anyway.

lumpley games
In a Wicked Age
Dogs in the Vineyard (buy!)
Poison'd (buy!)
kill puppies for satan (buy!)
Mechaton (buy!)
Matchmaker
the Abductinators
Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore

solace
Alas, a blog
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Building Rome in a Day
Creating Passionate Users
glyphpress discussion
ldopa.net
Long story; short pier.
Meguey's Dollz
MetaFilter
MonkeyFilter
Monkey Do, Monkey See
My LiveJournal Friends
naked and alive
Parthenia's blog
Real Live Preacher
Relentless Toil
Still the original Matt Wilson

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Cat and Girl
the Comics Curmudgeon
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Dresden Codak
Electric Sheep Comix
Finder
frankandfrank
Gone with the Blastwave
the Hotel Fred
Overcompensating
Pan
Penny Arcade
Questionable Content
Scary Go Round
scottmccloud.com
Seven Arrows
Shortpacked!
the Silent Penultimate Panel Watch
Sinfest
Some Dailies
Trollbabe Comics
Wapsi Square
Wondermark

endeavor
Fair Game
Planet Story Games
RPGnet Forums
Spione :: Spione forum
Story Games
I'm a Forge twick
the Forge forums
the Forge Bookshelf

Worth a Post?
Eat Poop U Cat
indexed
giant creepy things want to eat you
DrawerGeeks!
How to Make a 3D Paper Snowflake - WikiHow
All octopus, all the time
BibliOdyssey
Conic - Juggling in a Cone (Preview)
Rogue's Gallery
New Scientist - "Chameleon" Snake
The Power of the Dark Crystal
Drawspace

treats
the Book of Ratings
BookFilter
Buzzle.com: Carol Lay
Buzzle.com: Keith Knight
Cockeyed.com
Cooking for Engineers
Cooking for Losers
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explodingdog
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Get Religion
the Gilded Blog
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Jenn Manley Lee
Killing the Buddha
the Law of the Playground
Lore Brand Comics
Meta-Swap fora
Monkey and the Razor
the Moral Character of the Monkey
one desperate fanboy
the Raving Atheist
Richard Packham's website
Sincity
Slayage
Things my girlfriend and I have argued about
Thor the Barbarian
Tony Dowler's blog
Uncle Bear
Whedonesque
William Shunn

2007-12-13 : Mechaton rules questions?
Hey, if you're stopping by looking for answers about Mechaton's rules, welcome, and I'm at your service.

30 comments. Thread: from the top; first comment; first unread comment

2007-08-24 : Poison'd errata and Q&A
1. The cruel fortune accursing is all wrong. All wrong!
2. Ask the player if her pirate is enduring duress.

Click in for the rest.

28 comments. Thread: from the top; first comment; first unread comment

2008-01-11 : In a Wicked Age: Four Oracles
In a Wicked Age: Four Oracles.

Also check out the Oracles page at Abulafia. Dave's got the Four Oracles and the original AG&G Oracle, plus space for new "unofficial" oracles. I believe I'll be submitting some new unofficial oracles myself, come a day.

In a Wicked Age
sword & sorcery roleplaying

14 comments. Thread: from the top; first comment; first unread comment

2008-05-12 : Expressionism in Roleplaying
I think it was Cape Fear, the original. Emily and I watched it a bunch of years ago. There's this one moment in the film. As I understand these things, it's an example of the influence of German Expressionism on American Film Noir.

The villain is going to come into her house and kill her, right? In this moment she comes down the stairs or around the corner into the front hallway. There in the shadow behind the door is a guy - long coat, hat pulled low, hunched shoulders, this sinister figure we can't quite make out. Quick reaction shot, she startles and covers her mouth or something, and then we cut back: it was just a coat stand. Hat on one hook, coat on the one below, maybe an umbrella at the bottom too. She only THOUGHT it was a guy. The director had an actor stand in for the coat stand to give us her point of view.

So, sure, German Expressionism influencing Film Noir, no big.

Here's a made-up moment from a roleplaying game. It's Poison'd. I'm playing Ned McCubbins, murdering pirate; Mitch is playing Ned's shipmate Filthy Peter. Emily's the GM.

Me: I come up behind Filthy Peter while he's leaning against the rail watching the lights of Kingston. He has no reason to fear me so I don't bother sneaking.
Mitch: [narrowing his eyes]
Me: I put my pistol against the back of his head and blow his brains out through his face.
Emily: Cool. Roll brutality vs soul to attack someone unsuspecting.
Me: [rolling] Mother crap.
Mitch: Ha ha.
Emily: You flinch at the last second, and so do you, and the bullet opens his scalp above his ear but doesn't blow out his brains at all. Filther Peter, what do you do?
Mitch: Oh I bring the fight, oh yes I do.

I propose that "blow his brains out through his face" exists in our Poison'd game the way that the guy in the shadow behind the door exists in Cape Fear. It doesn't turn out to be real, but it sure does matter.

9 comments.
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2008-05-06 : Fantasy lit and rpgs
Oh by the way, Eero Tuovinen is kicking Fantasy's butt on his blog, Game Design is about Structure. Two articles: Cultural subtext of modern fantasy gaming, followed by My hate-on for big swords.

If you ask me, he's doing a thorough and satisfying job.

6 comments.
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2008-05-02 : I kill puppies for satan
When he was visiting the other day, Rob interviewed me for the Independent Insurgency about my first real game, kill puppies for satan. It was a fun interview, I like telling those stories. Give it a listen, it's episode 10.

0 comments.
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2008-04-30 : Movies and TV
The Shield, Battlestar Galactica, The Office, Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Michael Clayton, maybe some more.

There may be spoilers. Avert your eyes.

1. I'm caught up on The Shield. It's kind of an uncomfortable feeling. For some reason I liked knowing that, out there in the world, there were people who'd seen the future.

Shane is a colossal cock-up. Vic too. My money's still on Ronny. He's more unlikeable the less he's opaque.

2. Dear Battlestar Galactica,

Who's a Cylon isn't a gripping mystery all by itself. When I know that there's one Cylon unaccounted for, trying to create suspense by casting suspicion on several characters doesn't work. That doesn't create suspense, it only tells me that it doesn't matter who the cylon is. If it could be any of them, it might as well be any of them, and I'm non-gripped.

Your friend, Vincent

3. Look, I already knew what was going on between Michael and Jan. I really didn't need to see it layed out, so uncharacteristically, in all its nakedness and filth. Generally The Office strikes such a sweet balance between making me laugh and making me cringe, but that episode was way too cringe-y.

On the plus side, when Rob was up we watched a couple episodes of Coupling, and while funny it showed just how unstudied The Office seems. Dinner at Michael and Jan's aside, what a good show.

4. Judd Apatow likes his characters and is good to them. The opposite of, oh, Alexander Payne, Neil LaBute, or Christopher Guest.

5. Oh yeah, The Office and Michael Clayton, what they reveal about suspense.

I watched a half dozen episodes of season 4 of The Office, then went back and watched the whole series from the start with Meg. Here we are in seasons 2 and 3, and I know full well what's coming between Pam and Jim in season 4, and the suspense is killing me anyway. Every barrier makes my heart sink, and I honestly fear that they'll never be okay.

In Michael Clayton, we see his car blow up in the first ten minutes. Nevertheless, when time catches up with that preview, and his car's about to blow up for real? Suspenseful anyway.

Why is that? Why is it that I can know what's going to happen, but not TRUST it?

28 comments.
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2008-04-29 : GC08 - a Dirty Joke
Here are my caveman-dinosaur cartoons. The first five constitute my Game Chef 08 entry. The sixth, I didn't submit. Here's why I cut that one and not one of the others: I was perfectly happy dictating arenas of conflict to the designer, but I didn't want to dictate the reward cycle.

Now THAT's a joke with a target audience!

2 comments.
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2008-04-23 : What does the protagonist want?
From Robin Laws' livejournal, Todd Alcott's livejournal. He talks about film. I'm posting this for my own future benefit, and I'm reading him about No Country for Old Men first.

1 comment.
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2008-04-17 : IRON GAME CHEF
How could I not mention this here before today?

The Game Chef 2008 competition starts TOMORROW. Attention: TOMORROW.

This year it's called "Artists First!" Here's the deal. 30 or so artists submitted illustrations for rpgs that don't exist. That phase is done. Starting tomorrow, the design phase: choose an illustration set and design that game.

I submitted illustrations. They are VERY AWESOME and TOTALLY FUNNY. If you design a game using my illustrations, and I like it, and you decide to develop it post-contest, I promise additional illustrations, development help, promotion, and whatever else I can do for you. Lots of my fellow illustrators are promising the same.

It's an opportunity you'll be sad to miss. Join in!

Artists First! 2008 Game Chef

10 comments.
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2008-04-14 : Interchangeable?
I say below that some rulesets are interchangeable. Is it true? I have this thing going on in my head when I say it, and it may be a poorly thought out thing, so here it is for examination:

They're functionally interchangeable. They may be aesthetically non-interchangeable.

I suspect that, in fact, I'm drawing a line there where none exists. That, come to examine them closely, every real aesthetic difference between rulesets is in fact a functional difference. That after all, underneath, nobody chooses one ruleset over another except for functional reasons.

Levi, I think this is related to your rules-as-toy thing.

Any thoughts?

23 comments.
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2008-04-09 : Rules vs Vigorous Creative Agreement
I really dig the term vigorous creative agreement and I really dig Jim Henley's post about it. He sets me up (by association, not by name, and I don't hold it against him a bit, these are the circles I run in) to think that natural, emergent agreement is a poor substitute for functional formal rules. In fact I think the opposite.

Here's what I'd say: if all your formal rules do is structure your group's ongoing agreement about what happens in the game, they are a) interchangeable with any other rpg rules out there, and b) probably a waste of your attention. Live negotiation and honest collaboration are almost certainly better.

(This goes along with my answer to Mo here about the Wicked Age's owe list, and maybe see also reward the winner, punish the loser.)

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction. The reason to play by rules is because you want the unwelcome and the unwanted - you want things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create. And it's not that you want one person's wanted, welcome vision to win out over another's - that's weak sauce. (*) No, what you want are outcomes that upset every single person at the table. You want things that if you hadn't agreed to abide by the rules' results, you would reject.

If you don't want that - and I believe you when you say you don't! (**) - then live negotiation and honest collaboration are a) just as good as, and b) a lot more flexible and robust than, whatever formal rules you'd use otherwise.

The challenge facing rpg designers is to create outcomes that every single person at the table would reject, yet are compelling enough that nobody actually does so. (***) If your game isn't doing that, like I say it's interchangeable with the most rudimentary functional game design, and probably not as fun as good freeform.

57 comments.
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2008-04-06 : Demons are prowlin' everywhere, nowadays
Watched Sweeney Todd last night, the new Tim Burton one. I liked it fine.

While fightless, it's nevertheless Poison'd.

3 comments.
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