere Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, which features an 1149-foot tower. In 1997, the “New York – New York Hotel and Casino” lifted the bar still higher, designed to evoke with a single massive construction the 1940s skyline of the city for which it is named on an 18-acre site. The US Post Office “Forever Statue of Liberty Stamp”, which was intended to show the actual Statue of Liberty, inadvertently uses an image of the replica at the New York-New York due to an error by the stamp designers.

And then 1998-1999 blew all this construction out of the water with the completion of the Bellagio, the Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, and the Paris Casinos. Since then, the list of mega-complexes has only grown – the rebuilt Aladdin (which only lasted a couple of years before being completely redeveloped by Planet Hollywood), the Palms, the Wynn, the Palazzo, the Encore, the Aria Resort and Casino – the list goes on and on (and I’ve only taken it into 2009)! But, little by little, a new wave of maturity was taking over; the wacky, eye-catching themes were phased out (as much as one can when one’s hotel looks like a castle), and a more stable and secure generic sophistication took its place. The arenas of competition between the modern Hotel-Casinos are things like decadent nightclubs, celebrity chef-backed restaurants, fancy spas, and superstar shows.

And, in the middle of all that change, the public perception of the City was transformed, first by the original CSI (2000-2015), Las Vegas (2003-2008), reality shows like Pawn Stars (2009-present), American Restoration (a spin-off) (2010-2015, then continuing with a new cast and format), and movies such as Oceans Eleven (2001).

These days, and contrary to the impression held (and delivered) in the first few paragraphs, Las Vegas at last seems to be a city that’s entirely comfortable within its’ own “skin”.

The Demographics

The population breakdown of Las Vegas has been metamorphosing considerably since 1970. Back then, Blacks and African Americans totaled 11.2% of the population, Hispanics/Latinos, 4.6%, and Asians 0.7%; 87.6% of the population was White. In 2010, the Black figure was virtually the same (after a dip in 2000), the Hispanic figure was up to 31.5% (almost one in three), and Asians formed a significant minority at 5%. All this has come at the expense of the White representation, which is now only 62.1%. It follows that recruitment of the non-white demographic during the most recent expansions has been disproportionate.

In some ways, that’s not a huge surprise. The Moulin Rouge Hotel which opened in May, 1955, broke new ground as the first integrated hotel/casino within the US. For a while, it was even owned by the first African American woman to hold a Nevada Gaming License, and many of those who enjoyed and were employed by the hotel became activists and supporters of the cause. In 1960, under threat of a protest march against racial discrimination in the Las Vegas casinos down the Strip, a meeting was hurriedly arranged by the Governor between hotel owners, city and state officials, local black leaders, and then-NAACP president Dr James McMillan. The meeting was held on March 26 at the closed Moulin Rouge, and resulted in an agreement to desegregate all Strip Casinos.

The Hotel was closed in November 1955 and by December, it had declared bankruptcy. It has been partially demolished after a series of fire.

So there has been a relatively long history of integration within the city. When it declined, it would have become attractive as a relatively low-cost community, and when the resurgence occurred, the locals would have been first in line to take advantage of the resulting employment opportunities.

The Weather

Las Vegas is located in a basin of the Mojave Desert, surrounded by mountain ranges on all sides of more than 3000m (10,000 feet) elevation; much of the landscape is rocky and arid. Flash floods are possible, but have become less frequent and less damaging through improved drainage systems.

The climate is typical of the Mojave, but is slightly cooler in Winter thanks to the 2000-3000 feet of elevation. Officially a subtropical hot desert, it is characterized – according to climatologists – by long, very hot summers; warm transitional seasons; and short, mild to chilly winters. Las Vegas is among the sunniest, driest, and least humid locations in North America, with exceptionally low dew points and humidity that sometimes remains below 10%.

Las Vegas winters are short and generally very mild, with chilly (but rarely cold) daytime temperatures. Like all seasons, sunshine is abundant. Winter evenings are defined by clear skies and swift drops in temperature after sunset, with overnight lows sinking to 3.9°C (39°F) or less in most December and January nights. December is the year’s coolest month.

As with many other locations, the detail paints a slightly different picture. If Winter is defined as record highs below 100°F, it’s November to April (6 months). If it’s record highs below 90°F, November to February becomes winter, and we have a spring but no autumn. If it’s record highs below 80°F, we get the official 2-month December-January Winter.

It’s a similar story with the average of the highest temperatures recorded for the month, only the numbers are different:
<95°F: 7 months (October-April);
<80°F: 4 months (November-February);
<75°F: 3 months (December-February);
<70°F: 2 months (the official December-January winter).

The average daily highs across each month confuse the picture even more, suggesting a 2-month summer, 3-month autumn, 2-month winter, and 5-month spring.

I get exactly the same range of results when I study the average monthly lows, the mean minimum temperatures within each month, and even the record lows. It’s just as valid to say that Winter starts in October and runs through April as it is to say otherwise.

The notion of there being four seasons is a human creation based upon observations of a limited group of climates, and because they are used to trigger human behavior (“the planting season”, etc), we have been shoehorning the actual weather into that pattern as best we can, ever since. The definition of “winter”, in other words, depends on just where we draw the line between wintry conditions and non-wintry conditions. Sometimes, that line is clear, and sometimes it is not. Las Vegas is an example of the latter.

So I am going to go with the pattern that best fits the data that I can see, even though it contradicts the official description. Las Vegas has four seasons, starting in December: Not-Hot, Uncomfortable, Hot, and Less Unpleasant:

• Not-Hot: December-February
• Uncomfortable: March-April
• Hot: May-September
• Less Unpleasant: October-November.

The differences between one season and the next are merely a matter of degree; you only get substantial differentiation across the two most extreme seasons.

This, then, is the weather for the season I have defined as Not-Hot. To avoid confusion with any descriptive terminology that may be used, the “season” name will always be given in italics and “inverted commas”.

The record highs are fairly mild except at the end of the season, as the season drifts into “Uncomfortable”: Dec: 26°C (78°F), Jan: 25°C (77°F), and Feb: 31°C (87°F). It is worth noting that the February value is the same as the November, but that is not the case with the other values quoted below.

The usual daily maximum is more comfortable, even perhaps cool-to-pleasant: 13.7°C (56.6°F), 14.4°C (58°F), and 16.9°C (62.5°F) respectively.

Some days are hotter; at least once during each month, you can expect maximums of 19.4°C (66.9°F), 20.1°C (68.2°F), and 23.6°C (74.5°F), respectively, to be reached, and of course, some years are even hotter.

Of course, we’re talking about a desert environment, and everyone knows the nights are cool-to-cold in a desert. The usual daily minimums by month are 3.7°C (38.7°F), 4.1°C (39.4°F), and 6.3°C (43.4°F). Some nights each year are even colder; at least once in the month, you can expect a minimum of -2.9°C (26.8°F), -2.2°C (28°F), and -0.8°C (30.6°F), respectively, to be forecast. These are the ONLY three months of the year with such values below freezing point, and this is one of the unifying values around which the “not-hot” season has been defined.

Of course, some years produce extremes beyond these norms. The record lows are below zero from October through April, and in single digits centigrade in three more months. In “Not-Hot”, the records are -12°C (11°F), -13°C (8°F), and -9°C (16°F), respectively. Again, it’s worth noting that the record minimum for November is marginally cooler than that of February.

But don’t be fooled by these numbers. Freezing temperatures are recorded on an average of 16 nights each “Not-Hot”, but it is exceptionally rare for temperatures to fall to or below -4°C (25°F), or to remain below 7°C (45°F) for an entire day.

Rainfall is scarce, with an average of 4.2 in (110 mm) dispersed between roughly 26 to 27 total rainy days per year. Most of the annual falls occur during the “Not-Hot” months, but even the wettest month of the year (February) averages only four days of measurable rain.

The average number of “rainy” days is 3 in December, 3.1 in January, and 4 (as mentioned) in February. It’s worth noting that the figure for March is 2.9, only statistically different to that of December or January. In essence, one-in-ten, repeat, rising to one-in-seven, then falling back to one-in-ten. The rest of the year has notable fewer such days in a month save a “mini-wet” season in July-August.

The amounts that fall on these rare rainy days are small. The averages are 12.7mm (0.50”), 13.7mm (0.54”), and 19.3mm (0.76”), respectively. Dividing those by three (four in February) gives the true scale of the wet weather of 4-point-low-something to a-little-under-5 mm – which is a “light shower” in Sydney, the sort of event that does nothing to cool temperatures and only raises the relative humidity, leaving the day less comfortable after they pass than it was before.

Snow is even rarer. The mountains immediately surrounding the Las Vegas Valley accumulate snow every winter, but significant or sustained accumulation within the city is rare; the last time it occurred was on December 16, 2008, when the city received 9.1cm (3.6”).

Las Vegas records an average of 310 sunny days a year and bright sunshine during 86% of all daylight hours. December is the cloudiest month of the year, but that isn’t saying much since the average is still 78% of the possible sunshine. January isn’t much different at 79%, and February is 81%. It’s worth noting once more that November scores 80%. Every other month of the year records 85% or more.

When I started writing this, I expected the desert climate of Las Vegas to be simple and straightforward – so much so that I almost culled this city from the series. What I didn’t expect was a climate so complicated that it would challenge the very definition of the seasons.

I must also place a caveat to conclude this subsection: any analysis is only as robust as its data, and the climate data for Las Vegas available to me starts in 1961 and stops in 1990. Why the records don’t continue, I have no idea; clearly, we should now be approaching double the 29-year recorded baseline, which is to say, double the reliability of the statistics. But the numbers are what they are.

Attractions & Events Around Town

You might think that the city has no events beyond those mounted by the hotel-casinos, but that ignores the fact that people live here, the husbands and wives and children of those supported directly or indirectly by the star attractions, and they need to be kept happy, too.

December brings a number of season events, where “seasonal” can be sometimes defined as “taking advantage of the weather” instead of simply referring to the time of year.

• Beginning in late November and running through to early January is the Ethel M Chocolate ‘Light The Night’ Spectacular, in which The Mars chocolatier family hang thousands of lights on their desert plant’s garden and host special tours of their facility.
• The 26-mile Las Vegas Marathon takes place in the first week of December. Thousands participate in the all-day charity event which is full of parties and banquets for non-participants before, during, and after.
• Towards the middle of the month, Rodeo competitors gather from all over the world for the National Finals Rodeo, which lasts a week nine days ten days (it grew with every site I consulted).
• New Year’s Eve is always going to be over-the-top in a place like Vegas. At this time of year, the strip is packed with partying street crowds and top-draw entertainers seemingly on every street corner (and in-between as well).
• A more ‘organized’ alternative to the free-for-all along the Las Vegas strip is the Downtown event at the Fremont Street Arcade which features live bands and a synchronized fireworks display. Some people start here, drift onto the strip, and then drift back for the end-of-year countdown. Between both sets of events, an estimated 320,000 attendees partied at the start of 2018.

January is relatively quiet here as it is in many US cities.

• NCAA College Basketball starts in January and runs all the way through most of June.
• There is an annual parade on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, featuring floats, marching bands, and an awards ceremony to recognize those who have contributed to the dream of equality.
• The International Consumer Electronics Show grows in size every year (10% in 2017) and regularly tops 100,000 attendees (140,000 most recently, and organizers learned after the event of another 40,000 who attempted to participate but were discouraged by the Visa process; expect streamlined processes to be in place for 2019). Much of the boost is coming from international attendance, and that is fueling increased interest in international participation.

Things liven up in February.

• A number of events in February celebrate the African-American influence on the culture and entertainment of Las Vegas, notably the kickoff breakfast at Fitzgerald’s Hotel and Casino, the largest Black-owned hotel and casino in the United States, and the family cultural event held towards the end of February at Neonopolis. Collectively, these are known as “Black History Month”.
• The Super Bowl celebration (First Sunday in February, but it used to be mid-to-late January) at the Showboat Casino Hotel is famous for attracting the High Rollers and a crowd to watch the action on several wide-screen TVs plus a lavish free buffet.
• Early February marks the Chinese New Year, which is celebrated with events all over the city (and is an excuse for themed events at many of the big Hotel Casinos, to boot). The opportunity is also taken to celebrate Japanese, Tahitian, and Thai culture.
• The Tennis Channel Open, held through February and into March, takes place at the Darling Memorial Tennis Center. Although not as prestigious as the major tournaments, the guaranteed television coverage makes this an event growing in sponsor interest, and that pulls in the players, who in turn pull in the crowds.
• Sometime between mid-February and early March, the High Rollers Scooter Weekend celebrates Mod Rockers and the iconic Scooter associated with the movement in various Vegas locations. Because, like, they can.

These events only scratch the surface. Eventbrite lists an incredible 727 annual events in and around Las Vegas. That’s an average of more than one a day, each and every day of the week – and too many for me to process for this article, so I’ve simply linked to their 49-page list!

Primary Sources:

• Wikipedia’s Las Vegas page;
• Why did the California Gold Rush end after only several years? from Reddit AskHistorians;
• Las Vegas of the ’60s and ’70s by Gambling Sites .com;
• History in Las Vegas from Frommers.com;
• Greater Las Vegas Annual Events from the EventGuide network;
• Las Vegas events calendar from TimeOut;
• Eight Vegas events that draw massive crowds by Delen Goldberg for the Las Vegas Sun.

18. Winter In Denver, Colorado

Colorado contains some of the most scenic views to be found in the continental US. Unfortunately, relatively few of them are actually in Denver.

The Geography of the region is important: lots of open plains to the east, hills to the north and south, and the Rocky Mountains to the west. Latitude is some distance north of Las Vegas, which – if I were bound by a strict east-to-west progression – would normally require Denver to have appeared first on this list.

Fortunately, I’m free to vary the sequence to whatever makes the climates of the regions concerned most understandable and enlightening. Vegas was all about the desert; Denver (and Spokane, to follow) are all about the influence of the Rocky Mountains.

Denver is located in the South Platte River Valley, on the edge of the High Plains, with the foothills of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains just 19km (12 miles) to the west.

The city is nicknamed the Mile High City because of its official elevation – exactly one mile (5280 feet / 1609.3 meters) above sea level at the benchmark location on the steps of the State Capital Building (the city has actual elevations of 5,130 to 5,690 feet, and some official websites use a different benchmark to list the elevation as 5278 feet).

In 2016, it was named the best place to live in the United States by US. News & World Report.

Since the 2010 United States Census, it has also been one of the fastest-growing major cities in the United States, with a growth rate of 15.48% over the preceding decade. The 10-county Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area had an estimated 2016 population of 2,853,077 residents.

The shape of the city is somewhat unusual: A slightly-irregular rectangular block, connected to another one off to the North-east and connected by a complicated northeast-southwest corridor:

This makes more sense when you realize that the urban area extends well beyond the city of Denver, mostly to the North, South, and East.

When I examined the various photos shown on the Wikipedia page dedicated to the city, the content reminded me a lot of Sydney. The only thing separating the two cities is that Sydney is on the coast, with sea from SSW to NNE, while Denver is land-locked on all sides.

It’s not just terrain (both cities have mountain ranges to the west) that is similar and not just altitude that is different (Sydney is more-or-less at Sea Level). The lifestyle, culture, and devotion to sports are all reminiscent of Sydney. In fact, everything from the trains to much of the architecture is strangely reminiscent of the Australian city while still being just a little different.

As of 2006, Denver had over 200 parks, from small mini-parks all over the city to the giant 314 acres (127 ha) City Park – more than 1.25 square kilometers, almost have a square mile. Starting in 1911, Denver began acquiring land for mountain parks, and now have approximately 14,000 acres (57 km2) of mountain parks under management. Denver also has 29 recreation centers providing places and programming for the recreation of residents and visitors.

In 1970, Denver was selected to host the 1976 Winter Olympics to coincide with Colorado’s centennial celebration, but in November 1972, Colorado voters struck down ballot initiatives allocating public funds to pay for the high costs of the games, which were subsequently moved to Innsbruck, Austria. The notoriety of becoming the only city ever to decline to host an Olympiad after being selected has made subsequent bids difficult. The opposition was based largely on environmental issues and was led by State Representative Richard Lamm, who was subsequently elected to three terms (1975-87) as Colorado governor.

Denver has also been known historically as the Queen City of the Plains and the Queen City of the West, because of its important role in the agricultural industry of the region.

The City and County of Denver has defined 78 official neighborhoods that are used for planning and administration. These “neighborhoods” should not be confused with cities or suburbs, which may be separate entities within the metro area.

“The character of the neighborhoods varies significantly from one to another and includes everything from large skyscrapers to houses from the late 19th century to modern, suburban-style developments. Generally, the neighborhoods closest to the city center are denser, older and contain more brick building material. Many neighborhoods away from the city center were developed after World War II, and are built with more modern materials and style. Some of the neighborhoods even farther from the city center, or recently redeveloped parcels anywhere in the city, have either very suburban characteristics or are new urbanist developments that attempt to recreate the feel of older neighborhoods. Most neighborhoods contain parks or other features that are the focal point of the neighborhood.” – Wikipedia

Demographics

The minority populations of Denver have risen sharply since the 1940s. Black residents (as of 2010) account for 10.2% of the population (down from a peak in 1990 of 12.8%), Asians and Asian Americans 3.4% (up from 0.2% in 1940), and Hispanic/Latino residents have gone from 0 to 31.8% of the population. White residents have gone from 97.3% to 68.9%, and that includes 16.7% who are White Hispanics, which the earlier 31.8% does not. If these two groups are conflated, the total is more than 50% of the population.

Overall there were 102.1 males for every 100 females, but in 2015 for the category of never-married ages 25 to 34, there were 121.4 males for every 100 females – a skewed gender representation that have caused some to nickname the city “Menver”.

Climate

Denver is officially the owner of a semi-arid continental climate. But the climatic environment is a very complex one, as the climate-type map of Colorado below shows.

According to the Colorado Climate Center of Colorado State University,

“The climate of local areas is profoundly affected by differences in elevation, and to a lesser degree, by the orientation of mountain ranges and valleys with respect to general air movements. Wide variations occur within short distances. The difference (35°F) in annual mean temperature between Pikes Peak and Las Animas, 90 miles to the southeast, is about the same as that between southern Florida and Iceland. The annual snowfall at Wolf Creek Pass (elevation 10,850 feet) in the southern mountains is averages nearly 400 inches and sometimes exceeds 600 inches while at Manassa in the San Luis Valley just east of Wolf Creek Pass annual snowfall is barely 40 inches. Statewide average annual precipitation is 17 inches but ranges from only 7 inches in the middle of the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado to over 60 inches in a few mountain locations.”

Wikipedia states that Denver has four distinct seasons, a finding that is backed up by the meteorological record. “It receives a modest amount of precipitation spread throughout the year,” the site adds, and this is the key to defining the seasons.

Temperature records define Summer as June to August, and Winter as potentially September to May. However, the rainfall record defines a two-month Autumn (September-October) and three-month Spring (March, April, and May). By the process of elimination, that restricts winter to the four months from November to February. However, the temperature profile of November matches that of March so closely that it has to be considered part of the transitional season, so that we end up with a year of three equal-length seasons.

But it’s worth noting that weather that other locations would call “Winter” begin months prior to and follow for months after, this season. March, for example, has the heaviest snowfalls of the year – even though this analysis doesn’t even consider it Winter!

Due to its inland location on the High Plains, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Denver is subject to sudden changes in weather, and the diurnal temperature variation (the difference between day and nighttime temperatures) is unusually large throughout the year. Based on 30-year averages for December, January, and February, the Weather Channel in 2014 ranked Denver as the 18th coldest major US City.

There is a popular perception that Denver enjoys 300 days of sunshine a year (putting that “modest” rainfall into perspective), but this is somewhat inaccurate. Denver officially has an average of 115 clear days, 130 partly cloudy days, and 120 cloudy days each year.

Winters consist of periods of snow and very low temperatures alternating with periods of warmer weather due to the warming effect of the Chinook winds from the west, which have been observed in other locations to raise the winter temperature (often from below -20°C (-4°F) to as high as 10-20°C (50-68°F) for a few hours before temperatures plummet back to their base levels. [Loma, Montana, holds the record – from -48 to +9°C (-54 to +49°F), while Spearfish, South Dakota (in the Black Hills) holds the record for the world’s fastest recorded rise in temperature. Wikipedia describe the story very clearly (emphasis mine):

“On 22 January 1943, at about 7:30 AM MST, the temperature … was -4°F (-20°C). The Chinook kicked in, and two minutes later, the temperature was 45°F (7°C). The 49°F (27°C) rise set a world record, yet to be exceeded. By 9:00 AM, the temperature had risen to 54°F (12°C). Suddenly, the Chinook died down and the temperature tumbled back to -4°F (-20 °C). The 58°F (32°C) drop took only 27 minutes.”

That’s a brutal two-and-a-half-hour roller-coaster ride. Clearly, you can’t understand the weather of Denver without at least some understanding of the phenomenon. Fortunately, one diagram tells you almost everything you need to know for these purposes – the one below:

Snow is, at first, driven as flurries by the wind and then becomes “moist and heavy” and in an incredibly short time may disappear entirely. They can occur at any time of day or night. Without the Chinook, it is believed by the US Dept of Agriculture that without them, the livestock ranges of Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas would have to be abandoned in the winter as the stock would not be able to secure sufficient nourishment, and would freeze to death too often for the herds to be viable. A report held by the Departments National Agricultural Library and available online as a PDF states,

“Aside from its temperature, the Chinook bears an important relation to the amount of snow remaining on the ground in the mountains and on the plains at the time of the spring thaws. If the Chinook has been absent, or infrequent in occurrence, the accumulated snow, especially on the plains, is likely to be great. The conditions are then ripe for high spring floods. If frequent visitations of the Chinook have occurred, much of the snow on the plains will have either disappeared through evaporation or been converted into a hardened mass of snow and ice. As ice it remains a long time unmelted in the ravines and affords an abundant supply of water for the creeks and rivers during the succeeding spring and early summer. In either event the danger from floods from this source is practically eliminated. It might appear at first thought that these hot winds, which so suddenly denude the plains of snow, would themselves cause floods. Such is not generally the case. These winds are intensely dry, having lost their moisture on the other side of the Divide. Accordingly, they reach the eastern slope bereft of their original dampness, but possessing a manifold capacity for absorbing moisture from any source available. The melting snow supplies this source, and so rapidly does the evaporation follow that floods caused by the Chinook alone are practically unknown.”

How strongly is Denver affected? Daytime highs at this time of year can exceed 16°C (60°F) but also often fall to 0°C (32°F) during periods of cold weather, and can even fail to rise above -18°C (0°F) on occasion. On the coldest nights, lows can easily fall to -23°C (-10°F) or less.

The usual peak daytime temperatures in Winter are Dec 6°C (42.8°F), Jan 6.7°C (44°F), and Feb 7.9°C (46.2°F). In November and March, these climb to 11-12°C (52-54°F), noticeably warmer. However, temperatures will regularly exceed Dec 18.3°C (64.9°F), Jan 18.2°C (64.7°F), and Feb 19.2°C (66.5°F) in the course of the season, and the record highs are Dec 26°C (79°F), Jan 24°C (76°F), and Feb 27°C (80°F) – t-shirt weather, which you wouldn’t expect to last very long!

But these values are inherently contaminated by the Chinook phenomenon. The extent of that contamination will vary; it would be 100% in terms of the record highs, and a small percentage in terms of the “usual” temperatures depending on the frequency these winds are experienced.

Unfortunately, that seems to be a value that’s hard to get data on; the University Of Colorado website that I’ve quoted already simply states that they occur “Occasionally”. Digging into the causes, it seems you need a high-pressure system and a low-pressure system to be, respectively, in just the right places in order to create one. Alberta, Canada, experiences them on one day in three, but only one-third of those are sufficient to have full effect, but it is known from other sources that they decrease in frequency as you head south. A report by the USGS finally provides some specificity; Approximately 29.75% of the time the wind is from somewhere in the range the NNW to SW; 17% of the time, it comes from the SSW. That’s slightly better than one in three, and it suggests that the Alberta numbers are applicable.

So Chinooks of noticeable impact can be presumed to occur once every week and a half, on average, or about three times a month, plus the occasional extra. So the percentage of days on which Chinooks occur and contaminate the readings would be about 12%.

Which means that the usual temperatures are usually about 12% of the 16°C (28°F) cooler than indicated above – that’s -2°C (-3.4°F).

In terms of the average highest temperature of the month – which I describe as “regularly exceed” – these would almost certainly be Chinook occurrences, and provide an indication as to the usual degree of impact that they have (while the records show how big an impact they can have.

The minimum temperatures tell quite a different story. The usual minimum, according to the records, is Dec -8.3°C (17.1°F), Jan -8.1°C (17.4°F), and Feb -7.3°C (18.9°F), however the same “Chinook correction” needs to be applied [-2°C (-3.4°F)].

Some nights, the temperature can fall to Dec -20.3°C (-4.5°F), Jan -19°C (-3°F), and Feb -18.5°C (-1.3°F), respectively. These would obviously be values free from the Chinook effect, as would the record lows: Dec -32°C (-25°F), Jan -34°C (-29°F), and Feb -32°C (-25°F), respectively. It is worth noting that both November and March average below-freezing temperatures, and the record lows for only two months of the year (at the height of summer) are above freezing.

Rainfall. Just how “modest” is it, with that recurring term “arid” in the climatic description? In December, the average from 4.1 rainy days is 8.9mm (0.35”); in January, 4.1 rainy days yielding 10.4mm (0.41”), and in February, 5.3 rainy days produces 9.4mm (0.37”) – but taking the shortness of the month into account raises those numbers to 5.7 days, 10.1mm, and 0.4”, enough to state that February is not noticeably drier than January. All other months of the year (3 exceptions) average more than an inch of rain in the month, and of those exceptions, two get close to an inch and the last – November – receives 0.61”, almost double that of the following month.

The average fall per rainy day is noteworthy – somewhere around the 2.5mm mark – which is not very heavy. My part of Sydney is reasonably typical of the city, and averages 81.33mm a month over the equivalent season. That’s more than three inches – which exceeds Denver’s fall in even it’s wettest month.

The reason, of course, is that the atmospheric humidity is locked up in the form of snow.

The Colorado Climate Center describes the counterbalance to the Chinook, the arctic air masses descending from the North, as follows:

“Storms moving from the north usually carry little moisture. The frequency of such storms increases during the fall and winter months, and decreases rapidly in the spring. The accompanying outbreaks of polar air are responsible for the sudden drops in temperature often experienced in the plains sections of the State. Occasionally these outbreaks are attended by strong northerly winds which come in contact with moist air from the south; the interaction of these air masses can cause a heavy fall of snow and the most severe of all weather conditions of the high plains, the blizzard.”

Were it not for the Gulf of Mexico, in other words, the Midwestern US would be as dry and arid as central Australia.

Snowfall is common throughout the late fall, winter and early spring, averaging 53.5 inches (136 cm) for 1981-2010. The typical season for snowfall is October 17 to April 27, though snow has been recorded as early as Sept 4 and as late as June 3rd.

I have already mentioned that the heaviest falls of the year occur, according to the records, in March, even though this is outside “Winter”. Suddenly, this makes sense; it is then that the confluence of cold temperatures and southern moist air combine most intensely.

There are just short of 5 snowy days in November (one in six), and just short of 6 (one in 5) in March (and just over 4 in April, for that matter, about 1 in 7 if the “April 27″ date is considered the end of the month for the purpose. These produce, respectively, Nov 22.1cm (8.7”), Mar 27.2cm (10.7”), and Apr 17.3cm (6.8”) of snow. Use these values as comparisons.

December has slightly more snowy days than November (5.3, still about one in six), and usually receives 21.6cm (8.5”), so snowfalls are slightly lighter in the Christmas month. January brings a decline in both: five snowy days (still about 1 in six) and 17.8cm (7.0”). If you do the math, you find that the average fall is again lighter – about 1.2” vs 1.6”. February has 5.3 snowy days (but, since the month is shorter, that’s about 1.06 days in 5), producing 14.5cm (5.7”) – so falls grow more frequent but lighter as the month draws to a close.

Relative Humidity is moderately high all year round, but is highest in late Autumn, throughout Winter, and in early Spring. With the exception of March and April, this period averages better than 55% (and a high in December of 56.6%), so there is very little variation.

Late Autumn and Early Winter is the cloudiest time of year. November receives only 65% of the possible sunshine, and December 67%. In January and February, these numbers are 72% and 70%, respectively. Interestingly, there is only a slight drop in March, which I will analyze in the Spring section of the series when I get to it.

Snow is not the only Winter phenomenon of concern. Wikipedia reports that in a study looking at hail events in areas with a population of at least 50,000, Denver was found to be ranked 10th most prone to hail storms in the continental United States. In fact, Denver has received three of the top 10 costliest hailstorms in United States history which occurred on July 11, 1990; July 20, 2009; and May 8, 2017 respectively.

Tornadoes are rare but one struck 4.4 miles south of downtown Denver on June 15, 1988. The suburbs to the east of Denver and the city’s northeastern extension can see a few tornadoes (usually of the weaker Landspout variety, of which I had never heard before) each spring and summer, especially during June.

Winter Activities

Because of its proximity to the mountains and generally sunny weather, Denver has gained a reputation as being a very active, outdoor-oriented city. Many Denver residents spend the weekends in the mountains; skiing in the winter and hiking, climbing, kayaking, and camping in the summer.

This proximity is both its blessing and its curse; most visitors barely “scratch the surface before disappearing to Aspen, Vail, or Breckenridge”. In an attempt to capture some of the tourist dollars literally fleeing their city, Denver is especially active at creating and promoting events all year around, which would make it a fun place to live.

You don’t have to look into the subject very hard before discovering that hosting a winter Olympics, and how to pay for it, remain extremely important questions to Denverites. Expect the question to be a perennial subject of conversation at this time of year.

Because of the location, I am going to completely ignore the obvious; there will be ice skating rinks, and mountain ski resorts are only an hour, or less, away. Otherwise, this list would be extraordinarily lengthy and full of redundancies.

It’s also worth noting that some may consider both March and April to be Winter, and certainly, winter activities are possible into mid-spring that simply can’t happen elsewhere.

Denver and the surrounding cities are home to a large number of local and national breweries, and hosts many nationally-recognized museums. At the time of writing, these were hosting no less than nine special exhibitions – eleven, if you count “A Passion for the Contemporary Art of Ballet” (3-dimensional wall art created directly from posed Colorado Ballet Dancers, available for public viewing one night only) and “Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads” (a reinterpretation of the twelve bronze animal heads representing the traditional Chinese zodiac that once adorned the famed fountain-clock of the Yuanming Yuan, an imperial retreat in Beijing). Many of these museums have free days or free entrances one day a week, some for Colorado residents only.

It also has active pop, jazz, jam, folk, and classical music scenes. Of particular note is Denver’s importance in the folk scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Well-known folk artists such as Bob Dylan, Judy Collins and John Denver lived in Denver at various points during this time and performed at local clubs.

One phenomenon experiencing a resurgence in Denver of late is the Speakeasy, a “hidden” bar. To get to one, you have to sneak through a refrigerator door; to reach another, a picture frame; and a third is accessed through a sneaker shop (and also known as a “sneakeasy”). But there are many more popping up around the city.

Another year-round attraction is Solutions Escapology, which hosts five different escape rooms and a cheese-oriented restaurant. These essentially challenge you to figure out an escape route before your time is up, typically an hour.

There are several day trips, tours, and excursions that are popular at this time of year.

• Red Rocks & Golden – it’s past the height of the tourist season for this natural wonder but that can be an advantage; the site is open all year. Particularly for the more active, the Trading Post Loop Hiking Trail is a 1.4-mile trip through the spectacular rock formations, valleys, and a natural meadow. Golden is a nearby town which features shopping, restaurants, and attractions all with an old-west theme for lovers of the cowboy genre.
• Denver Botanic Gardens & Chatfield – the Gardens boast of one of the ‘most compelling tropical plant displays in the country’ and that things are still blooming. Quite obviously, that means a climate-controlled break from the ever-present cold. Tours last about an hour. Afterwards, most people head for the Gardens’ Chatfield location which deals with the local ecology and features nature trails, a wildlife observation area, display gardens, educational exhibits, a historical farm, a 19th century one-room schoolhouse, working beehives and picnic areas. From late November (they get an early start) through to January 5th, the Gardens mount their “Blossoms Of Light” display, an interactive light-show built around a huge array of sound-reactive LEDs.
• Central City & Black Hawk – Denver was originally settled as a gold-mining community, and for me, that’s the big attraction of this one-two punch. There are mine tours, mining museums and several places offering instruction in the fine art of in-stream gold panning where a half billion dollars of the coveted, shiny metal was once found. Others may be drawn to the more than 30 casinos in these two towns located 55km (34 miles) west of Denver. In 2009, stake limits were raised to $100, in a bid to attract higher-rollers. The towns are also known for having some of the best-preserved Victorian architecture in the West.
• Rocky Mountain National Park – Even in Australia we’ve heard of this legendary preserve, just an hour out. Some of the most picturesque scenes of the season are to be found here, accessible only with snowshoe-hikes or cross-country skiing. Hiking trails can be open at any time of year, thanks to the effects of the Chinook; visitors should check with Park Rangers for information on what’s accessible and how to choose the right trail for your experience and stamina.
• Anyone from the US, dig around for some loose change. If you see a small “D” stamped on one of your coins, it was produced by the Denver branch of the US Mint, who manufacture 50 million coins a day. I was seven or eight years old when I toured the Australian Mint, and I can still remember some of what I saw as though it were yesterday; anyone who’s had a similar experience is sure to want to pass it on to the next generation or simply relive it. And if you haven’t, there is the fascination of doing something new. So expect tours through the Mint to be popular all year round.
• Free tours through the Colorado State Capital Building take place from 10AM to 3PM five days a week.
• The Denver Story Trek is billed as an interactive exploration of the stories behind the city’s landscapes and landmarks. And it’s free.
• The Great Divide Brewery in downtown Denver specializes in Craft Beers and has free tours.
• Littleton Museum focuses on Colorado’s pioneering days. Located on 39 acres, the museum consists of two living history farms (one from the 1860s and one from the 1890s), with a working farm, a blacksmith shop and more than 40,000 historically Colorado artifacts.
• Coors Brewery is the largest in the world. Free tours show the brewing process from start to finish and ends with free samples for those over 21.
• Dinosaur Ridge features Jurassic fossils discovered in 1877, and Cretaceous dinosaur footprints. Tours are self-guided but guidebooks are available.
• Celestial Seasonings is a company I hadn’t heard of before (unlike Coors). They are the largest specialty tea manufacturer in North America. Tours show how they blend, package, and ship their products, takes you through a gallery of original artwork from their tea boxes, and gives out free samples of every variety they make. All for nix.
• The National Center for Atmospheric Research will educate the tourist about Global Warming – but if that holds little attraction (many don’t believe in it, it has to be admitted), there are other displays to hold your attention and make this free attraction worthwhile. View a hailstone the size of a softball, watch a miniature tornado get created right in front of you, and get a look up close at how lightning is created. These are phenomena that affect us all to some extent, and where better to come to grips with them?
• On the first Friday of every month, the First Friday Tour explores Denver’s artistic communities through all seven of the art districts (six more than many other cities can boast)! Galleries, studios, and exhibitions stay open late for “a mind-expanding night of art, food, drink and fun.” It’s worth noting that the two “extra events” not counted in the “museums and galleries” notes above are (were) both parts of this Tour.
• The Royal Gorge Route is a unique train service that is around 2 to 2.5 hours and offers breakfast, lunch, or dinner on its route by the Arkansas River. With a fully equipped bar, you can enjoy the scenery of Colorado by sitting on a train with a beer in your hand. In the Holiday season, they also have a Santa Express Train (early bookings essential). Tickets can be pricey at $44-plus a head. This is just one of at least seven different scenic train rides through different parts of Colorado.

There are several noteworthy events during the winter Season. While many cities start their “winter seasons” on Thanksgiving Day, Denver (and Colorado in general) date their season from December first, perhaps because Thanksgiving doesn’t signal a season change in weather as strongly as in other places.

• One of the first events of the Winter is the Denver Parade Of Lights, which “snakes through downtown from the Civic Center to Skyline Park and back again on a two mile route”. Floats, Marching Bands and more, “all taking place after dark under the magic of twinkling lights” – other cities have parades, but this is the first night-time one in the US to come to my attention and it may very well be unique for that reason.
• The Denver Zoo is open all year, of course, but in Winter they cover all 70 acres with lights including a number of animated animal sculptures and provide nightly activities across the park.
• Starting in mid-December and continuing through to March, “Our Gang” have hosted ice racing at Georgetown, 45 minutes out of the city, for the last 42 years. 2018 is the first year that they have been forced to cancel the season due to insufficiency of the ice cover when it became clear that they weren’t going to get the ice they needed. Kudos to them for a safety-first prioritization, Commiserations for missing the racing. Entry is free.
• December 16 2018 was the date of this year’s benefit for “One Warm Coat”, which provides free warm coats to anyone who needs one, the “Ugly Sweater Run”, a 3.1-mile fun run through downtown Denver, ending at the finish line with “fake snow, warm hot chocolate, and a Kahlua cocktail”. Participation is $45 a head, but the cause is worthy and the participants enthusiastic.
• Late in December or early in January, the city of Dillon, 1hr 45m from Denver, is one of a handful of locations to construct an Ice Castle. These are “kind of like being inside a glacier or a Narnia-type scene where you have towers and tunnels and archways and everything’s frozen.” The story of how they were invented is engaging, you can read it (and see some stunning photos) at 303Magazine.com in an article by Marissa Kozma, one of their travel and lifestyle writers. The first public Ice Castle went up in 2010 and they have been growing in popularity as a winter attraction ever since. Cities “all over North America” have requested them, and in 2018, they were in Midway, Utah, Stillwater, Minnesota, Lincoln, New Hampshire, Winnipeg, Manitoba and Edmonton, Alberta in addition to Dillon, Colorado. They remain open 6 days a week both day and night (usually 4PM to 8/9/10 PM) until they melt, typically six to eight weeks after construction, but one year in Utah, “it was so abnormally warm, the castle closed after only three days.” Tickets start at $15.95 for pre-booked admission. There is a link in the article to the official website if you want more details.
• New Year’s Eve: The best place to view Denver’s fireworks and mini-parade, which features magicians, costumed performers, balloon artists, and other family-friendly attractions, is the 16th street Mall in downtown Denver.

January, as in most locations, is relatively quiet – if you exclude all those non-seasonal things-to-do listed earlier!

• The National Western Stock Show & Rodeo took place from Jan 6 to Jan 21 in 2018, and has been a tradition since 1906. The most attention-grabbing part of the show is perhaps the Kick-off Parade, when ranchers on horseback march long-horned cattle through downtown Denver.
• From Jan 11 to 14, the Denver International Sportsmen’s Expo brought together hundreds of vendors to display the latest in outdoors gear.
• March 15th saw the “Martin Luther King Marade” (NOT a typo), described as ” the largest parade and rally of its kind in the country.” The concept appears to be that you are expected to join the parade as a participant. The memorial parade begins at City Park and then marchers continue to Civic Center Park, with the final stop at the Colorado State Capitol Building.
• I mentioned the Red Rocks Amphitheater earlier. On January 26, they held a special event, “Icelantic Winter on the Rocks”. This is a naturally-formed rock formation that is acoustically-perfect (and surrounding park) and used as a unique venue for live music.
• January 26-27 this year was the Winter Brew Fest, which celebrates the beer-brewing history of Colorado by drawing together all the major brewers and microbreweries in one place so you can taste all their wares. Tickets are limited to give the festival an intimate ambiance, so booking ahead is essential.

February gets even busier.

• On the first of the month, “Ales, Apps, & Barrels of Fun” took place at the Marsico Campus of the Children’s Museum Of Denver, but it was an adults-only event for those aged 21 and over. Taste beers from local breweries, snack on light bites, and best of all, enjoy an evening of play (starts 7PM) in “world-class exhibits”: Build and launch rockets, see who can make the biggest bubble, race to the top of Altitude and so much more. The thought of using alcohol to impair adults back to childhood levels of physical activity appeals to me for some reason, and some of these sound like fun even for the teetotaler!
• If the Broncos don’t make the Superbowl, some residents like to distract themselves from the game at the “Run 5K on Super Bowl Day” fun-run from Washington Park, with prizes for the best fan ‘gear’. Advance registration required, $35.
• The Fire & Ice Festival in the appropriately named “Loveland” is a pre-Valentine’s special event that features on-site ice sculpture by day and the lighting of fire sculptures by night, plus live music, booze, and a nightly fireworks display, Feb 9th to Feb 11th. Entrance was free in 2018.
• Denver Restaurant Week runs from February 23 to March 4th. Hundreds of the top restaurants and eateries in the city offer multi-course dinners at three different price points to suit everyone from the casual diner to the discerning gourmet seeking something exceptional.
• The Colorado Garden and Home Show nestles alongside Restaurant week on the 2018 Calendar, running from Feb 24 to March 3. This is regarded as the region’s most prestigious show of its type.
• February closes out with yet another charity fun-run, this one the very descriptively-named “Run In Your Undies”. The distance is a “mile-ish” and the cause is a cure for neurofibromatosis. This is more about the party before and after and less about athleticism; participants warm up before (and after) with (presumably alcoholic) drinks. Starts at the Denver Civic Center.< ./li>

Sports are popular all year in Denver. It is one of only 13 US Cities with teams in four different national sporting leagues. Local teams are the Colorado Avalanche (Ice Hockey), Denver Nuggets (NBA Basketball), Colorado Mammoths (National Lacrosse League), Denver Outlaws (Major League Lacrosse), Glendale Raptors (Major League Rugby), University of Denver Hockey (More Ice Hockey), Colorado Rockies (Major League Baseball), Colorado Rapids (Soccer) and (of course), the Denver Broncos (NFL). And that excludes College Sports teams, amateur teams, and unofficial groups, like the Ice Racers listed earlier. And, as usual, sports teams imply sports fans, which imply sports events.

Sources

Primary Sources not linked to within the article:

• Wikipedia’s Denver page;
• Wikipedia’s Colorado page;
• Wikipedia’s Rocky Mountains page;
• Wikipedia’s High Plains page;
• Winter Fun & Outdoor Activities by www.Denver.org aka “Visit Denver”;
• New Year, New Adventures by www.Denver.org aka “Visit Denver”;
• Denver Events This Weekend by www.Denver.org aka “Visit Denver”;
• Free Winter Activities by www.Denver.org aka “Visit Denver”;
• First Friday Art Walks by www.Denver.org aka “Visit Denver”;
• Top 5 Reasons To Visit Denver This Winter by www.Denver.org aka “Visit Denver”;
• Snowpak’s Things To Do In Denver During Winter;
• 11 Free Things To Do In Denver In the Winter, by Diana Rowe “Traveling Grandmom”, for TravelingMom.com;
• 35+ Winter Date Ideas To Keep You From Hibernating by Ashley Adams for 303Magazine.com;
• The Ice Castles Are Back In Colorado This Winter – Here’s What You’ll See by Marissa Kozma for 303Magazine.com;
• Everything You Absolutely Must Do In Denver This Winter by Molly Martin for thrillist.com.

19. Winter In Spokane, Washington

The “Lilac City” looks so simple on a state-scaled map. A small city (about 209,000 people, 101st largest in the US) in what would be the exact center of Spokane County if it were a perfect rectangle (instead of having a ‘bite’ taken out of it to the northwest. And at first glance, the Wikipedia article detailing the city supports that.

The reality is in the second paragraph, hidden behind the seemingly-innocuous passage, “…and the economic and cultural center of the Spokane Metropolitan Area, the Greater Spokane Area, and the Inland Northwest.”

It’s only when you bring up google maps, zoom down to the individual street level, and start panning around, that the reality of what this means begins to strike home.

Spokane is a set Russian Dolls, with the “official” city nothing more than the innermost layer. The metropolitan area effectively protrudes Northward to encompass Country Homes, Southward to include Glenrose, and Eastward to incorporate Spokane Valley, and further east from there into Idaho and a north-south strip of adjacent urban areas that comprise Post Falls, Coeur d’Alene, Dalton Gardens, and Hayden. What’s more, Rathdrum, Idaho, is just outside this corridor but close enough that it can probably be considered an outer suburb in any practical sense.

Some of these (and more besides) fall into the Spokane Metropolitan Area, which is a full three counties in size. The more is places like Cheney (11,534 people), Liberty Lake (8,906 people) and Airway Heights (6,639 people).

Adjacent to this in Idaho is the Coeur d’Alene Statistical Area, which comprises of the townships named above including Rathdrum, and which also happens to be Kootenai County.

And it should be noted that all this is a simplification of the human geography of the region.

But, when you take away all these artificial divisions away and simply look at the roads, all of the above form one extended metropolis as shown on the second map of the montage. Put them all together and you get the third largest urban area in the Pacific Northwest, bettered only by Seattle and Portland.

The history of the place is not uncommon for these parts: a trading post, connected to everywhere else when the Railroad came through and brought settlers, the discovery of gold and silver, and an economy based on primary production (mining, timber, agriculture) until the 1980s.

During the first half of the 20th century, Spokane seemed to be simply marking time. Slow growth was followed by stagnation was followed by slow growth. The initial decline, in 1910, was largely due to a slowing economy, not helped by the Great Fires of 1889 and 1910.

A saga of flames

All right, there’s a historical can of worms that I tried hard not to open, without success.

1889

[On] August 4, 1889, … a fire, now known as The Great Fire (not to be confused with the Great Fire of 1910, which happened nearby), began just after 6:00 PM. and destroyed the city’s downtown commercial district.

Due to technical problems with a pump station, there was no water pressure in the city when the fire started.

In a desperate bid to starve the fire, firefighters began razing buildings with dynamite. Eventually the winds and the fire died down; 32 blocks of Spokane’s downtown core had been destroyed and one person killed. – Wikipedia

A construction boom naturally followed as Downtown was rebuilt, though not without more than their fair share of setbacks: between 1889 and 1896 alone, all six bridges over the Spokane River were destroyed by floods before their completion.

Nevertheless, the city boomed until the 1910s, as the city became an important rail hub.

1910

The Great Fire of 1910 is also commonly referred to as the Big Blowup, the Big Burn, or the Devil’s Broom fire. It was a wildfire in the western United States that burned about three million acres (4,700 sq mi; 12,100 km2) in two days, August 20-21, killing 87 people, mostly firefighters, and established the profession as public heroes. The cause of the fire has never been officially determined, but the story given below is all-but universally accepted.

Abundant Autumn and Winter rainfall in 1909-1910 promoted a dense undergrowth in the forested regions of the affected states. The Spring and Summer that followed were extremely dry and summer hot enough to be described as “like no other”. The drought produced forests teeming with dry fuel. Individual spot-fires were lit by hot cinders flung from locomotives, sparks, lightning, and back-burning fire crews, and by mid-August, there were 1,000 to 3,000 fires burning across Idaho, Montana, Washington, and British Columbia.

These fires exploded into rolling waves of flame as the sap in the Western White Pine forests that blanketed Idaho boiled and created

“a cloud of highly-flammable gas that blanketed hundreds of square miles, which spontaneously detonated dozens of times, each time sending tongues of flame thousands of feet into the sky” – Wikipedia

…which created the heat conditions to generate a new release of hydrocarbon gas, a self-perpetuating cycle that destroyed everything it touched.

Smoke from the fire was said to have been seen as far east as Watertown, New York, and as far south as Denver, Colorado. It was reported that at night, five hundred miles (800 km) out into the Pacific Ocean, ships could not navigate by the stars because the sky was cloudy with smoke. – Wikipedia

And then the fire became the inferno that earned it the rather graphic appellations given earlier. On August 20, a cold front blew and brought hurricane-force winds, whipping these hundreds or thousands of small fires into one or two huge conflagrations. The resulting fire was impossible to fight; there were too few men, too little supplies, and not enough expertise or technology. It ultimately collapsed when another cold front swept in, carrying steady rain.

Even today, with the full gamut of national resources and expertise, experience tells me that firefighters would struggle to cope with such a perfect storm of conditions. So much of this story is reminiscent of regular events here in Australia, such as the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983, the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009, and the Black Christmas bushfires of 2001-2002.

But it was time of industrial economic change, and that was the real killer; everything else was only a temporary setback. Control of mines and resources became increasingly dominated by national corporations rather than local people and organizations, which diverted capital away from the local economy of the city (and to the economies in which those corporations were based). This decreased growth and investment opportunities in Spokane, which made the city less attractive to investors and further slowed growth.

With mining in decline, agriculture and logging becoming the dominant forces in the local economy. The population explosion and the building of homes, railroads, and mines in northern Idaho and southern British Columbia fueled the logging industry in particular.

Although Spokane’s resources were overshadowed in importance by the vast timbered areas on the coastal regions west of the Cascades, and the local industry was handicapped by monopolistic rail freight rates and stiff competition, it nevertheless rode the boom to become a noted leader in the manufacture of doors, window sashes, blinds, and other planing mill products. – Wikipedia

The railroad industry was already killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, so far as Spokane was concerned. Rail freight rates were so much higher in Spokane than those in coastal seaport cities such as Seattle and Portland that Minneapolis merchants could ship goods first to Seattle and then back to Spokane for less than shipping directly to Spokane, even though the rail line to Seattle ran through Spokane on the way to the coast.

This situation could not last; freight rates eventually fell to more rational levels, but by then the local logging economy was limping – not moribund, but not really growing, either. As the logging interests consolidated, this economic stagnation became entrenched within the local industry.

During this time of stagnation, unrest was prevalent among the area’s unemployed, who were victimized by “job sharks”, which charged a fee for signing up workers in the logging camps. Job sharks and employment agencies were known to cheat itinerant workers, sometimes paying bribes to periodically fire entire work crews, thus generating repetitive fees for themselves.

Crime spiked in the 1890s and 1900s, with eruptions of violent activity involving unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or “Wobblies” as they were often known, whose free speech fights had begun to garner national attention. – Wikipedia

The unethical practices of recruiters gave the IWW a legitimate grievance that turned Spokane into a flash-point of industrial unrest. Union members from many western states came to Spokane to participate in what was a deliberate publicity stunt, a fight over Free Speech and local ordinances on Soapboxing that was symbolic of the broader conflict between Workers and Profits that continues to evolve to this day.

When your city economy rests on three pillars and two of them are on shaky ground, you had better hope for good things from the third. It can be argued that agricultural success kept Spokane alive.

Initially, the region was thought to be unsuitable for wheat production due to the hilly terrain; there was a common belief that wheat could not be cultivated on the tops of the hills. When wheat was first planted in the region in the late 1850s, it was discovered that this was false, and the region became a breadbasket.

Inland Empire farmers exported wheat, livestock, and other agriproducts to ports such New York, Liverpool, and Tokyo. These days, the region south of Spokane is one of the largest wheat producing regions in the United States. A large share of that production is exported to Far East markets. The agricultural economy has also diversified, supporting many vineyards and microbreweries.

But it wasn’t enough at the time to sustain growth; the 1920 census showed a population increase of just 35 over the preceding decade. Since this is far less than the natural growth of the then population, it shows that thousands were, in fact, leaving the city.

In the 20s and 30s, to generate any sort of growth, those attempting to boost the city were forced to market it as a quiet, comfortable place suitable for raising a family rather than as a dynamic community bursting with opportunity. A brief improvement in the city’s fortunes occurred during WWII, when the cheap electricity available in the area from the many local dams stimulated local aluminum production, a material much in demand for aircraft. Post-war, this demand waned, proving this boost to have been a temporary lifeline.

In the early 1960s, an organization naming itself Spokane Unlimited sought to revitalize downtown Spokane and lift the city out of this malaise. They successfully hosted the first environmentally-themed World’s Fair in 1974, in the process sweeping away a century of railroad infrastructure and reinventing the urban core. The actual site of “Expo ’74” became the 100-acre Riverfront Park after the event.

This kick-started the city, which experienced a boom through the late 1970s and early 1980s, interrupted only by a nationwide recession in 1981 in which Silver, Timber, and Agricultural Product prices dropped. This triggered a period of slow decline which lasted into the 1990s and exacerbated by the loss of many blue-collar jobs in the manufacturing sector. Eventually, though, the diversification made possible by the reinvention of the city in the 60s and 70s enabled it to escape this downward slide and begin to transition to a service-oriented economy, a process that continues to this day.

Along the way, Spokane has seen the emergence of a number of features unique to the city, a unified patchwork of styles that sets it apart when taken as an aggregate. An example is the extensive network of skywalks that interconnect a number of buildings in the downtown area, a concept that remains somewhat controversial to this day – see, for example, this discussion on the metrospokane website.

I’d like to have provided a map to illustrate just what is meant by the term “extensive”, but I couldn’t find one that wasn’t copyright-restricted, so you’ll have to settle to a link to an 8-years-out-of-date map at Experience Spokane (Zoom in to see the skywalk network, which is a silvery-gray in color. Look for the yellow buildings and City Hall, which is a middle-gray).

Other Architectural & Cultural Features

Spokane neighborhoods contain a patchwork of architectural styles that give them a distinct identity and illustrate the changes [that have taken place in the course of] the city’s history. – Wikipedia

Most of Spokane’s notable buildings and landmarks are in the Riverside neighborhood and the downtown commercial district, where many of the buildings were rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1889 in what is known as the “Romanesque Revival” style. The principle architect of this reconstruction was a self-taught designer named Kirtland Kelsey Cutter, who got his start designing “Chalet Hohenstein” for himself and other residences for his family, all while supporting himself working as a bank teller.

The next great wave of construction/reconstruction was in the 1960s and 70s and was in the Modernist style.

As a general rule, you can observe the history of the prosperity of the city by noting which styles are well-represented in the patchwork; renewal occurs when the economy booms.

An early affluent Spokane neighborhood, the Browne’s Addition neighborhood, contains the largest variety of residential architecture in the city. Residences are lavish and personalized, featuring many architecture styles that were popular and trendy in the Pacific Northwest from the late 19th century to 1930.

Much of Spokane’s parkland was acquired prior to WWI, and in 1907 the board of Park Commissioners retained influential landscape architects, the Olmsted Brothers, to draw up a plan for those Parks, establishing the city as a leader amongst western cities in the development of a citywide system of parks, an approach that is commonplace in modern times.

Spokane is also known as the birthplace of the movement that eventually led to Father’s Day being established as a National Holiday in the USA.

Topography notes

The lowest elevation in the city of Spokane is the northernmost point of the Spokane River that lies within the city limits, in Riverside State Park: 490m (1,608 feet). The highest elevation is on the northeast side, near Beacon Hill and the North Hill Reservoir,: 790m (2,591 feet). That’s a difference of 300m (983 feet), which is not an inconsiderable range and reflects the city’s location in the western fringes of the Rocky Mountains.

Of course, it’s not that simple. The city lies on a steppe plain west of the Selkirk Mountains, the sharply-rising foothills of the Rockies. Ecologically, the city is situated at the transition point between two different neighboring ecologies; to the east lie the Columbia Basin and the coniferous forests of the Rockies; to the south are prairies and rolling hills.

Demographics

Spokane has been criticized and sometimes derided for its lack of diversity and mono-cultural society, but recent decades have brought about an increase in diversity that renders the stereotype out-of-date.

Spokane and its metro area in general, particularly northern Idaho, has been stigmatized in the popular consciousness by a number of hate groups that were set up in and around Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Low ethnic diversity made the region a destination for some seeking to escape more cosmopolitan cities for a locale with a relatively homogeneous, white population, a trend that accelerated with the arrival of retired engineer Richard Butler from California to (eventually) establish the white supremacist church better known by the name of its political arm, the Aryan Nations, who were responsible fro several hate crimes and terror plots during the 1980s and 90s. The group became defunct in 2000 when the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a civil suit against them, winning a $6.3 million dollar settlement that eventually bankrupted the organization and caused the closure of their compound.

Another significant act of hate was the attempted bombing of Spokane’s Martin Luther King Day Parade by Kevin Harpham of Addy, Washington in 2011.

The Southern Poverty Law Center currently lists three hate groups in the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene metro areas, in the categories of anti-Muslim, Holocaust denial, and general hate.

But even as the Aryan Nation were at their zenith in terms of “political activity,” their grounds for choosing this location were being undermined by a new cosmopolitanism. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a substantial wave of immigration from countries in the former Soviet State (especially Russians and Ukrainians), who now form a comparatively large demographic in Spokane and Spokane County.

There is also a strong Latino demographic. And among the fastest-growing smaller demographics in Spokane is the Pacific Islander ethnic group, which is estimated to be the third largest minority group in the county.

Spokane was once home to a sizable Asian community, mostly Japanese, centered in a district called Chinatown from the early days of the city until 1974, even though that was both a misnomer and culturally insensitive to a degree that would not be tolerable in modern times. As in many western railway towns, the Asian community started off as an encampment for migrant laborers working on the railroads. This Asian community thrived until the 1940s, after which its population decreased and became integrated and dispersed, losing its Asian character; urban blight and the preparations leading up to Expo ’74 led to the demolition of “Chinatown”.

Perhaps nothing speaks to the transformation undergone by the city in the 21st century more strongly than the gay and lesbian Spokane Pride Parade, held each June, and the Spokane Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, held every November, which features contemporary, independent films of interest to the LGBT community. The acceptance of these events as part of the cultural landscape demonstrates clearly how much things have changed since the 1990s when diversity was a much-maligned dirty word.

Climate: The big picture

Spokane has been a rules-breaker since the days of the IWW, more than a century ago – sometimes in good ways, and sometimes in bad. Although nicknamed the Lilac City from a flowering shrub that has flourished since being introduced in the early 20th century, after the history conveyed above, I feel it is equally deserving of the name “The Teflon City” – in the same sense that John Gotti used to be known as the “Teflon Don”. No matter how bad things got for them, none of the undoubted misfortune experienced seems to have stuck to them. Other cities, faced with the challenges dealt Spokane, could have collapsed; instead, the city simply languished in the doldrums until someone found another avenue to good times.

It’s somehow fitting that the climate of the city is also a noted rules-breaker. Officially, it’s a humid continental climate, which is considered a rare climatic type because of its elevation and significant winter precipitation requirements. Spokane, however, is adjacent to, and sometimes classified as part of, a region with a warm-Summer Mediterranean Climate, because the average temperature for the coldest month is just over -3°C (26.6°F). In truth, and in keeping with the modern diversity underpinning the city, it shares some features of both, revealing just how arbitrary the lines between different climatic types really is at times, and how complex real weather can be – for all that there are obvious patterns and correlations within the phenomena.

As you might expect from so large an extended city, there’s a wealth of data that’s applicable to some extent. Wikipedia’s page on Spokane provides complete records for Spokane International Airport, Supplemented by partial records from 1953-1983 at Riverside Park, and by partial records from Felts Field Airport, close to the border with Idaho. There are substantial differences between these records.

But Post Falls, for example, has weather that is only similar to the records for the three Spokane sources. And I suspect that the weather would only grow more diverse if I went looking for other data points. Still similar, but the devil’s in the detail, as has been shown a number of times.

Rather than bury both myself and the reader in confusing details, I’m going to simply summarize the differences and then treat the international airport as “THE weather” of Spokane.

Riverside: Hotter in late summer, cooler or the same the rest of the year, warmer at night in Winter and Spring, significantly cooler in Autumn. Marginally wetter all year round, and receives a LOT less snow.

Felts Field: Record temps, both high and low, are 6°F (or more) hotter all year round, both days and nights. Normal temps are all 4°F hotter. Some months are slightly wetter, and some slightly drier, but any pattern is obscure; as a general rule, the amounts are only 0.3” or so in the course of a month.

Post Falls, Idaho: officially a “dry-summer continental climate”. Remember that, and that Spokane has officially either a “humid continental climate” or a “warm-Summer Mediterranean Climate” (depending on who you ask), both of which sound like they would be rather more moist than that of Post Falls. In fact, Post Falls experiences considerably more rainfall than the Spokane reference – in fact, up to 2 1/2 inches more, depending on the month. Some months, Post Falls gets double the rainfall of it’s western neighbor. Your immediate suspicion might be that Post Falls receives less snow, but once again, this is not born out by the records, where up to six inches more can fall in January and lesser increases at other times. What’s more, Post Falls only has three months with snow-less records; Spokane has four and very nearly six or seven.

No, what’s going on here is the other side of the Chinook Wind phenomenon – all that moisture and precipitation has to go somewhere. You could say (inaccurately) that Denver is in Post Falls’ “Chinook Shadow”. If you corrected the places referred to, you could even make that a reasonably accurate statement, because the principle is correct.

What this shows is how sharply the Chinook “precipitation dump” effect falls off. The distance between the two is only 25 miles; it takes less than half an hour to drive from one to the other via the I-90, but there are both pronounced similarities and profound differences between their respective climates.

“Proximity to elevation”, relative to the prevailing winds over water-sources, is thus revealed as a critical factor when it comes to the climate actually experienced by a region.

Spokane’s location, between the Cascades Range to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east and north, protects it from weather patterns experienced in other parts of the Pacific Northwest. The Cascade Mountains form a barrier to the eastward flow of moist and relatively mild air from the Pacific Ocean in winter and cool air in summer.

Climate: Specifics Analysis

There is no pronounced dividing line between the primary seasons and the transition seasons. The changes tend to be more gradual between a high-point and a low-point. The two primary seasons are quite distinct, but there beginnings and endings are a little fuzzier. Nevertheless, there are four distinct seasons experienced in Spokane.

Winter, at first glance, is normally December through February, but it regularly starts early and can occasionally linger into March. The months that bookend each year are the clear “heart” of the winter season. It is as correct to describe Winter as two months long as it is to consider it to be three or even four months in duration; it’s all about where you draw the classification “dividing line”.

I am going to consider winter as commencing in November because of a marked similarity between snowfall levels in February and those of November; if one is designated “Winter”, the other should be too, according to this observed pattern. In effect, Winter has stolen an Autumn month, making for a sharper transition between the hot and cold seasons, a pattern that is reflective of the actual situation revealed by the climatic data. It is this accuracy of impression that I consider the decisive argument.

So the seasons of Spokane, for the purposes of this series, are:

• Winter: November, December, January, and February;
• Spring: March, April, and May;
• Summer: June, July, and August;
• Autumn: September and October.

So, to analysis of the Winter records, starting as usual with the daily temperature highs: Winter tends to arrive suddenly. There is a 10°C (17°C) difference between the record highs of October and November respectively. This is the biggest month-on-month change in the course of the year, though the March-April change is almost as great. The hottest temperatures on record are Nov 21°C (70°F), Dec 16°C (60°F), Jan 17°C (62°F), and February 17°C (63°F).

The typical highs of each day in these months are far cooler. Nov 5.3°C (41.6°F), Dec 0.1°C (32.2°F), Jan 1.3°C (34.4°F), and Feb 4.2°C (39.6°F). However, not all days are this extreme; temperatures of Nov 13.4°C (56.2°F), Dec 8.3°C (46.9°F), Jan 8.6°C (47.4°F), and Feb 11°C (51.8°F) occur at least once each month.

The overwhelming impression created by these numbers is one of an extreme symmetry to the season. The temperatures plunge until they reach bottom, then rise again. All else is “passing noise” in the pattern. It will be interesting to see if that pattern also occurs in the daily minimums.

Most nights (presumably) are below freezing, sometimes by quite some margin. Typical daily minimums are Nov -1.2°C (29.8°F), Dec -5.3°C (22.5°F), Jan -4.1°C (24.7°F), and Feb -3.1°C (26.4°F). But at least once in a season, those minimums are exceeded (in the wrong direction): Nov -10.9°C (12.3°F), Dec -16.1°C (3°F), Jan -15.9°C (3.3°F), and Feb -12.9°C (8.7°F), respectively, and minimums are below zero regularly in Autumn and Spring, as well.

With chilly minimums such a recurring feature of the climate, it’s no surprise that the record minimums are extremely frosty. Nov -25°C (-13°F), Dec -32°C (-25°F), Jan -34°C (-30°F), and Feb -31°C (-24°F).

Despite this impression, the Rockies shield Spokane from some of the coldest air masses traveling southward from Canada. It could, in other words, be much colder. This also suggests that wind speeds, and hence windchill effects, are also relatively moderate – compared to what they could be.

Temperatures of less than -23°C (-10°F) are rare, and typically only 3.5 days a year average below -18°C (0°F).

As a season, winter is the wettest month. Because of the rain shadow effect of the Cascades, the Spokane area has 420mm (16.5”) average annual precipitation, less than half of that of the (unprotected) Seattle. However, there is a second annual peak in late Spring which is important to the agriculture of the region, and which can produce heavy fire loads in a summer that is already hot and dry. Within the season, November and December are the wettest months, both receiving 58.4mm (2.3”) on 13.7 and 13.2 rainy days, respectively. This also shows that individual falls are slightly heavier later in the year. In January, the average falls to 45.5mm (1.79”) over 13.4 rainy days, so this trend doesn’t last. February receives 33.8mm (1.33”) over 10.4 rainy days, but it is the shortest month of the year; if it were a more typical length, these numbers would be 36.5mm (1.44”) and 11.2 days. If you compare these, you find that not only are the falls decreasing in frequency but they are also becoming lighter.

The defining visual image of Spokane’s winter climate, though, is snow. While rare, at least one incident of snowfall in October and another in May, of virtually-identical intensity, have taken place; snow is a regular feature of the months in between. The peak occurs in December, and would trend toward the 3rd-4th week of that month, i.e. Christmas. Residents of Spokane don’t have to dream of a White Christmas and probably wouldn’t consider it anything to look forward to.

It is worth bearing in mind that snowfalls happen with roughly half the frequency of rainfall while considering the actual averages: November, 4.9 snow days yield 18.8cm (7.4”); December, 9.8 days produce 37.1cm (14.6”) of cover; January, 9 snow days generate 29cm (11.4”) of snow; and in February, the typical experience is 5 snow days and 17.3cm (6.8”). Falls generally persist into mid-Spring, decreasing in frequency and severity.

While late Summer and early autumn see relatively clear skies, the frequency of cloud cover rockets as Winter approaches. In November, only 26% of the possible sunlight actually reaches the city, in December that falls to only 22%, and in January the average is 28%. In February, this rises to 41% – 4 clear days for every 6 cloudy ones – and throughout Spring this slowly increases. But clouds are a recurring fact of life in all but the hottest months, and winter is when they are most ever-present.

Winter Events

The appeal of covered walkways between major buildings becomes far more understandable after considering these weather patterns. In fact, the reader could be forgiven for a suspicion that the regular rainfalls, however light, might put something of a damper on the social scene; Spokane was ranked as having the 4th ‘most depressing’ Winter in the US, after all. Spokane even struggles to promote any specific local activity themed around Christmas.

Outside of Winter there’s plenty going on, and there are a few events that occur regularly despite the season.

There’s an active Arts subculture concentrated in three districts. Like Denver, Spokane has First Friday art walks. Twice a year, these build to a crescendo – the first Friday each of October and February – which attract large crowds to the art districts within Davenport, the Garland Business District, and East Sprague. The first of these also has the highest concentration of art galleries and is also home to many of the main venues for the Performing Arts.

“The Knitting Factory is a concert house that serves as a setting for many mainstream touring musicians and acts.

“The Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox, restored to its original 1931 Art Deco state after years of being derelict is home to the Spokane Symphony Orchestra.

“The Metropolitan Performing Arts Center was restored in 1988 and renamed the Bing Crosby Theater in 2006 to honor the former Spokanite.

Touring stand-up comedians are hosted by the Spokane Comedy Club.

Theater is provided by Spokane’s only resident professional company, The Modern Theater, though there are also the Spokane Civic Theatre and several other amateur community theaters and smaller groups.

The INB Performing Arts Center is often host to large traveling exhibitions, shows, and tours.” – Wikipedia

Spokane is considered somewhat deficient in terms of grassroots-level musical venues, though there are a number of higher-level venues and groups, such as the Spokane Symphony Orchestra (mentioned above), which presents a full season of classical music each year, and the Spokane Jazz Orchestra, which does likewise for their genre.

Similarly, there are a range of museums catering to everything from art to local history to science and technology.

But in terms of big local events, the schedule favors the warmer months, which are home to everything from the annual Lilac Bloomsday Run to the Spokane Hoopfest (a 3-on-3 basketball tournament) to Pig Out In The Park, an annual six-day food and entertainment festival which features free concerts featuring local, regional, and national recording artists in Riverfront Park.

What major events do occur in the Winter Season are indoors in nature. November brings the Spokane Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (mentioned earlier), while the Spokane International Film Festival (a small, juried festival that features documentaries and shorts from around the world) is a February event.

There is an annual Renaissance Faire but no indication of what time of year it calls home.

There are five ski resorts in the region and this is their peak season (for obvious reasons).

The INB Performing Arts Center hosts the WCE Best of Broadway at the end of each year.

The Spokane Symphony’s concert season continues through the winter. You can also stop by the Historic Davenport Hotel which has an annual Christmas Trees display and sells raffle tickets to win the decorated trees, with funds going to support the Symphony. The display and raffle are about a week long and are a genuine seasonal highlight.

And the last week of February is the time of year for the Inlander Restaurant Week – just like Denver, the best restaurants create three-course fixed-price menus for this celebratory period. The Menus are generally made public in early February to give patrons the chance to plan their gastronomic tours.

Primary Sources

• Wikipedia’s Spokane, Washington page;
• Spokane Winter by Visit Spokane .com.

20. Winter In Seattle, Washington

Any time that you use a real-world location with which you have no personal experience for any purpose – be it literary, factual, or in an RPG – you are forced to confront the difference between what you think you know and what you really do know about that location. This is something that I’ve had to do repeatedly in the course of this series, and Seattle is no exception.

My awareness of the place is that it’s on the West Coast of the USA, up in the extreme north of the contiguous continental states, and beyond that there is a confused melange of unreliable impressions more accurately ascribable to the New England region, such as “Whale Hunting” and “snow”. And there’s a vague association with Soundgarden. Or maybe it’s a different band.

Of course, you may be able to get away with such vagueness if your audience – your players, in the case of an RPG, or my readers, in the case of this blog – know no better than you. For example, most North Americans would have known very little about Sydney, so a GM setting an adventure in my city would be able to get away without a great deal of research and the players probably wouldn’t notice.

Given that most of my readers are North American, and predominantly from the US, that won’t work in this case – if I screw up, or do a half-arsed job, someone’s sure to spot it. The only solution is to do the very best research job that I can, because your credibility suffers massively from even a single case of getting it wrong through inadequacy of research. If you can spot that I’m talking through my hat in an area about which you know better, you are that much less-inclined to trust my work on a place about which you know nothing.

Worse still, most RPG players are sponges for factual information. When I use, say, Rome in an adventure, I can never be sure in advance of what my players might know about the place. So I have to maintain the most scrupulous standards that I can manage just to achieve a reasonable suspension of disbelief.

And that means that thee unreliable gestalt of vague and uncertain impressions needs to be shown the door unless they can be validated through factual research.

In a way, that’s what this entire series is about – on the local scale, it’s about the weather experienced by different specific locations that have been selected to be representative of various climates and geographic locations; on the regional scale, it’s about using local climatic data as a template for similar locations, knowing that there will be some inherent level of inaccuracy in doing so; and on the broadest scale, it’s about my understanding of the weather, confronting the numerous errors and patches of nebulous vagueness in my knowledge on the subject, and passing the resulting factual foundation on to you, my readers, for your own use.

Seattle was chosen because my research indicated that there was a uniqueness to San Francisco that made it unrepresentative of the West Coast as a whole, and because I was already reporting on Spokane, Washington, a location that is specifically described in various sources as being sheltered from the climatic influences to which Seattle is subject. To get the complete picture, then, you needed both Spokane and Seattle.

Okay, so the first thing you notice about Seattle is that for a coastal city, it seems to be an awfully long way inland. This is one case in which appearances are highly deceptive, and the error can be summed up in a single two-word name: Puget Sound.

Puget Sound

A ‘sound’ (in geographic terminology) is a “sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, and wider than a fjord; or a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land” (though those are also known as a strait).

Which sounds all nice and precise; the reality is a heck of a lot messier. There’s no consistency to the use of the term, which was often assigned long before the definition was cobbled together.

In the case of Puget Sound, the term is applied to a complex network of estuaries, marine waterways, and basins with three connections (one major and two minor) to the Pacific Ocean. The name was first assigned to the waters of the region south of the Tacoma Narrows by George Vancouver in 1792, and was later extended to include the waters north of the Narrows as well.

In 2009, an attempt to clean up the terminology by the United States Board on Geographic Names led to Puget Sound, plus the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Strait of Georgia (both of which form part of the international border between the US and Canada), being defined as the “Salish Sea” – but sometimes the terms “Puget Sound” and “Puget Sound and adjacent waters” are used to refer not only to the Puget Sound referred to as part of the Salish Sea but also waters to the north, such as Bellingham Bay and those in the region of the San Juan Islands.

Nine rivers feed into the Sound, however ill-defined it might be, and it forms a major channel to the Pacific. The most practical definition is based on that fact; the waters of the sound are a blend of fresh water and the salt waters of the Pacific. The marine population is a mixture of salt-water life, fresh-water species, and some unique adaptions that exclusively prefer the lower salinity of the Sound.

There are 15 prominent islands within the sound’s one hundred mile length & ten mile width, and six cities are located on its coastline – Seattle, Tacoma, Washington, Olympia, Everett, and Bremerton.

Even before looking at the data and analyses of various sources, I can see from the map of the Sound included in the Photographic Montage that Puget Sound will have a complex relationship with the climate of Seattle. If the wind is from exactly the right direction, it will carry cold, moist, air from the northern Pacific SSE to strike Seattle with minimal interference; but if the source is just a few degrees more from the north, the wind will flow across the icy landmass of western Canada, resulting in a drier and even colder airflow. A few degrees more to the west, and Vancouver Island and/or the expanse of the Olympic Peninsula to the west will provide at least some shield against the winds, a situation that remains in effect through almost 45 degrees of arc. The location map at the start of the montage adds to the story, clearly showing a channel of relatively low ground from the west to the south-west; while these winds would be warmer, there is not a lot of terrain impact to leech the water content out of the air before it gets to Seattle. Everywhere else you look, there is high ground; winds from those points of the compass would incur Chinook effects to at least some extent, making them drier and providing less rainfall for the City.

From this alone, I would expect the weather to be quite literally as fickle as the winds. From the currently-prevailing wind and the season, you would have a reasonable chance to predict the general weather pattern, and from a particular state of the weather and general knowledge of the season, you could probably make a fair stab at guessing the wind direction.

It should be noted that these last two paragraphs are entirely semi-educated guesswork on my part – bold predictions to be validated by examining the actual climatic information, which happens a little later in the article.

A (very brief) History of Seattle

The Seattle area was inhabited by native Americans for at least 4000 years before the first permanent European settlers, now known as the Denny Party, arrived from Illinois via Portland on the Schooner Exact in 1851.

In the following year, the settlement was moved to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay from it’s initial location at Alki Point and renamed “Seattle” after Chief Si’ahl of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes.

The first major industry was logging, but by the late 19th century it had become a commercial and ship-building center, serving as the gateway to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush.

In 1907, the company that would eventually become UPS was founded in Seattle.

During World War I, a shipbuilding boom took over the city, and the retrenchment of the workforce after the war led to the Seattle General Strike of 1919, which was the first General Strike in the USA. Seattle was mildly prosperous in the 1920s but was particularly hard hit in the Great Depression, experiencing some of the country’s harshest labor strife in that era. Violence during the Maritime Strike of 1934 cost Seattle much of its maritime traffic, which was rerouted to the Port of Los Angeles.

Quite obviously, job-creation programs focus on where the need is greatest, and so Seattle became one of the largest beneficiaries of the New Deal. The residents were subsidized to build roads, parks, dams, schools, railroads, bridges, docks, and even historical and archival record sites and buildings, but this was not enough to stave off the challenge posed by Los Angeles. Seattle’s eastern farm land faded in importance due to the growth of farming in Oregon and the Midwest, forcing people into town, further boosting the unemployment rate.

World War II saved the city, as prosperity returned, centered on Boeing Aircraft. Post-war, this prosperity again dipped, but Boeing grew in strength to dominate the commercial airliner market, and this dip was short-lived. The city became established as a center for aircraft manufacturing, and future prosperity seemed assured.

The city hosted the 1962 World’s Fair, also known as the Century 21 Exposition, which included construction of what has become the most iconic visual icon of the city, the Space Needle, an observation tower. During the World’s Fair, nearly 20,000 people a day used its elevators.

The aircraft boom ground to an unexpected and savage halt in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a victim of the oil crises, loss of Government contracts, and costs and delays associated with the Boeing 747. Many people left the area to look for work elsewhere. So savage was the downturn that two local real estate agents erected a billboard which read, “Will the last person leaving Seattle Turn out the lights.”

Boeing recovered, of course; and the 747 proved to have been worth all the angst in the long-term; it is now regarded as the most successful commercial aircraft design of all time. While the manufacturing plants remain an integral employer in the region, the corporate headquarters of Boeing were relocated to Chicago in 2001.

But, by then, the city had developed alternative economic pillars. In the 1980s, Microsoft established themselves in the region, and was followed in 1994 by Amazon. Innovative technological startups in the software, biotechnology, and internet fields have sustained the city in slower times since 1990 and led to the occasional economic boom.

The biggest such boom ran from 1990 to 2000, and saw the city grow by 50,000 residents and saw Seattle’s real estate become the most expensive in the US. In 2001, the dot-com bubble burst; many of the Seattle companies had been built on real technologies and not only survived but remained relatively strong, but the explosive growth in the field was over.

In July 2013, Seattle was the fastest-growing major city in the US, remained in the top five for the next 2 years, and then again topped the list in 2016.

Beginning in 2010, and for the next five years, Seattle gained an average of 14,511 residents per year, with the growth strongly skewed toward the center of the city. Unemployment dropped from roughly 9 percent to 3.6 percent. And then another boom started.

This most recent boom is directly attributable to Amazon, which moved its corporate headquarters from north Beacon Hill to South Lake Union (both in Seattle), which involved a historically-epic construction boom which resulted in the completion of almost 10,000 apartments in Seattle in 2017, more than in any previous year and nearly twice as many as were built in 2016.

Nevertheless, the city is now “bursting at the seams”, with over 45,000 households spending more than half their income on housing and at least 2,800 people homeless, and with the country’s sixth-worst rush hour traffic.

Today, Seattle is a major gateway for trade with Asia, and the fourth-largest port in terms of container handling. Because of the indirect impact from imports, Seattle is likely to be one of the cities most strongly impacted by the proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum.

Seattle’s musical history is an enviable one; from 1918 to 1951, nearly two dozen jazz nightclubs existed on Jackson Street, connecting what is now the Chinatown/International district to the CBD. This jazz scene nurtured the early careers of Ray Charles and Quincy Jones to name just two. Seattle’s next claim to musical fame was as the birthplace of Jimi Hendrix, but from 1951 to the 1990s, it was a relatively lean time for the city. Then Grunge and alt-rock exploded into mainstream awareness – Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and the Foo Fighters are all native to the city.

To me, the pattern of that musical legacy is reflective of Seattle as a whole. It plods along, drifting from year to year without making waves – and then emerges from the mists of history to shake the economic foundations of the nation for a while, only to again fall quiet for long enough to be forgotten sufficiently for the “next big thing” to emerge from the region to widespread astonishment. Conditions now seem right for it to again fade from the forefront of cultural and social awareness – for a while.

The Physical Reality

Seattle is farther north than Canadian cities such as Toronto, Ottowa, and Montreal, and lies at roughly the same latitude as Salzburg, Austria. It is further North than Hobart is South, a fact that might surprise many, the consequence of there not being very much of significance between the continental Antarctic landmass and the almost 44°S latitude of Tasmania’s South-East Cape.

Geographically, the city encompasses several noteworthy hills; in fact, like Rome, the city is sometimes said to lie on Seven hills (one of which has been removed by man). The Kitsap and the Olympic peninsulas along with the Olympic mountains lie to the west of Puget Sound, while the Cascade Range and Lake Sammamish lie to the east of Lake Washington.

Much of the immediate region has been extensively landscaped by a number of “mega-projects”. For example, an area north of the central business district contained a steep hill (“Denny Hill”) that was removed to create what is now known as the “Denny Regrade”. This (and other regrades) moved a combined total of more than 35 million cubic yards of earth (almost 27 million cubic meters). Creating Harbor Island involved 7 million cubic yards, while the Ballard Locks project moved 1.6 million, twice that of the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel. Straightening the Duwamish River and filling its tide-flats was the largest single project, at nearly 22 million cubic yards.

Seattle is in a major earthquake zone. On February 28, 2001, the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake did significant architectural damage, especially in the reclaimed land of the Pioneer Square area, but caused only one fatality. Other strong quakes occurred in 1700 (estimated magnitude 9), 1872 (7.3 or 7.4), 1949 (7.1), and 1965 (6.5), which killed three people directly and one more by heart failure.

Climate

“Seattle’s climate is classified as oceanic or temperate marine, with cool, wet winters and mild, relatively dry summers.

“Temperature extremes are moderated by the adjacent Puget Sound, … Pacific Ocean, and Lake Washington. Thus extreme heat waves are rare in the Seattle area, as are very cold temperatures.

“The Seattle area is the most cloudy region of the United States, due in part to frequent storms and lows moving in from the adjacent Pacific Ocean.” – Wikipedia

Despite having a reputation for frequent rain, Seattle receives less precipitation than many other US. cities, but does have many more rainy days when a very light drizzle falls for many days.

In an average year, according to Wikipedia’s sources, 150 days in a typical year receive at least 0.25mm (0.01 inches), more than nearly all US cities east of the Rockies, and it’s cloudy 201 days of the year and partly cloudy on 93 more.

Official weather and climatic data is collected at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, located about 19 km (12 mi) south of downtown in the city of SeaTac, which is at a higher elevation, and records more cloudy days and fewer partly cloudy days per year – something to bear in mind when assessing climatic records..

Hot temperature extremes are enhanced by dry, compressed wind from the west slopes of the Cascades, while cold temperatures are generated mainly from the Fraser Valley in British Columbia – which jibes fairly well with what I predicted earlier in the discussion of the region.

You can get a better feel for the variability of the region in terms of climate from the fact that Sequim, 64km from downtown Seattle, has a climate more like that of Los Angeles, roughly 1200 miles to the South, than to the far closer city.

The temperature records clearly show that Summer runs from May to September. November is more like February than it is like October, and March is not all that different from November, at least in terms of temperatures, while April is very reminiscent (statistically) of October.

In practical terms, there’s a 5-month summer (May-Sept), a 5-month winter (Nov-March), and two transitional seasons measured in mere weeks (October and April).

The record highs for the winter season are Nov 23°C (74°F), Dec 19°C (66°F), Jan 19°C (67°F), Feb 21°C (70°F), and March 26°C (78°F).

The more usual winter highs are Nov 10.5°C (50.9°F), Dec 7.6°C (45.7°F), Jan 8.4°C (47.2°F), Feb 9.9°C (49.9°F), and March 12.1°C (53.7°F). At least once in these respective months, however, the temperature will normally climb to Nov 15.9°C (60.7°F), Dec 13.3°C (55.9°F), Jan 13.6°C (56.4°F), Feb 15.7°C (60.3°F), and March 18.9°C (66°F), or more.

Comparing the differences between these values and those of other cities I’ve looked at gives the impression that Seattle is slightly more variable in daily temperature than the usual. That certainly fits with the expectations I raised based on the geography of Puget Sound relative to Seattle.

Typical daily minimums for this time of year are Nov 4.4°C (40°F), Dec 2°C (35.6°F), Jan 2.7°C (36.9°F), Feb 2.7°C (36.9°F), and March 4.1°C (39.3°F). However, it is normal for temperatures to fall, at least once in each respective month, to Nov -1.8°C (28.7°F), Dec -4.4°C (24°F), Jan -3.7°C (25.4°F), Feb -3.4°C (25.9°F), and March -0.4°C (31.3°F). It does sometimes get colder than that; the record lows are Nov -14°C (6°F), Dec -14°C (6°F), Jan -18°C (0°F), Feb -17°C (1°F), and March -12°C (11°F).

These numbers suggest that winter tends to arrive slightly more precipitously than it ends. They also suggest that the winter chills are more consistent for Seattle than for other cities, the occasional icy blast notwithstanding.

28 times in a typical year, the temperatures will drop below freezing. Twice in such a year, temperatures will not rise above the freezing point. It is extremely rare for temperatures to fall below -7°C (20°F), again supporting the impression of more consistent winter lows.

The average window for freezing temperatures is November 16 through March 10, allowing a growing season of 250 days.

Seattle experiences its heaviest rainfall during the period from the start of November to the end of January – roughly half its annual rainfall occurs in these three months. In late fall and early winter, atmospheric rivers (also known as “Pineapple Express” systems), strong frontal systems, and Pacific low pressure systems are common. Many Pineapple Express events follow or occur simultaneously with major arctic troughs in the northwestern United States, often leading to major snow-melt flooding with warm, tropical rains falling on frozen or snow-laden ground. The series of charts below summarize what’s involved in a “Pineapple Express” – from the North of Australia all the way to the North of America by way of Hawaii.

It’s worth noting that the source event (“1” on the first chart) occurs most frequently in our late spring and summer, which corresponds to the American late autumn and winter.

In November, Seattle averages more rainfall than any other US. city of more than 250,000 people; it also ranks highly in winter precipitation. It is simultaneously one of the rainiest major US cities (as measured by the number of days with precipitation) and one of the driest (as measured by the total rainfall, especially during the June-September period (which I have defined as mid-to-late summer).

During El Niño years, little precipitation falls in the Puget Sound area even by the typical standards. Since the region’s water comes from mountain snow packs during the dry summer months, El Niño winters can not only produce substandard skiing but can result in water rationing and a shortage of hydroelectric power the following summer.

Thunderstorms are rare; on average, only seven days a year include a report of thunder. New York City has an average more than 3.5 times this, Kansas City an average more than 7 times that of Seattle, and Fort Myers in Florida, an average more than 13 times this frequency (roughly 2 per week over a year). Most of Seattle’s thunderstorms are relatively mild, a characteristic of the Puget Sound Convergence Zone.

In this Zone, air arriving from the north meets air flowing in from the south. Both streams of air originate over the Pacific Ocean; airflow is split by the Olympic Mountains to Seattle’s west, then reunited to the east. When the air currents meet, they are forced upward, resulting in convection. Thunderstorms caused by this can occur north and south of town, but Seattle itself rarely receives more than occasional thunder and small hail showers.

The Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm in December 2006 is an exception that brought heavy rain and winds gusting up to 111 km/h (69 mph). This event was not caused by the Puget Sound Convergence Zone and was widespread across the Pacific Northwest at the time.

Occasionally, Seattle will experience a more dramatic weather event, usually associated with a “Pineapple Express”. Wikipedia describes one (edited for consistency):

One such event occurred on December 2-4, 2007, when sustained hurricane-force winds and widespread heavy rainfall associated with a strong Pineapple Express event occurred in the greater Puget Sound area and the western parts of Washington and Oregon. Precipitation totals exceeded 350mm (13.8 inches) in some areas with winds topping out at 209 km/h (130 mph) along coastal Oregon. It became the second wettest event in Seattle history when a little over 130 mm (5.1 in) of rain fell on Seattle in a 24-hour period. Lack of adaptation* to the heavy rain contributed to five deaths and widespread flooding and damage.

* I presume they mean “preparation for the heavy rain”.

The average rainfall in Seattle through the winter months is Nov 166.9mm (6.57 inches) over 18.4 days; Dec 135.9mm (5.35 inches) over 17.6 days; Jan 141.5mm (5.57 inches) over 18.2 days; Feb 88.9mm (3.5 inches) over 14.7 days; and March 94.5mm (3.72 inches) over 16.9 days.

Seattle typically receives some snowfall in a year but heavy snow is rare. Average annual snowfall, as measured at SeaTac Airport, is 17.3cm (6.8 inches). Only fifteen falls in a single calendar day of 15cm (6 inches) or more have been recorded since 1948, and only once since February 17, 1990. Much of the city received less snow than was measured at the airport and the southern regions of the city, with Olympia and Chehalis receiving 36-46 cm (14 to 18 inches).

Another moderate snow event occurred from December 12-25, 2008, when over one foot of snow fell and stuck on much of the roads over the two week period because temperatures remained below 0°C (32°F). This caused considerable problems, because these events are so rare that Seattle is not equipped for snow clearance.

The largest documented snowstorm occurred from January 5-9, 1880, with snow drifting to 6 feet (1.8 m) in places by the end of the snow event. But that was almost 140 years ago, long before official records were kept. The heaviest fall officially recorded was 20 inches on January 31, 1950. That month was particularly severe for snow, receiving a total of 57.2 inches (including that single-day fall).

Snowfalls are generally far more moderate, month on month. The averages are Nov 3 cm (1.2 inches) over 0.3 days; Dec 4.3 cm (1.7 inches) over 1.6 days; Jan 3.6 cm (1.4 inches) over 1.3 days; Feb 4.3 cm (1.7 inches) over 0.9 days; and March 2 cm (0.8 inches) over 0.5 days. These are the only months of the year with recorded snowfalls.

The sunshine hours through winter make for grim reading. November has clear skies only 26% of the possible hours on average; December, 20%; January, 25%; February 38%; and March 48%. Even at the height of summer, the sunshine received is only 65% – which is around the LOW mark in some other cities I’ve looked at.

Winter Events

There are a number of local attractions within the Seattle region, operating year-round.

• The Pacific Science Center has a tropical butterfly house, planetarium, hundreds of hands-on science exhibits, two IMAX theaters (night-time only) and one of the world’s largest Laser Dome theaters (ditto). They also have periodic special events.
• The Museum Of Pop Culture (“MoPOP”) sounds like a great place to spend a day. Exhibits are designed to be experienced, not just viewed, and cover everything from Star Trek to Jim Henson by way of David Bowie.
• A multi-course feast, generous libations, and a show that’s part circus and part dinner theater featuring international cirque, comedy and cabaret artists, is the menu for a three-hour evening at Teatro ZinZanni.
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center is at the core of the world’s largest center of private philanthropy, designed to inspire, educate, and empower others to make a difference in the world as well as communicating, through interactive exhibits, the projects of the Gates Foundation.
• Pinball is big in Seattle right now. There’s an annual mid-year Pinball and Arcade Show (11 years and counting) and the world’s largest weekly pinball tournament at Fremont’s Add-a-Ball.
• They might be dying out elsewhere, but record shops are a big thing in Seattle. Bop Street in Ballard carries over half a million LPs and Easy Street in West Seattle is also a center for the resurgent audio medium.
• “Wings Over Washington” is an immersive Virtual Reality aerial tour of some of the most scenic locations in the state. This appears to run all year round. Each “flight” takes about 15 minutes.
• The Seattle Children’s Museum is located in the Seattle Center Armory and features interactive exhibits aimed at “Kids of all ages”.
• The 5th Avenue Theater has produced and presented live musical theater since 1926.
• Seattle regularly holds conventions of various sorts aimed at popular culture, both mainstream and fringe. Anglicon 2017 (Dec 8-10) was a Dr Who convention; Rustycon 35 (Jan 12-14) was a science-fiction/fantasy convention; and the Emerald City Comic Con 2018 (March 1-4) was about comics and pop culture in general, to name just three. There’s another for paranormal investigators (the Port Gamble Ghost Conference), and one for small publishers and… look, there are lots of them, okay?
• The first Thursday of every month, three museums offer free entrance to their regular exhibits: the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the U.W.; the Museum of History & Industry at South Lake Union; and the Seattle Art Museum downtown, which also permits entrance to any special exhibition for half price on these Free Thursdays.

November

But these only scratch the surface. Seattle is one of those places where there is always something going on. The following are selected highlights of the November events calendar (trust me, I left dozens more off the list):

• The month starts back in mid-October with the Earshot Jazz Festival which concludes after almost 3 weeks and more than 50 live concerts on November 4th (2018). Timing in other years will probably vary.
• Seattle Restaurant Week runs for eight days at the start of November (and again in April) – except Fridays and Saturdays. 165 restaurants in the Seattle area offer three-course meals at discounted prices. All participants offer Dinners, some also offer discounted Lunches.
• On a November date to be confirmed (it was Nov 4 in 2017), the Day Of The Dead Festival includes a procession of Aztec dancers, performances by singers and folk dancers, the dedication of an altar, face painting, and Mexican snacks for sale.
• Not to be confused with the Emerald City Comic Con, the Jet City Comic Show at the Tacoma Convention Center brings in an extra dose of comics and pop culture.
• At about the same time, “America’s Largest Antique & Collectible Show”, a quarterly event, brings 400 vendors selling everything from furniture to slot machines and memorabilia. Note that this is a traveling “show” that has made over 220 appearances over the last 32 years in different locations, mostly in the northwest, but some as far south as Reno, Nevada.
• The Seattle Winter Ciderfest occurs early in the month. Tasting the “Fall and winter ciders from the Northwest’s best producers” plus local beer, wine, soda, and vendors representing ski resorts, spas, and music festivals come together for one evening. Ages 21+ only.
• The Veterans Day Parade and Observance (Nov 10, 2018) in Auburn, 26 miles south of the Seattle CBD, is one of the largest in America, with veterans’ units, military vehicles, motorcycles, 25 marching bands, and floats, plus related events. Note that it’s actually scheduled for the day BEFORE Veterans Day.
• Also on Nov 10 is the Tacoma Beer Festival, featuring “150 Halloween-themed and seasonal craft beers from 34 breweries”, plus food for sale. Ages 21+, costumes welcome.
• And starting at the same time, but extending an extra day, is Northwest Chocolate Festival brings 80 purveyors of chocolate delights to satisfy the most ardent chocoholic.
• Veterans Day is one of the Free Entrance Days at all National Parks and Washington State Parks. There are more than 140 of the latter to choose from.
• Sometime during the month (no date has yet been confirmed), the Seattle International Auto Show will display 400 of the latest cars and trucks.
• Starting in late November and running through to the New Year’s Eve celebrations at the Space Needle is the Seattle Center’s Winterfest. Activities that are designed to be free or highly affordable, fun, and uplifting, take place over five weeks in a variety of venues – everything from ice carving, live performances, ice rinks, Dickensian carolers, a comedy show, a dance party, student showcases, and the Winter Train & Village, a turn-of-the-(19th)-century village and train.
• The day after Thanksgiving, the Christmas Ship Festival gets underway, and continues until December 23. The Spirit Of Seattle is decorated with twinkly lights and sails to 65 different waterfronts in Puget Sound while an on-board choir serenades passengers and shore-dwellers. This has been a regional tradition since 1949. The Red Tricycle web-page on the Festival has some great photos but they are copyright Argosy Cruises, so you’ll have to go there to look at them (the one about half-way down the page is my favorite).
• Starting in mid-November, Swanson’s Nursery (a prime source of Christmas Trees) transforms into a “Winter Wonderland” in what it called the Reindeer Festival. The display, which includes a model train village and Santa’s Reindeer, remains open to the public until Christmas Eve.
• From around Thanksgiving (in 2017 it was from Nov 21) until Jan 1, Seattle showcases its annual Gingerbread Village. Seattle takes this very seriously; architectural firms, master builders, and Sheraton Seattle culinary teams create a “meticulously planned candy wonderland”. The 2017 exhibit recreated elements of Seattle’s past and imagined future in candy form, “from skyscrapers to underground tunnels”. This is more installation art than the domestic treat that may have initially come to mind.
• From a month before Christmas through until the end of the year, the Bellevue Botanical Garden offers the “Garden d’Lights”, in which more than half-a-million sparkling lights are formed into “whimsical shapes of plants, flowers, birds, animals, and cascading waterfalls” within the Garden’s scenic surrounds.
• Not to be outdone, the Woodland Park Zoo presents, from Thanksgiving+1 day through to Jan 1, their annual “WildLights” exhibit, which uses 500,000 LEDs to create luminous animal-themed designs and put the zoo’s nocturnal animals in a new light. Other attractions are an indoor snowball fight, real reindeer, carolers, and a holiday beer garden.
• And, at the same time, the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma (34 miles from Downtown Seattle) creates hammerhead sharks, sea turtles, carnivorous plants and their insect prey, a 30-foot-wide underwater landscape, a polar bear family, and a giant Pacific octopus from lights.
• And yet another light-themed event that starts at the same time, but runs until mid-January, is the Lantern Light Festival, a 2000-year-old Chinese tradition in which lanterns of various shapes, sizes, and colors are set aglow. The chinese-dragon lantern is quite spectacular (I’d like to have included the image but it appears to be copyright, so click on the link to see it).
• The Seattle Marathon and Half-marathon will be held on November 25th in 2018. More than 15,000 people participate.
• Late in November through to early in December there is a Victorian Country Christmas market with 500 booths with vendors in Victorian costumes selling art, jewelry, decorations, clothing, and toys.

You see what I mean?

December

Not only do several of the above continue for various lengths into December, but there are even more events on the Christmas Month’s schedule. Below is an even more restricted set of highlights:

• The Leavenworth Christmas Lighting Festival (aka the Leavenworth Festhalle) commences Dec 1 and continues every weekend through to the last Sunday before Christmas Eve, transforming the Bavarian town into a village of holiday-themed lights, and featuring live music, street performances, roasted chestnuts, a traditional Gluhwein Tent selling hot spiced wine and cider, and more. Admission is free. While Leavenworth is almost 135 miles from Seattle, this is nevertheless a popular place to visit, reachable by train, bus, or car. Most of the trip takes place within the Wenatchee National Forest, ensuring plenty of alpine scenery.
• Also starting the festive season with an exotic splash is Jule Fest, a Scandinavian Christmas bazaar of arts and crafts, folk dancing, Vikings, a Christmas tree lighting, Lucia bride, bonfire, and Santa Claus.
• The Seattle Art Museum runs different public tours throughout the year. Regular involvement by an eccentric? opinionated local art community – visual artists, dancers, curators, critics, and more – mean that these are constantly changing, and the Museum is a place to explore repeatedly through the year. But the highlight of the year is the annual SAM Lights display, a free illuminated event in the associated Olympic Sculpture Park (which is usually only open during daylight hours) that includes hands-on public art-making, music, hot drinks and sweet snacks, and of course, the light display. In 2017, this event was Dec 14, a Thursday, suggesting that the date is fixed.
• Speaking of the local arts community, Nov 30 and Dec 1-2 sees the Seattle Sampling Artists’ Studio Tour – 24 artists at 8 studios who make clothing, jewelry, glass, ceramics, prints, and more offering their wares for public purchase.
• Dec 9 is the scheduled date for the Jingle Bell Run (5k, or 1 mile distances) and the kid’s run (1 km). Participants are encouraged to wear a costume or Christmas bells, walkers are welcome, but there is a fee for dogs.
• New Year’s Eve is spectacular at the Space Needle, which is transformed into a fireworks platform that has to be seen to be believed. The city closes the streets in front of the Space Needle so there is ample room to find an unobstructed view.

January

Things quieten down – a little – in January. I only count 42 events currently scheduled for January 2019. Of course, that’s a long way away, leaving plenty of time for more event to be announced…

• The Resolution Run 5K and Polar Bear Dive is a 5K fun-run on January 1 and includes an optional dip in the cold waters of Lake Washington, awards, snacks, and a beer garden at Magnuson Park.
• And, just a mile north of those who want to work up a sweat first, the annual Polar Bear Plunge attracts 1000+ people a year to wade into Lake Washington, and even more to watch them do it. Costumes are encouraged.
• In Tacoma, and starting Dec 31, there is a 2-day Model Train Festival.
• The provocatively-named Worst Day Of The Year Run is a 5K/10K winter run with a costume contest, indoor finish line party and a beer garden. The 2019 version will be the fifth event in what is rapidly becoming established as an annual tradition. The run’s menacing name derives from the sister event that inspired it, the Worst Day Of The Year Ride, a cycling event that started in 2000 in Portland. The ride, in turn, was named in honor of Oregon’s coldest and wettest day in history: February 8th. In 1933 on that date, Ukiah, Oregon enjoyed balmy temperatures of -54 degrees, and in 1966, the coastal range was all but swimming after 26′ of rain in just 4 days.
• Once the Christmas Lighting Festival at Leavenworth has run its course for the year, the township takes a couple of weeks to reinvent itself for the Bavarian Icefest. A one-weekend-a-year event which transforms the town with snow sculptures, a snowmobile sled-pull, live ice carving, and other cold-oriented activities.
• And, two weeks after that (are you sensing a theme, here?) they host the Timbrrr! Winter Music Festival which throws skiing, snowboarding, a hot-toddy garden, wine tastings, and festival-branded flannel shirts together with numerous local and national acts of styles ranging from indie rock to hip-hop.
• Martin Luther King day (Jan 21 in 2019) is another free entrance day to state and national parks. There is also a workshop at Garfield High School followed by a rally, a two-mile march, and a second rally to celebrate the day, amongst more conventional commemorations.

February

The tranquility is not a function of the colder weather; come February, and the schedule has regrown to November-level event levels, despite the shortness of the month. The list below has been ruthlessly pruned:

• This entire month is designated “Seattle Museum Month” in which a huge diversity of museums in the Seattle area put on special exhibitions and drop their prices to half the usual admission fee. Everything from the Museum Of Flight to the Pacific Science Museum to the Museum of Pop Culture take part.
• Early February will showcase the Seattle Boat Show, which promises 1000 boats and watercraft on display plus 200 boating seminars. Attendees can also visit boats in the water at Bell Harbor Marina & South Lake Union. It’s possible that the event opening will be brought forwards into January.
• America’s Largest Antique & Collectible Show is back.
• The official start of Spring has become, over the last 25+ years, the traditional time for the annual Northwest Flower & Garden Festival, attracting gardening enthusiasts from all over the Northwest of the USA. Tickets also grant access to a vintage garden market, educational seminars, a gourmet marketplace of craft food and beverages and more. The Festival runs from Feb 7-11, plus an opening-night party to support the Washington Park Arboretum.
• Of course, Valentine’s Day events abound. Options include everything from Symphony Concerts to Burlesque Shows (more than one of each!)
• New Orleans might be around 2500 miles away as the crow flies, but the ‘any excuse for a party’ mentality won’t let anything so trivial as that get in the way. The Mardi Gras Masquerade Party Cruise includes “Creole and New Orleans inspired appetizers and desserts,” a masquerade mask, beads, a drink ticket, and three hours of scenic views of Lake Union and Lake Washington. For age 21+, of course.
• Any city that celebrates the Lantern Lights Festival (see November, above) is likely to make a big deal about the Chinese New Year. So it is no surprise that one of the biggest annual parties in Seattle is the Lunar New Year in Chinatown. Of course, the date varies from year to year, but is generally in mid-to-late-February. In fact, the region celebrates the event twice in 2019 – once on the 11th and again on the 24th.
• Later in the month, the Seattle Food and Wine Experience is a three-day festival of gastronomy with an emphasis on local produce. Multiple local gastropubs and taverns, winemakers, and brewers come together to produce a succession of themed culinary delights at a series of locations.
• And, at about the same time, the annual Wintergrass Festival is underway at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue. As you might suspect from the name, this is a Winter Bluegrass festival, which this year ran for 4 days.

March

March is when the social calendar starts to get busy. There are more events that either have taken or will take place in the course of this month than there were in November, by a considerable margin.

• One of the big events of the year is the Emerald City Comic Con; in 2017, more than 91,000 fans attended, along with hundreds of guests from television, movies, and comics. The 2018 version was from March 1-4. Next year, it will be mid-month. Helping it grow each year is the inclusion of add-on side-events open to the general public as opposed to being restricted to registered attendees.
• There’s a Sewing and Stitchery Expo for the same four days.
• One of those side events is the Night of Board Gaming for Good on Top of the World which, for $69, includes a buffet dinner, two $10 vouchers for the game store, and all of the games you can play, with views from the top floor of Columbia Tower, all to support charity.
• March 2-4 is the Polar Science Weekend at the Pacific Science Center.
• Carnival for a Cause on March 3 includes two drink tickets, appetizers, and dancing at a number of locations hosted by 1927 events and is a Masquerade cocktail party.
• Also on March 3 are several celebrations of the Indian festival of Holi, when colored powder flies. Younger Children (age 12- at one, age 15- at the other) are free at two of the events, another is adults 21+ only.
• The Seattle Bike Show is March 3-4, and entry is free for children 12 and younger. Tickets also give access to the Golf and Travel Show and the Outdoor Gear and Adventure Expo, both at the same location at the same time.
• In a sort of prelude to St Patrick’s Day, the Shamrock Wine & Beer Walk on March 10 includes 10 tastes from Washington wineries & breweries in the shops at Country Village in Bothell. Wear some green, and bring a glass. Age 21+, ID required.
• The Seattle Kennel Dog Show on March 10-11 attracts 11,000 spectators and 2,000 dogs.
• St Patrick’s day commences the previous afternoon (because it can) with the Landing Of St. Patrick at 5:30PM (at South Lake Union) and the Green Stripe Laying starting at 7PM which marks the parade route along 4th Avenue. Both are free events.
• St Patrick’s day proper starts officially at 12:20 PM with the raising of the Irish Flag at a ceremony in front of the King County Administration Building. The Mayor of Seattle and various parade dignitaries will be in attendance and the Irish and American national anthems will be played. The Parade itself begins approximately 10 minutes later and features Irish bands, pipers, dancers, and 2,000 marchers. Several other events also mark the day, some of which are listed separately below.
• The St Patrick’s Day Dash is a 5K fun-run (wear green or a costume), and then head for the giant beer garden if your over 21. The Leprechaun Lap is a 1K dash for kids aged 10 and younger.
• There are two other fun runs on the day. The Kirkland Shamrock Run (5km) and kids’ race ends with a party at the Wilde Rover, and welcomes walkers. The St Paddy’s Day Run in Tacoma is a morning 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and kid’s 1K run.
• The St Paddy’s Day Cruise includes one free drink, an appetizer and dessert buffet, food for sale, and three hours of scenic views of Lake Union and Lake Washington. Ages 21+.
• The State’s oldest and largest Coin Show is at the annual convention of the Pacific Northwest Numismatic Association, March 16-18.
• At the same time, the Quilters Anonymous Annual Quilt Show takes place at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe, in the greater city’s north-eastern fringes.
• March 17-18 is the Spring Book Sale by Friends Of The Seattle Public Library and features 100,000 titles starting at $1.
• You might expect everyone to be tired out, but no – the day after St Patrick’s Day sees yet another run, the Mercer Island Half Marathon, which also includes a 10K run, a 5K run/walk, and a half-mile Kids dash.
• Billed as the world’s largest comedy/variety festival, the Moisture Festival has 40 shows at Hale’s Palladium, Broadway Performance Hall, and Teatro ZinZanni at 3 & 7:30 pm. for all ages; plus burlesque and late-night shows for age 18+.
• On March 23, Boots, Barrels and Brews tickets include six beer or wine-tasting tickets, appetizers, a live country band, and line-dancing lessons. Age 21+.
• Starting on the same day, the 3-day Victorian Heritage Festival has a Friday evening pub crawl, a Saturday Victorian fashion show and Victorian Ball, and weekend teas plus weekend tours of historic buildings in Port Townsend.
• Easter comes early to Seattle this year; while the big day is of course April 1, events start on March 23 and continue daily.
• Norwescon is a literary sci-fi and fantasy convention starting March 29 and running through April 1. Two hundred panelists, vendors, events, and 24-hour game-playing. It describes itself as The Pacific Northwest’s Premier Science-Fiction and Fantasy Convention, and is one of the largest regional conventions of its type in the US. The 2018 edition will be the 41st. Attendance numbers haven’t been provided for a few years but in 2013, approx 3200 attended.
• The day after Norwescon starts, it is joined by Sakura-Con, an Anime festival and rival. Traditionally held over Easter weekend, is the largest anime convention in the Northwest and is the 8th largest North American anime convention as of 2017. Last year, 25,000 attended. 2018 is the 21st anniversary of the original event.

My best guess is that the listings above represents at most a tenth of the total events hosted by Seattle and Region over that five month period. Typical of the items that didn’t make the cut are the Seattle Scotch & Beer Fest and the Grilled Cheese Festival. If you want to experience the jaw-dropping totality, consult the events12 links below.

It strikes me, as I complete this essay on the city, that Grunge Music is the perfect metaphor for the City that birthed it. Rarely receiving enough rain to do more than spread the grit around, and full of dark and gloomy looks, it nevertheless captures the vitality and life of a city in which any excuse is good enough for a gathering. They even have a Mussel festival and a Hairstyle Show, two more March events that didn’t make the cut – but, between them, they represent the sense of fun and activity that seeps out of the list of events above!

Primary Sources:

• Wikipedia’s Seattle page;
• Wikipedia’s Puget Sound page;
• Clipper Vacations Magazine’s web page, 25 Things To Do In Seattle This Winter by Katie Schlossberg;
• The Seattle Center’s web page for Winterfest 2017;
• The Seattle Art Musuem’s home page and SAM Lights web page;
• The home page of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center;
• The home page of the Emerald City Comic Con;
• The Best Festivals in Seattle: Winter 2017/2018 by Elaina Friedman, Kim Selling and Joule Zelman for The Stranger;
• Events 12 Seattle’s pages for
  • November,
  • December,
  • January,
  • February, and
  • March.
• Worst Day Of The Year Run’s Facebook page.

21. Winter In San Francisco

Forty-one or forty-two years ago, my family (including a Grandmother and an Aunt) embarked on a three-week tour of the US. This was the trip that resulted in the loss of luggage at Las Vegas, mentioned in the entry detailing the Nevada city. From there, we traveled to San Francisco.

It’s a city that holds mixed memories for me, as a result. I was impressed by the public transport system – one ticket lasted all day, no matter how many times one alighted and rejoined the cable cars – but there wasn’t a whole lot of interest to the young teenager that I was at the time.

It was bitterly cold (in comparison with Las Vegas, bearing in mind that the clothing I was wearing was quite inappropriate for the climate), and spending money was in relatively short supply (I think some of that had been lost in the missing luggage). So we didn’t do much and didn’t go very far. One round trip on the cable-cars, one trip – it might not even have been a round-trip – on the BART, which was new and ran completely under the Bay, one trip to Lombard St, and the Mirin Headlands (to see the Golden Gate Bridge).

But we did pick up in Chinatown what still abides in my memory as the most comfortable jeans I’ve ever worn – stonewashed denim, pre-softened – and an orange-colored Hawaii-print sloppy joe that I still remember fondly, and that was possibly the softest shirt that I’ve ever owned.

Still, at the time, San Francisco was a disappointment. If I were ever to return, I think I would find a lot more to be of interest. Because there is a lot there to be interested in.

The Location

Let’s start with something astonishing. While almost everyone has heard of both Los Angeles and San Francisco, altogether too many people couldn’t tell you which one was more Northerly of the two. I once saw a survey of Americans that said that this was true of 60% of the US population (excluding Californians) – it was in the late 80s, I think – and that 25% of respondents thought that the two cities were less than 100 miles apart.

San Francisco is about 40% of the way down the California coast. Los Angeles is roughly 80% of the way down that coast. There’s a difference of about 610 km (380 miles), and that’s more than enough to make a significant climatic difference between the locations.

Which is a distinction that most people are aware of, but they never seem to think about the geographic implications.

San Francisco is the 13th-largest city in the US in terms of population and the fifth most densely-populated US County (the two terms are virtually interchangeable).

The History

San Francisco was founded as a Spanish colony on June 29, 1776 (if the founders has any sense of future history, they might have waited another 5 days…)

In 1821, the area became part of Mexico during the Mexican War Of Independence. California was then claimed on behalf of the US by Commodore John D. Sloat on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican-American War, and what was to be renamed San Francisco was claimed by Captain John B. Montgomery two days later. On January 30, the name change took effect, and Mexico officially ceded the territory to the US at the conclusion of the conflict in 1848.

Despite being an attractive location for a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography, numbering only 1,000 residents. That, however, was about to change…

Gold Rush of 1849 and the Barbary Coast

On January 24 of 1848, gold was found at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California (58 km [36 miles] northeast of Sacramento, which is itself 142 km [88 miles] northeast of San Francisco).

Sutter had plans for an agricultural empire and attempted to suppress the discovery because he feared his plans would be disrupted if it became known, but rumors soon started to spread and were confirmed in March by San Francisco newspaper publisher Samuel Brannon. Brannon quickly set up a store to sell prospecting supplies and then strode through the streets of the city holding aloft a vial of gold, shouting about the discovery.

It took five months for the story to be picked up by a major East Coast newspaper, the New York Herald, who published the discovery on August 19th. These days, people have the erroneous impression that the news spread like wildfire, not realizing that the coasts were not linked by telegraph until 1861 and by rail until 1869. The tyranny of distance was very real in those days. While the section “Distance From News” in my 2017 article The Influence Of Distance Part 3: Far (The first half) dealt with remote communities being separated from the news of the political and social centers, the problem cuts both ways, and those centers are just as separated from events in remote corners.

Almost four months later, in December, President James Polk confirmed the discovery in an address to Congress, telling them – and the world – “The accounts of abundance of gold are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service.”

It was this confirmation, and the news of it, that really ignited Gold Fever in the rest of the world. By then, California had been living with the discovery for almost ten months.

When the residents of San Francisco learned of the discovery, courtesy of the opportunistic Samuel Brannon, the then-tiny settlement became a ghost town of abandoned ships and businesses. It was only when waves of immigrants began arriving – the earliest as a result of the New York Herald story – that the population began to swell. By then, Sutter had (as he feared) been ruined; his workers had abandoned their employment in search of gold, and squatters had taken over his land, stealing his crops and rustling his cattle.

The boom began in earnest in 1949, hence the popular nickname for the opportunistic prospectors, “49ers”.

Throughout the year, people around the United States (mostly men) borrowed money, mortgaged their property, or spent their life savings to make the arduous journey to California. They abandoned wives and children, families and deserted responsibilities.

The first waves came by ship, and were also known as Argonauts; from the East Coast, a sailing voyage around the tip of South America would take five to eight months, and the alternative was to sail to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama, take canoes and mules for a week through the jungle, and then on the Pacific side, wait for a ship sailing for San Francisco. There was also a route across Mexico starting at Veracruz. But many gold-seekers – now estimated to be half – took the overland route across the continental United States, particularly along the California Trail, and these are the ones that are best remembered in modern times.

Each of these routes carried deadly risks, but I could not find any reliable estimates of how many perished en route. It may have been as little as 1%, or as many as 1 in six. Hundreds are known to have died en route, but the toll may have been much higher.

“The people who went to California by the the tens of thousands were greenhorns — city folks. They didn’t have a callus on their hand, had never fired a rifle, had never followed a plow, had never rode a horse, didn’t know up from down in terms of the wilderness world, the frontier life. And they weren’t interested in it.” – JS Holliday, author of “The World Rushed In”, quoted by Genealogy Trails.

The first groups to arrive were from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), Mexico, Chile, Peru and even China. Immigrants from these regions were arriving even before the East Coast knew there was anything to get excited about.

The gold rush brought rapid growth to San Francisco, as eager fortune-hunters from all over the world rushed to the region. By December 1849, the population of the city was 25,000. California boomed equally; estimated at this time to be 100,000 (non-natives only), up from 20,000 a year earlier, and around 800 in March 1848. By the mid 1850s, it would be 300,000, or one in 90 US Citizens. By 1852, more than 25,000 immigrants from China alone had arrived in America.

The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Approximately 500 ships were abandoned, some of which were then used as storehouses, saloons, and hotels, but many were left to rot and some were sunk to establish title to the underwater lot.

To provide for the needs of the ’49ers, gold mining towns had sprung up all over the region, complete with shops, saloons, brothels and other businesses. Most of these were operated by those who had come early and learned the brutal reality – even with gold abundant (a relative term), 9 prospectors in 10 found nothing. Many got out of the melee and began to open businesses catering to newly arrived prospectors.

“In fact, some of America’s greatest industrialists got their start in the Gold Rush.

“Phillp Armour, who would later found a meatpacking empire in Chicago, made a fortune operating the sluices that controlled the flow of water into the rivers being mined.

“Before John Studebaker built one of America’s great automobile fortunes, he manufactured wheelbarrows for Gold Rush miners.

“And two entrepreneurial bankers named Henry Wells and William Fargo moved west to open an office in San Francisco, an enterprise that soon grew to become one of America’s premier banking institutions.

“One of the biggest mercantile success stories was that of Levi Strauss. A German-born tailor, Strauss arrived in San Francisco in 1850 with plans to open a store selling canvas tarps and wagon coverings to the miners. After hearing that sturdy work pants – ones that could withstand the punishing 16-hour days regularly put in by miners – were more in demand, he shifted gears, opening a store in downtown San Francisco that would eventually become a manufacturing empire, producing Levi’s denim jeans.”

“Most of the men who flocked to northern California arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs. Once there, they needed to buy food, goods and supplies, which San Francisco’s merchants were all too willing to provide – for a cost. Stuck in a remote region, far from home, many prospectors coughed up most of their hard-earned money for the most basic supplies. At the height of the boom in 1849, prospectors could expect prices sure to cause sticker shock: A single egg could cost the equivalent of $25 in today’s money, coffee went for more than $100 per pound and replacing a pair of worn out boots could set you back more than $2,500.” – History.com

Labor was in such short supply, and hence commanded such high wages, that it was routine for laundry to be shipped to Hawaii for washing – for those who could afford to have laundry done at all.

California was granted statehood in 1850. Silver finds, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth.

The overcrowded chaos of the mining camps and towns grew ever more lawless, including rampant banditry, gambling, prostitution and violence.

“As the amount of available gold began to dwindle, miners increasingly fought one another for profits and anti-immigrant tensions soared. The government got into the action too. In 1850 California’s legislature passed a Foreign Miner’s tax, which levied a monthly fee of $20 on non-citizens, the equivalent of more than $500 in today’s money. That bill was eventually repealed, but was replaced with another in 1852 that expressly singled out Chinese miners, charging them $2 ($80 today) a month. Violence against foreign miners increased as well, and beatings, rapes and even murders became commonplace. However no ethnic group suffered more than California’s Native Americans. Before the Gold Rush, its native population numbered roughly 300,000. Within 20 years, more than 100,000 would be dead. Most died from disease or mining-related accidents, but more than 4,000 were murdered by enraged miners.” – History.com

San Francisco was not spared. Fortune hunters streamed through the city, and lawlessness was rife; the Barbary Coast section of the town became notorious as a haven for criminals, prostitution, and gambling.

By 1851, surface gold had largely disappeared, though fortune-seekers continued to arrive. Striking it rich had always been difficult and dangerous, requiring as much good luck as skill, perseverance, and a near-obsessive work ethic. The average daily take for independent miners working with pick and shovel had been declining sharply from what it had been in 1848. As gold became more and more difficult to reach, the growing industrialization of mining drove more and more miners from independence into wage labor.

In that year, the San Francisco harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships, and by 1870 the entire Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land; buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations for new structures are dug.

Gold Mining peaked in 1852, though it would continue throughout the decade.

The Gold Rush would have had an even more profound impact on the population of California, including San Francisco, had not a great number of those seeking wealth departed for the Alaskan Goldfields starting in 1896.

As the funnel through which the riches of the goldfields poured, San Francisco prospered throughout the Gold Rush.

“Development of the Port of San Francisco and the establishment in 1869 of overland access to the eastern US. rail system via the newly completed Pacific Railroad (the construction of which the city only reluctantly helped support) helped make the Bay Area a center for trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Immigrant laborers made the city a polyglot culture, with Chinese Railroad Workers, drawn to “Old Gold Mountain”, creating the city’s Chinatown quarter. – Wikipedia

It’s not entirely untrue to say that this boom was the making of the city. Through the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, a sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for a spacious public park which eventually was realized as Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the other infrastructure of civic life, while the Presidio developed into arguably the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast.

By 1890, San Francisco’s population was approaching 300,000, and the city was the 8th largest in the US. By the close of the century, San Francisco had established a unique character as possessing a flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions, and a thriving arts scene. The city acquired the nickname “The Paris Of The West”.

Plague

But the new century was not to be kind to the burgeoning metropolis. The first continental North American plague epidemic struck the city in 1900.

A ship from Hong Kong in 1899 had two cases of Bubonic plague on board. Because of this, although no passengers were ill when the ship reached San Francisco, it was to be quarantined on Angel Island. When the boat was searched, 11 stowaways were found – the next day two were missing. Their bodies were later found in the Bay, and autopsy showed they contained plague bacilli.

It is believed that rats from the ship escaped into the city, and were the source of the outbreak in Chinatown 9 months later. Health authorities immediately recognized the danger posed by the situation, but for more than two years, would be obstructed by Henry Gage, the Governor of California, who denied there was a problem. Gage was motivated by the wish to keep the reputations of San Francisco and California clean and to prevent the loss of revenue from trade stopped by quarantine. The failure to act quickly is believed by many to have allowed the disease to establish itself among local animal populations.

“Anti-Chinese feeling ran strong in the city then, and the first step taken was to quarantine Chinatown. The Chinese objected, and so did the business community. Not because they wanted to protect the rights of the Chinese, but it was bad for business to have people thinking there was plague in their city or state.

“The quarantine was lifted and health officials began to run house-to-house inspections of Chinatown. People resisted, hiding their dead and locking their doors. But two more plague victims turned up.

“The city Board of Health officially announced that plague was present in the city. The governor refused to believe it or to do anything to help in the anti-plague effort.

“The Surgeon General got permission from President McKinley to pass anti-plague regulations. Others still denied the existence of plague, although more and more states in the country were stopping trade with California.

“Commissions and boards formed, fought with the governor, and were disbanded, underfunded, and reformed. Meanwhile, more plague cases were found.” – PBS

City leaders were not above taking advantage of the situation when opportunities presented themselves. In the mistaken belief that interred remains were one source of the disease (for which there was little evidence), burials were banned within the city. Cemeteries were moved to the undeveloped area just south of the city limit, now the town of Colma, California, releasing extremely valuable land within the city limits. (In 1912 (with legal fights extending until 1942), the last remaining cemeteries in the city were evicted to Colma, where the dead now outnumber the living by more than a thousand to one). Less than a handful of exceptions were granted.

Federal authorities slowly built up incontrovertible proof of the problem, and this undermined Gage’s credibility to such an extent that despite the city being in the grip of machine politics, he lost the 1902 Gubernatorial election. His replacement quietly implemented medical solutions and by 1904 the epidemic was stopped with 119 dead of 121 identified cases.

The Great Fire of 1906

“At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across the city and burned out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks.

“More than three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the earthquake/fire combination, including almost the entirety of the downtown city center. Official estimates at the time put the death toll at 498, but modern estimates place the true number in the thousands.

“More than half of the city’s population of 400,000 was left homeless. Refugees created a diaspora, settling temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay.” – Wikipedia

Reconstruction

“Rebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed. Amadeo Giannini’s Bank of Italy, later to become Bank of America, provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated.

“The earthquake hastened development of western neighborhoods that survived the fire, including Pacific Heights, where many of the city’s wealthy rebuilt their homes. In turn, the destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall was reopened in 1915.” – Wikipedia

The area destroyed included the Chinatown district. While reconstruction was underway, a second outbreak of Bubonic Plague occurred, this time spread generally over the city, including cases across the bay in Oakland. It seems likely that plague-carrying rats had spread out unchecked following the fire, searching for food.

This time, the official response was rapid and decisive. Between 1907 and 1911, $2 million was spent on killing as many rats as possible in the city – more than $50 million in modern currency.

In 1907, Mayor EE Schmitz was found guilty of extortion and the office of mayor declared vacant. Schmitz had been president of the Musician’s Union and was chosen by political powerbroker Abe Ruef to run for mayor as a front for the Union Labor Party in 1901. Ruef constructed an effective political machine to win and retain power. Schmitz is considered to have been less corrupt than the Mayors who had preceded him, but he was little more than a puppet in the hands of his friend and master, Ruef, who wrote most of the mayor’s official papers and ran the city from behind the mayoral chair. Ruef was also sentenced to 14 years imprisonment and served a little more than four-and-a-half years of his sentence before being released, though he was not permitted to resume his legal practice. Before entering prison, he had been worth over $1 million, when he died in 1936, he was bankrupt.

Dr. Edward R. Taylor, Dean of Hastings College, agreed to step in as interim mayor and was given power to appoint new supervisors to replace those who had resigned, and most of the recovery from the Earthquake occurred on his watch.

Much of the city’s most important infrastructure dates to this period. In particular, the creation of abundant and stable water supplies would permit the sustained growth and development that created the city as it now stands.

The speed with which San Francisco was rebuilt was astonishing, and established a baseline of expectations internationally that was not shattered until New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

A mere nine years after the almost-complete destruction of the city, it was able to host the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Officially, this was to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, but unofficially its purpose was to showcase the city that had been completely-rebuilt less than a decade after being wiped out by an Earthquake.

Depression? What Depression?

Fourteen years later, San Francisco was a financial capital, with a reputation for stability that was only enhanced by the 1929 stock market crash, when not a single San Francisco-based bank failed.

“…at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937, respectively.

“It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz, a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone, and Robert Franklin Stroud, The Birdman of Alcatraz.” – Wikipedia

While the rest of the country recovered, San Francisco forged ahead, hosting a World’s Fair in 1939-40, the Golden Gate International Exposition, creating an artificial island named “Treasure Island” to house it; several of the structures are now Heritage Listed.

War and Peace

During World War II, it was a major embarkation point for service members deploying to the Pacific Theater, and the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a major hub of military activity. This triggered a fresh boom for the city, as the explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South, to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from service abroad, and civilians who had originally come to work, decided to become permanent residents.

In 1945 it became the birthplace of the United Nations, and in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco officially ended the war with Japan.

Contraction and The Summer Of Love

“Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s involved widespread destruction and redevelopment of west-side neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways, of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by citizen-led opposition.

“The onset of containerization made San Francisco’s small piers obsolete, and cargo activity moved to the larger Port of Oakland. The city began to lose industrial jobs and turned to tourism as the most important segment of its economy.

“The suburbs experienced rapid growth, and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America. From 1950 to 1980, the city lost over 10 percent of its population.” – Wikipedia

Over this period, San Francisco became a magnet for America’s counterculture. Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s.

Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love. This was a golden year or so; it didn’t last. A year later, George Harrison visited, expecting to find a socially progressive, liberated, and spiritually awakened center; he left, disillusioned. Pattie Boyd described the occasion:

“We were expecting Haight-Ashbury to be special, a creative and artistic place, filled with Beautiful People, but it was horrible – full of ghastly drop-outs, bums and spotty youths, all out of their brains. Everybody looked stoned – even mothers and babies – and they were so close behind us they were treading on the backs of our heels. It got to the point where we couldn’t stop for fear of being trampled.” – The Beatles Bible.

The “Gay Mecca”

The gay population of San Francisco was given a boost during World War II, when the US Military began to actively seek out and dishonorably discharge homosexuals from the armed services. From 1941 to 1945, more than 9000 were discharged, many processed out in San Francisco.

Over the next 15 years, the city acquired a “gay tolerant” or even “gay friendly” undercurrent to its reputation as a radical left-wing center. While the hippies were attracting all the attention, a new wave of lesbians and gays with more radical attitudes also flocked to the city.

These new residents often lived communally, buying decrepit Victorians in the Haight and fixing them up. When drugs and violence began to become a serious problem in the Haight, many lesbians and gays simply moved “over the hill” to the Castro District (frequently referenced simply as “The Castro”) replacing Irish-Americans who had moved to the more affluent and culturally homogeneous suburbs.

In the 70s, The Castro emerged as an urban gay village and the city became a focal point of the Gay Rights movement and its opposition. San Francisco was home to the first lesbian-rights organization in the United States, the Daughters of Bilitis (1955); the first openly gay person to run for public office in the United States, José Sarria (1961); the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk (1977); the first openly lesbian judge appointed in the US, Mary C. Morgan (1981); and the first transgender police commissioner, Theresa Sparks (2004).

The assassination of Milk, along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978 focused national attention on the LGBT community of San Francisco and further galvanized that community. Following the Summer Of Love a decade earlier, this cemented the city in the popular zeitgeist as a center of liberal activism in the United States.

“Manhattanization”, redevelopment, and social problems

“[The] Bank of America completed 555 California Street in 1969 and the Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972, igniting a wave of “Manhattanization” that lasted until the late 1980s, a period of extensive high-rise development downtown.

“The 1980s also saw a dramatic increase in the number of homeless people in the city, an issue that remains today, despite many attempts to address it.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim The Embarcadero as its historic downtown waterfront and revitalizing the Hayes Valley neighborhood.” – Wikipedia

Dot-Coms and Technology

In the late 1990s, startup companies from the dot-com boom reinvigorated the economy.

“Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once-poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified.

“Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district. By 2000, the city’s population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950.

“When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off [but] high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy; By the [middle of the decade], the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a popular place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.

“By 2013, San Francisco, with thanks from the Web 2.0 boom, had fully recovered from the late 2000s recession and [was] experiencing a real estate and population boom. The computer industry [was] moving north from Silicon Valley. Availability of vacant rental units became scarce and the prices for vacant units increased dramatically, and as of 2015 is reported to be the highest in the nation.” – Wikipedia

During the recession, the area South Of Market, which had been the bustling heart of the dot-com industry, went from being crowded with few vacancies to a virtual wasteland of empty offices and for-rent signs. Although still expensive by US Urban Standards, residential demand and rents eased considerably. The availability of cheap property was undoubtedly a factor in luring the Web 2.0 resurgence to the city, which attracted white-collar workers, recent University graduates, and young adults from all over the world, leading to a rise in residential demand and renewed rise in rents.

The city’s history of equal rights movements continued with the 2011 election of Edwin Lee as the first Chinese-American mayor in a major US City. Mayor Lee has proven to be a strong proponent of tenant’s rights as well as being business-friendly toward the tech community.

To ease residential demand, the city relaxed building height restrictions and zoning codes to construct residential condominiums though the GFC (also known as the Economic Downturn of 2008) halted some of this construction.

As you might expect from a city with “young attitudes,” San Francisco is a leader in the adoption of renewable energy. In April 2016, the city passed a law requiring all new buildings below 10 stories in height to have solar panels on the rooftop, the first major US city to do so, again reasserting the city’s claim to being one of the most progressive in the nation.

Geography Of San Francisco

The bulk of the mainland city forms a “seven-by-seven-mile square”, though it’s total area (including water) is nearly 232 square miles. San Francisco is known for it’s hilly terrain, the tallest of which is Mount Davidson (283m [928 feet] in altitude), one of several districts and neighborhoods named for the hill upon which they are situated.

The city has grown significantly beyond the natural geography; entire neighborhoods are located on areas of landfill. Unfortunately, such land tends to be unstable in earthquakes…

The Fault Lines

The San Andreas and Hayward Faults both lie close to the city, though neither pass directly through the city. Both have been responsible for earthquake activity in the region. The larger earthquakes in 1906 and 1989 were caused by the San Andreas.

Los Angeles may be the oft-proposed site of “The Big One” (and in fact experienced a magnitude 5.6 ‘quake just offshore this morning [April 6]), but San Francisco is arguably more likely to experience a major seismic event, though this risk is taken in a more matter-of-fact manner.

You often get the impression that while LA residents know it might happen, they don’t really think that it ever will, while San Franciscans have experienced something that was as close as you would care to come to the real thing.

In response to their past, San Francisco has repeatedly improved the building codes and have constructed an auxiliary water supply. Many of the building code improvements also required retrofitting older buildings.

This played a significant role in the outcome of the 2013 Mythbusters test of whether or not standing in a doorway yielded the greatest chance of survival in a major earthquake. They constructed an earthquake shake-table that measured 13 feet by 11 feet, and then constructed a traditional masonry house on the earthquake simulation platform, and found that the doorway was indeed the safest location in a high-magnitude earthquake. They then constructed a timber-frame home on the platform according to the most up-to-date San Francisco building code and re-ran the test, finding that hiding under the table was now safer than the doorway by far. Their conclusion was that because older buildings of the masonry type were increasingly rare in San Francisco, and reasoning that other earthquake-prone zones would have implemented similar protections, on balance, the myth should be considered busted because it was not universally true – while noting that other locations which also suffered from earthquake risk may not have been as proactive in mandating retrofits.

(It must also be said that areas with low earthquake risk may not have any resistance at all specifically incorporated within their construction standards; that significantly increased the destruction caused by the Newcastle Earthquake here in Australia in 1989, which killed 13 and injured more than 160 despite being a (relatively) mild 5.6 on the Richter scale. Despite geoscientists knowing better, prior to this, Australia was immune from Earthquakes – at least in the popular zeitgeist.)

The Coming “Big One”
The first image in the “earthquake montage” depicts the San Andreas fault. I have added markers for Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

“A study published in 2006 in the journal Nature found that the San Andreas fault has reached a sufficient stress level for an earthquake of magnitude greater than 7.0 on the moment magnitude scale to occur. This study also found that the risk of a large earthquake may be increasing more rapidly than scientists had previously believed. Moreover, the risk is currently concentrated on the southern section of the fault, i.e. the region around Los Angeles, because massive earthquakes have occurred relatively recently on the central (1857) and northern (1906) segments of the fault, while the southern section has not seen any similar rupture for at least 300 years.

“Nevertheless, in the 11 years since that publication there has not been a substantial quake in the Los Angeles area… – Wikipedia

Studies by the USGS have assigned varying predictions for the next big one. One assigned a 7% probability that a magnitude 8.0 or bigger will occur somewhere along the San Andreas fault. But this is nothing new; for as long as I can remember, there have been warnings that the next “Big One” was due or overdue.

So why hasn’t it happened if it’s overdue?

A lot of people don’t understand probability when applied to infrequent events. If a study determines that a major event occurs once every hundred years, on average, that doesn’t mean that you can expect one to strike each century like the hour hand on a clock. It means that the long-term average period between events is roughly 100 years – and that assumes that the underlying conditions don’t change.

There could be a 200-year interval between any two events – and then 70 years, 90 years, 50 years, 70 years, 110 years, and 80 years. That yields a perfect 100-year average over a 600-year span. The longer the span, the greater the scope for variability in any given interval.

As a rule of thumb, when an event – seismic or weather or whatever – is officially designated a once-a-century event, what it means is that the scientist in question would be surprised if there were less than 50 years or so before the next one, and not surprised if there weren’t another for 150 years, all things being equal, and assuming no errors in the assessment methodology.

Image by MW Toews, based in concept on a figure by Jeremy Kemp via Wikipedia commons, license CC-BY-2.5.

A “once a century” event is simply one in which the peak probability of the next event is at the peak of the probability distribution.

Which means that, by definition, half the time the interval between events will be longer than a century, possibly even several hundred years. That’s not impossible, just unlikely – just as it’s unlikely but not impossible that the same event will be repeated next year.

The “Big One” is inevitably coming. But when it will occur, and how big it will be, is a lot harder to predict.

Readers interested in more specifics about the likelihood of an occurrence in the near future are directed to this page at Wikipedia. My conclusion: it could happen by 2050, but is more likely to happen after that date.

Looking back at the San Francisco region, it’s clear from the statistics that the likelihood of a major earthquake is relatively low, despite the two? three? four? that have taken place already in the last 120 years or so. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, just that it isn’t likely to.

The 1906 earthquake was estimated to be magnitude 7.8. There was another of magnitude 5.7 in 1957, and a third in 1989 (magnitude 6.9 and actually in the Santa Cruz area), and a fourth in 2004 (magnitude 6.0 and actually in Parkfield). The 1989 quake caused fatalities and property damage in San Francisco, the 2004 quake did not (but was felt over a wide area of California, including San Francisco).

You can see why it’s hard to even decide how many there have been.

In the near future, at least, the threat posed by the weaker Hayward Fault Zone is probably of greater significance to San Francisco. This is a group of six fault lines running through the San Francisco area, roughly parallel to the San Andreas fault. In general, they have been responsible for relatively mild earthquakes over the last century, but that may be changing.

“Many seismologists believe that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which occurred on the San Andreas fault, reduced the stress on many faults in the Bay Area including the Hayward fault, creating an “earthquake shadow,” a quiescent period following a major earthquake.

“It also appears likely that this quiet period in the earthquake shadow is ending, as projected by the rate of plate motion and the stress state of other faults in the region.” – Wikipedia

Prior to the 1906 earthquake, there had been 4 significant earthquakes (magnitude 5.2 or more) in the system, the worst of which may have been as great as magnitude 7.0, and caused 30 deaths in 1868. Significantly, the area of the 1868 quake had not been significantly urbanized at the time, but has been since. If the 1868 earthquake were to occur today, the estimates are that the damage bill would top 165 billion US dollars and more than 5 million people would be directly affected.

For the thirty years following 2014, the estimated likelihood of a magnitude 6.7+ earthquake in the Hayward Fault Zone is 14.3%, compared to a 6.4% likelihood of an event of the same magnitude within the same period on the southern San Andreas fault. Another (2012) USGS estimate increases the risk to 31%, while a third (2015) raises the risk level to 72%, with the chances of a magnitude 7 or greater being 50%, and a 20% chance of magnitude 7.5-to-8.

This risk is beginning to affect San Francisco society.

“The progressively more severe reports and estimates of event probability and consequences have awakened a broad interest in training people for emergency response. It is becoming widely understood that professional fire fighting, police, and medical services will be overwhelmed by a major event and that neighbors will have to assist each other as best they can.” – Wikipedia

It is expected that the area response organization would be modeled on the 1950s civil defense structure, but as yet, nothing has been done. And it’s been 3-4 years. I smell politics getting involved, but that’s just my opinion.

The remainder of the images in the “Earthquake Montage” show damage from the 1906 Earthquake.

Climate In Winter

The climate of San Francisco is officially the “Warm-Summer Mediterranean Climate of the California Coast, but the sharp topography, high hills, and marine surroundings on three sides create a number of quite pronounced micro-climatic variations on this foundation.

The hills in the center of the city cause as much as a 20% variance in rainfall between different parts of the city, and also protect neighborhoods directly to their east from the foggy and sometimes very cold and windy conditions experienced in the Sunset District; for those who live on the eastern side of the city, San Francisco is sunnier, with an average of 260 clear days, and only 105 cloudy days per year.

That means that the specific location of the weather monitoring is something that needs to be taken into account. The official observation station is currently at the United States Mint building (opened in 1854 to serve the gold mines of the California Gold Rush). The current facility at the corner of 5th and mission streets was opened in 1937.

Location of the US Mint Branch within San Francisco. Click on the thumbnail to view a much larger version or for a copy of the large map without the mint location marked. Original map, based on OpenStreetMap project data, by Droll, license CC BY-SA 2.0.

That puts it on the eastern side of Lone Mountain, a 421′ peak. There are lower hills to the north (Russian Hill, Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, Presidio Hill) and much taller peaks to the south such as Mt Sutro and Mt Davidson. That suggests that the location is going to be partially affected by the phenomena described earlier, making it a good compromise location. So BOTH the general micro-climate effects listed earlier have to be applied to this basis – areas west will be cloudier and rainier, areas east clearer and drier – but as much as areas to the near south-southeast.

I found this topographic map to be extremely useful in analyzing the information and this topographic map useful for interpreting the results.

Rising hot air in California’s interior valleys during summer creates a low-pressure zone that draws moist sea air from the North Pacific High through the Golden Gate, creating the characteristic cool winds and fogs for which the city is infamous. This phenomenon is weakest in late summer and early autumn; because of this, the warmest month is usually September, and October is usually warmer than July, especially in the daytime.

This makes picking out the start and end points of some of the seasons especially difficult. Fortunately, winter is not one of them, clearly running from December through February. High Summer, on the other hand, appears to be split up by a two-month “false autumn” early in that season that will make that time of year more complicated, and the real autumn seems quite truncated as a result.

It’s as though the seasons ran:

• Spring (3 months, March to May);
• Early Summer (June);
• Early Autumn (2 months, July and August);
• Late Summer (2 months, September and October);
• Late Autumn (November);
• Winter (3 months, December to February).

I will probably treat the entire 5-month span from June to October as “Summer” and Autumn as a single month in duration. But that’s a decision for another day.

Record highs for the Winter months are Dec 24°C (76°F), Jan 26°C (79°F), and Feb 27°C (81°F), respectively. With the record high for the preceding month being 30°C (86°F), it is clear that the change of seasons is quite rapid.

It doesn’t normally get anywhere near that high; the mean of the highest temperatures each month is roughly 5°C (11°F) lower than these record highs. Specifically, the records to 2010 show values of Dec 19.1°C (66.4°F), Jan 19.6°C (67.3°F), and Feb 22.5°C (72.5°F).

More likely temperatures each day are 5-7°C (9-12°F) cooler again, specifically Dec 13.9°C (57.1°F), Jan 13.8°C (56.9°F), and Feb 15.7°C (60.2°F), respectively.

The three winter months are the only ones in which the record low temperature of the day is below freezing: Dec -3°C (27°F), Jan -2°C (29°F), and Feb -1°C (31°F). Given that San Francisco is only about 3 degrees of latitude, the differences between the Eastern and Western seaboards could not be more pronounced.

Of course, these are – by definition – exceptionally cold. Averaging the minimum recorded temperatures gives a better idea of how cold (at worst) it’s likely to get: Dec 4.5°C (40.1°F), Jan 4.6°C (40.3°F), and Feb 5.4°C (41.8°F).

Most days, it won’t even get that cold, but it will get close; there isn’t a lot of difference (about 3°C (6°F) between the averages of the minimum temperature of each month and the average minimum temperature each month: Dec 7.8°C (46.1°F), Jan 7.6°C (45.7°F), and Feb 8.6°C (47.5°F).

Winter doesn’t so much end as taper off. The temperature differences between March and April are very similar to those between February and March.

The same can’t be said of the rainfall pattern. Autumn through Winter and into Spring is the rainy period for the city, while the summer and “early” autumn are relatively dry.

December brings, on average, 115.8mm (4.56 inches) of rain on 11.6 rainy days, or slightly more than 1 day in three and an average fall of 10mm (0.39 inches).

January is statistically a fraction drier at 114.3mm (4.5 inches) with a slightly greater frequency of falls (11.7 rainy days). When you break that down to daily values, the difference is minuscule, and easily swallowed by daily variations; I doubt it would even be noticeable “on the ground”.

The same is not true of February, which experiences 113.3mm (4.46 inches) over 11.1 rainy days, despite initial appearances. Correcting for the length of the month shows that the frequency of rainfall goes up slightly, and the average fall is up almost 7%, enough to say that at least one fall would be significantly heavier.

I do get the impression that frequent light drizzles are more common than full-on rainy days, but have only the above statistics to back that up.

However, Wikipedia warns (through NOAA data) that the variation in precipitation from year to year is high. Above average rain years are often associated with warm El Niño conditions in the Pacific while dry years often occur in cold water La Niña periods. In 2013 – a “La Niña” year – a record low 142mm (5.59 inches) of rainfall was recorded in downtown San Francisco over the year, less than 24% of the average.

Snow is very rare, with only 10 measurable falls since 1852, most recently in 1976 when up to 5 inches (130 mm) fell on Twin Peaks.

Cloud cover is frequent over autumn and the winter months. The yearly average excluding those months is 72.125% of the available sunshine; compare that with 57% (November), 54% (December), 61% (January) and 69% (February). Only the latter comes close.

One final word on the subject by WhiteDahlia, a contributor to Trip Advisor Australia’s forum in response to a question about San Francisco’s weather in Winter:

“Historical averages for January in SF are a Google search away. But historical averages are just that and rarely do we have an ‘average’ year.” – WhiteDahlia

So take the information and analysis provided above as a foundation, but not as gospel!

Things to do in a San Francisco Winter

“Tourism is one of the city’s largest private-sector industries, accounting for more than one out of seven jobs in the city. The city’s frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide. It attracts the fifth-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the United States and is one of the top-20 destination cities worldwide by international visitor spending. More than 25 million visitors arrived in San Francisco in 2016.” – Wikipedia

My abiding impression of San Francisco is that it’s a great place for adults to visit, but of limited interest to kids, as I said in introducing the city.

A number of things deserve mention as places to see, but you will find most all of them in the notes attached to the photo montage, so I have restricted myself to listing a few that weren’t.

Year-round:

• The most-visited museum in San Francisco is the California Academy of Sciences, which contains a planetarium, an aquarium, a four-story living rainforest, and a natural history museum with, amongst other things, the fossilized skeleton of a T-Rex. Let’s be honest – you could probably spend several days exploring everything this place has to offer.
• San Francisco has several theaters offering live performances during the colder months, in what is simply known as the Theater District.
• City Bus Tours – there are several of these that vary in price and duration. Almost all of them show the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, and Fisherman’s Wharf; some include 19 stops. One tour lets you set your own pace, another includes a visit to Alcatraz, and a third is an evening tour – which is excellent for seeing the downtown lights (refer December Events, below).
• These days, one of the city’s most popular attractions is a tour through Alcatraz, the Federal Prison that once held the nation’s worst criminals. Tickets tend to sell out quickly. Tours operate seven days a week, and in the evenings from Thursday to Monday. Dress in warm clothing for the 20-minute Ferry ride to and from the Island.
• The Exploratorium is a science museum which emphasizes the buzzword of 21st century displays – interactivity. Five large galleries explore sound and vision, the structure of living things, weather, mechanics, and human behavior, respectively.
• San Francisco holds almost 50 different film festivals each year, each with a different theme, genre, or culture. Winter festivals include the American Indian Film Fest, the Transgender Film Fest, Save the Waves, Noir City, the SF Indie Fest, and the Mostly British Film Festival. You can examine a full list of the festivals at this website.
• Whale Watching tours take place all year round. From December to May, the focus is on Gray, Sperm, and Killer Whale migrations. Sightings occasionally include dolphins, leatherback turtles, and sea lions.
• The Napa valley and Sonoma County, both located close to San Francisco, produce some of the best wines in the America. You can head for the source to explore for yourself or attend one of the regular wine-tastings. Wine is popular in this part of the country.
• Just across the road from the California Academy of Sciences is the de Young Art Museum, which contains more than 25,000 works from all over the world. Permanent exhibits include pieces from pre-Columbian to 20th century America, and artwork from sub-Saharan Africa, New Guinea, and Indonesia. Tickets also grant admission to another fine art museum, the Legion of Honor.
• San Francisco has a world-famous Zoo. Visit it anytime, but there are special events in later December for Kids, known as the “Zoo Lights”.
• The Children’s Creativity Museum is “known for its state-of-the-art, hands-on exhibits that explore art and technology” – which makes it like any number of other children’s museums, though the inclusion of art as a focus is a point of distinction. Interactive exhibits include an animator’s studio, music production lab, digital workshop, studio z, and more.
• Cooking classes are a popular pastime in San Francisco, especially at this time of year, and supply has evolved to meet the demand. Three that have been recommended by others are the San Francisco Cooking School, Tante Marie’s, and the Cheese School of San Francisco.
• I don’t know of anywhere that has an active foodie scene that doesn’t have an active coffee scene to compliment it, and San Francisco is no exception. Lots of high-end coffee shops can be found in different corners of the city.

November/December:

San Franciscans date Winter as starting on Thanksgiving (or thereabouts), so there is some “bleed” of seasonal activities into November. That said, Winter is the “quiet time” for tourism – which, if you can tolerate the weather, provides considerable advantages in terms of queue lengths and availability of tickets (with a few exceptions noted).

• San Francisco has several different tree-lighting ceremonies to attend. A number of them also incorporate refreshments and live entertainment. Amongst the most popular choices are Pier 39, (From Noon, Sunday Nov 19 in 2017, and the tree is re-lit nightly at 6PM throughout the season), Union Square, (6PM, Friday Nov 24 in 2017), Ghirardelli Square (from 7PM, Friday Nov 24 in 2017, this is more adult-oriented than many of the other events), 555 California (6PM-9PM, Wed Nov 29 in 2017), The Ritz-Carlton (5:30 PM to 7:30PM, Thursday, Nov 30 in 2017), Westfield Mall (6PM to 8PM, Thursday Nov 30 in 2017), Rainbow World Tree Of Hope at City Hall (5:30PM to 8PM , Wed, Dec 4 in 2017), and The Presidio (5PM to 6:45PM, Friday, Dec 8, in 2017 – and take a flashlight for the guided lantern-walk). On top of that, many buildings and structures sprout decorations, and some residential neighborhoods also maintain a tradition of richly decorative displays at this time of year.
• Every year, starting in mid-November and running until Mid-January (sometimes longer if the show is popular that year), Cirque du Soleil brings their latest masterpiece to the San Francisco public.
• From mid-November until mid-December, weekends bring the Great Dickens Christmas Fair, a slightly-romanticized recreation of Charles Dickens’ London, complete with period-appropriate shopping, dining, and entertainments.
• In mid-December (it took place on Dec 15 in 2017), from 6PM to 8PM, Fisherman’s Wharf hosts the oldest and largest holiday boat parade, with more than 60 colorfully illuminated boats sailing along the coastline.
• Like most cities, San Francisco has a fireworks display at midnight on New Year’s Eve. There are also dozens of public parties to attend, NYE cruises, and concerts.
• For the last 5 years, Illuminate SF have held a Festival Of Light on Thursday nights through December. This celebrates the city’s many light-art installations with a series of three specially-guided tour.

January:

• The first week of January is San Francisco Art Week. There are two contemporary art fairs that comprise this event.
• Each year, at some point in January, droves of Sea Lions take up a temporary residence at the K-dock of Pier 39, “camping out” for a while. This convergence of man-made urban environment and nature is a popular event and attraction for locals as well as visitors.
• The San Francisco area’s biggest comedy festival occurs for a week early in January. It’s well-known for innovation and creativity within the comedic community, nation-wide, including workshops, presentations, kids events, podcasts, improv shows, and more, at locations all over the city.
• The last week (or so) of January is given over to the San Francisco Restaurant Week, which actually lasts ten days. I don’t have too many details of what this specifically comprises, but suspect that it’s something similar to the events of other cities – see, for example, the Denver, Spokane, and Seattle entries above.

February:

• San Francisco’s Chinatown is legendary, and that means that the city really kicks out all the stops when it comes to celebrating Chinese New Year with close to a month of events, the highlight of which is the annual parade with colorful dragons, lion dancers, drums, and lanterns through the downtown streets. Other related events include a flower market fair, basketball jamboree, Miss Chinatown pageant, street fair, and a 5K-10K run.
• The annual Chronicle Wine Competition gives visitors the opportunity to sample more than 800 award-winning wines. The competition selects the best American Wines from (usually) more than 5000 entrants.
• The San Francisco Giants start the baseball season early with the “Giants Fan Fest” every February. This event gives fans the chance to meet the players, get their autographs, pick up new merchandise, and play catch on the field. Traditionally, this event is one of the accepted signals that Winter is ending.
• Of course, any city that celebrated the “Summer of Love” can be expected to have a host of Valentine’s-Day related activities.
• The Noise Pop Festival in late February is a Music Festival with a focus on indie music.

Primary Sources:

• Wikipedia’s San Francisco page;
• Wikipedia’s History Of San Francisco page;
• Wikipedia’s page on the California Gold Rush;
• Wikipedia’s page on the San Andreas Fault;
• Wikipedia’s page on the Summer Of Love;
• The Gold Rush of 1849 by History.com;
• 8 Things You May Not Know About the California Gold Rush by Barbara Maranzani for History.com
• Bubonic plague hits San Francisco 1900-1909 by PBS.org;
• George Harrison visits Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco from The Beatles Bible
• San Francisco Tree Lighting & Holiday Events 2017 from SF Tourism Tips
• Things to Do in San Francisco in the Winter from SF Tourism Tips
• 10+ Things to Do in San Francisco in Winter 2018 – January & February Activities & More by Casey Makovich for the Go Card San Francisco Travel Blog.
• Things To Do in San Francisco in the Winter by Andi Fisher for her blog, “Misadventures with Andi”.
• Everything to Do in San Francisco This Winter (Including All the Holiday Cheer You Can Handle) by Allison McCarthy for PureWow, a women’s lifestyle online magazine.

That concludes part 4 of this series. I’m going to take a week or two off from it in order to finish up another massive post because the unwritten parts of it are starting to become vague in my memory and I want to try and finish it before it’s too late.

While I’m doing so, expect “regular” Thursday posts to resume. Besides, a change is as good as a Holiday, as they say.

When this series does resume, it’s off to the Central Pacific and Asia for Winter in Honolulu, Bangkok, Tokyo, Beijing, Tibet, and Nepal (I can feel the snow piling up from here…)

A month or two back, I perceived the plot need in my superhero campaign to have one of the PCs appear on the celebrity edition of a game show.

The complication: Licensing of formats

The problem was that Game Shows are licensed for big money and the owners are very protective of their rights. While it was possible that – even if they came to know about it, something that would not necessarily ever happen – they would not mind one of their shows being adapted for RPG purposes, I didn’t feel like taking the chance (you can read a great overview of the situation in general at Deal or no deal: copyright protection in television formats by Leonard Glickman for Lexology).

Besides that, the game setting argued in favor of doing something new – I’ll get into that in a little bit. So, after concentrating on the problem for a while, I came up with my own original game-show format. And because other GMs may also want to incorporate a game-show into their RPGs, I am presenting it here.

The License

The game-show format and key elements thereof, as described in this blog post and its sequel, are ©2018 Mike Bourke. Licensing is free for any RPG-related purpose. Licensing for any other purpose (but especially for use in an actual televised game show) are negotiable, contact me through the website.

A Terminology Note: “Participants” vs “Players”

You normally term those taking part in a game, “Players”, but that term has a specific meaning already in an RPG. In an attempt to avoid confusion, I have attempted to use the terms “Participants” and “Contestants” to describe those characters taking part in the game-show throughout this article.

The Key Elements

The game show format that I created for my game features seven elements that, to the best of my knowledge, are original and unique.

Differentiated Scoring

Trivia-knowledge questions are ranked in terms of difficulty from 1 to 10 and that ranking is the score that is awarded for correctly answering the question. It is also the score that is lost for failing to provide a correct answer.

Deflection

Contestants in later rounds have the option of sacrificing a small part of their points score to “deflect” a question they do not feel confident of answering to a competitor, who must then answer the question or suffer the consequences of failing to do so.

Inter-participant interactions

This encourages interactions between competitors as a feature of the game. A key strategic element is the competitor “selling” themselves to their rivals, whether that is as someone who is trustworthy, or someone who is not to be messed with.

Participant Knockout

Contestants who run out of points are eliminated from the game.

Audience Directions

In some game segments, the audience determines which competitor will be presented with a given question. A key strategic element is the competitor establishing a rapport with the audience.

Audience Answers which may be false

In some game segments, the audience offers answers to the question which may or may not be accurate, depending on whether the audience members selected support or dislike the competitor who is attempting to answer the question.

Combination of pre-recorded and live game-show segments

Early stages of the game show are pre-recorded with a slight delay to broadcast. Later segments are broadcast live. This permits real-time interaction between the viewing audience and the ongoing game.

The Setting

The RPG campaign is set in the year 2056, in a world in which the British Empire has become the dominant political force over more than half the world. Individual nations have Kings (or equivalent, including Presidents and Prime Ministers) who are subordinate to the Emperor or Empress. Imperial Decree and Common Law form a foundation to the legal and social systems of all nations; in all areas in which no decree overrides the prerogatives of the national ruler, each nation is free to impose its own laws and governmental structures. Politics is broadly modeled on that of Britain, with local variations – political parties, free elections, a civil service, a peerage nominated by the crown or elected independently who serve as a reality check to the legislation of the primarily-elected lower house, and so on.

The key point here is the date, with all the technological baggage that it carries. While it’s not impossible for a game show to remain popular for 38 years, it doesn’t happen very often. How many game shows currently air with original episodes that were also on the air in 1980? There are a couple – some of whom had popular runs, faded away, and have been rejuvenated after a long hiatus – but it’s fair to say that almost all currently-successful game shows started far more recently.

That meant that either nostalgia would be a major part of the game show (if I were to appropriate an existing format) or that it would be a new show that was not currently on the air, and which would therefore require original and novel features.

Commentaries on the Key Elements

Having made the decision to go with an original game-show format, it was then necessary to devise one. I started by reviewing all the game shows currently airing in Australia and asking how my game show would differentiate itself from them. What would make it different enough to stand out?

Differentiated Scoring

The first thing that I noticed was that in almost every show out there, correct answers scored the same number of points, regardless of the difficulty of the question. The only exception was a show called “Pointless” which tests obscure knowledge; the goal in which is to give an answer which is both correct and which none of 100 people surveyed in advance had given. “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” also differentiates between difficulties of question but only in an attempt to sequence them in order of increasing difficulty as the prize money earned by a correct answer increases.

Deflection

Every game show that I looked at either permitted people to confer or asked questions to individual competitors. “Family Feud” permits rival teams an attempt to “steal” the points earned by their opposition if that opposition fail to give all the correct responses to a general question that had earlier been provided by a public survey.

The exact opposite of the person who was asked the question having to answer it is for them to have someone else answer it. It was that thought that led to the eponymous element of the new game-show that I was devising, Deflection.

Inter-participant interactions

That gave the concept, as a development tool, of attempting to find a way to do the exact opposite of what most or all game shows that I had seen did. Most game shows have the host / quiz-master interacting with each competitor or competitor group, but limited or no interaction between rivals. Doing the opposite of that – encouraging interactions, even baiting participants into interacting, brought a social element to the game show which permitted roleplaying. I took this as a signal that I was on the right track!

Audience Directions

The audience applauds. Contestants may be drawn from the studio audience. The only game show of which I am aware where there was any sort of interaction between a contestant and the audience was a show that was popular in Australia a while back called “Deal Or No Deal“. Specifically, I was not aware of any game show in which the determination of which contestant was asked a particular question was determined by the audience members voting in the space between one question being asked and the next. In more modern times, this could be done over the internet if the show was being broadcast live to air; otherwise, it would need to be done by the studio audience, who could indicate their choice by viewing the question being shown on an overhead screen (where contestants couldn’t see it) and a bank of colored buttons in the armrests of their chairs. The host would then be signaled the majority tally of who the audience wanted to answer the question.

This opened up important new avenues of interaction within the game-show, and new strategic and tactical considerations. Being perceived as the underdog, or simply being popular, could lead to the audience sending easy answers to one participant; being disliked by the audience could lead to difficult ones. Since the studio audience would serve as surrogate representatives of the broader viewing audience, this would create a sense of engagement between the audience and the show, an interactivity that I thought would greatly add to its popularity. In a more technologically-adept era, and with a live broadcast of those segments of the show affected, that engagement could be made more direct and immediate, a notion that I derived from the system of voting used by the Eurovision Song Contest.

Audience Answers which may be false

That, in turn, opened up the possibility of audience members voting on answers which would then be given to the contestants during the segments (see below) when the questions were especially difficult. Once again, this could be in the form of a multiple choice presented to a studio audience or some kind of official twitter-like feed from a broader audience pool once the technology permitted. One or two of the individual responses would be chosen at random and presented to the studio contestant.

This idea added a further dimension to the interactivity between the audience and the game show, and between the audience and the game show contestant.

Combination of pre-recorded and live game-show segments

Given the obvious advantages in terms of audience engagement and participation, I couldn’t see why – in the mooted 2056 era – the show would not be broadcast live. And then I had some second thoughts – there were obvious segments in which the foundations for each contest were laid, before audiences had the opportunity to get to know all the participants, when it would be patently unfair for that audience to be making game-changing decisions. I therefore decided that part of the show would be pre-recorded (with minimal delay and no interaction outside the studio audience), and the rest presented live. A further factor influencing this decision was the thought that this would increase the pressure on the contestants, making for a more vicariously-thrilling outcome.

Besides – once again – that sort of thing simply wasn’t being done, and so it marked another point of difference between Deflection and everything else out there.

Number Of Participants

In an ordinary show, with regular contestants, I would expect four players to be normal. For plot reasons, I wanted this to be a celebrity edition, which entailed an extra round, more questions, and more participants. After some thought, and bearing in mind that the number of potential interactions increased exponentially with each additional contestant, I settled on six.

Anticipated show length

That should give a show of 25 minutes (leaving room for adverts) for the regular show and 45-48 minutes (leaving room for adverts) for a celebrity version. That would translate to one and one-and-a-half hours broadcast time, respectively. I took my cue for those lengths from the Australian version of Family Feud, which is typically a fast-paced half hour but which has celebrity versions that are sometimes a slightly more languid hour in length.

The Segments

The regular game would have three segments, separated by ad breaks. The celebrity edition has a fourth segment.

Introductions Segment

In the introductions segment, contestants are asked questions – first, one each in succession, and then semi-randomly – the sequence is random except that no player gets two questions in a row, and the points score available to each player has to total the same at the end of the round if they answer all questions correctly.

Before each contestant is given their first question, they are introduced to the audience. All contestants start with a points score of 20. Questions asked in this round are

• 60% very easy (difficulty 1-3 out of ten) and
• 40% moderately easy (difficulty 4-5 out of ten).

Players are not permitted to deflect these easy questions, which exist to establish a baseline score, i.e. a set of starting conditions.

The host regularly comments on the state of the score, especially when the leader-board changes or might change dramatically.

Celebrity-only Segment (in two parts)

The celebrity round-2 introduces both studio-audience directed questions and deflections. It costs a contestant 1 point to deflect a question to the player coming last other than themselves, and three points to deflect one to the current leader other than themselves. Tactically, this gives whoever is coming last the chance to build up their score. However, no contestant can be asked two questions in a row – if you have just answered a question (right or wrong), you are immune from having the next question Deflected to you.

Complicating this is the audience attitude toward the contestant. Celebrity contestants can include publicly-elected or -appointed officials, artists, musicians, actors, models, you name it. All they need is some sort of name recognition.

The producers go out of their way to match contestants with rivals or with individuals with whom they (are believed to) have a public disagreement or relationship of some kind, or some controversial opinion with which another contestant is likely to disagree. In each part of this two-part segment, the host will raise the issue as a question is directed at a contestant and discuss it with them. Celebrities appearing on the show know this and usually prepare accordingly.

One reason for prerecording the early segments, including this one, is so that the reactions of the other celebrities can be monitored and appropriate footage inserted, and so that these interviews can be edited for length and language.

The mix of questions in this round is:

• 20% very easy (difficulty 1-3 out of ten),
• 40% moderately easy (difficulty 4-5 out of ten), and
• 40% moderately difficult (6-7 out of ten).

It is normal for one or two contestants to end up in points trouble by the end of this round, while a third takes a strong lead.

Deflection Segment

This is round two in the regular game and round three in the celebrity edition. This is the first live segment of the show.

This round is played the same way as the previous one, but the mix of questions is harder, and a randomly-chosen answer from a member of the audience is given before the contestant chooses whether or not to deflect. They are given only a second or two to make this decision.

This is the round in which the game becomes very tactical, and it may be preferable for a contestant to deflect an answer they know to a rival who they think doesn’t. It’s normal for whoever is leading at the start of the round not to be by it’s end, and this can be when contestants get knocked out (i.e. have their score reduced to zero).

The mix of questions in this round is:

• 10% very easy (difficulty 1-3 out of ten),
• 30% moderately easy (difficulty 4-5 out of ten),
• 30% moderately difficult (6-7 out of ten), and
• 30% difficult (8-9 out of ten).

In addition, it’s traditional for the round to contain 1-3 difficulty-ten questions in the latter half as forewarning of what’s to come.

Double-Deflection Segment

This is the final round of the game show. At the start of the round, each contestant in the celebrity edition announces which charity or cause they are playing to raise money for, while the contestants in the regular game are asked what they will do with the money if they win. In addition, there are hot-line numbers set up for the celebrity edition which permit the viewing public to contribute to the celebrity cause.

Questions are, basically, whatever’s left to be asked, and can include trick questions.

In this round, Deflection costs are doubled, correct answers score double points, and incorrect answers cost double points. Questions can be Deflected twice and two answers are chosen at random from the audience. These can be the same, or different. Contestants also get twice as long to think about their answers. Contestants still can’t be asked two questions in a row but a second question in sequence can be deflected to a given contestant.

Because of the points available, any Contestant still in the game can still win, or crash out. It’s normal for very tactical play to occur, and for there to be several changes of the lead.

In this round, Contestants are not told how many points a question is worth until after they have attempted to answer it, adding yet another tactical layer to the mix.

Prize-money

At the end of the game show, contestants earn a fixed amount for every point in their final score, with the winner getting +50% for every point they scored. The remainder of a fixed prize pool is then divided equally amongst all the contestants.

Celebrity editions generally have a much larger prize pool.

I won’t quote the exact numbers from the example game here because they would be misleading, taking into account another 38 years of inflation. To give readers some idea of how big an impact that has, I worked back from 1980 US dollars to modern currency. It’s roughly 5-fold.

While the host explains all of this, and gives the amounts won, a giant-sized novelty check is produced off-stage and presented to the winner at the end of the show.

Celebrity-specific procedures

Another of the tactics that the show uses to keep itself interesting is not to tell the players who they are up against until filming starts, even to the point of getting additional celebrities into the studio audience as red herrings and deliberately casting celebrities with “histories”.

Tactics

Contestants are encouraged to “talk their way around the question”, even if they know the answer.

It’s quite common for players to use this time to try and charm the audience, or paint themselves as the bad guy or girl if they are confident of their abilities and want to put the other contestants off. Sometimes, this is all bluff.

There are other tactics: snappy answers to get more questions in, or taking your time to get less, trying to prune the field, being friendly or ruthless, attempting to send other players down the garden path by offering a red herring in your dialogue, trying to charm the audience, singling out the weakest player or the strongest…

Rumors

It’s rumored that the quiz cards have multiple questions on them, and the producers are reputed to manipulate the difficulty to make for a more interesting game. That wasn’t the case in the version that I ran (too much work), but you may choose otherwise if that’s important to your
plot.

Host

The host should have a current affairs background and be used to interviewing people who don’t want to give answers to difficult questions.

The host and quiz-master of the in-2056 version is Stuart DeBrassie, who also hosts the most-watched public affairs program in the Empire [‘IBC Tonight’]. Stuart uses his knowledge to quickly get to the heart of who players are.

“Stuart” was deliberately modeled on David Frost, who had that sort of reputation as an interviewer – able and willing to ask the hard questions and skilled at getting an actual answer. There was also some touch of Andrew Denton (who has developed a similar reputation in Australia) in the way I played the character and wrote the ‘script’.

When you use this Game-show format in your RPGs, you will need to create a host of your own, possibly based on mine. The host is responsible for a lot of the interaction and tone of the show; the tone that I was striving for was a touch on the serious side, but someone who was strong enough to keep control over potentially heated tempers. You might want a more folksy, lighter touch, or a more charming host, or a fire-starter like Jerry Springer, or someone with stronger social credentials like Oprah Winfrey.

Whoever you choose as the model upon which your host is based will have a profound impact on the tone of the game-show.

Participants

The next thing that you’ll need are participants – six for the celebrity edition, four for the regular.

The Celebrities that I chose for the 2056-based game were:

• Recently-disgraced politician Marcel Thurman Greene, who “allegedly” contracted with the Circus Of Crime to assassinate Shock Jock and thorn in his side, Howard Eskin. The PCs failed to get sufficient proof of his involvement when they took down the Circus (in their 3rd adventure), so he is on the reelection trail;
• NOPD Chief Of Police Oscar Raven;
• Sir Alice Cooper, semi-retired shock rocker, actor, golfing celebrity, restaurateur, and vintage automobile restorer/customizer, 107 years old and still going strong, knighted for his social services in combating celebrity alcoholism;
• “Princess”, a somewhat prissy fashion model and Cooper’s great-granddaughter;
• Mosul Panesar, Sikh and Comedian, who pokes fun at tradition-for-the-sake-of-tradition and racial bias; and
• Alison Cash, an all-too-serious and opinionated (but very popular) actress with whom Mosul has had several public disagreements about whether or not his comedy is inappropriate, and who has publicly criticized Cooper for being unwilling to mix entertainment and politics, i.e. to utilize the stage given him by his fame.

Of these, everyone except “Sir Alice” is completely fictional.

You will almost certainly want different participants; these were not chosen at random. More on that, shortly. It’s very important that you have a clear idea of who these people are, their experiences and expertise levels, their personalities, and – preferably – to have some way of distinguishing between them when delivering dialogue between them.

It should also be noted that there’s an extra! The “corrupt politician” was never intended to survive through the entire game-show as a Contestant, and in fact I incorporated an “extra question” to make sure that his score would have the right value at the right time to enable his “exit” to follow my script. His appearance was the entire point of the plot sequence (in campaign terms), everything else was an added bonus.

Gathering Questions

I gathered my questions, first, by looking up trivia quizzes through Google, and second, with an old fashioned web-crawl through Wikipedia, plus one or two items that I already knew. My goal was to have five questions for each difficulty rating (1 to 10); achieving that required subsequent rephrasing some questions to contain multiple choice answers or hints. I still needed to gather about 60 questions to get the required target.

Participant- specific questions

I also scratched a few because I wasn’t confident of the answers supplied, and made sure that there was one question targeting a known expertise of each contestant.

In an non-celebrity game, these would be based on pre-game questionnaires.

Rating Questions

This was mostly done by ‘feel’ and by how difficult they would be for the average person in the game setting to answer. I took into account how recent the events were, whether or not they were likely to be taught in school, and how specific the required information was.

Allocation to segments

Before allocating the questions to segments, I sorted them by difficulty and then randomized the sequence within each difficulty score.

Randomizing the Sequence

Once questions were allocated into a particular segment of the game show, I randomized them within that segment. However, to space out the interval between the various dialogue segments, I was quite willing to “override” that randomness when necessary.

Planning Interactions & Personality Conflicts

You don’t get an interesting “show” by accident. Normally, I was have assigned each character a “character arc” within the broader context of the story, but this time around, I did something a little different, planning a “narrative arc” for each of the points of conflict instead, and using that as my guideline to the “in-game-show” situation.

I also had a couple of plot developments that I wanted to deliberately insert. The first was the corrupt politician, present because he had been an outspoken critic of the PC group, and was the spearhead of a political movement that I wanted the PCs to become aware of; the second was to cement the relationship between traditional law-enforcement and the PCs; the third was to make the PCs aware of how much their fame had grown in the course of the campaign (you can never hint at that too strongly or too often); and, lastly, I wanted to plant the philosophical issue of celebrities influencing opinions, rightly or wrongly, and the “baggage” that comes with fame.

With those in mind, take another quick look over the contestants listed above, and the reasons for their inclusion should be fairly clear.

In Part 2

In the second half of this article, I will talk about how I wrote the “script” for the show, how I kept it dynamically-responsive to what the PC did, how I extended the narrative to include the other Players, and will wrap up by sharing the excerpts from the actual adventure.

I get asked questions all the time. Those coming at me through twitter I usually answer extremely briefly; if the 280-character limit (was 140) is not enough, I will either add more replies or set the question aside for answering here, if there is likely to be sufficient interest in the question. Those I get asked in person, I answer as best I can within the limits of the time I have available. And I average about 1 answer a month on Quora.

Never heard of it? It’s a site where some people ask questions and other people – who feel they have the expertise to provide a useful response – answer them. Some of my answers have been about Australia, some about Politics, some about Cricket, some about other topics – and yes, some have been RPG-related.

Until now, none of the answers have been suitable for expansion here. On Saturday, that changed.

The Question was, How do I create a good combat system for a tabletop RPG?

Below is the full text of my reply. You can confirm that (and read the other answers to the question, which are also worthwhile) at How do I create a good combat system for a tabletop RPG?

Combat systems are the crunch of RPGs, the most intensive interaction between players and game mechanics. Before you start, you need to understand the fundamentals of time-and-motion optimization.

If the average combat between 4 PCs and 4 equally-matched NPCs requires 6 rounds of battle, a single extra step taking 10 seconds (which seems quick and easy in isolation) for each adds 6x8x10 = 480 seconds or 8 extra minutes. If that time-span is 20 seconds, that’s 16 minutes game time lost per combat. If there are 12 rounds of combat in those typical battles, that’s 16 and 32 minutes of extra time per combat.

If it takes five extra seconds to perform an operation – the difference between addition and subtraction – and you have to do that for 10 rounds, 8 characters, 4 times in day’s play, that’s 5x10x8x4=1600 seconds=26-plus minutes of extra game time, lost. Plus, it makes it slower to evaluate your different tactical options, and that can add anything from 5 to 25 seconds on top of that five. Two or three such operations, and you can easily lose three, four, or even five hours of game-play.

The next thing you need to get your head around is the relationship between simulation and abstraction. Clearly, a combat system that takes account of everything that can possibly affect the outcome is going to be so slow that it’s unplayable. That means that you are going to need just enough realism that it feels like all possible combat modifiers are taken into account (i.e. feels ‘realistic’), but abstract enough that it’s playable.

Thirdly, the system needs to contain mechanisms by which the participants can influence the basic operation of the system – ways to implement tactics, ways to differentiate one character from another, different styles of combat, and so on – and these cannot add to the combat-time overhead. Accommodating these ‘differentials’ usually requires further simplification and abstraction of the combat simulation.

All of these principles wrap around your core combat mechanics, and don’t leave a lot of room for complexity in those mechanics. Which is why most systems come down to a chance of hitting, an amount of damage inflicted on a successful hit, and a total capacity for absorbing successful hits, and circumstantial/tactical modifiers to one, or at most two, of these. The details vary from system to system, but those are the core principles. There simply isn’t enough room for much more in the timing. Hero games splits damage into two varieties, and adds an Endurance variable that restricts medium-term capacities for combat – but uses a mechanism that requires only a single roll to calculate both damage results.

Finally, all combat systems have to pass the sensible test. In other words, they have to feel like they respond to common sense. Put on better armor and you become harder to hit to the point of taking damage. Put on more restrictive armor (which might be the same thing) and it becomes harder for you to hit others and inflict harm with that ‘hit’.

If you want to create a new combat system, start by understanding the ones that are already out there. Throw in an understanding of how card games work. Toss in an understanding of probability. Then follow the process outlined above. And think of the results as just your first draft, because I can guarantee that they will need revision after some real-world play-testing!

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that answer, and I stand by it. But there’s a lot of meat in there that could be better-served with some fleshing-out and annotation.

Time-And-Motion Optimization

Back in 2014 (it doesn’t seem like four years ago), I wrote a full article on the subject, but that was focused more on House Rules and the inevitable inefficiencies that come as a price tag. I had in mind things like incorporating extra classes of modifiers, or hit location mechanics, or different types of damage, or a more Rolemaster approach to weapons and the other rules tweaks that every GM seems to come up with. This is a new application of the principles, and that’s why I went into some detail in the above answer – nearly 1/3 of it relates to the subject.

Another way to phrase this aspect of the answer is to ask a distinct and related sub-question: how fast should combat take to complete?

At it’s absolutely most basic level, a single die roll that takes into account every relevant factor could resolve the battle, and the rest is GM narrative. I think this goes too far, but there may be times when it’s the right solution.

A better solution is a single die roll that then leads into a formalized and structured narrative interaction between players and GM. This essentially uses the die roll and some assessment of the “quality” of the resulting success or failure as a guide to the outcome while saying nothing about the path taken:

In this example, the characters have rolled a 16 on a d20 but don’t know what they needed to succeed because they don’t know what modifiers the GM has placed on the roll. The GM initially has the battle advantage swing this way and that before events turn decidedly against the PCs, ending in a sudden decisive twist that produces the successful outcome they earned through their die roll. They can attempt whatever they want to attempt but will have little success until the final moments of the struggle.

Along the way, the GM might dole out damage and changing tactical circumstances as the combat evolves, based on what the players attempt and what the enemy does in response. But the ultimate question, “is a 16 good enough?” is not resolved until the end of the battle.

This sort of approach permits the GM to make combat dramatic and visceral – if he’s good at that sort of thing – but can leave the players ignorant of specifics that would affect their tactical decisions, and leaves no place for in-combat strokes of genius on their part.

For that reason, a lot of players wouldn’t like it. They want to know everything about their character’s condition, they want to be able to judge for themselves how effective or ineffective a particular tactic or weapon is, and so on.

And so we end up back at the basic RPG combat system, in which round by round numeric consequences of combat are described and any narrative is something the GM has to shoehorn in, sideways.

Simulation Vs Abstraction

I’ve touched on this subject many times in many articles, but I don’t think I’ve ever addressed the subject directly – see, for example, the series on Cinematic Combat from 2015.

There’s a difference between realism and verisimilitude that many people confuse. Verisimilitude is all about the suspension of disbelief, of logical consequences deriving from improbable or even impossible assumptions, of making the game – and that includes the combat – feel as though it was real, despite the presence of all sorts of strange phenomena like Sorcery and Monsters and what-have-you. Realism means that there is no disbelief to suspend, and nothing so out of the ordinary is possible. It takes the fantasy out of the equation, replacing imagination with simulation. Verisimilitude is to be encouraged at all times; Realism may be a vector to achieving Verisimilitude, but at least as often, it gets in the way.

Simulation attempts to load up on specific details. In theory, with a well-designed combat system, these details are epicly good, because they carry inherent verisimilitude. But they do so at the expense of practicality. I have seen (home-brew) game systems in which it took 12 minutes to resolve each attempted attack in a combat. Everything you can think of was taken into account, from the capabilities of weapon-type-X against armor-type-Y, to the relative heights of the two combatants, to skill levels with a shield, to…. well you get the point. This might work well in a computer RPG because the computer can crunch this type of math faster than you can blink.

In any other sort of game, there isn’t enough abstraction; it takes too long, can be too confusing, and intrudes game mechanics so severely into the gaming process that any gains in verisimilitude are often lost. You might know that the outcome is believably accurate, but you don’t feel it, viscerally.

Every RPG, every combat system, has it’s own point of compromise between simulation and abstraction. If that was all there was to it, you could pick the point that seems most desirable to you, and all would be well.

But this feeds directly back into the question of Time-and-motion Optimization, as was implied by that home-brew system I mentioned. You can’t accurately simulate every aspect of the real world in a practical combat system; you need to abstract and compromise the realism in order to achieve both a dynamic, thrilling, visceral contest, and a sense of verisimilitude.

There are good abstractions that are easy to understand and work with, and there are poorer abstractions that are extremely complicated when you dig deeply into what seems to be a very straightforward mechanic. An example of the latter that I analyzed extensively is D&D 5e’s “Advantage” mechanic – you can read my analysis in this article.

Controls

There are always rules for things like facing, and initiative, and surprise, and movement, and cover, and flanking. These are all variables that the characters engaged in combat can manipulate in an attempt to Control the outcome. No rules system can ever cover everything, or you end up back at the Simulation end of the scale.

For example, in D&D (any variety), you might have a player state “I am attacking to draw his shield out of position. I don’t care about hitting him – yet – I want to spend a round or two defending myself and getting him into a vulnerable position.” How do you adjudicate this? Unless there is a specific maneuver listed amongst the controls that describes this, you’re in trouble.

Before you can create and implement such a Control, you would need to really understand the abstractions that are built into the D&D system. One of those abstractions is that each attempt to “hit” is actually many attempts to strike a blow against the enemy, and your chances of success at inflicting harm incorporate any skill you might have in getting a character’s shield “out of position”. Ultimately, you could craft an explicit maneuver that would work – storing up your success margins above what you need to hit over multiple rounds in order to achieve a more effective blow when you do strike, for example – but you need to understand the abstractions and foundation assumptions of the game system first.

I’ve seen a number of house rules and attempts to create combat systems where the designer lost track of the abstractions, or never understood them in the first place, and as a result, their home-brewed rules came with gaping, exploitable, system deficiencies.

You need Controls, or the characters will have no capacity to treat the combat as though it were real – breaking verisimilitude – but you can’t cover everything. D&D 5e’s “Advantage” is an attempt to umbrella everything into a single abstraction, and – to a certain extent – it works well.

The Sensible Test

The Space Gamer, and more recently, Pyramid – both by Steve Jackson Games – used to feature a page called Murphy’s Rules, which mocked (in a comedic way) rules that failed the Sensible Test. Many of these have been collected into a PDF (US$ 7.99). For example, in AD&D, a fighter specializing in Darts can do more damage in a round than one specializing in Broadsword…

Every game designer has, at one time or another, written a rule that fails the Sensible Test. If they are lucky, it’s only in exceptional circumstances, and a minor tweak can set things aright. More often, this comes about because the left hand either didn’t know or forgot what the right hand had already done.

If it comes to that, the limits of abstraction frequently pose challenges to the Sensible Test.

Take the D&D 3.x stacking limits, for example. That game system had a quite sensible mechanic designed to simplify the abstractions question, only different modifiers stack. If you had two modifiers of the same type, you simply used the biggest one and ignored the lesser. There were one or two minor exceptions.

What did various supplement publishers do? To make their products more appealing, they came up with their own “categories” of modifier. You could get one magic item from one book, a class ability from another, and add them to something from the core rules, and end up with three STACKABLE bonuses for something that was never meant to stack in the first place! If those were just +1 or +2, that would be bad enough, but some of them were +4, +5, or even more.

I once constructed a character in this way, as a test to ascertain the seriousness of the problem, and ended with a 1st-level character who had +40 to stealth. No, I no longer have the details.

What to do? Well, you could restrict the publishers that were considered canonical in your game. Or, you could rule that unless it’s explicitly differentiated in the core rule-books, all these modifiers were considered the same type under a different name, restricting the scope of the problem.

But, at the same time, there were logical challenges to the concept of stacking limits. “You mean that because of my Cloak, I can wear hobnailed boots instead of my Boots Of Elvenkind and there’s no change to my Stealth roll?” kind of challenges. The concept itself fails the Sensible Test.

You could solve that whilst retaining the spirit of the rule. Many GMs did. The simplest solution was: total all your applicable bonuses except the single largest one. Each time those other bonuses equal the largest one, in aggregate, or part thereof, it increases the benefit of that largest one by one. So +2 and +2 and +3 gives you +5, not +7. And +4, +5, +4 gives you +7, not +13. It meant that characters still got a benefit from wearing multiple items that contributed the same bonus, but those benefits were curtailed to some extent.

Understanding The Game System You Are Using

You can do a lot worse, either as a player or as a GM, than taking the time to analyze and understand the combat system of the game you are using, even if you have no desire to create a new game system. Identifying the abstractions, and understanding the implications, comprehending the mechanics, being aware of the line between Abstraction and Simulation that the rules adhere to and why – these all make you better equipped to deal with failures of the Sensible Test when they occur, and increase your capacity to arbitrate the inevitable situations that aren’t in the book.

We all encounter those situations. Quite often, they result when an unusual combination of rules comes into effect; the better the play-testing that’s been done, the more the obvious such mechanics “holes” have been identified and corrected. But RPGs deal with environments and situations that are so complex, it’s impossible to have test every possible combination; there will always be tar babies and other monsters lurking in the shadowy recesses of the rule-books.

It’s part of your responsibility to hunt these down and whack them on the head before they become a problem, if you can.

Looking at the photographs of the “March For Our Lives”/”Never Again” rallies, you can’t help but feel that an entire generation, who have grown up under the shadow of gun violence in schools since Colombine (April 20, 1999), have run out of patience and been energized.

Calls for compromise, like those of Mark Rubio, who suggested “understanding of the other side,” are clearly going to fall on deaf ears; they essentially reiterate the policy compromises of the entire post-Colombine era that the students and organizers of the rallies consider failures, and with which they have exhausted their patience.

I saw one sound-byte in which it was claimed that at the coming Midterm elections, 1 million millennials would have the vote, and at the next Presidential Election, the number would be 20 million. Clearly, if the protests become a social movement that endures until then and which then transforms the protesting millennials into a unified voting bloc, this will bring about a wave of change that no political party can ignore.

That’s a major problem for the Republican Party, who are strongly linked to the NRA, who the students view as the enemy, willing to sacrifice the students lives in defense of the principles they espouse. The Democrats should have a far easier job of wooing these voters, as what attempts at gun control have taken place over the last 40 years or more have almost exclusively been from their side of the political fence.

Whether you agree with the position of the students or not (I do, but I’m Australian, and we have gun control laws that work), it’s hard to argue that this is a defining event for this generation, of the sort that hasn’t really been seen since the Vietnam War, or the Second World War before it. I tend to put the Civil Rights movements of the 60s, Prohibition, and the Unionization/Worker’s Rights movements of the early 20th century, into the same category.

These defining events don’t come along in every generation, but when they do, they tend to be, well, defining, whether you are pro- or anti-; they force those of that generation to choose a side, disregarding past loyalties and familial traditions, and from that stance, like dominoes falling, other stances and positions will flow, crystallizing around this seed principle.

There’s an obvious connection to the “youth vote” discussion that leads off A Political insight for RPGs & Life but, aside from this movement representing a clear and obvious inversion of a political trend of the last few decades (diminishing youth politicization), that article doesn’t really contribute very much insight into the current situation, never mind offering an RPG-related insight.

I’m not entirely sure why, but when I was thinking about this situation, I found myself making an unexpected connection to a couple of past articles here at Campaign Mastery –

• Throw Me A Life-line: A Character Background Planning Tool
• Ergonomics and the Non-human (about Elvish Ergonomics)
• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves (a sequel to the Elves article).

Specifically, I started thinking about Elves and lifespans and maturation rates and coming-of-age events and Generation Landmark events, and one thing led to another…

Proportionate Age Scaling

Most people, when they think about the longer lifespans of Elves, Dwarves, and other forms of long-lived characters, do one of two things: expand their life-stages proportionately, as shown on the diagram above, or simply add lots of extra years to the adult part of the range.

Few go so far as considering what that does to the demographics of the community. The first implies as much as 80 years of increasing senility in roughly 20% of the population, but that’s rarely shown; what do the elves do with their elderly when they start getting a bit dotty? The second implies that children are relatively rare, simply because more of the population would be adult.

When you get results like this, that don’t fit the norm of what’s established in most games, the temptation is to throw out the entire concept. This is wasteful and neglects a great opportunity.

Challenge your assumptions and preconceptions

What if “senility” in a long-lived species was different to that of Humans? Take Elves – two possibilities leap immediately to mind: Senility = obsessiveness, and Senility = coalescence with nature.

Senility=Obsessiveness

This is probably the more dangerous choice, because you can never tell what subject the obsessive will fixate upon. If it’s pottery, or ancient history, there’s no problem. If it’s arcane research, there will be trouble. If it’s religion or politics, you have a powder-keg.

Coalescence With Nature

Under this concept, aging elves grow ever more tired and lethargic. Eventually, they move so little that moss begins to grow on them, and they start to put down roots. If undisturbed, they sprout branches and become as trees.

There’s a lot that you could do with either concept. But why stop there? Why not redefine adolescent behavior, while you’re at it?

Redefined Aging

Once you’ve gone that far, it seems silly to cling to the concept of races who have different lifespans experiencing the same aging landmarks. Perhaps Elves mature emotionally and physically at quite different rates, remaining skittish and obsessed with fancy poetry and other fanciful impracticalities until some coming-of-age event occurs – if it ever does – at which point they metamorphose, emotionally, into a serious individual, more like Elrond, in the process transitioning from gregariousness to insularity and even xenophobia. Most PC elves under this model should be modeled on someone like Lelldorin from the Belgariad by David Eddings (or, if you want to stick with examples from The Lord Of The Rings, like Pippin and Merry).

Generational Landmarks of the long-lived

If you live a long time, perhaps even remaining “stuck” in a stage of development until transition to the next is triggered by involvement in some external circumstance, the great likelihood is that this will be a generational landmark event of some kind.

Elves, for example, could be happy-go-lucky wastrels indulging their most pretentious artistic tendencies, until some external threat or personal tragedy – the death of one’s parents, for example – caused the elf to set aside such childish pursuits, recasting their capacity for passion into a near-obsession with serious subjects. Mature Elves smile only for effect, under this model. Think of Latins, taken to the extreme.

This means that while there would be a few individuals who would make the transition due to personal circumstances, in the majority of cases an entire generation would mature simultaneously. If PCs – and NPCs – were used to dealing with the more happy-go-lucky elves resulting from a generation of peace, they might underestimate the Elves.

If part of a campaign is a quest by the PCs to “awaken the Elves”, this could become central to that campaign. But even without that option, there is RPG value to the proposition.

Consider the Vietnam war – in general, there were three possible reactions to it: You could oppose it, fleeing the draft if necessary; you could support it, and go willingly to fight; or you could be caught in the middle, perhaps opposing the conflict even while supporting a relative who was in service. No matter what the Generational Landmark event is, there will be at least two reactions, often splitting along generational fault-lines, and the resulting core values will define commonalities shared with a number of others who shared the experience. Of course, when you look more closely, you would find any number of individual variations within that overall generalization.

The Principle

The principle is to decide what traits you want the race to have and define a rational aging progression accordingly. Fit landmarks to the aging process that accord with the aging progression you have defined, and you end up redefining the race in question. Make the right choices, and there might not even be any superficial difference, while the race is entirely different “under the skin”.

Let’s take Dwarves, for an example. In childhood, they might have an overwhelming spiritual bond with the earth, looking upon the process of what other races consider mere “mining” as shaping the earth. Think of the reverential attitude of Gimli to the caverns beneath Aglarond – “When the torches are kindled and men walk on the sandy floors under the echoing domes, ah! Then Legolas, gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light flows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-colored floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from the dark pools covered with clear glass” – and apply that passion to the race in general. As yet, though, the young Dwarves cannot do anything with this bond.

When a dwarf enters adolescence, he abruptly loses this connection to the Earth, and – in effect – he spends this entire phase of his life in a state of Addiction Withdrawal, leaving them hot-tempered and on the verge of a loss of self-control at all times.

As they begin to physically mature, becoming adults, they discover that this sense has not been lost, after all; instead, it has become focused into a number of specific channels, each of which provides one of the iconic abilities of the race. With each ability so regained, the bond is renewed and spiritual tranquility returns.

Have you ever talked with an addiction survivor? The experience marks the personality forever after. They tend to be ruthlessly pragmatic and willing to help those who want to be helped, or who they consider friends. Leo McGarry’s story about the Friend and the Hole from the West Wing episode Noel is not atypical: “This guy’s walkin’ down a street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can’t get out. A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, ‘Hey you! Can you help me out?’ The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole, and moves on. Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, ‘Father, I’m down in this hole; can you help me out?’ The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. ‘Hey, Joe, it’s me. Can ya help me out?’ And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, ‘Are ya stupid? Now we’re both down here.’ The friend says, ‘Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.’

They also tend to have a fierce protectiveness toward those that they are helping, or who have helped them.

Of course, there are individual variations. Another prevailing trait tends to be a tolerance of those who backslide, a patience that says, “Start Again. Today, and every day, is the first day of the rest of your life.” That part of the ex-addict character would not translate into the Dwarfish character, because the bond has been restored.

Instead, the focus would be on the shared experience that every Dwarf has experienced. This would be something akin to the bond between members of the military. These bonds could be easily misinterpreted as xenophobia to those looking in from the outside, because they would be a shared experience that only other Dwarves understand.

There would also be a sense of having survived the worst possible pain and distress it was possible to know. It is a known fact that mothers have a higher pain threshold than non-mothers, simply because of the experience of childbirth; this would be akin to that, in spades.

Of course, this life journey is something intensely personal to the Dwarf; other Dwarves might understand it, but non-Dwarves certainly would not, and so Dwarves don’t share any information about it.

Under this (example) model of Dwarfishness, you can assume that there would be some few rare cases where the bond was never restored, but the Dwarf learned to live with lesser substitutes. Hotheaded, perpetually angry and resentful at the universe, given to other forms of self-gratification, and lacking the restored bond with the Earth that keeps them spiritually centered, these would make fearsome enemies. Think serial killers and sociopaths who are nevertheless sheltered and protected by the rest of the race, who could not fail to be sympathetic to their plight.

The short-lived

Another problem that GMs often have is in making sense of the short-lived races. There was a time when Orcs were described as living only 15 years or so, for example. Even if you assume that they grow and mature faster than humans, this lifespan is so short that social and technical progress would be almost impossible. Which sounds like a fine justification of the Orcish nature as described in various source materials, but it is simply too extreme; Orcs are rarely described as being sufficiently primitive for this description to stand up. More to the point, they would never live long enough to become formidable threats to PCs!

What is needed is some sort of experience dump, a running start to the “maturity” and physical prowess of the Orc. But, since it’s entirely likely that anything of the sort will go too far in the other direction, we need this process to somehow exaggerate the worst social and personal attributes of the Orcish character.

There are any number of possibilities to consider, but most of them center on the concept of resentment and the loss of a pleasant childhood, and that doesn’t fit the Orcish character. Once they are eliminated, there aren’t too many contenders. One that would fit would be the use of pain – torture – as a conduit for the life experience of the parents and teachers. Stockholm syndrome then makes the new generation ready and willing to inflict pain on others. Generational Sociopathy (or perhaps, Psychopathy), does a lot of the work of turning Orcs into monsters.

It’s entirely possible that without this practice, Orcs would live longer – 25 to 35 years – but would be single-HD creatures and slow learners. Without the resilience that their prowess and ruthlessness imparts, the race would come under serious threat from their equally-nasty neighbors like Bugbears.

This isn’t the only model, by any means, but it is one that works.

Put a little more thought into the impact of different lifespans on the races of your campaign; it’s a shortcut into a more unified vision of what makes those races tick.