zwol | reflections on interchangeable parts and RPGs

Specifically, reflections on the celestials in the In Nomine universe that promote the concept of interchangeable parts.

On first glance, interchangeable parts seem like something Heaven would have sewn up. They make mass production possible. They facilitate repairing stuff; you only have to replace the part that broke, and you don't have to make the replacement from scratch. It is often possible to take two broken widgets and make one working widget out of them, because between the two of them there are enough good parts.

The devil, of course, is in the details. The Demon of Interchangeable Parts is the one who ensures that those lovely, Heavenly principles don't quite apply to whatever widget you are currently repairing. He'll ensure that the piece you want to remove cannot be removed without dismantling the entire rest of the device down to individual pieces. He'll include snap-together plastic bits in the design, that can't quite be pried apart without breaking, and screws that would come out easily if there weren't one of those snap-on plastic bits in the way of the screwdriver. He wasn't the inventor of self-tapping screws, but he made sure that they got used with shoddy plastic so the counterpart threads strip if you remove the screws too many times. In short, he is in charge of widgets that can be assembled, but not disassembled again.

If yesterday's experience is anything to go by, this demon holds sway in the Toyota subunit that designed the passenger-side mirror assembly on my car, but not the subunit that designed the door. Well, maybe. It's incredibly easy to get the mirror off the door, but somehow when you put it back on, it doesn't fit quite the way it used to ...