{"id":6403,"date":"2012-12-27T11:02:30","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T16:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=6403"},"modified":"2012-12-27T21:46:41","modified_gmt":"2012-12-28T02:46:41","slug":"up-for-a-quest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/12\/up-for-a-quest.html","title":{"rendered":"Up for a Quest?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Scott\/Yvain has previously written a truly delightful Dungeons and Discourses game<\/a> (inspired by these<\/a> two<\/a> Dresden Codak comics). Here\u2019s an excerpt (which doesn\u2019t even include any of the musical numbers or the ingenious solution to Nagel\u2019s question: What is it like to be a bat?)<\/p>\n

In his roundabout way, he identifies himself as Heraclitus, the Fire Mage, one of the four great Elemental Mages of Platonia. Many years ago, he crossed into Origin on some errand, only to be ambushed by his arch-enemy, the Water Mage Thales. Thales placed a curse on Heraclitus that he could never cross the same river twice, trapping him on the wrong side of the Abcissa and preventing his return to Platonia. In order to dispel the curse, Heraclitus finds a loophole in the curse: he convinces himself that objects have no permanent identity, and so he can never cross the same river twice since it is not the same river and he is not the same man. Accepting this thesis, he crosses the Abcissa without incident \u2013 only to find that his new metaphysics of identity prevents him from forming goals, executing long-term plans, or doing anything more complicated than sitting by the riverbank and eating the fish that swim by.<\/p>\n

This sets off a storm of conversation, as each member of the party tries to set Heraclitus right in their own way; Phaidros by appealing to God as a final arbiter of identity, Macx and Nomophilos by arguing that duty is independent of identity and that Heraclitus has a duty to his family and followers. Unfortunately, they make a logical misstep and end out convincing Heraclitus that it is illogical from his perspective to hold conversation; this ends the debate. And as the five philosophers stand around discussing what to do, they are ambushed by a party of assassins, who shoot poisoned arrows at them from a nearby knoll.<\/p>\n

Outnumbered and outflanked, the situation seems hopeless, until Macx notices several of the attackers confused and unwilling to attack. With this clue, he identifies them as Buridan\u2019s Assassins, who in the presence of two equally good targets will hesitate forever, unable to choose: he yells to his friends to stand with two or more adventurers equidistant from each assassin, and sure enough, this paralyzes the archers and allows the party some breathing space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He\u2019s working on a new campaign, but he\u2019s lost the spellbook he was working on. \u00a0He\u2019s asking for suggestions<\/a> to flesh out the ideas he remembers, and it seemed like you might be the band of philosophy enthusiasts to take on the job. \u00a0(And, I\u2019ll confess, this feels like a fantasy-from-this-xkcd-comic<\/a> come true: Only your capacity to make philosophy puns can save us now!<\/em>). \u00a0Here\u2019s the kind of thing he\u2019s looking for:<\/p>\n

A good name could be a philosophical concept that sounds like a spell, for example \u201cPre-Ordained Harmonics\u201d.<\/p>\n

It could be a violent or magic-sounding philosophical concept put into the classic Dungeons & Dragons form of [NAME]\u2019s [ADJECTIVE] [NOUN], for example \u201cChurchland\u2019s Psychic Elimination\u201d or \u201cParmenides\u2019 Stasis Hex\u201d.<\/p>\n

It could just be a weird but amusing idea about how to apply a philosophical idea to combat, for example \u201cInverse Communion\u201d (turns your enemy\u2019s flesh into bread and their blood into wine, killing them instantly).<\/p>\n

It could be a summons, for example \u201cSummon p-zombie\u201d or \u201cSummon Euclidean Elemental\u201d<\/p>\n

It could be a terrible pun, for example \u201cCatatonic Imperative\u201d for a paralysis spell.<\/p>\n

It could even just be anything boring from philosophy that sounds like it would work in RPG combat (\u201cCreate a trolley to run over your enemies!\u201d) and let me think of a name for it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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So please pop over\u00a0chez lui<\/em> if you have any suggestion, forward this around to other geeks, and do cross-post your suggestions here, so I can chuckle and read them to my housemates. \u00a0Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve come up with so far:<\/p>\n