Monday 12 May 2014

Shameless Behaviour, Tarragon, and Yoon-Suin

Nate interviewed me about Yoon-Suin on A Gaming Podcast About Nothing. I know I said I wasn't going to post about the podcast on this blog more than once; I lied. 


It's an attempt to explain what the whole Yoon-Suin thing is all about - in a concise 30 minute conversation. The conversation also ranges over random encounter tables, the philosophy of randomness, and tarragon.  

10 comments:

  1. You didn't sound convinced, or weren't convincing, that this contagion of random table presentation is the best way to exhibit your setting.

    Falling back on random tables to spark creativity should be done behind the curtain, no? You are in inventive doldrums so you resort to arbitrary thoughtless juxtapositions to spur you on. But a collection of too many frankenstein ideas will damage a setting with incoherence.

    You are not offering to the restaurant experience are you? It's more like an Asian supermarket - 'Don't let chefs tell you what to eat! Make your own dinners.' Where has the design ethic gone? Design responsibility? Are you an archititect or some guy driving round dumping bricks, cement and shovels on the ground - 'Build your own house with my beautiful bricks!'

    Why don't publishers of random tables prove the tools work by designing a setting first, letting us be the judge of the setting's merit, before releasing the 'now you go and do it toolkit', abstracted and atomised into cells for reconstruction?

    I find it very easy to believe that there is a failure of nerve behind publishing tables rather than sentences and paragraphs and chapters which have to build into something worth reading.

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    Replies
    1. Well, you can be the judge of how convincing or otherwise I am. For the final product itself the proof will be in the pudding. You'll have to download it and see.

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    2. That's very weak sauce. Do you by yourself without Zak's help, and this is your material, have anything to say to defend the principle of random table presentation?

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    3. Riddle me this, first: do you think it's possible to publish a campaign setting that is sufficiently detailed, comprehensive and interesting that a person buying it or downloading it would have to change, add or subtract literally NOTHING? Unless the answer to that question is yes, you are creating a false dichotomy between architects and the guy dumping bricks and shovels.

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    4. Furnishing? A woman's touch? Pillows? That's the limit of the user's imprint. The more you think it is, the less your achievement, and you should admit it on the cover.

      The admission someone who buys material has to make is 'I am using someone else's ideas. I need those ideas'. Either the ideas are evident and the user is grateful, 'Wow, what an imagination!' or the buyer is invited to share the burden and the blame of the incredibly shallow invention provided by random generation.

      Where are the great campaigns that have been created through the use of random tables? At least a well written setting might have a claim to being great.

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    5. Are you the Rock Band on stage or are you in the audience saying 'Let's create some fan based random rock shit, it'll be awesome dude.'

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    6. I'll write a post about it showing exactly how the whole thing works, sometime in the next week or so.

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    7. "Falling back on random tables to spark creativity should be done behind the curtain, no? You are in inventive doldrums so you resort to arbitrary thoughtless juxtapositions to spur you on. But a collection of too many frankenstein ideas will damage a setting with incoherence."

      Does this sound like someone who can get laid? No, it sounds like a overpuffed fedora tipping neckbeard with a literacy (burgerflipping) degree. It isn't like that kind of overly flowery language is necessary on motherfucking blogspot, or anywhere else on the Internet. Or planet.

      Maybe you should just not engage this Kent guy in dialogue, he's basically just saying "Your brand of fun is terrible and you should be ashamed of it", except that he's saying it in a way that makes this sound like some kind of important academic discussion as a way to inflate his own ego. And he's so invested in this it borders on pathetic.

      Come on, man, you've got better shit to do than pay attention to miserable people.

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    8. You sound like someone in their forties who shoots the shit with teenagers on street corners. They snigger when you leave because you try too hard and mispronounce the lingo.

      No, I encourage all the mass of people who are just like you, brave anonymous, to use random tables because I know it gives you confidence. Noisms is a creative guy and so I think he shouldn't.

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    9. Yet you are yet to prove your own creativity, as pretty much everything on your blog is just directly ripped from Tolkien.

      You still sound like a terrible British comedy routine, but that's pretty poor form for you to lower yourself to my way to speaking. Maybe you should concentrate more on your personal integrity and less on attempting to dole out criticism like a blind fat woman at a bistro.

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