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PATRICIA EDGAR. Going Round the Twist with Telstra and the NBN Co
Posted on July 6, 2018 by Nicholas Gruen
Cross posted from John Menadue's Pearls and Irritations
NBN Co claims their 'focus remains strongly on improving customer experience on the network including a smooth connection to the network.' In fact the experience is a fiasco.
Bill Shorten says the dysfunctional NBN needs to lift its game, and under a Labor Government, the company will have to pay compensation to businesses and families who have been seriously inconvenienced by their incompetence. Appropriate standards and financial penalties would be determined in consultation with the ACCC, NBN, and other stakeholders.
We are told NBN installers missed more than 80,000 appointments in 2017and a report by the ombudsman in April this year found that complaints about the NBN increased 200% in the second half of 2017 to 22,827, most of which concerned service quality and delayed connections.
The installation partnership between NBN with Telstra as service provider requires the talents of Shaun Micallef and Charlie Pickering to make sense. It is impossible to work out who is responsible for the mess. The frustrations caused – when appointments are cancelled, missed and the ongoing harassment from Telstra callers who can't understand Australian English, who cannot deviate from the script in front of them, and it seems, can't keep accurate records from one call to the next – are enough to send someone round the twist. And of course you can never speak to the same person twice, if you can reach anyone at all.
My nightmare began November, 2017.
We own a holiday house at Anglesea where we require the internet to do our work. We have had an ADSL connection with Telstra which has cost $29.00 monthly over some years. Two years ago we began to receive letters insisting we must sign up to the NBN. I investigated the costs of connection and found the best deal I could get was $80.00 a month. When I queried this price, the Telstra salesman said, 'Life was tough.' So I waited. Late last year I was sent two threatening letters. The wiring would be removed from the street to the house if I didn't sign up. So I did.
The 'case manager', who spoke from a place unknown, said three appointments were required; dates were not negotiable. Two modems arrived separately in the mail. I made myself available on the set date for the first appointment which went smoothly. The technician, a local from Anglesea, took the second modem and told me he had seen up to five sent to a house. Further appointments were set and dates were cancelled with no reasons given. The second appointment didn't require entry to the house but the third took some time. Eventually we got a date confirmed which was meant to conclude the task. But no; that technician, who installed a small device, advised we would need a fourth appointment as Telstra had not done the work required for the phone connection.
Over six months later and through innumerable calls, when a script was read, and I had to repeat myself interminably – giving my name, DOB, being notified the call would be recorded for training purposes, then the history of the case reviewed – a date would be announced when I couldn't be in Anglesea. Such a deviation from the script – as saying there would be no one in the house on the stated date – would stymie the caller and they would have to play music while they went off- line, into the Telstra morass, to find someone who could deal with this intractable client.
After several such calls, I suggested the local technician from the first job could be given access to the house to complete the work. That was not acceptable. That technician, who works for Telstra, tried to get the job, but he had no success either. Technicians are sent far and wide, rarely doing jobs in their home territory, as those allocating the jobs live in Woop Woop and don't know their geography.
Then I received another threat: the service would be cancelled if I did not present on the day specified. I demanded my recorded discussions, where I railed about Telstra's extraordinary inefficiency, be forwarded to management. I then got a call from a manager who could speak English. He would sort out a convenient date. But two days after that call, when I thought all was resolved, I got another call. The previous manager was 'no longer with Telstra' so I was required to go through the story again. I lost my cool, so another manager got involved and a 'mutually agreeable' date was set for the fourth appointment. I waited at Anglesea that day and the technician didn't show up.
Meanwhile, we have been billed for the last four months for a phone connection we do not have. After an hour on the phone, we thought Telstra understood the problem, but the next bill was the same. A further call to Telstra uncovered the fact that our case had been lodged as a complaint. A manager needed to review the complaint, a process that takes weeks apparently.
This saga is to be continued…
A consumer has no chance of apportioning blame between the wholesaler and the retail internet provider. Both Telstra and the NBN companies seem to be unmanageable and both need a monumental shake up.solution; where to now?
Now, it seems Telstra could clean up its act by purging 8000 staff. Mr Penn says it will lead the way with the 5G mobile rollout, offer unlimited data free and split its infrastructure and retail operations. Who then would want the NBN? The government will undoubtedly write off its $74 billion tax-payer-funded loss-making misfortune and Telstra will possibly pick it up at a bargain price. Those of us who have been coerced in acquiring the Turnbull hybrid will need, when the projected roll-out is complete in 2020-22, to have all the old copper wiring replaced to ensure reliable broadband access.
Welcome to Turnbull's innovation nation. What is it I am missing?
Patricia Edgar is a media sociologist and the producer of the television series Round the Twist
This entry was posted in Economics and public policy, Innovation, IT and Internet. Bookmark the permalink.
38 Responses to PATRICIA EDGAR. Going Round the Twist with Telstra and the NBN Co
You misunderstand agility. When Turnbull talks agility he is talking about agile excuse-making, not agile service delivery. If only you would update your understanding of agility then all would be well.
As a last resort I suggest writing an old fashioned letter to Andrew Penn politely outlining your concerns. Not many people get worked up enough to sit down and write a letter to a CEO, it worked for me.
Where I live Telstra and the NBN in the same sentence is considered a sick joke, the horror stories, especially from businesses, are legion.
And sacking 25% of the Telstra workforce is going to fix this mess, really?
Andrew Penn
Office Of The CEO
conrad says:
"What is it I am missing?"
Unlimited 5G doesn't mean you will get decent speed — it has limited total bandwidth too, so you will simply get the same problems. Thus fixed lines will still have higher total bandwidth and be cheaper. Even now, for example, 4G probably has enough speed for most people (you could stream HD videos), except we don't get the maximum possible speed due to network traffic.
On a different note, where I live, I had the great experience of guys coming around to give me the NBN, installing it, and then telling me I had to change over in a year (which was okay, because my current connection is pretty average). After about 10 months, I rang my provider and there is no NBN service in my neighborhood, despite everyone seemingly having the cable. God knows what is really going on.
Around my neck of the woods it's odd , they have done fixed wireless for a smallish outlying Village about 20 k away (and 20 k further from the main trunk lines) yet there is no sign of NBN in town.
BTW What is harder to understand is the amount of fairly high density mixed commercial-residential areas within 6 k of Martin Place that have still not been done.
Feel that eventually much of the spend on the NBN will have to be written – shifted to public debt. There's no way that they can charge city areas enough to cover the costs of doing NBN in a rural town such as Braidwood -about 600 buildings about 90 k from anywhere . It probably would have been better to ,leave the cities to the market to sort out and have had a straight out publy funded cross-subsidy for regional and remote areas.
I totally agree — if they charged enough to get their money back, presumably companies like TPG would just undercut them with their own network in high density places.
If they charged enough to get a reasonable return very few would (willingly) use it.
Gather that currently around 20 percent or less of all NBN users account for the majority of the NBNs total volume of downloads and uploads.
Graham Young says:
The lesson here should be obvious. Grandiose schemes dreamed up by politicians on the back of a drinks coaster are always going to underperform against reality, and what private business would have done on a for-profit basis. She wants to blame Turnbull, but she should be blaming Rudd and the arrogance of central-planning.
Moz of Yarramulla says:
It's interesting to compare this to Aotearoa, where central government issued a mandate to the infrastructure part of the former monopoly telco (Chorus) and after some token genuflections to the market (all hail the holy market!) it's a Chorus project. Now they're arguing about whether the gigabit rollout should be done while the basic 50Mbits rollout isn't finished (Australia has taken the other approach, compromising quality and price to get faster delivery).
This article has an amusing attempt by the (Labour) opposition to make the NBN look better than what NZ has. And it works, as long as you ignore the cost and connection speed. And rollout speed. And coverage*:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/chorus-announces-second-stage-of-ufb-fibre-rollout-across-new-zealand/
We've all seen how much fun handing a natural monopoly over to the market is, and trying to create a competitive market in landlines comes down to just how much you're willing to pay for duplicate infrastructure in order to make your point. The idea that two (or three, or…) copies of the NBN competing with each other can be cheaper than one copy … I struggle to understand how that would work.
I suppose the obvious answer is like it does in the US – there are competing networks with strict geographic separation except in very high population density areas where duplication can be profitable. If you don't like your local internet monopolist you're free to move to somewhere with a different one.
* I am reminded of "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
Australia is almost thirty times the landmass of NZ ,but only has about 20 million more people -Comparisons are likely to be unhelpful.
I guess the biggest , if only, of the NBN story is , if only Telstra had been split years ago.
Whereas the US has more people, so comparisons are also unhelpful? What we need is a country the same as Australia except for the single variable in question. Hmm.
If we can't learn from others I guess we have to learn from experience. If only that was a trait Australian voters valued in politicians.
The Australian continent is quite unique: its a small country spread over vast distances.
Its also the driest inhabited continent.
Only a tiny fraction ( about 5%) of our soils are even vaguely arable by normal standards.
An extraordinary percentage of the continents vegetation-ecosystems are dependent on wildfire to reproduce and also dependent on birds or bats for pollination.
One of the main lessons of the past 200 years of is that what works fine in the US, the UK or in Europe dosn't always work that well here.
But John, the other 80% of Australians live in a country about twice the size of NZ that has 4x the population. There are more people in Sydney than in NZ… but NZ spent less to get better broadband than Sydney has. By your argument it's New Zealand that should be struggling to get broadband and the Brisneybourne conurbation should be upgrading their gigabit fibre to the home to something even better.
Yes, getting broadband to the other 10% or 20% of Australians is an expensive exercise, involving satellites and racism. But note that I am talking about Australians not Australia. No-one cares whether a wombat burrow in the Tarkine has access to the internet (except possibly you). We care about whether the people up the way from that burrow have internet access.
Moz agree that its really hard to understand why
places like Redfern and the like are still not completed.
The NBN has recently published an analysis of individual usage rates for the just under 4 million premises that are connected:
"The data showed that usage demands in April were very similar across our Fixed Line footprint regardless of the technology an end user was on.
The first notable finding to come out of this research – which focused on usage across the month of April – was that across the total 3.7 million end-user premises on the nbn™ access network, median data consumption came in at 108GB while average consumption was 190GB for the month.
When we drilled down into why the median was significantly lower than the average, we found an answer: just 14 per cent of end-user premises accounted for 50 per cent of total traffic across all nbn™ access network technologies.
At one end of the scale we had one per cent of end-user premises download in excess of 1 Terabyte (TB) each a month.
But blowing all of those away was Australia's biggest downloader for April: a residential end-user premises on a 100/40Mbps retail plan who consumed a whopping 23.59TB of data in just one month. To put this in perspective, that is the equivalent of downloading about 5000 DVDs."
"These raw numbers paint an interesting profile of how much bandwidth Australians are using across the nbn™ access network. However, perhaps our most surprising finding was that – with the exception of our Fixed Wireless and Satellite access networks which are subject to capacity constraints – end users on HFC/FTTN/FTTP networks all had very similar usage demands, particularly on higher speed plans."
We struggle to use more than about 400GB/mo despite having far better than NBN internet speeds. The problem is peak hour congestion, where it doesn't matter how many people want to use the internet, our 100Mbits nominal can only deliver 50-80Mbits. Since we lack the desire to torrent our TV watching we are limited to what we can get when want to watch. That appears to be 400GB/mo. It did go up about 10% when our peak hour speed went from 40-60Mbits to the current 50-80.
My theory is that if we had more speed we'd watch higher-def video, and possibly more of it (less time watching it buffer). The question of when we'd peak out is unanswerable (the political cost of getting the results would exceed any technical benefit of knowing).
But there is also the problem that right now we can't do some things that we'd like to do, at all. VR chat just doesn't work without a consistent 20Mbits upload, and we only get that at unsociable hours. So… would we bother with VR if it worked? Ditto for a bunch of other things.
Those NBN figures seem to indicate that something like 30% or more of those curently connected have for whatever reasons little need-use for it.
For them opting out, shifting to cheaper ( even if inferior) 5G connections must in time be a real possibility and that raises the question: do we effectively place a tax on those opting out so as to subsidise the NBN? And that also raises the question: is any of this adding enough to net national productivity to justify the compulsory monopoly model?
I see it very differently: how do we regulate a natural monopoly to get the best outcome for everyone? Both the state-imposed "only Telecom is permitted to own POTS" and the free-market "we seem to have ended up with only Comcast providing internet access" have the same result: one provider, take it or leave it. Only a heavily regulated market can fragment that monopoly, and the cost of that appears to be uneven provision, poor service and extra cost (Canada and the UK, for example).
You seem to think that it's so obviously worth paying for multiple competing networks that we needn't discuss it. But I really don't see the advantage of a commercial competition model. As an engineer I can see some advantage to a robust, resilient set of semi-independent networks that might justify a degree of extra cost. Encouraging fibre + copper + radio as competing providers for example. But just having three equivalent sets of cables in the same trench in every street… what's the point? Who benefits from that type of competition?
The real irritation (to me) is when monopoly provision is overlaid with a confusopoly, the way electricity and cellphone "markets" have done. That's almost the worst of both worlds, except that having multiple physical-layer networks plus a confusopoly has been used to show that a single physical layer provider is actually better.
I don't think anyone in government has the combination of brilliance and power to have done that deliberately, but it is a very effective demonstration of the problem of partial market approaches.
It would have been better if we could have split Telstra.
Is the NBN is a natural monopoly? that argument is I think not settled , yet.
Point is the business model for the NBN was predicated on it becoming something that would attract private investors i.e return something like 5% and therefore (eventually) shift much or most of the build costs off the governments bottom line.
BTW I hadn't checked the NBN rollout map for sometime, they have now covered quite a bit of Sydney and Canberra or are in the active build stage ( but for some reason not the area near to the Sydney Technology park ). My town is slated for fiber to the curb by the end of next year.
Of the people we know in Canberra the bigger issue is not speed , they are not big users of bandwidth, rather its the fact that all too often it dosn't work at all.
Also "little need for it" and "don't use much data" are unrelated statements. You definitely cannot take one as indicating the other.
Especially these days when the government is increasingly requiring internet access as a condition of receiving services. To someone fit and able the choice "10 minutes online, an hour on the phone, or an hour or two visiting an office" is merely a trade-off between the value of your time and and the stupidity of the website. To someone with a disability the equation can easily be "an hour online, hope the NRS is working, or pay to get to an office and hope it's accessible". The fact they only use 100MB/mo is completely irrelevant, taking it away would kill some of them (look at the UK if you doubt the literal truth of that statement).
At the more trivial level, my parents are in their 70's and were reluctant adopters of even ADSL. They were pushed into that by my grandmother getting Skype :) But now that they have fibre they have gone from "internet is for seeing mum" to "what do you mean my video clip is still uploading? This is ridiculous". Sure, it's just an incessant stream of random gibberish but it means a lot to them that all of their family get to see the kitchen reno. And yes, at 4k because who has time to fiddle with tiny little settings somewhere in the four hundred sub-menus on a phone? They have *grandchildren* to WhatsBook and InstraTweet at. Last time I looked they were heading towards 1TB/mo between two people. We manage 400GB between 4 or 5.
(actually, I kid: my mother has gone into some depth on the relative merits of various anti-social networks and which ones are best for different things).
Am told that a lot of the people that Canberra-Goulburn Anglicare cares for don't have a fixed line at all, the NBN is not that relevant for them . (and quite a few can't afford both heating and eating, let alone the web)
Needs vary a lot across "the disabled" especially if you include "the elderly". "the" monolithic {cough}. I'm somewhat aware of some of the variation thanks to a lot of blog-following and various friends. Stuff like the ever-stupid "that homeless person isn't really poor, they have a smartphone" is hate speech*, to give one example.
One person I know who's now in a wheelchair despite a PhD (who'd have thought that that intelligence isn't a protective factor for MS?) tells me, with vigor, that the only thing worse that the horrible, horrible mess of variously accessible government websites is being condemned to visit a Centrelink office. And their disability is mostly "just" fine motor control.
The government policies of enforced poverty are a somewhat unrelated problem, though.
(* good luck crafting a definition of hate speech that doesn't cover it)
Regardless of the exact label it is not inline with the intention of the second great commandment.
BTW it seems ridiculous, and wasteful for all ,that somebody with a condition like MS ,where diagnosis etc is pretty clear cut, has to on a regular basis ''do anything much ' re Centrelink .
You do want regular reviews and updates so that when for example the local supplier of wheelchair transport ups their rates the increase in rebates happens promptly, but only for those affected. Or when the operational parameters change there's a process that leads to "and we now cover your not-causally-related but necessary medication X". Ideally there'd be an assigned case-worker somewhere so that "missed appointment" is noticed in time to find out "patient slipped off wheelchair and has been trapped in hallway" before it becomes "deceased was…". But I digress.
I hesitate to speculate, but I suspect that much of the work is part of a job-creation strategy. By regularly improving everything from the legislation to the office layout people are kept employed at a variety of levels. One feature of the ongoing improvement process is occasional changes in the specific details required from subjects of the various systems. Even just subtle changes in labels should be confirmed, so you want the not-medically-trained call-centre worker to confirm that NEHTA code 1234: Huntington-Barr Syndrome is the same disability that was previously listed as "Barr-Floyd Cryptogenesis Disorder". It sounds stupid. But the alternative is that after a transcription error or two and the odd guess, now Centrelink believes they have Bovine Tuberculosis. So we want the confirmations. I say that even though it seems overwhelmingly more common that the random errors are in the direction of "not entitled to benefit".
it can also have the flavour of Joseph Heller crossed with Kurt Gödel.
In our town ,for many years our ecumenical community care society had an arrangement with the local RSL club re vouchers for hot showers for those in need. About two years ago the club received a phone call from a new unknown government office about 90 k from here wanting to set up a system for , vouchers for hot showers …
About the same time that same new office defunded a community group in Queanbeyan that had for many years owned and operated housing for the homeless Etc and then funded a new organisation that nobody had even heard off.( I think that one was eventually sorted.)
A lot of people work pretty long hours these days.
On a typical day they might catch news breakfast. Tend to get home at around 7pm (or later ). Then it's cook eat dinner, feed the pet ,attend to emails and Skype OS biz contacts , and then maybe watch an hour of Netflix before, so to bed.
For them surely it's not really about the speed rather it's the reliability of service that matters.
In general, yes, but there is a floor. That's imposed as much by the content providers as any theoretical understanding of information transfer.
One sad example is that the SMH and Age websites used to have excellent text-only versions of most of their stories but stopped updating those pages a few years ago. Checking now, it redirects to the "full" user page where 300 words turns into 160kB of text plus images and a video. So now you need a megabit/s or more just to read the daily newspaper in a day when even crappy dial-up used to be ample. Luckily it's mostly inside script tags so I believe screen-readers still work (they like blind people as long as they're rich enough to afford broadband).
The my.gov website is, astonishingly, worse. The landing page is 8kB but after that they vomit half a megabyte of garbage onto every page and impose short time-outs, so if you don't have at least fast ADSL you are SoL. I have mentioned this via their contact page but …
Moz would have thought that if I ,living in a nice turnip in the country ,have few problems re downloading the Fin, utube etc then it would be the same for most Australians? Am I wrong?
Most, sure, just like most Australians have annual incomes over $30,000.
Read some of the NBN horror stories. There are parts of even newish suburbs where 10Mbits downloads are an aspirational goal.
But I'll be honest, I've always been able to choose to live where better internet is available, and been able to afford to pay a premium for it. Right here I could be on ADSL at 15-20Mbits and only pay $50/mo or so, but I pay twice that to get 100Mbits. When we were buying I was very keen to live in a FTTH area but we couldn't afford to, but we equally couldn't afford to live with ADSL because we both work from home at times. So my knowledge is largely media based rather than actually knowing anyone.
Unfortunately there are too many in my
community who have to choose between heating and eating.
I sincerely mean no offence but your concerns about the max downloads speeds of the top 20%
seems awful ,cold.
So you're suggesting we cancel the NBN and focus on ending poverty?
I wasn't aware that this discussion was about that kind of heat-or-eat poverty, but you've brought it up twice now in response to "internet access is important". So yeah, I guess first we end the Liberal party control of federal parliament (because they regard poverty as a useful tool "pour encourager les autres"…)
Personally I think the government should be capable of doing more than one thing at a time, and I aspire to the same thing. So I am simultaneously of the view that destroying the Great Barrier Reef is a dumb idea and a bad policy (that darn Liberal Party again), that ending poverty is something I'm willing to pay more tax to achieve (I vote and donate Green), and that there are far too many people in the world (the question is which pandemic will the the first to kill a billion people, not whether one will… barring some other catastrophe). But even while juggling those and a hundred other concerns, I still think that Australians should have access to decent internet, and that "can read a newspaper online" should not be the definition of broadband.
Look the NBN was supposed to be off the budget -a profitable investment .
It's not, therefore how much we spend must be weighed against other needs and priorities.
I simply can't see the NBN as a pressing need benefit for the poor it seems to be of most benefit to the relatively well off.
I'd love to hear your views on the JSF then. You must be absolutely incandescent.
The decision that the NBN should make a loss was put to the electorate and they decided that that was what they wanted. As has become something of a cliche "Malcolm promised that the NBN would be an expensive failure and he's going to keep that promise". But then, this is the electorate that thinks genocide is a great idea and climate change is someone else's problem. As Gareth Morgan said the other day "most of them are idiots".
Of course this is politics, so whatever is actually delivered will be a "success" as measured by the government of the day, just as all political programs are – we "stopped the boats" (whatever the cost), we "supported our allies in Afghanistan" (modulo the collapse of civil society, a few war crimes, and the odd by of Nazi imagery), we "added a million jobs this year decade" (however precarious and low-paid).
The NBB was conceptually ,intrinsically redistributive. But that doesn't mean that the NBS is intrinsically progressive.
The comments thread is getting too squeezed.
The NBN is a compromise – we are a democracy .
Going of the NBN rollout map they have covered a lot of ground in the last two years.
Going of what I have heard it seems that the Fttp to all (but a relatively few isolated premises ) would have cost and have taken way too long. And that because of the binding high $ contracts that were signed in the years before the 2013 change of government ,cancellation of the whole thing was not really an option. Least that is reportedly the argument that was presented to Abbott ( who reportedly wanted to can the whole thing ).
Therefore some kind of ' near enough ' NBN became the result.
Personally I cant really accept that a fttp NBN to all homes is progressively redistributive enough to justify spending say $60 billion or more of public money on it – there must be more efficient better targeted ways of improving the lives of the poor.
Given that Australia is a net importer of IP -for example movies ,music, software and books and also buys a lot of general OS stuff online:
Is it possible that the NBN might in time generate a lot more for the likes of Netflix, Facebook and other entities based in Luxembourg than it does for Australia?
Yes, just as our roads and schools do. Tax evasion by multinationals, including "australian" multinationals, is no reason to stab ourselves in the eye.
The flip side is that decent broadband could be a competitive advantage, or worse, it could be the bare minimum needed to keep up. The thing about the internet is that it's proven even less easy to predict than other infrastructure, and it removes scaling constraints in unexpected ways. Sure, the obvious stuff like outsourcing medical interpretation and exam marking can use selective allocation of broadband (both are downsides of broadband in that sense – we're buying overseas IP/exporting jobs). But that also risks forcing the next great idea overseas before it goes anywhere, rather than making it an Australian idea that goes global. With poor access, though, we're doomed to be buyers rather than sellers. And that goes right down the scale to stuff like the GGG sale… sure, it's only $100M or so, but they also have 100-odd local staff and that's likely to grow rather than shrink with the sale.
You obviously see internet access as a nice to have, and faster internet is somewhat better than slower internet, but it's not worth spending much money on. But if you think that no NBN, or a shitty NBN, is going to mean cheaper internet overall… I disagree with you there too. More likely it'll be the existing confusopoly all over again. We're already seeing competitive overbuilding, and the money for that has to come from somewhere.
Whether the Australian political system is capable of rolling out a program as large as the NBN without completely screwing it up is I agree, an open question and the evidence is not great. Likewise the various questions about how vigorously we should punish the poor, both Australian and non. (Victoria slashing early childhood education in order to afford a new private prison would be hilarious as a Utopia episode but sadly it actually happened).
Moz I didn't make the choice I'm not the government, and with all respect perhaps the reason why this particular and relatively small thing looks so big to you is because it's the only thing you can see?
rog says:
You can lay the blame squarely at the feet of the govt, for selling off telstra. Had it remained in govt hands separation could have proceeded and fibre would have been quietly laid. But the attraction of the pot of cash, and offloading the rotten copper onto the public, was too great.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing


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The Blue Fairy with her team of trainees, Pinocchio and Geppetto (aka, l to r, Aadeetri Pandey, Sydney Newbern, Anna Ciccozzi, Indira Weed, Nika McLaughlin, Jacob Juneau, and Annie Ferrara).
Years ago, my ninth-grade daughter learned that she would not be able to play both tennis and volleyball, because they occurred during the same season. Not content to let my daughter lounge around watching One Tree Hill reruns, my wife required my daughter to try out for our spring musical, Bye Bye Birdie. While initially reluctant, my daughter wound up participating in musicals all four years of high school and to this day has a deep appreciation for the theater.
I tell this story on the heels of watching our Lower School musical, My Son Pinocchio, Jr. and marveling at the large cast, fabulous costuming, and professional staging. Jacob Juneau as Geppetto and Anna Ciccozi as the Blue Fairy were particularly outstanding, but Tyler Bloomfield was a definite showstopper as Professore Buonragazzo, the mad scientist. The show is short, only an hour or so, but it is well worth watching and supporting our youngest thespians.
The arts at an independent school often go unremarked upon except for times of performance, and in this, I am as guilty as anyone else, but it is also an amazing thing to watch when students work so hard for so long to create a performance. It is a magical transformation at any level, and to see the intensity and dedication our youngest students have demonstrated in creating a musical still amazes me even after watching student theater for many years.
Having watched my daughter become enamored with Les Miserables, Rent, and Sweeny Todd, and listening to her sing show tunes mixed in with Taylor Swift and 50 Cent, I am reminded that independent schools are incredible incubators, not only for talent, but also for interest. With their participation in the Lower School musical, our Ellis Hall students have already begun a lifetime of enjoyment, and their lives will be all the richer for it.
So let me encourage our parents and students to take an hour out of your weekend to go and support our burgeoning pool of acting talent. It is a truly great part of what makes North Cross a special place.
Christian J. Proctor, PhD
Dr. Proctor is the ninth Head of School at North Cross and has served as such since 2011. He has more than 30 years of experience in education. He has served as headmaster at Porter-Gaud School in Charleston, South Carolina, St. Martin's Episcopal School in Metairie, Louisiana, Grace Episcopal School in Monroe, Louisiana, and as Interim Headmaster at Wesley Academy in Houston, Texas. In each location, Dr. Proctor's tenure was marked by creativity, innovation, and school growth.
Dr. Proctor earned his Bachelor's Degree in Geology from Colgate University, a Master's Degree in Geology from Duke University, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A native of Chapel Hill, NC, Dr. Proctor and his wife, Ellie, have two children, Katherine and Andrew '14.
He can be reached at cproctor@northcross.org.
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Plunkett Research Online: Feld Entertainment Inc
FELD ENTERTAINMENT INC (Private) Company Profile, Corporate Revenues, Growth, Market Size, Analysis, Business Forecasts, Market Share, Metrics, SWOT
Feld Entertainment, Inc. is a producer of branded live entertainment shows. The firm's shows, performed in 75 countries, include performances on ice, interactive shows and around the track by both people and characters. Disney on Ice is an ice skating show that combines professional ice skaters an.....
FELD ENTERTAINMENT INC
Ticker: Private
Address: 800 Feld Way
Palmetto, FL 34221 United States
Kenneth Feld CEO
Feld Entertainment, Inc. is a producer of branded live entertainment shows. The firm's shows, performed in 75 countries, include performances on ice, interactive shows and around the track by both people and characters. Disney on Ice is an ice skating show that combines professional ice skaters an.....See More See More


Global GPR Services expains the basic principals of how Ground Penetrating Radar works from GPR data collection to final analysis and a chart of the potential exploration depth for GPR to answer the question - How Deep Can It Go.
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text:
DBF kan syfta på:

 DBF – förkortning för De Blindas förening, se De blindas förening
 DBF – tidigare namn på en intresseorganisation för synskadade i Sverige Djurens befrielsefront
 DBF – ett vänsterextremt djurrättsförespråkande nätverk, se Demokrati för Barns Framtid

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


It's been a while since we've had an episode of Clueless Gamer, but Conan is back and wilder than never. Wiz Khalifa joins Conan to play through some of the campaign of Gears of War 4. Although, most of the video is featured on them lighting up and having the munchies than actually playing the game.
Gears of War 4 Ultimate Edition is out today on Xbox One and Windows 10. It will release on Tuesday the 11th for the general public.


text:
Q: Best way to upgrading Servers from 2008 R2 to 2012 R2 I have 50+ Windows Servers with 2008 R2 OS, they have diverse roles installed, like some are DCs with DNS, DHCP, etc. Some are File Servers, Print Servers, WTS Servers, IIS and so on. They are all VmWare VMs. We are planning to upgrade them to 2012 R2. The question is about the best and not-so-painful way to do this. Some guys suggested me to create secondary VMs and install 2012 R2 on it, migrate the roles and then turn off the old ones. I have even tested in lab the media (in-place) upgrade with DC roles and all the stuff installed and working. It upgraded surprisingly quite easily and fast, and everything came back normally. But I don't know if this is the best practice. Do you guys have any suggestion?
Thanks in advice.

A: I have had great success with Inline Upgrades and this is going to be the norm moving forward.   Legacy administrators will be stuck in legacy ways administrating systems.   Microsoft has overhauled its inline process to ease the burdens of past experiences.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Life insurance, or life assurance, is a policy that can help give you peace of mind if you fear passing away, and leaving your family unable to support themselves. As a result its an important decision to take. And getting a good life insurance policy is equally important to ensure you have high quality coverage. After all, its not worth getting something thats cheap from brokers or companies that you can't trust, because after all its an important insurance buying decision, and not one you'll want to take lightly.
So get a life insurance policy that you can really trust. One way to go about this is to get advice about life insurance from the insurers themselves. Theyll be able to make clear what variety of insurance policies are available, and what extras can be added on. Of course, the best policy is the one you never have to get paid out, but even though you ultimately want to stay healthy, you still need to ensure that just in case the worst happens, you've got to be sure that the policy is good enough.
Once you've decided what life insurance policy you want, then through our online comparison system, we can help you find quotes for you to compare. The quotes all come from companies in the UK, and we hope you can find one that matches your needs.


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Posts tagged 'd&d'
Dungeon Full of Monsters
Dungeon Full of Monsters is a modular megadungeon for use with Labyrinth Lord and other old school fantasy role-playing games.
The Dungeon is Modular
The megadungeon is composed of 50 individual sections, separated into 5 different levels. You can assemble these in any configuration you like, either randomly or not, either before the campaign or on-the-fly in play. You can also use these sectiosn on their own, without reference to the larger dungeon itself.
And Full of Monsters
The second half of the book contains dozens of monsters, illustrated in full colour, often with multiple variations and types. Combined with the unique monsters located in specific dungeon sections, this book contains over 150 different monster stat blocks. There are criminal organizations, insane cultists, meddling deities, evil wizards, undead kings, infernal demons and other invaders from beyond the stars, numerous unspeakable horrors and arcane beasts, and even a few rival adventurers. Use these monsters with this dungeon or any other.
Specific conversion guidelines for The Nightmares Underneath are also provided.
Dungeon Full of Monsters was written by Johnstone Metzger and illustrated by Nathan Jones.
The digital pdf is Letter sized 5.5 by 8.5 inches, 352 pages, and also comes with a file containing only the dungeon maps, and a file containing only the monster illustrations. The print version is US Trade sized 6 x 9 inches, 352 pages, and is available in both softcover and hardcover.
Buy it at DriveThruRPG.
Tags: books, d&d, dnd, dungeons & dragons, johnstone, Labyrinth Lord, modules, Monthly Monsters, old school, Patreon, The Nightmares Underneath
The Caves of Moreau County
The Caves of Moreau County is an adventure module for Labyrinth Lord (i.e. B/X). The various sections of this dungeon are random and modular — there is no mandated way for them to fit together. You can generate the actual structure of the dungeon before you play, or do it during the game, partly in response to the players' decisions.
The dungeon consists primarily of beastmen in caves with a few twists and buried secrets. It is a fairly dark adventure, written from the perspective of murderhobo PCs. It's gritty, horror-saturated old school fantasy, in case that is or isn't your bag. Or just check it out for yourself, since you can get it for free if you want to.
This module was created to be a proof-of-concept prototype, to see how well this format works, and what needs to be done to make it work better. As such, the text is released under a Creative Commons license and the PDF is offered here as Pay What You Want. Monetary support goes towards creating more role-playing game materials. If you enjoy this module, you might also consider purchasing some of my other books, if you haven't already.
LINK BELOW
The Caves of Moreau County is available in PDF from DriveThruRPG.
And in print from Lulu (6×9, staple-bound, cream pages, B&W printing, US$10).
Some Design Notes:
Because this is a prototype made in preparation for a larger project (related to my Monthly Monsters project on Patreon), I don't mind critiquing it or offering my thoughts on how it could be done better.
The sections in The Caves of Moreau County are fairly small, mostly limited to one room each. I think this would work better with larger sections, maybe small collections of rooms, or several rooms that comprise the lair of a particular monster, or a type of monsters. So, probably something more akin to a series of modular one-page dungeons, though many sections would be smaller than your typical OPD, I would think.
There's only a few connections between rooms—the ritual room leads directly to the tomb of saints, for example—and only a few rooms lead back to rooms that are already on the map. I'd like to insert more connections of that sort, including secret passageways, and links between different dungeon levels.
In general, this is also a fairly small dungeon, with twenty rooms and only a few different types of monsters. More variance in the wandering monster tables would definitely be a plus.
Tags: adventure, d&d, dnd, dungeons & dragons, Labyrinth Lord, modules, Monthly Monsters, Moreau County, old school
5e D&D getting reaction tables, morale scores
You read it here first.
From Mike Mearls' AMA on Reddit.
Tags: 5e, d&d, playtest
5e D&D's Advantage/Disadvantage rules
Roger at Roles, Rules and Rolls has a great post exposing the probabilities of the the Advantage/Disadvantage rules called D&D Next: (Dis)advantage. Go check it out for a succinct discussion of the bonus (and penalty), and why it's different than a flat +/-3.
5e D&D Playtest, Session 3
Tonight I ran another session of the D&D Playtest, picking up right where we left off last time, with the enemies of the party's new goblin friend running off yelling "Bree-yark" and talking about getting "the Ogre". The session was very surprising. Rather than give a blow-by-blow, I'll give the short version: the party killed the Ogre, but were driven off by the goblin chieftain and his troupe–who actually chased the party halfway back to town.
Here's what we learned:
Magic Missile isn't at all over-powered when you're not fighting Kobolds.
The "laser cleric" effect only happens if your cleric's player can manage to hit.
The Ogre can take out half the Fighter's hit points in one hit.
Advantage should probably be called "Huge F**king Advantage".
Being prone is brutal.
The whole Hit Dice/Healing Surge thing is not as huge as I thought.
These don't feel like first level characters.
Narrative creativity can come back to bite you in the ass.
Honestly, I was surprised I didn't manage to drop a PC tonight. I was disappointed too, because I wanted to try out the Dying rules. I got the Dwarf down to 1 hit point, but the Cleric and Wizard saved her bacon. It felt pretty epic, actually. I planned to have the Ogre hit to subdue and tuck her into his sack for later, but he couldn't get a swing in.
The players used all their tactical advantages. They threw a stone with a Light spell so they could loose arrows and spells into the goblin ranks. They used the hallway to bottle up the enemy and a Sleep spell to separate the Ogre from his allies. They used Ray of Frost to pin the Ogre down. And they were pretty canny with their movement too, darting in to hit and then running back to cover to deny the goblins one of their main advantages–lots of arrows.
I made two major tactical errors. The first was not realizing the Ogre had spears for throwing, so he spent a few rounds closing with the PCs, and when he was frozen in place by the Wizard, that bought the PCs precious rounds to maneuver and heal.
The second was when I had the PCs goblin buddy show up and order the five or so allies he'd rounded up from the tribe tackle the Ogre, who was "frozen in ice" as part of the Ray of Frost effect. I thought this was a really cool image: the wild-eyed Ogre, struggling to break free of the ice encasing him, rocked like a statue and toppled to the ground.
Naturally, the players used this against me. 🙂
On the Ogre's turn, I narrated him throwing off the goblins and standing up, then running over to the delicious dwarf, mouth watering. The players successfully lobbied for a Strength check. Then, in a fit of soft-heartedness, I let myself be convinced that the goblins should have Advantage, because there were so many of them. (My reasoning was that they are Medium sized creatures, there are five of them, and the Ogre is only Large. I regret this line of reasoning now.)
Turns out that even a monster with 18 Strength has a tough time against Advantage. I wonder if I should have granted the Ogre Disadvantage instead? The players seemed to enjoy rooting (and rolling) for the goblins, who proceeded to hold the Ogre down for three rounds while the Fighter and the Cleric went to town on him, also with Advantage. They took him apart.
They players wisely decided to run, although the Wizard had a Burning Hands in reserve, so they might have actually prevailed. I think had we had our fourth player (the Rogue couldn't make it) it would have been much less of a nail-biter. People have been saying that these characters are overpowered. They certainly are a hell of a lot more capable than B/X D&D characters. I'd rate them at about 4th level for B/X D&D. Probably about 2nd or 3rd for 3e D&D. I haven't played a ton of 4e, but 4e characters seemed invulnerable at first level. The two players who have done a lot of 4e mentioned that 4e PCs "never run" and that they liked having to leg it home.
The Cleric player missed all night, so the complaints about his at-will attack were a non-issue for us. The Wizard's magic missile, that seemed so infinitely deadly in the earlier fights, was also a bit of a non-issue. He couldn't reliably kill a goblin with one shot, and since I had the cowardly goblins take cover between shooting, he didn't have a lot of second chances.
Because I wanted to try out the Short Rest/Healing Surge/Hit Dice rules, the players humored me and bandaged up after losing the goblins in the forest (an opposed check, if you're keeping track). The cleric, who was at 1 hit point, gained back a whopping 2 hit points. The fighter, who was also close to zero, managed to get herself up to half by spending a Hit Die and getting a Cure Light from the cleric. All in all, it didn't seem too over powered. They certainly didn't feel like they were in any position to return to the fight, especially with the goblins out in force. It felt more like insurance against bad luck on the way home.
On the other hand, it's a little disappointing to me to know that they will rest up for a night back in town and be up to full everything. They're averaging one cave per 24 hour period, and at this rate I'll have to rename the dungeon "Caves of Law Abiding Beastmen and Corpses" in about a week. 🙂
5e D&D pushing sandbox play?
I played 5e again last Friday. The players ambushed a couple of Orc couriers carrying a wriggling bundle from their lair to somewhere else in the ravine. Once again the advantage/disadvantage rules shone, as we dealt with long range slinging, a wizard's familiar hiding in dense undergrowth, and the PCs attacking enemies on higher ground.
The halfling rogue started things off by sneaking up the side of the ravine to cut the orcs off, and then smashing the skull of the one carrying the bundle with a lethal sling stone. The rest of the party and their kobold scouts (see last post) burst from cover and laid down missile fire, wounding the remaining orc, who yelled an alarm and ran. Just before he ducked out of sight, the Wizard's magic missile caught him, and that was all she wrote.
The dwarf fighter slit open the bundle to find–not the captive dwarf or halfling she was expecting–but a captive goblin. As orc patrols began coming out to investigate the noise, the party retreated to the kobold cave and conducted a whispered interrogation. It turned out that the captive goblin was the son of the recently killed goblin chieftain, betrayed by his uncle to the orcs. The party agreed to take him back to his home where he claimed to have allies.
Fortunately, the guards at the cave entrance were sympathetic, although they were put off by the appearance of an Elf and Dwarf with their would-be chief. Unfortunately, a second goblin patrol aligned with the new chieftain came around a corner and attacked. The party quickly drove them off, although the Wizard had some scary moments when he was hit in rapid succession with two spears. Then the Fighter stepped in and killified the aggressors. The allied goblins, freaked out by the situation, ran one way, while the hostile survivors went in the other direction, shouting for their friends to "bring the Ogre!".
It was a quick session, but Caves of Chaos is still bringing the Old School, and the new rule system is continuing to make me happy as a DM, and my Wizard player even happier. The Fighter and Rogue players seem content with their characters too. It'll be interesting to see how they fare against the Ogre–or whatever else they decide to do. This playtest is definitely pushing the "sandbox" angle of play.
And that brings me to the title of this post. After reading the play test documents, I wasn't sure whether WotC was giving lip service to sandbox play or if they intended to make it a design priority. Well after reading this article, there's no doubt in my mind that this edition of the game is intended to support the sandbox.
Check out this quote, where the designer is talking about the new way characters increase in power:
DCs do not scale automatically with level, and instead a DC is left to represent the fixed value of the difficulty of some task, not the difficulty of the task relative to level.
That sounds a little sandboxy, right, where there are set difficulties that players can choose to tackle in any order? Well check out these snippets from the rest of the article:
Getting better at something means actually getting better at something. Since target numbers (DCs for checks, AC, and so on) and monster accuracy don't scale with level, gaining a +1 bonus means you are actually 5% better at succeeding at that task, not simply hitting some basic competence level.
Nonspecialized characters can more easily participate in many scenes. While it's true that increases in accuracy are real and tangible, it also means that characters can achieve a basic level of competence just through how players assign their ability bonuses.
The DM's monster roster expands, never contracts. Although low-level characters probably don't stack up well against higher-level monsters, thanks to the high hit points and high damage numbers of those monsters… the lower-level monsters continue to be useful to the DM, just in greater numbers.
Bounded accuracy makes it easier to DM and easier to adjudicate improvised scenes. After a short period of DMing, DMs should gain a clear sense of how to assign DCs to various tasks.
It opens up new possibilities of encounter and adventure design. A 1st-level character might not fight the black dragon… But if they rally the town [guard]… and whittle the dragon down with dozens of attacks instead of only four or five, the possibilities grow.
It is easier for players and DMs to understand the relative strength and difficulty of things. Under the bounded accuracy system, a DM can describe a hobgoblin wearing chainmail, and, no matter what the level of the characters, a player can reasonably guess that the hobgoblin's AC is around 15;
It's good for verisimilitude. The bounded accuracy system lets us perpetually associate difficulty numbers with certain tasks based on what they are in the world, without the need to constantly escalate the story behind those tasks.
The items are definitely a nod to complaints that in other editions, nothing really changes, just the DCs get harder for the same activities. I think it's also great news that even if you're not super-specialized, you'll still be able to play a role in the success of your party. One of my favorite things about B/X D&D is how level the playing field is, in terms of talking, improvising solutions, etc.
The bit about improvising and adventure design–that's music to my ears. One of the main joys of running B/X is not having to worry about level appropriate challenges, "precious encounter" design, or other complexity. And the example of the party rallying a bunch of militia to drive off the big monster, that's right out of the "Combat as War" handbook that's the default mode of the OSR.
And finally, the verisimilitude, which could also be called "consistent reality" and making it easier for players and DMs to judge it, that's a corner stone of any kind of sandbox. Players need information, so they can make informed choices and maximize their agency.
tl;dr: w00t!
I played 5e D&D tonight!
Like most of the nerdo-sphere, I signed up for the 5e D&D playtest (I ain't calling it "D&D Next", because then I'll have to call the next edition "D&D Next 2"). And tonight I ran the adapted version of Caves of Chaos for some friends instead of painting miniatures.
Before I get into what I liked and didn't like about the playtest, some bona fides. Everybody in the group has played or is still playing B/X D&D. One of the guys is an active player at Red Box Vancouver, one of the guys was a DM for RBV in the days when we had more players than we could handle, and two of the other players were not only active RBVers, but were with me when I ran Basic Fantasy way back in 2008 and first started on this whole retro-roleplaying thing.
Of the group, we've all played a metric ton of 3e. I'm not sure about the active RBVer, but me and the other DM dropped out of a 4e group after about 6 months and the other two players stayed in the 4e group for a few years–and they both still really like a lot about 4e. So we're not all dyed in the wool OSR evangelists, but everyone is Old School Friendly at a bare minimum.
So… the playtest. We started our game right at the edge of the ravine, the halfling rogue (all characters are pre-gens) looked for and found a track leading to a cave hidden in the trees (no roll). He crept up to the cave, spied it out and was about to head back to the party when a gang of Kobolds threw a spear and dropped out of the trees to attack (he described peering at the cave entrance and trees for guards, but bombed a stat check to notice the hiding monsters).
The halfling won initiative and ran back to the party with the monsters in hot pursuit. He was narrowly missed by a rusty dagger hurled by one of the kobolds (ie dagger -2, hit him for 3 points of damage, but in 5e the text says that until you are below half hit points, you haven't taken any physical damage). By then the rest of the party had come out of hiding.
The elf wizard fired, what else, magic missile (automatic hit, AD&D-style). The player, who is especially fond of playing Magic-Users in B/X, was thrilled that magic missiles are an unlimited "cantrip". He was also pretty excited that wizards get three spells at first level, instead of the usual "Sleep or nothing" of 1st level B/X. The lead kobold dropped like a sack of potatoes. The wizard's player was also very happy that 5e lets you split your move, so he could run within range, cast his spell, and withdraw to behind the safety of the fighting-types.
Next the dwarf fighter and human cleric attacked. The dwarf fighter fired his crossbow at a kobold, killing it. The cleric called on the power of Pelor and a radiant beam from heaven burned another kobold alive.
In subsequent rounds, the kobolds took a few hit points off the halfling before he was able to slip into the treeline and hide. Then he was able to dash out from cover and stab from behind, giving him "advantage", which means you get to double your chances to hit. The dwarf went to town with his two-handed axe, and discovered that even when he misses, he does some damage with an ability called "close call". The player seemed to like that a lot (she is a 4e fan and that mechanic is *very* 4e).
I don't remember if the cleric used his radiant beam spell again–I think it may also be an unlimited orison, much like the wizard's magic missile. I do remember that the wizard used his split move to go all Emperor Palpatine on some unlucky kobold (shocking grasp… total overkill, but a lot of fun).
In any case, the kobolds routed and were cut down as they ran, except for one that surrendered and was taken captive by the halfling. After much ridiculous roleplaying by yours truly, "Meepo" led the party into the cave where he promised to introduce them to the Kobold King.
Here's where I should mention the "hook" for the adventure that I used, from a list of possible ways to interest the players in the dungeon. Although the adventure suggests several ways to introduce the dungeon, including the tried-and-true "there's gold and monsters, what else do you need to know?", I thought it would be more interesting if the players were tasked with opening diplomatic relations with the monsters, offering tribute from the nearby towns if they would leave off raiding.
Speaking of the adventure, it's practically a love letter to the OSR. Not only is it an extremely faithful port of the Caves of Chaos, arguably the most influential dungeon ever written, but it specifically encourages sandbox play over plotted adventures, suggests parleying with monsters, the possibility of TPKs from reckless exploration, playing off factions against each other, etc. There's also a lot of rules text devoted to the idea that the rules should get out of the way of running the game you want to play. The designers are definitely paying attention to the OSR blogs.
The players ended up sending the wizard's familiar (a cat) to scout some of the kobold lair while they negotiated with the Kobold King, attended a meagre feast in their honor, impressed the yokels with a display of magic (Light + Mage Hand FTW!) and successfully negotiated an exchange of a promissory note for four scouts and the lowdown on "The Master", some sort of necromancer who has united the tribes through fear of his power, plus information about a still simmering feud between two of the orc tribes that could be exploited.
It's 1am and my kids are going to wake me up in six hours, so I'm going to end this with a couple of lists.
Advantage/disadvantage rules: love this, along with…
Helping rules: finally, a way to meaningfully help another character!
Simple combat: splitting up your move made combat way more fluid, as did the absence of Opportunity Attacks and all that standard/minor/move/swift action hair-splitting.
Pretty cool
Stat checks: seemed like a nice compromise between old-school "roll under your stat" house rules and modern skill systems.
I wasn't keen on the Close Calls fighter "I missed but still did damage" power. But then again the whole "I hit but since hit points are abstract didn't hit (or maybe I did)" design is a muddle (albeit a beloved muddle), so I could change my mind.
Where are the Meatshields? No henchmen or hirelings. 😦
No morale rules or reaction tables. The first seems like it would fit really well with the streamlined combat, the second with the emphasis on "interaction" as one of the three main pillars of play (Combat, Exploration and Interaction).
No wandering monsters. Not much resource management yet.
I'm really curious to see how the at-will wizard/cleric cantrips/orisons will play out. The players seem to love it, but I wonder if I'll miss the game of resource management that is the Magic-User in B/X. Ditto for hit points and healing, the characters have a ton of hit points at first level (equal their Constitution score and then some). They also have the ability to recover some hit points if they rest right after a fight, which looks a lot like healing surges from 4e, but also reminds me of the very common "bandage yourself for 1-3 hit points" house rule in OSR games. Only it's more like 1-8 hit points.
I haven't looked at the characters much, but they seem to have 3e/AD&D style stat inflation (ie 4d6 drop 1). The players seem excited to be so much hardier. I'm curious to see if that will translate into their being "fool-hardier" or just invincible.
Stay tuned. We continue the playtest next week. 🙂
-cr0m
The Metamorphica: A Book of Random Mutation Tables
UPDATE: A new, revised version is now available.
See the new blog post HERE.
As promised, the book is finally done!
The Metamorphica is a very large system-agnostic collection of random mutation tables, for any table-top role-playing game. The digest-sized PAPERBACK VERSION is available from lulu.com for only US$6.66 plus shipping, but you can download the pdf version for free (either FROM LULU or FROM HERE for less hassle) from DriveThruRPG HERE.
How did this happen? Good question!
I was originally inspired to make this when I started using the old Realm of Chaos mutation tables while I was running old Red Box D&D. We had a lot of fun with mutagenic substances so I decided to make a much larger collection that included mutation ideas from a whole range of other role-playing games. Along the way I added a lot of new ones as well, and when it became too big to be a stapled booklet, I decided to add procedures for creating all sorts of monsters and mutants. And also to make it available as a printed book and not just a pdf.
The Metamorphica is system-agnostic, meaning there aren't any rules in it per se: no attack bonuses, no hit points, and no task or conflict resolution systems. I intend to use this for more than just D&D, but making the book compatible with such disparate systems as Metamorphosis Alpha, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, and Diaspora would make it way too long, and take way too much time. You can just make up rules in play if you need them, that's what I do. It's really not that hard.
The Metamorphica was written by Johnstone Metzger and illustrated by Andrew Gillis, Nathan Jones, Johnstone Metzger, and Nathan Orlando Wilson. If you need to get in touch with anyone about this book, Red Box Vancouver (no spaces) has a standard gmail address that will accept your inquiries.
Also? It's free!
Yes, this is (essentially) a free book. But if you would like to not-so-subtly encourage future products of a similar nature, or just buy me and/or the artists a drink by way of thanks, feel free to donate whatever you feel is appropriate. I will also happily accept pdfs, which you can send to the above-mentioned gmail address (the name of this blog, no spaces).
Or, if you would really like to do me a favour (warning, real-life bummer stuff follows):
I find the violence surrounding coltan mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the economics of the electronics industry that encourage it, particularly concerning. Especially since this book would not have been possible without such electronics. However, I have neither the time nor the expertise to track down and properly vet charitable organizations working to solve this issue. If you know of one, and can make an adequate case as to their accountability and their work in the DRC, please let me know. If you don't know any charities working in this area specifically, don't worry about it, just enjoy the book. And if you are unaware of this issue, please look it up, the information is readily available. Thank you.
Tags: art, books, d&d, dnd, dungeons & dragons, game design, johnstone, mutations, publishing, random tables, red box, story games, the metamorphica
And these arrived as well…
Shown with eraser, highlighter, and one of Blair's old digest-sized Planet Algol booklets for scale.
Tags: Adventurer Conqueror King System, art, d&d, dnd, dungeons & dragons, johnstone, old school, Planet Algol
Revenge of Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown
I received the actual physical books in the mail not too long ago. Aside from a few typos here and there, the art and layout is quite pleasing, but you have likely seen other peoples' pictures of them already.
A couple of observations:
Isle of the Unknown isn't a fully-conceptualized setting, but Carcosa is. However, it's a minimalist setting, with a fairly tight, singular premise around which the whole book revolves. And while I admire that, artistically, I actually prefer maximalism, when it's done right (i.e. integrated maximalism, not pastiche overcrowdingism). Not that I think either book should be less minimalist and more maximalist, it's just a personal preference I've noticed. Luckily for me, I don't think either product is too weird to be easily incorporated as one layer of a maximalist setting.
In the poster map, the races of men are colour-coded, which is interesting because there are three fictional colours on Carcosa.* While this adds to the book's tone of otherworldly strangeness, it is also somewhat difficult to actually imagine and picture mentally. To take a couple examples from other sources, when I imagine garrow, I think it looks like both black and yellow simultaneously (not mixed together), and I think of Terry Pratchett's octarine as looking similar, but with blue and orange, also simultaneously.
(*Never mind that adding one new primary colour actually results in at least five new colours, that's something to take up with David Lindsay.)
On the Carcosa poster, Dolm Men are colour-coded with light blue and cream, Jale Men are coded with dark blue and red, and Ulfire Men are coded with cream and deep purple. But when I think of ulfire, I think of red, green, and white at the same time (this might be partly due to some bird that was covered in ulfire-coloured flames in one of Blair's early Planet Algol reports). Jale and dolm, though… I'm not entirely sure. Sometimes I imagine dolm being a bit like olive green, and other times I can't imagine what either of them looks like. Maybe jale is similar to yellow and pink and neon colours. I mean, sure, it's "dreamlike, feverish, and voluptuous," but so is purple.
If there is just one fictional colour, then it's easy to imagine, because every person's different interpretation can stand without interfering with each other, as long as they imagine some kind of fictional, hitherto-unimagined colour. When you have to differentiate between fictional colours, that can start to get weird.
That's not a criticism, just an observation. What do you imagine dolm, ulfire, and jale look like?
I do have some actual criticisms of the two books, though. There are a few things that could have made the books easier to use, at least for me.
I think both maps could have benefited greatly from the addition of roads being marked. Even without them, Isle of the Unknown's keyed map is pretty good, but Carcosa's is slightly less so. The poster has a map keyed with the locations of rituals and Great Old Ones, but there is no map with settlements or the colours of the men that live in them. When the locations of certain colours of settlements—such as we find around the other lake (the one that isn't Hali)—are mentioned as plot points in the hex descriptions, it would help to have this information in map format. Likewise, there is a mention of a trade route road winding around the icy wastes, but no indication of where this road is coming from or where it is going.
The political situation isn't the most useful aspect of this information, however. Terrain, and especially roads, determines how fast characters can move across the map, and how fast characters can move across the map determines how much the DM has to prep between sessions in order to respond to the players' choices. If there is a road that stretches across three hexes, on either Carcosa or the Isle, it's entirely possible that the PCs could travel the whole way in a single day, walking from dawn to dusk. Without having roads on the map, the DM basically needs to prep three hexes away from the PC's present location in every direction, in order to get an idea of where to even place roads. It seems to me that adding even just major roads is not much additional work when all major settlements are already plotted out, which is the case for both books, and some hex descriptions even mention roads, which is at least the case for Carcosa.
Being able to see the roads helps to envision the possibilities of PC movement, which makes the DM's job easier.
Any hint of motivation or personality is missing from most of the magic-users and clerics in Isle of the Unknown. They are treated simply like monsters—if you want to kill them, all the problems you'll face and the lack of rewards you'll receive (in most cases) are listed, but not much else. It makes me wonder why anybody would want to interact with these characters in the first place. Even a little bit of information would have been useful, evocative, and inspirational—the way threats are summarized in Apocalypse World, for example. Describing a warlord's personality with "Dictator (impulse: to control)" or the character of a landscape with "Maze (impulse: to trap, to frustrate passage)" goes a long way with a short amount of text.
While Carcosa has numerous settlements with motivation-less leaders and populations listed, there are also many characters who do have goals, connections to other parts of the map, and even some small semblance of personality. It would have been nice to have a little bit of that in Isle of the Unknown as well, though it's by no means a dealbreaker. And while I think including something like the Carcosan Ethnography supplemental material in the book itself would have been fantastic, so that DMs can just randomly generate genre-appropriate population details and character motivations, it's good enough without it that I'm not really upset.
Similarly, there are a few occasions in both books where the material is essentially a tableau to be presented to the players, with little opportunity for them to interact successfully with it, or to use it in combination with other setting elements. When the text describes something the PCs can see but never do anything with, when some magical effect can only happen once in one location by accident, or when the benefits of braving obscene risks turns out to be a measly +1, I'm a little underwhelmed. I much prefer the part of Carcosa's premise that includes finding a giant laser cannon and deciding to kill Cthulhu with it. Especially if it doesn't work because you used up all the charges destroying castles and fortresses that asked you to pay tithes for safe passage, and now you're facing Cthulhu with no ammo and no castles or fortresses to hide in. There's slightly less of that in Isle of the Unknown, but both books should have had a little more, in my opinion.
Those are all relatively minor concerns, though. Overall, I think the good things everybody says about these two books are pretty accurate.
Tags: Apocalypse World, Carcosa, d&d, dnd, dungeons & dragons, editorial, Geoffrey McKinney, Isle of the Unknown, johnstone, modules, old school, Planet Algol, review, sandbox
5e adventure Adventurer Conqueror King System Adventures on Dungeon Planet Apocalypse World art books Carcosa characters Class Warfare cr0m d&d d20 dnd dungeons & dragons Dungeon World editorial game design Geoffrey McKinney Isle of the Unknown johnstone Labyrinth Lord magic items microscope modules Monthly Monsters Moreau County mutations old school one page adventure Patreon Planet Algol playtest publishing questions random tables red box sandbox Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn story games swords & sorcery the metamorphica The Nightmares Underneath wordle xoth


1National Software School of Yunnan University, Kunming, China; 2Key Laboratory in Software Engineering of Yunnan Province, Kunming, China.
With recent significant development in the portable device market, cloud computing is getting more and more utilized. Many sensitive data are stored in cloud central servers. To ensure privacy, these data are usually encrypted before being uploaded—making file searching complicated. Although previous cloud computing searchable encryption schemes allow users to search encrypted data by keywords securely, these techniques only support exact keyword search and will fail if there are some spelling errors or if some morphological variants of words are used. In this paper, we provide the solution for fuzzy keyword search over encrypted cloud data. K-grams is used to produce fuzzy results. For security reasons, we use two separate servers that cannot communicate with each other. Our experiment result shows that our system is effective and scalable to handle large number of encrypted files.
Over the past few years, many people have started to use cloud computing services for their works. With cloud computing, people can store, access and share their information anywhere anytime. Therefore, there are more and more sensitive information being stored in the cloud. In such open environment, users expect not only efficient operations, but also guaranteed privacy and security from the cloud service provider.
Cloud storage is an online storage model where people upload their files and their data will be stored on multiple virtual servers, which are generally hosted by third parties, instead of on dedicated servers. Only authorized users, such as the data owners, can access the stored information. To further protect their data, people usually encrypt not only their file content, but also their file names, before uploading them to the cloud—which makes it difficult for the cloud storage provider to search through the data.
In recent years, searchable encryption techniques have been developed to solve these problems [1-10]. However, these methods are too slow to be used on a large dataset, i.e. they are not scalable. Furthermore, users often have spelling errors or use morphological variants of a word. Hence, cloud storage search service should support fuzzy searching.
To solve these problems, in this paper, we propose a k-gram based fuzzy keyword ranked search system over encrypted cloud data. To increase the security of our system, we use two separate servers: search server and storage server. When the search server is compromised, the attacker will not be able to use the file access pattern to deduce the corresponding document that is stored in the storage server. We use k-grams to construct fuzzy keyword sets and Jaccard coefficient to calculate the keywords similarity. To avoid enumerating all fuzzy keywords, and thus reducing the search space, we eliminate keywords with Jaccard coefficient smaller than our threshold value. This threshold value is decided through experimentations described in Section 5. Search results are ranked according to our proposed weighted ranking function. With our system, a user can do fuzzy keyword search in encrypted environment effectively and securely.
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents some researches that have been done on encrypted keyword search; Section 3 introduces our system architecture; Section 4 describes our fuzzy keyword search algorithm; Section 5 shows the simulation results and analysis, and Section 6 concludes this paper.
Boneh et al.  introduced the first searchable encryption system, where anyone with public key can write to the data stored on server but only authorized users with private key can search. However, it takes too much time to calculate public key and the server may decrypted the uploaded file by using the received trapdoor and the keywords encrypted by public key.
Many researchers then tried to improve the efficiency and security definition of a single keyword search system [2-5]. Golle et al.  defined the first secured model for conducting conjunctive keyword search. Jin Wook Byun et al.  proposed a more efficient conjunctive keyword search that reduces the data storage and communication cost. Next, Ning Caoy  presented multi-keywords ranked search over encrypted cloud data and established variety of privacy requirements. To reduce the user's computational overhead, Qin Liu et al.  utilized the cloud provider to participate in the partial decipherment of the files. However, all of those schemes only support exact keywords search.
Jin Li  is the first to describe the scheme for fuzzy keyword search over encrypted data in the cloud. In this paper, we are introducing a system for performing multiple fuzzy keywords search in encrypted environment.
The architecture of our system is shown in the Figure 1. Our system is divided into three parts: user clients, storage servers and search servers. When a user sends a request to the search server, search sever will search through its local index and send the result to the user. User can then downloads, modifies any of these files from the storage service using the file identifier.
In the real-word environment, there are always threats from adversaries. Some adversaries may have no knowledge about the contents stored by the client. However, some may know the user's query records and use it to generate the list of keywords associated with some of the files. Thus, we use two separate servers (Figure 2), one for search and another for storage.
Cloud of Storage Servers: Users upload tuples of file and file identifier to the storage servers. These servers are supplied by the cloud service provider. All the files stored are encrypted. Authorized users use the file identifier to manage and retrieve the file on the storage servers.
formation uploaded by the user to build index. People can perform k-grams based fuzzy keyword search on the search servers.
By performing all the searches in a server that cannot communicate directly to the server that stores the actual data, an attacker who knows the content of the search servers will not be able to find the files stored in the storage servers.
Now we briefly describe the ways users can interact with our system.
Figure 3 shows the procedure of uploading files. A user uses a web client to upload an encrypted file with identifier Di to the storage service and generate the fuzzy keyword trapdoor index Ii. The tuple < Ii, Di > is uploaded to the search server. The search server inserts the tuple into the Bloom filter and build safe index.
When a user wants to search through their collection, he sends a fuzzy query request to the search server and a list of file identifiers will be returned and sorted based on their rank. He then decides which document to get, modify or delete. Finally he sends a request to the storage service to complete his operation. Figure 4 shows the procedure of searching files.
Figure 2. Separated storage service and searching service.
Figure 3. Procedure of uploading file.
and "se$". In a k-grams index, our dictionary contains all the k-grams of every word in the collection. For each k-grams, we create a posting list of all the words in the collection that contain all the characters in the gram. For instance, in Figure 5 the 3-gram "emp" would point to all the words such as employable and employee.
During the indexing process, our system first constructs the dictionary of all the k-grams in the collection. Posting list for each k-grams are then generated. All of these posting lists compose the k-gram index, that we called safe index. This predefined index will be used to generate fuzzy keyword set.
Let's assume that a user queries the keyword K. First, we generate the k-grams for keyword K, called . For every gram , the system looks for gi in the k-gram index introduced above and returns the list of words containing the gram gi. To reduce our search space, we only want to retrieve vocabularies that are closely similar to the user's query.
If W is one of the words in our k-gram index that contain the gram gi, we use the Jaccard coefficient to measure the similarity of the word K and the word W. Sets A and B represent the set of k-grams for K and W, respectively. If W is equal to K, W will have the highest Jaccard coefficient value compare to the other words in the index. If the Jaccard coefficient of W, , is bigger than our threshold value, , i.e.
we add W to our fuzzy keyword set . As explained in Section 5, in our system, is 0.18.
Figure 4. Procedure of searching file.
Figure 5. A 3-gram posting list beginning with emp.
, our fuzzy keyword set is sorted in descending order based on the words' values.
Once users entered their search query, our system will generate the fuzzy keyword set for all the fuzzy words in the query and calculate the weight of each word in the set. The weight of word W in fuzzy keyword set Fk is the multiplication of the predefined weight of the word K with the Jaccard coefficient of word W. We then find the weight of each file in our collection. The weight of a file is defined as the total weight of all the words in the file that are inside the fuzzy keyword set. Thus, we can sort all of the files in our collection in ascending order based on their weights.
To describe how our multiple fuzzy keyword search works, suppose the user types a query , where n is the number of keywords entered by the user.
As Figure 6 shows, for each , we compute the fuzzy keyword set by using the method explained in Section 4.1. Thus, the complete fuzzy keyword set for Q is .
Figure 6. Relation between coefficient and fuzzy sizes.
Figure 7. Time of building query request with different query coefficient.
We then calculate the weight of each fuzzy word in the set. Let's be the pre-defined weight of Ki. The weight of the word is .
For each file, its weight is calculated by adding the weight of all the words in the file that are inside FQ. Once we finished calculating the weight of each file, we sort them in ascending order based on their weights and return it to the user.
According to our algorithm, the building coefficient, , controls the size of the fuzzy keyword set. It describes the minimum similarity level between the predefined keywords (or query keywords) and the fuzzy keywords we generated. To find the best building coefficient value, we scan all the words in the Oxford dictionary and generate the fuzzy sets by using various building coefficient values from 0 to 0.5. As shown in Figure 6, when the building coefficient is bigger than 0.2, the demanded similarity level will be too high and the size of the fuzzy keyword set is almost 0. Hence, the result of the fuzzy operation will not be obvious. For example, consider the query word "quick", the fuzzy set will only contain the word "quick" when the coefficient is set to 0.5. Figure 6 shows that the size of the fuzzy keyword set will be larger than 20 if the coefficient is less than 0.15. Fuzzy keyword set that contains more than 20 words will waste computer space and operation time. Furthermore, those words may have nothing to do with the query word. Through experimentations, we decide that we can get a reasonable fuzzy keyword set size when we set the coefficient to 0.18.
In our scheme, building query request includes 3 procedures: generating fuzzy keyword set according to the building coefficient; generating trap doors; generating index. In procedure 1, we use a predefined k-gram index. To provide more security, two hash functions are used in procedure 2 to generate trap doors. In procedure 3, we use 10 hash functions to generate index. This makes the keyword invisible and safer, and increases the speed to process the query. Figure 7 shows that as the number of query words increases, the time required to build the query request is growing linearly which means that the time complexity of our building algorithm is O(n). We also find that the time we spent to build the query request is nearly the same even for different fuzzy keyword set.
In this paper, we proposed a novel way for performing multiple fuzzy keyword ranked search over encrypted cloud data by utilizing some advanced techniques (such as k-gram) are used to generate a search-efficient index.
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of Yunnan Province, China (Grant No. 2008CD084), and the Key Discipline foundation of School of Software of Yunnan university (Grant No. 2010KS05).
D. Boneh, G. D. Crescenzo, R. Ostrovsky and G. Persiano, "Public Key Encryption with Keyword Search," Proceedings of EUROCRYPT, Interlaken, 2-6 May 2004.
Y.-C. Chang and M. Mitzenmacher, "Privacy Preserving Keyword Searches on Remote Encrypted Data," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Applied Cryptography and Network Security, Vol. 3531, 2005, pp. 391-421.
R. Curtmola, J. A. Garay, S. Kamara and R. Ostrovsky, "Searchable Symmetric Encryption: Improved Definitions and Efficient Constructions," Proceedings of ACM CCS, Alexandria, 30 October-3 November 2006.
M. Bellare, A. Boldyreva and A. ONeill, "Deterministic and Efficiently Searchable Encryption," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Advances in Cryptology, Vol. 4622, 2007, pp. 535-552.
P. Golle, J. Staddon and B. Waters, "Secure Conjunctive Keyword Search over Encrypted Data," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Applied Cryptography and Network Security, Vol. 3089, 2004, pp. 31-45.
J. Byun, D. Lee and J. Lim, "Efficient Conjunctive Keyword Search on Encrypted Data Storage System," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Public Key Infrastructure, Vol. 4043, 2006, pp. 184-196.
J. Li, Q. Wang, C. Wang, N. Cao, K. Ren and W. Lou, "Fuzzy Keyword Search over Encrypted Data in Cloud Computing," Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM'10 MiniConference, San Diego, March 2010.
N. Cao, C. Wang, M. Li, K. Ren and W. Lou, "PrivacyPreserving Multi-Keyword Ranked Search over Encrypted Cloud Data," 2011 Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM, Shanghai, 10-15 April 2011, pp. 829-837.
Q. Liu, G.-J. Wang and J. Wu, "An Efficient Privacy Preserving Keyword Search Scheme in Cloud Computing," International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, Vancouver, 29-31 August 2009, pp. 715-720.


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Financial blog - all about money
Home Pension How Much Is The Single Pension In New Zealand?
How Much Is The Single Pension In New Zealand?
Standard NZ Super Rates (for tax code M)
Qualifying as
Weekly rate
Single: living alone $437 $22,721
Single: sharing $403 $20,973
Married, civil union or de facto couple: one partner qualifies (and the other is not included) $336 $17,478
1 How much does a single pensioner get?
2 Is the NZ pension increasing?
3 How long do you have to live in NZ to get the pension?
4 How does NZ pension work?
5 Can I get NZ pension living in Australia?
6 How much super can you have and still get the pension 2020?
7 How much can I earn on the pension NZ?
8 How much money can I have in the bank?
9 What is full pension?
10 What is the full pension for a single homeowner?
How much does a single pensioner get?
Latest Age Pension rates (from 20 September 2021) Single: $967.50 per fortnight (approximately $25,155 per year) Couple (each): $729.30 per fortnight (approximately $18,962 per year)
Is the NZ pension increasing?
NZ Super and Veteran's Pension rates are not increasing on 1 July – they will stay the same. NZ Super and Veteran's Pension will continue to increase each April, as part of the usual Annual General Adjustment.
How long do you have to live in NZ to get the pension?
To be eligible for NZ Super, you need to be aged 65 or over and be a legal resident of New Zealand. You can get NZ Super even if you're still working. You also need to have lived here for 10 years since age 20, with five of those years since you turned 50.
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How does NZ pension work?
New Zealand's public pension system, the New Zealand Superannuation (NZS), differs from those in many other countries. Its primary goal is to provide social protection rather than to replace earnings. The non-contributory flat-rate pension is paid to all residents fulfilling the residence requirements at the age of 65.
Can I get NZ pension living in Australia?
If you reach the eligible age while you are still living in Australia, you may be eligible to receive NZ Superannuation or the Veteran's Pension while living in Australia. You will need to meet the New Zealand criteria (apart from usually living in New Zealand).
How much super can you have and still get the pension 2020?
If you own your own home and are of age pension qualifying age, a couple can save up to $394,500 in super and other assets and receive the full age pension under the Centrelink assets test. If you have less than $863,500 in super and other assets*, you may qualify for a part pension from Centrelink.
How much can I earn on the pension NZ?
NZ Super or Veteran's Pension if you have non-qualified partner included in your payment. From 1 April 2021, you can earn up to $160 a week (before tax) before it affects both of your payments.
How much money can I have in the bank?
The Most You Can Keep in a Savings Account In short, there is no limit on the amount of money that you can put in a savings account. No law limits how much you can save and there's no rule stating that a bank cannot take a deposit if you have a certain amount in your account already.
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What is full pension?
The amount of pension is 50% of the emoluments or average emoluments whichever is beneficial. Minimum pension presently is Rs. 9000 per month. Maximum limit on pension is 50% of the highest pay in the Government of India (presently Rs. 1,25,000) per month.
What is the full pension for a single homeowner?
From 20 September 2021 the full pension is available, under the assets test, for homeowner singles whose assessable assets are under $270,500 – for homeowner couples the number is $405,000. The numbers for non-homeowners are $487,000 and $621,500 respectively.
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