Talk:David A. Hargrave

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I am posting the following excerpts here for others to draw upon for reference. This has happened because I noticed an anonymous poster had challenged the fact that David A. Hargrave was a US Army cinematographer in Viet Nam. I decided to contact Lance Mazmanian, who seems to know a great deal about Hargrave (based on his tribute page and the fact that David A. Hargrave created an entire dungeon module around him called "Lancer's Rest"). I asked Mr. Mazmanian if he could verify the information regarding the biographical information he has posted on his site regarding David A. Hargrave's cinematography in Viet Nam. This afternoon Mr. Mazmanian provided me with texts from paper letters Hargrave had written to him in 1988 regarding his military cinematography experiences. Following here are excerpts from two of those letters and there are apparently more references but those letters are not available to Mr. Mazmanian currently (he indicated they were in another city).

If anyone has questions about this information, I suggest contacting Lance Mazmanian via his website, which is here. He has said that he would be willing to provide scans of these quoted letters if necessary, and the rest at a future time.

Excerpt of letter from March 18, 1988

"...I was a cinematographer at one time in my military career...I managed to use up several miles of government supplied 16mm film at that time. Most of it in Nam."

Excerpt of letter from April 20, 1988

"My military camera usage was usually a 16mm Bell & Howell KS-10 (Army designation), but you know the type: Cast iron, hand-held, butterfly crank and triple lens turret (rotatable). I most often used Plus-X film as it was durable and workable under all field conditions. However, I did use mostly Tri-X in my aerial work (usually from an old L-19 "Bird Dog" aka a Piper Cub with no rightside door). I did a small amount of still work, usually with the huge old "Speed Graphics" the Army saw fit to supply us with (4x5 format). Needless to say, my combat footage showed a lot of "up close and personal" stuff, as I tended to slam the damn camera into the ground (I had unscrewed the the plastic hand grip off to the long screw acted as a spike) and let it run by itself as I popped a few back in the general direction of those trying to, ah, shall we say...uh..."shorten my life," as it were.

"The best part of my military cinematography training was the school at Ft. Monmouth, NJ, where they let us shoot a mile and a half of 16mm film, each, as training."

How do I make a reference to this area in an article?

Under the historical context heading, there is a sentence describing Hargrave's work as "a leading representative of the high-entropy, multiversal campaigns then prevalent in RPG circles of the era." What exactly does this mean? I am fairly familiar to the ttrpg world and this is a new term to me. Should that be reworded or explained better? The only other reference I could find to this terminology was in a Designers & Dragons column. Is this terminology accepted thoroughly enough in the designer realm of ttrpgs that its use is warranted here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jason-derp86 (talk • contribs) 01:04, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The use of "High-Entropy" was localized in several RPG-playing areas, long ago. Certainly not 100%. Generally the description references the use and distribution of power, at a high level. For example, magic, spells, and whatnot. I prefer Medium-Entropy myself, but Dave's use of extremity was amusing...like his High-Entropy description of multiple Balrogs coming through a door into a party's domain, while he was hosting a massive game at a convention. - Sanfranview (talk) 22:50, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]