Common Worlds

Somehow yesterday I managed to get a lot of work done and make it to a matinee of 300. Along with a mess of SCA work I made barbecue for tomorrow's game.

I thought I had read the whole Frank Miller graphic novel years ago when it sat on Aradd's coffee table, but either I'd forgotten most of it or the movie was very different from the original.

Still, I quite enjoyed it. If you like that sort of thing, you'll like this one. It's especially good inspiration for my HeroQuest game.

From an SCA standpoint, I just kept thinking "See, this is why you never want to use two sword in a melee."

If you liked 300 in either version, go read Gates of Fire I kept thinking of that extraordinary book of historical fiction while watching the movie. Colin introduced me to the book and I've recommended it to many people since then. It still amazes me that the author, Steven Pressman, went from Bagger Vance to Gates of Fire.

High Point doesn't have much of a downtown.

The black t-shirt business has more successfully conquered fandom than I ever thought possible.

Many gamers still smell bad.

Hey I'm upgrading the site today, so you may see some appearance changes, temporary interruptions and then finally some improvements.

Drupal 5.1 here we come!

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Mo at Sin Aesthetics has some sharp observations about the writing of examples of play in a rules book. Here's an excerpt:

...you need to examine the examples you're presenting not only for their effectiveness in communicating the process of your game, but also for the social milieu they illustrate your game as encouraging. Because your play examples are the Example of Play you should be acutely aware of the fact that you are setting the expectations of beheaviour in your game. If, for example, you include player banter to give it a sense of realistic colour and that banter includes one player dismissing another player's ideas, you need to be aware that you as the creater of the game have said that it's not just allowable to do so in your game, but that it's par for the course. That milieu might be your intent, or it might not. My point is that you need to be aware of what your examples do to the subtext of your game.

Lastly, I think it needs to be said that just like there are people out there that wouldn't read a play example if you tied them down to a Bond villain device to make them capitulate, there are people who will only ever read your play examples. I know people who read the back cover of a book to get the jist of the game's theme or context and then open the book to go right to a play example to see if it's the kind of game they'd like to play. Many of these people make purchasing decisions about your game based on that experience alone, and if they are turned off by what they see, they may never give your game a second chance again.

Doctor what-was-his-name-again?
Okaaay, clearly this is a very very serious and frightening matter, but they had to interview a guy by what name? Doctor Worm? You gotta be kidding me.

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