Jabbo's Postcave

(This is a revisit of the topic of an old post from 2014. And it's about Running the Transylvania Chronicles.)

Bad reasons to play the Transylvania Chronicles Your group can't decide whether they want to play Vampire the Masquerade in modern times or in the dark ages? Why not play both?

Sounds cool, right? Start in the 12th century play on to 1999! But it's not the same experience.

One of the core story elements in Vampire games is being manipulated by Elders. Either directly bossed around by less than subtle (and probably relatively young) Kindred, or being moved on the chess board by proper Elders and only learning in the aftermath (if at all) what really was going on.

It's immense fun to start out in the modern world as Neonates who haven't been Vampires for more than a decade or so. In TC, when you reach the modern world, you are Elders yourself. That has it's own appeal (see below), but it's a different game.

It's one of the most prolific Adventures in the classic WoD, so it's probably very well written and easy to run!

It's prolific, yes. And it's good, yes. But it's not well written and not easy to run. There are a lot of plot holes and gaps to fill. Expect to do a lot of work. You're not alone though. A lot of people have posted good ideas in the past, and Kelly Clark is running a good actual play series of it over on the DorkTales yt channel.

And this blog is my documentation and advice. So you're in the right place.

Good reasons to play the Transylvania Chronicles Play Vampire Elders whom you really know

Many players like to at least try to play Elders and find that it's a difficult thing to do. Sure, it's relatively easy to imagine to have so much power.

But to get into the mindset of a character that is centuries old? That's a tall order. What drives them? In what terms do they think about the world?

Instead of having a cold start with playing an Elder, the Transylvania Chronicles give you the opportunity to start out with this character when it is still a Neonate. Playing and developing the character over a course of eight centuries can not only be a rewarding experience in and of itself, it also makes it much easier to get into the character's head.

Witnessing key event in the World of Darkness timeline

TC not only takes you from the end of the 12th to the end of the 20th century, it also places you right in the middle of the action in a few key events of the WoD timeline, like the Anarch Revolt or the Council of Thorns.

You also get to meet a lot of the signature characters from the clan novels, like Anatole or Sascha Vykos.

I just published version 0.4 of my Emacs package Project Butler (it should hit Melpa in a few hours).

Customizable opening projects New default behaviour

A user pointed out that the defined window pattern of a project is applied within a window. So if a frame already has window splits, it doesn't yield the expected results. They suggested to run delete-other-windows by default before opening and applying the respective window pattern.

I implemented this as a customization variable project-butler-preparation which is a list of commands/functions to be run before applying the window pattern. I set the default to '(delete-other-windows) as the helpful user had suggested. (Thanks, vkazanov).

Customization example: dedicated buffer

Users who prefer other behaviour can customize this, e.g. to open the project and your window pattern in new frame:

(customize-set-variable 'project-butler-preparation '(other-frame-prefix))

More than one

The implementation as a list of functions enables users to call all sorts of other functions they'd like to run and/or to define their own ones. Imagine for example that you want keep the default behaviour, but you have some custom time keeping command that's supposed to run when you open a project. You could do something like this:

(customize-set-variable 'project-butler-preparation
                        '(my/start-timer delete-other-windows))

Customizable cleaning up

That, of course, made me think of closing projects and cleaning up. So I also introduced the customization option project-butler-cleanup-commands. By default, it still runs delete-other-windows and project-kill-buffers (without asking for confirmation).

Again, this is implemented as a list of functions to run. So, extending the example above, let's say you want to run a my/stop-time command:

(customize-set-variable 'project-butler-cleanup-commands
                        '(my/stop-timer
                          ( lambda () (project-kill-buffers  :no-confirm))
                          delete-other-windows))

Usually, the name of the function is enough. When you want to use parameters like the :no-confirm above, you'll have to define a custom function or use an anonymous function a.k.a. a lambda expression.

Aesthetically, I don't like the lambda expression, but defining a named function just to use a parameter feels like overkill. Maybe there's a more elegant way to do this?

Feedback

Ideas or general feedback are welcome! You can use the issues in the git repo, or my fediverse post.

A loose term with a fuzzy core

The "Small Internet" is not a well defined term. Neither is it well distinguished from similar terms like " Smolnet", " Small web", " Web0" 1 and others. It seems almost every person using the term "Small Internet" means something slightly different.

Where all these different meanings overlap, they form a fuzzy common core, though. That common core consists of (roughly) two statements:

1. The internet as we have it today is a bit shit.
2. To make it better we have to restrict the technologies we use.

Both require explanation, so here goes:

The internet is a bit shit

Try browsing the web. It almost feels like fighting, doesn't it? You want to run an ad blocker, you want protection against tracking, you have to fend off dark-patterned cookie consent banners etc.

That's shit.

Try reading a blog. Bloggers "optimize their content". Not for their readers, but for the search engine algorithms.

That's shit.

Try watching a video or listen to a podcast on one of the popular platforms. The creators have probably made an effort to please the platform's algorithm, not you. Not their viewers or listeners.

That's shit.

Try interacting with people you know and care about. Chances are WhatsApp, Gmail or one of the big social media platforms are involved. Each and every bit goes through the hands of one of the big tech companies. And again, they probably shape your interactions using their famed algorithms.

That's shit.

So, depending on where you're coming from (both in a literal and metaphorical sense), you'll bring varying levels of political considerations into this. You might say that the wild west era of the internet was the only real free speech phase of humankind. You might say that capitalism has - yet again - subdued and de-humanized a natural human process and imposed its own logic upon it. You might say that it's immoral to make you download and execute JavaScript code on your computer. Especially if it's proprietary code. Doubly so if the code serves no function but to spy on you. Or you might have a nostalgic longing 2 for "the good old days" when the internet mainly consisted of stuff that was made by people - not companies - and that was put online by people who cared about it, to be used by other people who might also care about it.

But whatever your flavour of the above is, the common core is a simple fact: surveillance capitalism has made the internet worse.

We have to restrict the technologies we use

So, whatever drives you - free speech, privacy, usability or nostalgia - we have to get rid of the big tech gatekeepers. They won't leave willingly, so we have to use technology that can't be (ab)used for commercial interests.

Paradoxically, that doesn't mean that we have to add ever more levels of complexity to the technology we use (I'm looking at you, blockchain!). Instead, we need to simplify it. And with that, I don't mean easier to use (though that's an important point, too). I mean simpler in structure, maybe even to a point where it becomes less convenient or less feature-rich.

Think of the fediverse, for example. Your Mastodon-, Pleroma- or whatever server doesn't offer you the feature of curating your home feed for you by some clever algorithm. It's just a timeline. Some people complain about that. They want an algorithm, but one that serves their own interest. And there's the problem. If the algorithm is there, it can be sold. All a big tech company needs to do is to wave a lot of money into the face of your instance admin and the algorithm no longer serves you but its new corporate master. That's why restricting the feature set works. What isn't there can't be sold.

Of course, the alternative is to make these technologies even simpler. So simple in fact, that they're not only easy to use, but also easy to run on your own hardware. If everyone ran their own instance just for themselves, timeline sorting algorithms could become a thing again.

• If it's simple, it probably misses features that can be monetized.
• If it's really simple, it can be used by everyone so we can have real decentralization.

Further things to look at

• Talk: Rocking the Web Bloat: Modern Gopher, Gemini and the Small Internet by James Tomasino
• Geminispace (a few useful hints can be found at my overview of the topic)
• Tildeverse / Pubnixes
• Gopherspace
• Twtxt

Footnotes: 1

Not really. As far as I can tell, no one is seriously using this term. It's just the people of the Small Technology Foundation making fun of web3 crypto bros. When serious, they usually speak of the " Small Web", as well.

2

Think back to the beginnings of the web, when people either ran their own webservers, had a public directory on some university's server or (towards the end of that era) had a site at GeoCities (before it was purchased by Yahoo). People published all sorts of material that was of personal importance to them. Some only curated lists of links to other people's material they cared about, which was useful because search engines weren't very good. I am aware that I'm glorifying that time, but this idealized image is still a good illustration of what the Small Internet as a cultural phenomenon is about: a spirit of small communities before commerce and the big players came along.

My Emacs package Project Butler has been accepted into Melpa.

It adds a further option to the project-switch-commands of the built-in project.el and opens buffers and lays them out for you.

It uses a very simple syntax to describe window layouts. For example, 1|2_3 results in a layout like this:

|----|----|
|    | 2  |
| 1  |----|
|    | 3* |
|----|----|

When set up for a project, all it takes is to switch to the project (e.g. by C-x p p ), choose the project, type “o”. And that’s it.

Optionally, the butler also cleans up after you.

This is my first emacs package. Also I’m not a programmer by trade, I only wrote this to scratch my own itch. Any constructive feedback is very welcome!

You can use the issues in the git repo, or my fediverse post for feedback:

Note: This post was originally published on my other (and back then: only) Website.

Video Series

I started a video series to demonstrate how I use the wonderful Emacs package Denote to implement a Zettelkasten.

The series will (probably) consist of five videos. So far, three have been published:

• Part 1: What do we need?

• Part 2: Search & Inspect
• Part 3: Links & Backlinks
• More to come:
  • Part 4: Literature Notes
  • Part 5: Putting Notes on a "Desk"

Feedback & Discussions Comment in the Fediverse

Feel free to comment and give feedback in the related thread in the fediverse:

Reddit

I also posted it to the Zettelkasten community on Reddit where a few discussions have been going on that might be interesting for you.

Note: This post was originally published on my other (and back then: only) Website.

tl;dr

• Hypertext is a way to overcome linearity of text corpora.
• Pure hypertext has the disadvantage of losing the sequentiality of argumentation it was written in.
• A Zettelkasten is hypertext plus sequentiality, if it has a way to designate sequences of notes.

TOC Preliminary Remark: Tim Berners-Lee and Hypertext

When Tim Berners-Lee (TBL) introduced the technology for the www and hypertext became an easy-to-implement concept for the first time, he criticised several problems with previous solutions for information management and classified these solutions as hierarchical tree systems and keyword catalogues.

He was right. Hierarchical tree systems and traditional index card catalogues have disadvantages and limitations, which can be views as incomplete approaches to overcoming linearity. His solution – Hypertext – overcomes linearity completely.

Zettelkasten

At first glance, a Zettelkasten as used by Niklas Luhmann is everything that TBL criticises: Sequences of notes, archived in a hierarchical tree structure. And these notes (mainly the beginning of sequences) have keywords.

However, because of the granularity of notes and the ability to link between them, a Zettelkasten is also hypertext. A Zettelkasten is hypertext plus a hierarchical tree structure and keywords.

One could argue that Luhmann's use of keywords and the hierarchy of his note's signatures (e.g. 1/9ca1b4) is just a byproduct of the fact that he implemented a hypertext system with handwritten paper notes.

And some people argue that all we need to implement a Zettelkasten is hypertext (preferably with backlinks). Others disagree and warn not to underestimate the power of the "Folgezettel".

While I do believe that there is not one single right way to do manage your knowledge storage, I believe that the sequentiality of Luhmann's system is more than just an obsolete byproduct, but has value on its own.

Clarification of terms: Sequentiality vs. Linearity

I just used the word sequentiality, which is not to be confused with linearity. So I'll attempt a definition of what I mean:

Definition Attempt:

• Linearity means that the reader is forced to read the text in a certain order.
• Sequentiality means that the reader can inspect the thought they're reading came to be in context of other thoughts: a sequence of thoughts.

So hypertext with sequentiality offers the reader the option to follow the author's thoughts in a linear way, but also the option to deviate from that path.

Beyond that, I see a surplus value in hypertext + sequentiality, which can described best by having a look at the disadvantages of pure hypertext corpora.

Disadvantages of pure hypertext corpora

When a hypertext corpus reaches a certain size, certain disadvantages become apparent:

1. lack of orientation

   Usually, the entry node has various links that refer to other parts of the text. The reader has some idea what is hidden behind the link (if they're semantically labelled and not like this: "click here!"), but they can't know which further links will be found there. In order to get to a certain passage in the text, there can be different paths through the structure of hyperlinks. These paths can lead in circles or result in long detours. Fun Fact: TBL describes this as "feeling lost in hyperspace".

2. lack of visible "chains" of thoughts

   If we assume that texts contain argumentations, i.e. sequences of statements reasons and conclusions, reading a pure hypertext corpus (depending on the path that has led one to the the current passage), can put the reader in the situation of reading a passage that relies on pieces of argumentation they haven't read yet. Inspecting backlinks might help, but it also might give the reader multiple link sources which have to be searched for the missing piece of argumentation or reasoning.

Pure hypertext corpora try to compensate for this with techniques like sitemaps, full-text search, tagging etc. Most of them don't fully establish sequentiality. And those that do don't emerge automatically by just writing your notes, but have to be maintained (sitemaps, indices etc.).

Zettelkasten: Hypertext plus Sequentiality

Luhmann's concept of a "Folgezettel" (a followup note) is a simple solution. If a given note can have multiple followup notes, but itself can be a followup of only one single other note, the result is full non-linearity (links to various followups and other links can be – well – followed) paired with an unambiguous sequentiality:

• If the reader wants to follow the author's chain of thoughts, they follow the sequence of followups "downwards".
• If the reader arrived at a thought by other paths (e.g. a manual hyperlink) and needs context to understand what they're reading, they follow the sequence "upwards".

For the author however, it doesn't take much effort, all they do is continue writing in sequence.

Keywords as entry points

Keywords don't have the function of linking related notes in a system like this. They mark useful entry points, mostly the beginning of sequences.

Comment in the Fediverse

Feel free to comment and give feedback in the related thread in the fediverse: