Sunday 7 March 2010

Wake Up Baby Cause I'm Coming To You From The Future

I took two days off last week to play with the wife (no, not just that kind of playing... well, okay, quite a bit of that kind of playing, although it depends on what kind of playing you really mean, etc. etc.). So I came into the office today, even though it be Saturday, to catch up on work. Naturally I'm not doing much work at all, and mostly am just listening to Zwan and Alice in Chains, checking the football scores every three seconds, and drinking tea. Nobody else is around. All is at peace. Time to write a blog entry compose of random titbits.

  • I'm spending some time posting at Story Games, to see how the other half live. Thoughts? Relatively friendly and sedate, probably due to shared viewpoints and a high degree of consensus on any given issue. A nice change of pace from the freneticism of my regular haunts.
  • It strikes me that this list of maxims, found at said forum, could apply equally to what so called Old Schoolers trumpet, except for maybe the last one - just goes to show how both the avant-garde forge games and OSR retro-clones are really a reaction against the same thing:
    Story is created in play.
    Is it fun?
    Create opportunity and provide feedback.
    Player’s actions matter, reinforce this to create immersion
    Story is the culmination of player’s goals.
    Continuity fosters reality
    Supply redundant and convergent paths
    Drive the story with all you have.

  • Arguing on the internet is a terrible waste of time, but really quite fun sometimes.
  • I wonder how many people who are usually the DM are also failed novelists, or at least people who think about writing novels but never do. I suspect there's a high correlation between DMing and Wanting To Be A Writer.
  • I love how d12s roll.

9 comments:

  1. Alice in Chains is playing on XM Radio right now. Or I should say, it's playing in the satellite radio station that replaced XM through my satellite TV provider.

    You ever listen to any Mad Season? I love that depressing, heavy shit.

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  2. No, I'll check them out on YouTube. I love depressing heavy shit too. Try Kyuss sometime if you haven't already.

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  3. Though my ultimate favourite grunge era band has to be Screaming Trees.

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  4. A former member of Screaming Trees was part of Mad Season. :) I just posted my favorite song from them at my blog. Thanks for the tip on Kyuss!

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  5. 1) Screaming Trees rock

    2) I'm an half-failed novelist, and I'd rather play than DM, honestly. It just didn't work out that way.

    3) get back to work!

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  6. 1) I too am a frustrated writer, hence I DM. 8)

    2) I have always wanted to make a D&D world using a bunch of stuff from Monster Magnet songs, including "Temple of Your Dreams". Sadly, most of the good stuff is ripped off from Marvel Comics. 8)

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  7. "I'll plant a bomb in the Temple of your Dreams!"

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  8. Novelist. No way. I don't publish any modules/materials either. Both are way too much work. All that writing and editing and outlaying.

    It's mostly all in my head, vaguely and broadly stroked. It doesn't become detailed until it's needed in a game. And even then I don't have to worry about spelling, gramer and typos. Although, I do try to worry about "voice".

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  9. If I had channelled all the effort I have put into adventure planning, writing and recapping over the last 10 years into a novel, I would be damn prolific.

    It just seems so much easier to role-play though. And yeah, arguing with you is fun. Not sure about the waste of time part, though.

    Are the story-player boards as pretentious as popular legend would have it? A preponderance of goths?

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