At Aaron's suggestion, we went to see the new Clash of the Titans on Saturday ( Read more... )

Everyone here is familiar with Chekhov's gun, of course. Specifically, the proper use of it - the idea that you shouldn't introduce story elements that don't become important later. It's an important rule that can or can be ignored, depending on the authorial skill, when you're writing straight-up literature.

In gaming? Don't listen to Chekhov.

( Read more... )

It's interesting how things come at you from two directions sometimes. Justin Achilli, over on his blog, was asking questions about what sort of games you've played recently and what you get out of them. (I'm not sure what I get out of Robot Unicorn Attack, but goddamn if I don't enjoy it.) And Rob Donoghue, over on his blog, was musing by way of ( Read more... )

Went back up to the mountains for my brother/his girlfriend/his dog triple-threat birthday celebration (the two of them have birthdays two days apart, so they claim that the dog Ali's "birthday" is the day between), and wound up talking a lot of RPG talk with my brother after dinner. It's really unbearably geeky, but there you have it. Cigars were ( Read more... )

Doing a bit of everything today, not finishing anything. Thank-you notes, tidying the house, reading books, planning game (actually ran for Aileen last night as kind of a new ritual), painting minis, playing widya games, messing with the girls, doing chores, maybe trying a little exercise, and interacting with the Internet ( Read more... )

But come on look at this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f5bcn_z0Qg

Okay, long car rides with the radio on led to this one.

I have sometimes wondered what it would be like to design your own anime-style game. Something explicitly "this could run in Japan," but not a specific knock-off of any one existing thing. Borrowing from piles of them, though: let's say, something in the henshin genre (because transformation ( Read more... )

Somewhere along the way of turning a misspent youth into a misspent adulthood, you may notice that there's a certain...something about the way we tend to play. It's something that came into focus once when I realized that one of the cardinal differences between an American fantasy like D&D and a European fantasy like Warhammer is that, well, ( Read more... )

There is a certain image that has always inspired me with a modest level of intellectual dread. Effectively, it is the labyrinth. Not just any old maze, mind; hedge mazes seem almost homey, and the corn mazes that are popular down here are pretty harmless as well unless you go in deliberately churning images of brutal harvest gods and Children of ( Read more... )

I wouldn't have expected Atlanta to be at risk of flooding, but well, there you have it.

Things are well enough; the house is on a hill, and the main trouble is getting to work. A 15-minute drive becomes an hour as you go around and try to avoid all the flooded-out bridges (of which we normally cross two). Dogs should be safe.

Actually slept last ( Read more... )