Sarah gives the straight case for the cellist:
Yo Yo Ma brings so much more than perspective on being a classical musician. He has been the foremost cellist in the world for decades and has collaborated with musicians from many other genres and toured the world. When he speaks he gives a sense of being transcendental and also, a regular guy. There is so much I would want to ask him . What did he learn from all the people and cultures he has collaborated with? He is near the end of a long career (he was a child prodigy), how has his perspective on work and purpose changed over the course of this? What are the sources of his sincere and abiding humility, what pitfalls of fame did he draw near and how did he avoid them? He is from a musical family and his sister is highly accomplished in her own way. How do they relate to one another or support each other?
This sounds pretty good. On the other hand, Anonymous writes:
Yo-Yo Ma is fresh off his appearance in the second best Knives Out movie, and could definitely talk about that, if nothing else.
Knives Out 2 was kinda disappointing. So I’m gonna have to agree with Jonathan:
Keeping everyone entertained is a heavy lift — so I go for Li Wenwen.
Today’s matchup
Round 2 has arrived! “Jerrt” comes from the known-by-initials category, while Gygax is a creator of laws or rules. The pairings were random but it’s an interesting matchup, given that Dungeons and Dragons is heavily based on Middle Earth.
So this should be a fun bout: these two guys will go medieval on each other. The sound of axe on chainmail. We got a real Helm’s Deep situation going on here.
What do you say?
I thought D&D was more based on Jack Vance’s Dying Earth.
Tolken is known for one thing, writing very long winded but usually well-constructed books. Anyone who has attempted to read the Silmarillion can see that.
Gygax is instead an interdisciplinary polymath who mixed fiction, theater, and probability into a single activity that is exciting for all. Having him give a seminar allows for arguments between literature and math people with a bonus helping of historical pedantry from the history department. This would be a wide-ranging seminar that could spiral into whacky hijinks, much like a game of DnD.
Do you want a guy listing names of Elves or an animated discussion on if cold iron should hurt them?
Tolkien was famously a linguistics professor, so he must have been pretty good at talking. I assume that Gygax, being the typical nerd in all other aspects, was also the stammering umm…well…uh… type, and would thus be simply infuriating to listen to. Plus, unlike Paul, I don’t care about the pain management of elves, which is the only type of material Gygax could lecture on with any degree of accuracy.
Anon:
Elves don’t feel pain; they just have hit points! No pain until HP=0, at which point they keel over.
That is, unless the’ve changed the rules sometime in the past 40 years.
This is a perfect example of why the elf pain discussion is a lot of fun. Now there is a modeling decision of how to represent physical injury on a simple numeric and if complex features like pain can be rejected. Should a low-hp creature/character take debuffs after receiving damage? How detailed should the simulation of stab wounds work or should it be highly abstracted? These are fun debates perfectly suited to a seminar discussion which is far better than listening to a single speaker talk for an hour, even if they are well spoken.
I kinda feel they should split the bill since Gygax depends on Tolkien and Tolkien’s fame was magnified by Gygax. It’s really a Jesus and John the Baptist kind of situation here. I know the rules are the rules but maybe we can petition the authorities for an exception?
PS. In our family D&D game we had a real moment where a bunch of orcs had been captured and the kids wanted to keep them prisoner, which would’ve basically made the whole adventure unmanageable. As DM I gently suggested that the proper procedure was just to kill them all and move on — they being pure evil and whatnot — which is what eventually happened, but it left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. People kept muttering about little orc orphans and whatnot.
Just saying that it may be that we may be moving beyond the cut-and-dried morality on which both rely … maybe neither should advance.
There’s a pre-school in my area called OrcKids. (Ah, an online search shows that they’ve rebranded as Orkids… but you can still find archived pages where it’s spelled the old way. And I’ve got a photo somewhere). Whenever I pass, I think “I have a dream that someday the children of humans and the children of orcs will sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
Tolkien’s books, and Gygax’s game (as written, although you can play it any way you like) share an essentialist view of races. (And I think we are talking about ‘races’, not species: aren’t there hybrids of humans and orcs, humans and elves, elves and orcs, etc?).
But, I dunno, like John the Baptist is not really a good example; he was utterly forgettable without Jesus, and said he wasn’t worthy of untying Jesus’ shoes. Besides, he really lost his head over Jesus at the end.
I dunno… Roll funny polyhedral dice or something.
Gary will probably insist on the audience playing through his masterpiece module, the Tomb of Horrors. Which, trust me, is mostly fun for Gary, and in a weird way.
I’d much rather have Tolkien lecture on the points of similarity and difference between his own creative process and roleplaying games than be subjected to humiliation and PC death by unsolvable puzzles and DM fiat with Gary.
I don’t think this can be decided on the merits, so as usual I retreat to formalism and puns.
JRR can never be other than a Tolkien presence in this bracket, so I’ll take Gary Gygax and roll the dice.
Gary Gygax is a better name than Bilbo Baggins, besides.