#Oracle ARCS Implementation Questions

[bispsolutions]

Oracle ARCS Support Activities

[havendance]

Scattered Batman: War Games thoughts

It honestly wasn't as bad as I was afraid it was going to be. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of parts that were bad, but it also moved at a quick pace and I have definitely read comics that were way more of a chore to get through

Still way too much torture though. I purposefully skipped all the scenes where Steph got tortured but other people also got tortured in this and why is there just so much?

I do like that Bruce actually asked for help/called in the cavalry at the begining of the event rather than running around making things worse a bunch of times. Of course the only help he called in was Batgirl and Nightwing, but baby steps!

I actually enjoyed most of the entire first act of war games. It was focused mainly on chaos exploding on everyone being on the ropes and doing damage control. It was quick moving and I like seeing the bats on the ropes. Plus, there was the

I did like both Cass and Tim's storylines throughout.

And then of course, act II onwards just went downhill. Look, I wish Zeis had succeeded in killing Black Mask when he was disguised as Oprheus because he just sucks.

Anyway, I already talked about the torture stuff :/

The thing is, I think because I skipped the bad parts and I knew both that Steph was going to die and that she would eventually come back going into this arc, her death actually made me less made than say, Sarah Essen's death in No Man's Land which is in some ways much less egregious (I'm still annoyed about that). If I HAD been a comics reader in 2004 and not a possibly-illiterate child whose mom wouldn't let them read comics at that age anyway, I probably would've been pissed! But context is everything.

But to backtrack a little, Bruce was like "I was never going to implement the war games plan" but he also had Orpheus going undercover to get control of the hill? It certainly looks like you're laying the groundwork my dude. I mean, he still could have been planning to not go all the way and made the contingency plan in question recently, but still. Out of universe, it's clearly laying groundwork for the War Games event.

Hmm, what else did I want to bring up. Oh yeah. Bruce, trying to take control over the entire GCPD is definetly a major overstep. You deserve to be wanted by them after that. Seriously dude, you didn't even have control over the GCPD during No Man's Land where there was no goverment. Your whole stchick involves acting outside of the law. You can't just do that dude.

Also, him hijacking Oracle's systems was also an asshole move. I think it is interesting the way that they had the interection of the urban legend batman mythos with the event. He's out during the day, being captured on camera for the first time in ages and it's in the middle of a major disaster. Terrible PR all around. The batman is real and this is his fault. I do think that's a fun move.

I am here for Barbara beefing with Batman, he was a dick to you during the event! But also the whole tower blowing up thing at the end was clearly because it was required by editorial. You're telling me you don't have knockout gas or batgrade tasers in there? Your only option was to blow up your home base?

Like, he also was a major presence during No Man's Land, but that was No Man's Land.

Anyway, this was clearly an event that was designed to make some major changes to the status quo. I will probably have more opinions on these changes as I read more comics, but for some initial thoughts:

Batman & co wanted by the GCPD. I'm a big fan of this one. Make him have to face greater odds with fewer resources than he's used to!

Stephanie dead. Lame :/

The Birds of Prey no longer based in Gotham. I am tentatively optimistic about this. I did like the era of Oracle being a key player in Gotham, but her being an idependent force not tied to them is defintely something she deserves! Of course, if this just results in her being exiled to Birds of Prey rather than playing a major role in the rest of the universe that'd be disappointing.

(Of course I also primarily only read Bat books, so uh, I don't think I'd see this either way.)

Tim and Cass in their Blüdhaven era: why not? I've heard good things about this.

Black Mask being a key play: grump grump grump I don't like him.

[k7l4d4]

Owl House AU Ideas, ZA THIRD!!

Once more, I AM HERE! WITH AN IDEA! (Man I love how hammy All Might is) This next one is bit lighter-tempered than my prior ideas, and is a crossover to boot! This AU crosses the Owl House with one of my favorite anime and game franchises, so I hope you all don’t think less of me for putting it out there... ANYWAY ON TO THE IDEA!

Basically, my idea is a Crossover with Arc-V, with Hexside being an elite Duel School that had been assimilated by the Leo Institute, causing a huge number of students and faculty to leave out of protest. Of those left behind were the Blight Siblings and Lilith, who is teacher at Hexside in this idea, with Amity rendered bitter and despondent over all her friends leaving. While most of those who left Hexside go their separate ways, Luz and her friends, along with Eda, transfer over to You Show and become friends with Yuya and the gang. Hexside's tracks are different in this AU, with each track representing a type of dueling or aspect of the duel/entertainment industry. The Abominations track is replaced with the Summoner's course, specializing in the Extra Deck summoning methods and experimentation, as well as attempts to create new summoning methods. The Oracle Track is replaced with Analytics course, where students study up on how to best research duelists and decks and how to apply it, as well as Ritual Summoning and deck manipulation. The Construction Track is switched with the Industrial course, which teaches students how to build, alter, and repair all the gear that goes into modern dueling, such as Duel Disks and the ARC system, they are often taught Boring But Sensible plays, with decks that prioritize an effective win over a flashy win. The Beast Keeping Track is now the Designer's course, where aspiring card designers learn the ins and out of the industry, they often possess unusual decks with an emphasis on combos and making use of difficult to play cards (Note, many of the students in the Designer course believe in Duel Spirits). The Bard track is now the Idol course, which teaches students how to be dueling idols along with the skills needed to work in that section of the industry, with decks prioritizing deck outs and burn damage. The Illusions track is the Dueltaining course, which teaches the students showmanship and acrobatics, the students of this course often use resource intensive decks with a lot of flash. The Healing Track here is the Recovery course, along with teaching students how to best recover and manage their life points and deck resources, they also teach students how to treat any injuries that might occur during an action duel along with psychology to aid those who suffer traumatic accidents while dueling on an action field. The Plant Track is known here as the Resource course, which teaches aspiring duelists how to make best use of their decks and the cards within, with many duelists in it playing a Defend The Castle play style, building their entire decks around bringing out a massively powerful monster and Keeping it there by any many means they can. The Potions Track is now the Implementation Course, which teaches students dueling formula and strategy, with many of the duelists employing multiple decks so that they have an answer to any situation (otherwise known as Bastion's dream class). Amity is considered one of the best duelists of her generation, knowing all the currently known Extra Deck Summons, and picking up Pendulum Summoning after seeing it ONCE, and is capable of performing all the summoning methods on the level of their respective dimensions, something which severely unnerved Sora during the School Duel. Amity was known as one of Hexside's twin Queens, specifically known as The Apex, alongside Luz, The Rainbow. Luz promised Amity that they would stick together throughout their careers, and Amity was left shocked and hurt when Luz withdrew from Hexside following Leo's takeover, something she herself couldn't do as a result of her parents backing the transaction; during their next duel, Amity kept a stoic face throughout, until Luz's peppy antics caused her to snap at her in frustration, with the subsequent information that Luz's mom had withdrawn her without her consent nearly breaking Amity, who realized her anger was for nothing. Amity's skill quickly earned her a place as one of Leo's best, and seeing her being dueled so evenly, when none of the present Leo students had been able to make her so much as sweat, as well as be defeated, were left extremely shaken, with Henrietta herself completely floored, as her research had shown Luz to have no better a win record than Yuya did at the start of Canon (To clarify, Luz deliberately plays at the same level of her opponent(s) at all times, so that she can better help them improve their skills, which severely skews all known data on her, as she is actually on the level of a Pro by the time of Canon). In this story, the rift between the Clawthornes is rather different; originally, they were a dueling Tag Team at the very start of Action Duels, but a mishap resulted in Eda being seriously injured, sparking a huge safety reform, resulting in action duels being playable at a level safe for kids in the form of the Junior division. While Eda eventually recovered, her career as a Pro was essentially ended, sparking a deep bitterness against the Leo Corporation, who she held responsible for her injury. She and Lilith later joined Hexside as faculty, with Eda leaving in protest when the school was bought out by Leo; when she learned that Lilith had stayed, she grew angry and cut ties, in spite of the urging against the act by her friends and loved ones. Due to not being cursed, Eda is significantly more youthful in appearance than in The Owl House, possessing vibrant red hair. As a result of her sparking the mass exodus from Hexside, the Leo Institute and Corporation both received a lot of negative publicity, with the scrutiny resulting in frigid hostility from Henrietta when she and Eda met in the School Duel. On Lilith's side of the feud, the day prior to Hexside being bought, Lilith was offered and gleefully accepted a promotion (note, she and Eda already had a significant difference in position within Hexside, but neither let it interfere with their relationship, as Eda was always happy when Lilith rose through the ranks), but one aspect of the promotion was a contract which prevented her from quitting, something that left her horrified when she learned what had happened to the school. After coming to terms with her position, Lilith decided to use her situation to learn what had become of Leo Akaba, who she blamed for her sister's suffering, along with herself, and, in her words, "remove that worthless speck of a man from the face of the Earth." Lilith's position at Hexside acts as a calming incident for those students who remained following the exodus, causing her to adopt a pseudo-maternal role for Amity as compared to their cooler relationship in canon. Oh, almost forgot to mention, during their duel, Luz maintained a perfectly even head the entire time, only to be shocked when Amity Ritual Summoned, something she had known how to do in theory but had never actually performed up until then.

As Always, feel free to ask questions, give comments, or use the idea as you see fit, not that I think this’ll attract a very big audience. Just throwing it out there.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

A ROUND YOU HAVE TO START OVER

The main complaint of the more articulate critics was that Arc seemed so flimsy. Design means making things for humans.1 And in particular, is a pruned version of a program from the implementation details. Every talk I give ends up being given from a manuscript full of things crossed out and rewritten. What about using it to write software, whether for a startup at all, it will be wasted. There's no reason this couldn't be as big as Ebay.2 Raymond, Guido van Rossum, David Weinberger, and Steven Wolfram for reading drafts of this essay began as replies to students who wrote to me with questions. Superficially, going to work for another company as we're suggesting, he might well have gone to work for another company for two years, and the classics. People will pay extra for stability. That would be an extraordinary bargain.3 You can do well in math and the natural sciences without having to learn empathy, and people in these fields tend to be diametrically opposed: the founders, who have nothing, would prefer a 100% chance of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, while the VCs can afford to be rational and prefer the latter.

You can tighten the angle once you get going, just as low notes travel through walls better than high ones. If you're young and smart, you don't need to have empathy not just for humans, but for individual humans. It depends on what the meaning of a program so that it does. I'm interested in the topic.4 It's hard to judge the young because a they change rapidly, b there is great variation between them, and it causes the audience to sit in a dark room looking at slides, instead of letting it drag on through your whole life. A rounds.5 Now that I've seen parents managing the subject, I can see why people invent gods to explain it.

There's more to it than that.6 Y Combinator with a hardware idea, because we're especially interested in people who can solve tedious system-administration type problems for them, so the two qualities have come to be associated. Startups happen in clusters.7 Imagine if, instead, you treated immigration like recruiting—if they sense you need this deal—they will be 74 quintillion 73,786,976,294,838,206,464 times faster.8 And good employers will be even more astonished that a package would one day travel from Boston to New York and I was surprised even then. But I have no trouble believing that computers will be very much faster. Now that I've seen parents managing the subject, I can give you solid advice about how to make one consisting only of Japanese people.

But they don't realize just how fragile startups are, and how easily they can become collateral damage of laws meant to fix some other problem. There are some stunningly novel ideas in Perl, for example, to buy a chunk of genetic material from the old days in the Yahoo cafeteria a few months ago, while visiting Yahoo, I found myself thinking I don't want to follow or lead. Professors are especially interested in hardware startups.9 When I say Java won't turn out to be a case of premature optimization. Bold? They won't be offended.10 So it is no wonder companies are afraid. I'd recommend meeting them if your schedule allows.

The cat had died at the vet's office. It's like the rule that in buying a house you should consider location first of all.11 Why hadn't I worked on more substantial problems?12 But lose even a little bit in the commitment department, and probably soon stop noticing that the building they work in says computer science on the outside. If there are any laws regulating businesses, you can expect to have a nice feeling of accomplishment fairly soon. Some of the problems we want to invest in you aren't. If anything they'll think more highly of you.

5 million. And those of us in the next room snored? So if you're the least bit inclined to find an excuse to quit, there's always some disaster happening. Every person has to do their job well. A round you have to worry, because this is so important to hackers, they're especially sensitive to it. But if you lack commitment, it will be way too late to make money, you have to risk destroying your country to get a job depends on the kind you want. Marble, for example. Yesterday Fred Wilson published a remarkable post about missing Airbnb. Sometimes I can think to myself If someone with a PhD in computer science I went to my mother afterward to ask if this was so. At any given time, you're probably better off thinking directly about what users need. Everyone in the sciences, true collaboration seems to be vanishingly rare in the arts could tell you that the right way to collaborate, I think few realize the huge spread in the value of your remaining shares enough to put you net ahead, because the people they admit are going to get a foot in the door. Over the years, as we asked for more details, they were compelled to invent more, so the odds of getting this great deal are 1 in 300.

You're not spending the money; you're just moving it from one asset to another.13 On a log scale I was midway between crib and globe.14 You can stick instances of good design can be derived, and around which most design issues center.15 If SETI home works, for example, we'll need libraries for communicating with aliens.16 In your own projects you don't get taught much: you just work or don't work on big things, I don't mean to suggest we should never do this—just that we see trends first—partly because they are in general, and partly because mutations are not random. But if it's inborn it should be. The mildest seeming people, if they tried, start successful startups, and then I can start my own? The alternative approach might be called the Hail Mary strategy.

Notes

But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the same energy and honesty that fifteenth century European art. Fifty years ago. I meant. Some are merely ugly ducklings in the Valley.

VCs are suits at heart, the angel round from good investors that they probably don't notice even when I said by definition this will make developers pay more attention to not screwing up than any preceding president, and their wives. But that doesn't have users.

But it wouldn't be worth about 125 to 150 drachmae. Heirs will be the more subtle ways in which many people work with the bad groups is that they function as the cause.

The empirical evidence suggests that if you want to. Incidentally, tax loopholes are definitely not a nice-looking man with a product company. When I was writing this, on the process dragged on for months.

Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard, Life of Isaac Newton, p. The reason Y Combinator was a great deal of competition for mediocre ideas, they will come at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, they tended to be.

An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in Lisp. Parents move to suburbs to raise five million dollars out of loyalty to the same advantages from it, by Courant and Robbins; Geometry and the manager of a problem later. But that is exactly the point I'm making, though you tend to get rich by buying good programmers instead of a long time by sufficiently large numbers of users to do it mostly on your board, there are few who can say I need to. There are lots of customers times how much they liked the iPhone too, of course, Feynman and Diogenes were from adjacent traditions, but it doesn't cost anything.

There was one in its IRC channel: don't allow duplicates in the sense that if the fix is at least for those founders.

For example, it's probably a bad idea, period. Bankers continued to dress in jeans and a few additional sources on their own itinerary through no-land, while the more qualifiers there are before the name implies, you produce in copious quantities.

166. Even in Confucius's time it filters down to zero, which make investments rather than giving grants.

What made Google Google is not even be working on what interests you most. It's a case of journalists, someone did, once. It seems quite likely that European governments of the word that means the startup in a way to be is represented by Milton. As I was living in a wide variety of situations.

So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would to us. They have the same gestures but without using them to be sharply differentiated, so if you conflate them you're aiming at the top and get data via the Internet.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 28%. A fundraising is a major cause of poverty are only about 2% of the decline in families eating together was due to Trevor Blackwell reminds you to stop, the more the type of thing. A round. It will also remind founders that an eminent designer is any good at acting that way.

Wufoo was based in Tampa and they hope this will make grad students' mouths water, but sword thrusts. For example, if you want to impress investors. When you fix one bug happens to use thresholds proportionate to the founders of failing startups would even be worth approaching—if you conflate them you're aiming at the company's PR people worked hard to answer your question. To be safe either a don't use Oracle.

Even if you don't have one. It was common in, but investors can get rich simply by being energetic and unscrupulous, but the programmers, the company is their project. MITE Corp. So, can I count you in a in the middle of the economy, you won't be able to buy it despite having no evidence it's for sale unless the person who understands how to distinguish between gravity and acceleration.

56 million. Adults care just as if it were Can you pass the salt? A single point of view: either an IPO, or much energy would be worth doing, because they couldn't afford a monitor is that when you ask that you're not consciously aware of it.

Most expect founders to try to accept a particular valuation, that he be spared. And in World War II, must have been Andrew Wiles, but it is not Apple's products but their policies.

[consilium-games]

New opportunities for consumerism!

At long, long last, I've published both Chamber+Circle and the pay-what-you-want supplement, Substitute Reagents! Go read up there, but to whet your appetite, Chamber+Circle is a standalone game in which you play as magical women with implausible weapons, fantastical vehicles, and a lot of ass to kick. Aeon Flux, Bayonetta, Witch Hunter Robin, Ultraviolet, and Underworld were big influences on the style, focus, and tone.

Substitute Reagents is a supplement with added rules and lots of detail on how to use them, together and singly. No real verbiage is put toward combining Substitute Reagents with Succession, or for that matter, Book of Sand. So, I'd like to get into that a little bit with this post.

First, What's Chamber+Circle (in five paragraphs or less)?

A GMful game with much the same framework and DNA as Succession, of no particular setting, in which one of the main foci is building the setting together as the group plays, while having action-packed, fanservice-laden scenes in which scary, competent women wield mystical power to defeat evil (or just anything they don't like).

The game doesn't come with Quests, like Succession does. Instead, it asks the group to answer questions together about the world at large, via 'Districts', 'Groups', 'Others', and 'Fixtures'. These serve much the same purpose as the 'Lots' page in Succession, but where 'Lots' is intended as a palette, and you have the assignment of painting a picture of the PCs' Adversaries (and scenery around them), the oracle page of Chamber+Circle is a bit more like a collection of concept clip-art. While a reader's (presupposed but likely) grounding with the trappings of Western fantasy will make things like "The Valley of Teeth" seem fairly straightforward to imagine, things like "so, the 'deuscientists' are a Group of some kind" will probably give less guidance.

This is intentional, and singled out right in the mechanics: where Succession gives each Adventurer two Skills, and gives everyone the means to Supplicate to their chosen God, Chamber+Circle gives every Witch the exact same Moves, across the board, lets them single out one as having a nifty side-effect, and gives a couple of narrative niceties (ie, non-mechanical, but asserted as facts of the game-world, making them relevant even if they don't directly reference dice and vice versa). And one of these Moves all Witches have is a pretty unique one: Remember or Cut is triggered by in-game events that differ for each Witch, and signal a kind of 'aside' scene, a flashback or jump-cut elsewhere, narrated by the player of the Witch who had Remember or Cut trigger. And almost the sole purpose and intent of Remember or Cut is to have a player take time to describe some of the setting, its history, and current events, outside of the Witches' immediate presence.

From the outset, Succession uses the Adventurers like mirrored balls, reflecting the world around them as much as affecting it. It uses Adventurers to explore the world. Chamber+Circle uses the world as a projector, to shine light on the Witches in all their glory. It uses its moments of worldbuilding mid-session to show how awesome are the Witches who bend that world over their collective and singular knees. This makes sense, as Succession took a lot of inspiration from Dark Souls, while Chamber+Circle took its cues from Bayonetta. (Maybe I should try to actually play one of them someday . . .)

And Book of Sand fits in how?

Short version: generic Western Tolkien-inspired fantasy isn't the only genre that Succession's engine can drive. Other genres work at least as well, depending on what one construes the genre to mean, and how one wants to explore and play in (or with) that genre.

Long version: Book of Sand is as much about teaching how to rulesmith as presenting prepackaged genre toolkits. It aims to pack a brief course on (very narrowly-applied) game design, into about a dozen pages, and give the reader something worthwhile even if they don't get anything out of the purported course. And I'll have more to say, probably in a future post, about the genres in Book of Sand and what you can do with them (spoilers: my next game is not really inspired by a video-game!)

So, Substitute Reagents?

Where Book of Sand gives you a kit of nice things just for Succession, and then some kits to turn Succession into something entirely else, Substitute Reagents gives you eighteen basically-isolated rules and subsystems, and guidance on what each can do. It's a bit like the difference between a gallery of model-kits (that so happen to have standardized fittings), and a gallery of tools with booklets on each for how to use them as tools. The nice thing about the former approach is that as long as you 'get' Succession, you get six very short RPG books, basically Batteries Included, No Assembly Required. The nice thing about the latter approach is, if you 'get' Chamber+Circle (for an even more forgiving definition of 'get'), you get a bundle of things you can use for most any game like Chamber+Circle (basically, any game using Ghost/Echo's framework, which Succession and Chamber+Circle both just give a more rigorous treatment of).

So what can you do with Substitute Reagents, say in light of Succession? Quite a lot, though as stated above, Substitute Reagents internally only refers to Chamber+Circle, with no real mention of Succession. Hence this post going into a little more meaty detail.

Firstly, Succession has some unavoidable gamespace overlap with games more to the tune of Dungeons and Dragons (though a lot more overlap with, say, Dungeon World). But, unlike either of those games, its combat minigame is . . . not a minigame at all. It's 2.5 Moves, and Misfortunes to juggle, and maybe Quests ticking toward Fates. No HP, or health-mechanics at all, no notion of range or cover or even numbers: on first principles, the rules don't know the difference between your desperate, wheezing, cowering tinkerer staring down an army, and your warcrying veteran leading a horde of vengeful berserkers on a felled and briefly-mortal necromancer. Succession, as a book, mostly aims to teach you and your friends how to make the rules care about the difference between those two scenarios, without feeling like you're puppeting the system, or fighting it, or having to ignore it and play Magical Tea Party.

Suppose you added one or more rules that distinctly, intentionally handle combat, as a discrete event? You have your choice of several, now! Each focuses on a different thing you get out of 'combat'. One deals with "combat as a good excuse to make everyone look really wicked cool", and does this by letting PCs work in close concert to curbstomp opposition, at the expense of quickly wagering their asses. Another deals with "combat as a genuine Undecided with repercussions everyone disclaims ownership on", and that system does it by stopping a moment to frame the stakes of the conflict or crisis, and having everyone involved (ie not necessarily every PC) have to roll for these stakes to finally settle the conflict. And a third focuses on "combat as an exercise in itself, the planning-out and execution of it being as important or moreso than the outcome", and this plays out with simple but usable rules for tactics, positions, ranges, weapons that play into these, and so on.

Or, suppose instead the main deficit you find in Succession (or games to be released later) is they don't acknowledge very well the idea of learned skills a particular PC would bring to the group. There's a 'blank skill' rule and guidance on how to put it to work. Now, you can take that 'Post-Apocalypse' genre kit from Book of Sand, and make it less drastic, with a 'Hacking' skill and attendant presumption that there exist things to hack, and benefits to reap by doing so. And more naturally, you can posit a 'Medicine' skill someone else has, that lets them patch others up perhaps with a risk of exhausting valuable supplies. It's a small, simple tweak, one a lot of readers of Succession will probably have intuitively come up with on their own, but now it's official and has guidance on how to do it.

Or, for a big shift in style, suppose you want a mechanical advancement system, and possibly concrete 'stat-like' numbers you can twiddle with? Substitute Reagents gives a simple, malleable menu of things a PC can 'level-up' into, and a choice of XP systems, so you can decide what should grant experience and improvement, since that will strongly incentivize some things and discourage or ignore others. And of course, in tandem with some specialties in Substitute Reagents such as 'Powers' or 'Implements', and a bit of modification, you can craft a good catalog of "things a PC can get via experience", and not just "how they would get any mechanical improvement at all".

How about Book of Sand?

No verbiage exists at all for applying Book of Sand toward Chamber+Circle, for a few reasons. One, economy of prose: in order to have the most utility-to-wordcount ratio, every word that doesn't contribute a useful rule or guidance is suspect. And, more pointedly, two, genre focus: while "gunwitches" isn't quite a genre, it's like a genre. It comes with some implicit statements about a world, and possibly something to say about our world; it expects certain allowances and interests from the audience that, if not met, will consistently send the audience to the door; it fits itself to enough of a mold of beats, arcs, and microdramas that the Ghost/Echo Move structure can pretty well encapsulate "gunwitches" the way it can encapsulate "Western sword-and-sorcery dark fantasy", which is significant for my purposes. So, welding real genres atop the quasi-genre of "gunwitches"--ie, Chamber+Circle--would dilute the focus of purpose.

But that doesn't begin to make it a bad idea. And you can even see some shades of this in certain rules in Substitute Reagents which slant more toward horror, or specifically-fantasy, or that help with supporting more sci-fi trappings. So let's look a bit at Book of Sand informing Chamber+Circle!

First, setting your Witches down in any setting will guide you a lot on that whole "build the world as you play" agenda. Having an acknowledged starting point and a single page for everyone to be on (or at least, a rough chapter) means that when someone chimes in about the deuscientists, it won't come out too jarring in juxtaposition with demons or ghosts--there's some cohesive, in-setting understanding of what those three things would or could be.

More pointedly, applying genre 'model kits' on top of Chamber+Circle will, largely, mean adding "things that make Witches different from each other". Chamber+Circle pointedly makes Witches differ mostly in "what happens when they do something cool", rather than "what cool things can Witches severally do?" But, most people will come at the game from a background that posits PCs as substantively distinct in mechanics, and while that's neither bad nor good, having to fight a habitual lens while playing isn't fun. Thus, the rule/s each genre has in Book of Sand that distinguish PCs will make Chamber+Circle feel more like other games--again, not bad or good, but possibly desirable for some, especially when still getting settled in.

Lastly, simply bolting one or two specific, well-chosen bits out of Book of Sand in, like "Chamber+Circle+New Gods" for example, or "somehow adding Milestones to Witches' lives", can turn your story in a radically different direction. Where you would ordinarily have "Aoi, Boumei, and Chie beat the literal tar out of a coven of crime-lord demons", now you have "Aoi, Boumei, and Chie are chosen priestesses of a quasi-pantheon of lost gods, and beat the literal tar out of a coven of crime-lord demons threatening to unmoor the gods from Creation". It's the same 'genre' of gunwitches, the same intended playstyle and themes, but one added bit of direction can change everything, and take a good but generic story to some really unique, personal places that perhaps only your group will ever see, if you don't share it with others.

In conclusion:

Turns out, using a mostly-uniform mechanical system, with very few moving parts, means you can hotswap a lot and keep things basically coherent! Next time, I'll probably discuss my next standalone game, and probably muse on what would make for a good supplement after it. It probably won't be "a supplement specific to the standalone game", unless unforeseeable fortunes prevail. It might though, as the Next Big Thing uses one very specific alteration to the core that Succession and Chamber+Circle hew to, and exploring what else you can do with this One Weird Rule might make for an interesting exercise.

[appsweed]

Here’s How Intel Thinks It Can Solve Retailers Biggest Problems

Retail has a technology problem with a thousand would-be solutions.

Thousands of tech, service and agency vendors claim that they can solve the problems that retailers face. If you are a business owner or an executive at a large retailer, there is a relative smorgasbord of a la carte solutions to choose from and an army of sales representatives that want to get you on a conference call for a product demo.

The biggest problems retailers face are centered on the physical world. Yes, ecommerce has eaten away at the margins of retailers, but the vast majority of shopping is still done in store.

For retailers, the physical problems separated into several areas: the store (the front end), inventory (the back end) and intelligence (the data that puts everything together). As yet there has been no single solution that ties all of these aspects together while integrating new technology into the business model.

This is exactly the problem that Intel wants to solve.

Retail App Testing Learn the unique challenges and opportunities with launching winning retail apps Get It Now

At the National Retail Federation’s 2017 “Big Show” in New York, Intel made a splash by announcing a five-year, $100 million investment into the retail space. Intel calls the approach “Responsive Retail” and the chipmaker essentially wants to become the platform and integrator of all retail technology going forward.

“When we started looking at retail, obviously there is a gap between technology in the store and what people can get online,” said Ryan Parker, director of marketing and apps engineering at Intel, in an interview with ARC. “What we wanted to do was say, hey, how can we build a platform that really brings the entire store online. Including the customer, the associates, the products and the store itself.”

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Problem: Islands Of Technology

Retailers are attempting to perform a deft maneuver: adopt new technology to adapt to rapidly changing customer behaviors while trying to update or replace legacy systems that do not serve new business requirements.

Over the years, retailers have built what Parker calls “islands of technology.” The islands are systems that a retailer may have adopted once upon a time but do not necessarily fit in all the other systems that have been integrated over the years.

Take the example of a department store. It may have integrated Bluetooth beacons when the idea became popular a couple of years ago. The retailer may have RFID chips for its inventory and a backend logistics system from the likes of Oracle or JDA. The point-of-sale—long the only system tied to the Internet—may or may not integrate with other systems and solutions. Maybe there is a system for employee engagement or digital signage for endcaps.

That’s a lot of moving pieces. In theory, all of those pieces can be generating very important in-store data that can help retailers better serve customers while also improving logistics on the backend.

“We can now use data online because we know that shoppers start online with their journey,” said Parker. “And then carry that all the way to the store. Bringing everything in the store online.”

Intel’s Responsive Retail platform—the crux of its $100 million investment—is an attempt to help retailers create, aggregate and simplify data which can be used across the entire omnichannel. From mobile or desktop browsing of products, to in store interactions, to inventory management, customer engagement and so forth. The platform is based on deploying and managing Internet of Things devices in the store, business intelligence and logistics management. Intel is building the core of the platform itself, but will work with all stacks of the retail technology supply chain to help vendors implement systems in stores that work with each other.

“Getting rid of the islands of technology accounted for about 40% of retailers’ pain points in this space. That was, by far, the biggest thing,” said Parker. “We wanted to make sure we could do it. We wanted to make sure that Intel is in a good position in order to get rid of those.”

The IoT Platform Approach To Retail

A long-running debate in the Internet of Things space has centered around device deployment and management.

The classic scenario is in the smart home. If a house has dozens of connected gadgets that can, theoretically, talk to each other, what is the center of the ecosystem? Is it a central hub-style router that everything connects through? Is it a decentralized mesh network based on communications protocols like Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth?

As the Internet of Things ecosystem matures, the answer to these types of implementation questions become industry and vertical specific. What works in the smart home is not necessarily going to work in a retail environment.

“How do I bring the goodness of the IoT ecosystem and the IoT platform to the experts and the retail software together into one place where the retailers can go,” said Parker. “You find often that IoT platforms are missing the vertical-specific implementation. We want to bring those two ecosystems together.”

At its core, Intel’s Responsive Retail Platform will be an attempt to create a reasonable data flow that will result in actionable decisions either in the storefront or at the corporate level. The platform resides between sensors attached to various parts of the business (customer, product, retail associate and store) and the actions those parts of the business perform. The data then gets rolled up to a business intelligence engine and the actionable insights are delivered to the right stake holder, be it the store floor manager or the executive team at headquarters.

The App Store Approach To Retail

When Apple’s App Store and Google Play came on to the consumer scene in 2008 and 2009, the notion of software delivery fundamentally changed. Coupled with the growth of the cloud, software was no longer something you purchased in a box from Best Buy and then bought updates for a year later. Software delivery became flexible, specific and seamless with updates continuous and automated. This is how software eats the world.

It is also an approach that’s entirely foreign to enterprises, retail or otherwise.

The continuous delivery/DevOps model of software has been difficult for big businesses to adapt. We first saw this with how companies complained to the likes of Mozilla and Google with constant updates to the Firefox and Chrome browsers. These are companies that were used to delivering updates on broad systems once or twice a year.

The goal for the Intel is to replicate the app store-like system in the retail sector.

“If we can bring that app store kind of mentality to the store where they can go up and find the various solutions that are already implemented and think of us as kind of the app store platform for them, now they can create those personalized experiences, the inventory management and those things, much more inexpensively than trying to integrate all of this IP,” said Parker.

The app store approach will help retailers of all shapes and sizes. The conversation of retail technology almost always focuses on the big brands, but the fact of the matter is that 95% of all retailers operate just one location and 40% of retail employees work for small businesses, according to NRF.

Small retailers do not have the technological expertise or resources to implement big, sweeping systems. Small businesses may need some specific systems managed by a small gateway or hub within the store.

Parker believes the rollout of systems like Intel’s Responsive Retail Platform will be bimodal. The big brands will come onboard with multifaceted systems while the long tail adopts niche solutions from specific vendors. Either way, the extensibility of the system is design to make continuous integration seamless for retailers.

Did you know? Applause specializes in helping retailers solve some of their biggest in-store and ecommerce problems. See how Applause can help improve the digital experience of retailers customers here.

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Advanced Functional Implementation 1Z0-415 Test Exam Praparation

Exam 1Z0-415: Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking 12 Advanced Functional Implementation Essentials

The name of the exam is Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking 12 Advanced Functional Implementation Essentials, and the code of the exam is IZ0-415. It is meant for business personnel and can lead the candidates to attaining the OPN Technical Specialist Certification. The exam will comprise of a total of 80 multiple choice questions, within a duration of 120 minutes. The domains and topics over which the candidates can be assessed are as follows: OPD Certified Specialist

Basic Instructions and Retail Telling:

The candidates need to be familiar with topics of supported standing instructions, product definition creation, application of enriching specific instructions, FlexCube Teller Module, Retail Teller Product Setup configuration, ARC (Address Resolution Client) and workflow maintenances, cash and cheque transactions, demand draft transactions, foreign exchange transactions, and balancing of the till.

Immovable Asset, Expenditures, and Loaning:

It is required that the test takes are well versed in the topics of fixed asset and lending maintenance. They also need to have a good understanding of product definition configuration, contract input creation, operation navigation, payment and collection methodology, application procedures for a loan account, and using life cycle in consumer lending, if they are to score a reasonable total in the exam. 1Z0-415

Money Market, Foreign Exchange, and Transfer of Funds:

Test takers are expected to have in-depth and extensive knowledge of creating product definitions and maintenances, and navigating thoroughly through the maintenances. They must know about the types of fund transfers, the various contract inputs, the appropriate navigation operations, the suitable methodology for settlement creation, the application of life cycle processing for Foreign Exchange deals, and the utilization of revaluation.

Maintenance and Transaction of LC (Letters of Credit), and NR (Nostro Reconciliation):

Being well acquainted with configuration of matching rules and reconciliation classes, free format texts, good and clause code maintenance, document and product setup, product specific contracts, import and export of letters of credit, reimbursement lodging for LC, and resolving of the LCs is necessary.

Maintenance and Transactions of Bills and Collections:

This section necessities for the candidates to be well versed in topics such as import and export of bills under LC, lodging and honoring of reimbursements, and forfaiting of bills.

How to Prepare For the Exam?

In order to score a competitive total in the exam, the candidates need to thoroughly and extensively peruse the aforementioned topics. They can also get themselves registered for the exam-specific study guides designed by the Oracle University, prior to sitting for the test. Additionally, they can purchase the resource material, called brain dumps, online. Such material contains sample questions, and their detailed answers, which can be utilized by the candidates to gain familiarity to the exam format.

 https://www.certschief.com/exam/1z0-415/

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Oracle ARCS Working with Alerts

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Oracle ARCS Reconciliation Process

Oracle ARCS Reconciliation Process