| white people are serious business |
[Jul. 2nd, 2008|10:17 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | the redness of texas twilight | ] |
things are good, and i have every right to be happy. but more and more i can feel the world leeching away from me. i don't know if its depression or just my age and really facing down mortality for the first time, but everything seems so finite and limited. as a christian, i know i should be believing in an eternal reign of God both in this world and the next, and i know that Christ's love echoes against my tiny disbelief. but, its hard sometimes to not look at everyone around me and wonder what their ultimate fate will be. i can't know, and its best that way, but it bugs me.
it also makes me really question where i'm at in my life right now. two years ago, i made a decision fueled by the notion that love between individuals was selfish and leads only to pain due to that selfishness. i don't think that's right, after the experiences i've had the last couple of years, but that understanding led me to challenge myself and grow.
now, i'm 25, unemployed, planning to move to los angeles to try my hand at a domestic, 'normal' life and i find myself wondering if i'm still being selfish. kathy's said one of the things that scares her about our relationship possibly being a very serious one is that she's worried that some day, after we've built a life together, i'll decide that Christ isn't in a home life, isn't in cleaning dishes or reading to my children. and she worries i'll disappear on that day.
and i struggle with that fear too, those old voices telling me that the greatest love is always for humanity make my heart feel kind of like a knot in my neck.
that's growing up, right?
p.s.
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| bite in the neck |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|11:25 pm] |
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| I Judge the Origins Awards |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|05:27 am] |
Supplement of the Year
Legend of the Five Rings: Emerald Empire
Published by Alderac Entertainment Group
Written by Shawn Carman, Richard Farrese, Douglas Sun and Brian Yoon
Pirate’s Guide to Freeport
Published by Green Ronin
Written by Chris Pramas, Robert J. Schwalb, and Patrick O’Duffy
Delta Green: Eyes Only
Published by Pagan Publishing
Written by Dennis Detwiller, Adam Scott Glancy and Shane Ivey
Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords
Published by Paizo Publishing
Edited by James Jacobs, Art by Wayne Reynolds
Ruins of the Wild: Dungeon Tiles 4
Published by Wizards of the Coast
Written by Bruce R. Cordell
Codex Arcanis
Published by Paradigm Concepts
Written by Team Paradigm
Did win: Codex Arcanis
Shoulda won: Pirate's Guide to Freeport. It's the first major systemless supplement in at least a decade. Maybe Eyes Only is worthy, though it's oatmeal: Good for you, but how often to you eat it? Except the oatmeal's fans spit out the same canned praise all the time and never talk about their campaigns. (Not the book's fault.) I'm sure Rise of the Runelords is nifty, but if there's a plot that's caught somebody's fancy I've yet to hear about it. Finally, L5R card players getting a coffee table book is no biggie for me, no matter how much it pretends to be an RPG supplement. Somebody will do something dumb at a tournament and the whole thing will blow up anyway. Yeah, once bitten twice shy, there.
Roleplaying Game of the Year
Grimm
Published by Fantasy Flight Games
Written by Robert Vaughn and Christian T. Petersen
The Savage World of Solomon Kane
Published by Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Written by Paul “Wiggy” Wade-Williams (with Shane Lacy Hensley)
CthulhuTech
Published by Mongoose Publishing
Written by Matthew Grau and Fraser McKay
Battlestar Galactica
Published by Margaret Weis Productions
Written by Jamie Chambers
Faery’s Tale Deluxe
Published by Firefly Games
Written by Patrick Sweeney, Sandy Antunes, Christina Stiles, and Robin D. Laws
Aces & Eights
Published by Kenzer & Co.
Written by Jolly R. Blackburn, Brian Jelke, Steve Johansson, Dave Kenzer, Jennifer Kenzer and Mark Plemmons
Did win: Aces & Eights.
Shoulda won: As a Canadian, I have about as much interests in Westerns with obscure alt-history as many of you American readers do in playing a game where Riel won -- not bloody much. Plus, nobody but you likes the alt-CSA at all, except people in my country that should probably die in a fire.
(Why, by the way, can there be alt-histories with fucking aliens and the CSA together but somehow, the South turning into a place where freemen retain political power is just super-hard to even conceive of?)
Let's look at our alternates to see if there are other options.
Cthulhutech is pandering high concept stuff (Giant Robots! Mythos! Buy, you pathetic fanboi cocksucker! We couldn't do better for you lot unless we put a topless Lidda at the controls of a mecha!), but I still pity the creators because they're essentially making whatever change Matt Sprange can vacuum from his chesterfield after throwing money at some old-ass licenses to give them a hard, unlubed reaming, slapping a couple of pieces of warped cardboard on the (metaphorically) bloody wreckage and sending it to market.
BSG: Meh. There are like 40,000 guys. You yell at each other. Sometimes you shoot. Maybe you could make a crappy 32 page indie pamphlet out of it to disguise its limitations, but like many such things, what's the fucking point. When I want to do that I write a play. I do like the system.
The Savage World . . . YEAH! . . . of Solomon Kane: Aw, nuts. Not interested. Plus, what is it with the Mythos all over the place?
That leaves Grimm and Faery's Tale Deluxe. So it's gotta be one of them. Tie! No, screw that. FFG put up a silly 4e sweatshop job posting* and I like Robin Laws, so Faery's Tale Deluxe wins!
* It was, "Relocate and make 3 cents per word while bringing your own gear to write with on site, jump through several hoops, get no benefits and go away when you're done." Individually, these requirements could be reasonable. Together, they totally suck. Plus, now that the GSL is out and everything has changed it might have collapsed anyway. |
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| sun to rain |
[Jun. 28th, 2008|12:46 pm] |
started out hot and muggy this morning
threatening storm clouds rollin in
and we're going camping |
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| selecta! |
[Jun. 25th, 2008|09:15 am] |
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| the spanish civil war |
[Jun. 23rd, 2008|07:49 am] |
I dreamt I had a tattoo of a breaking tower in silhouette, bordered by strips of red and black, with the words "a las barricadas '38" written beneath it.
All my friends, my girlfriend, and my mom told me it was a stupid tattoo, 'cos I don't even like the Spanish.
I kinda wanna get it, now.
(p.s. the bmx-in is ok, the song is better) |
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| Roleplaying as Metacontext |
[Jun. 23rd, 2008|07:58 am] |
A long time ago I made the statement "tabletop roleplaying games are a medium for roleplaying" in response to the many, many expressions of roleplaying outside of TRPGs. I've since refined my position a bit by brushing up on media studies.
Macluhan said that the content of a medium is another medium. Canadians might remember an expression of this from:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wtJmbuE2qOs
If I were to make this into a diagram for tabletop RPGs, I'd do it this way:
Traditional Tabletop Roleplaying Gameplay > Oral Narratives > Roleplaying
or
Text-based Roleplaying Gameplay > Written Fiction > Roleplaying
Roleplaying is distinctive because it united diverse media. The products of gameplay have a common context, or ground, even though the figures/media differ. This is not any form of "sharing," but a common set of conventions and attitudes that create the basis for mutual inspiration and more play.
This context is a historical artifact. That means that it is not an overarching model from on high or entirely the product of conscious arrangements, but it comes from the culture of players, events that have shaped gamers inside and outside of the context of gaming and so on. This is important, because among other things, it means that an idealistic conception of roleplaying as reflex or a timeless heritage, that ignores slang, chatter, schools of thought and even commercial releases is off the mark. Given rhetoric that tries to legitimize roleplaying by giving it extra-historical profundity, this is important to note.
Still, as a very broad context roleplaying is not something that creates true "common ground." It's a cultural focus that contains plenty of room for internal disagreement, especially when we consider how the various media *create* history, and apply it to our understanding:
* Oral narratives have a time-sensitive, interpersonal bias. Speech is a section of time. Speech in the same physical space as its audience adjusts itself to the audience, and the audience adjusts itself to the speaker.
* Text has a logocentric, timeless bias. Text can be read at any time and is not adjusted on the fly, reacting to an audience, but is composed in moments distinct from listening to input from other people.
The great thing about roleplaying's metacontext is that it accepts these various inputs and within its tradition, lets participants make connections easily. Its breadth also lends itself to indeterminate meanings, but this is not really a flaw -- assuming we are not trying to express some kind of definitive authority over roleplaying. |
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[Jun. 22nd, 2008|09:38 am] |
On several occasions I've considered writing up games I'm playing or games I'm running. Right now we're in the midst of the third section of the Vampire/Mage game, which has taken a bit of a twist after I made a decision to move beyond the politically-oriented holding pattern. A part of me really wants to describe this to you and has even started posts about it on several occasions.
The only problem is that really, these sorts of things are post-hoc performances of one stripe or another. Our group is definitely centered on dialogue and in the moment experience. It's simply too difficult to get that across, and attempting to do so would create a textual simulacrum of the real game that might be entertaining, but is probably false, to one degree or another.
Combined with the efforts I've made to observe games as a silent third party (I've done this a lot at conventions, because I don't like playing at conventions, really), my experience leads me to believe that most Actual Play reports are pretty divorced from the experience of the game. I think some of them (though not yours, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) innocent_man) are fabrications, or at least tinted with a heavy dose of wishful thinking and compensations for problems with performance. Thanks to our love of text in various gaming communities, we tend to place a lot of value on these representations, but from a design and theory perspective, what are they really worth? The answer seems to be a mix of morale building, idealism, propaganda and community affirmation -- and the pleasure of sharing a cool story in a unique format. I'm maybe interested in that last bit, but it's secondary to play as it happens.
I'm pretty concerned about the effect this is having on gaming's creative culture. More and more, people are reacting to these dubious representations of gameplay instead of the messy process behind real play, and of course questioning these retellings is considered rude. Podcasts are compensating for this and they interest me . . . but they are not as entertaining as "Actual Play." Maybe some factual tidbits will illustrate the differences:
* I made a personal effort to sit in on a a whole bunch of D&D (3.x) games where I took notes. Virtually every game featured significant judging errors that stemmed from a combination of fudging and confusion. One of the most popular errors were limits on sneak attacks. Also, most players are far more effective playing sorcerers than wizards. Nobody admits this sort of thing in AP reports.
* I personally witnessed a game of HeroQuest that was described in fairly action-packed terms -- despite the fact that while I was at the game, I had a 15 minute conversation with one of the players without interrupting anything.
* When I did a third party sit-in on a Mage game a few years ago I noticed that 1-dot sensory spells were the single most difficult things for storytellers to adjudicate. Also, Shielding practice rolls are usually a waste of time.
Now people were not necessarily having a bad time in any of these situations, but these are things that AP reports would never tell you. This is just rules and systems, too. When it comes to narratives, my experience is that things are greatly simplified and redacted between play and "Actual Play." This is unavoidable, but consider the fact that this sort of simplification is what many people now tout as a design ideal -- even though it's really an artifact of text infecting live play (or the pretense of live play, in some cases).
I used to be a bit less cautious about synthesizing everyone's experiences, and in the process I sure could say a lot of stuff. But now I think even this:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=133818
. . . which was a very general outline of part of my old Mage game, is a bit presumptuous. It doesn't showcase significant highs (a hostage scene that nailed it through excellent dramatic timing during the dialogue, and the heated exchange that happened later) or lows (a dumb argument about nuclear physics) that took place.
The essence of my position is that tabletop roleplaying is a broad medium for story creation. In a Macluhanesque sense, it is an extension of ourselves that contains a bias for making oral fiction. (Medium ---> Medium.) The ground of oral fiction grows internal fiction, laced with social interaction. I have some further thoughts about this, but I don't have the time to really describe them.
The classic error in current thinking is that it really wants another medium. Consider that the model for many games is not oral narrative, for example, but a written story or play. People get around this problem with the fiction of the social contract. This is a sort of utilitarian trick where we pretend everyone is a kind of p-zombie and take assent as commitment, and ignore personal differences and things the contract has designated as low-priority points of attentions -- the very things that play reports often skip, in fact. |
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| morning time |
[Jun. 20th, 2008|11:25 am] |
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