Some folks also don't agree with the way I framed the 2000s Indie RPG movement as a reaction to post-AD&D2 magical / railroady GMing styles + a desire to elevate Game Designer as auteur, rather than GM as lord-of-the-table. Honestly, hard for any of us to properly see this stuff from the inside!
For what it's worth, there was an earlier draft of my chapter on the post-2000 history of RPGs -- in the Routledge "RPG Studies" book -- that tried to present a preliminary mapping of phases of the OSR. But they got cut/changed, partly by folks who know more about the OSR than me. But I tried!
In other news, I taught my kids how to play Mahjong, and now they're really into it. So I get to play Mahjong most nights (!!).
We'll see how long it takes them to master the basic "trashbin" (垃圾桶) version that I was taught first -- a long time ago -- as a beginner. I bet it won't be that long.
Ugh, the constant emotional whiplash when good things happen within a timeline that is, overall, the worst.
"That's so cool. Well, back to standing under tiny cocktail umbrellas in the unending rain of fist-sized hail, while pretending everything's okay."
Also interesting to think about re: game rules!
T-shirt design: "Descriptive not Prescriptive." The first word is displayed as cursive graffiti surrounded by grunge elements. Arrows lead down to an abstract representation of an open book. More arrows lead down from the book to "NOT PRESCRIPTIVE" which is displayed as more formal typewriter font.
The design on a dark shirt.
This week's #WeeklyTshirt is in honor of #lexicographers and #linguists who introduced me to "Descriptive not Prescriptive." Meaning #linguistics is not an impartial referee of correctness, but a description of language by real people at a certain time. danielsolis.threadless.com/designs/desc...
I first read this poem as an undergraduate and the second stanza just floored me. Right time right place right between the eyes.
I don't know what to call the bizarre mix of hope & despair that sets in at these moments of the sublime amid everything else, each intensified stronger by the other. It's like the emotional equivalent of stagflation.
Beliefs & Goals.
Further de-centalizing everything, so I never have to GM ever again? ;)
“We’re mired in this conversation about wokeism, which I don’t think is particularly useful to any of us when our schools are closing, our students have no clear pathways, they’re in debt, our teachers are living paycheck to paycheck and our workers don’t have any sense of stability.”
Ma Yuan's studies of the properties of water, southern Song Dynasty China, ca. 1190 - 1225 CE
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I am very supportive of this USC unionization effort and hope that they win!
(I am excluded, but only because adjuncts in my department are already unionized!)
new banner alert for the Locked Room Murder Mystery Game, follow the Kickstarter coming this summer! www.kickstarter.com/projects/ada...
Adam Bell looks in on in surprise at a receipt. The text reads... It's the Wow Glasses Sure Are Expensive If YOur Eyes Are As Bad As Mine sale! Use the discount code VISION for 20% off your order! https://shop.adambell.games
Good glasses: broken
Cheap glasses: killing me
New glasses: quite expensive
Want some tabletop roleplaying games?
Head on over to shop.adambell.games with code VISION to get 20% off and help pay for my new glasses. The code will work with anything I have in stock, including Uneasy Lies the Head!
Brutal. I'm already dreading this stuff happening to Oberlin, where I went.
About those spear-y Danes who lived in worlds of yore
And all day and all night
The noble kings who ruled so well
Full of: courage and greatness
Jeffrey Jey, lead singer of Eiffel 65
Every 3 years or so, my kids become re-obsessed with THAT ONE SONG by Eiffel 65.
This time, it's making me wonder if anyone's ever translated "Hwæt!" or "Sing, Muse!" as...
"So listen up, here's the story..."
Basically, I'm just screaming into the void, like everyone else. When's the general strike, y'all?
Everybody with any modicum of power either (1) openly or low-key agrees with Islamophobic genocide, even after the disastrous War On Terror, or (2) has cravenly swallowed their own pride so much that that they have excreted any remnants of a spine. Neither of those should surprise me but COME ON!
I can't believe a right-wing clown is saying that Trump is as close to the Antichrist as we're likely to get, while most mainstream institutions are silent or (at best) mealy-mouthed. "Somebody better stop the demon Mammon from destroying the world..." YOU ARE THOSE SOMEBODIES. Do something!
Seattle Sounders "what is best in life?" tofo
Soccer in the rest of the world is pretty normie. Soccer in the U.S. is fairly nerdy.
Also: poor one out for Google Reader. It died for all our sins.
If nothing else works, several years back, I bought all the copies online that I could find -- so I can assign it to be played in class. I think I have a stack of 5?
BUT THAT ALL HAPPENED LONG AGO, AND NOW
THERE ARE NONE WHO REMEMBER IT.
(Polaris, 2005)
I'm fully prepared to make Desperation-powered games for the rest of my life. I just haven't had a chance to get started yet. Really want to make one about 1930s Shanghai, where everyone is spying for at least one side. "Place this card on a character who flips. Everyone they know is now in danger."
The game design program I teach in is literally on the former site of a massive industrial steel mill, so... I really hope it's NOT in the water?
Games are fun.
It's so aggravating that Bibi's stupid right-wing genocidal war has kept expanding & persisting long enough to taint yet another Passover gathering. How long until an overwhelming majority accepts that violent, U.S.-backed hegemony cannot (& does not even intend to) deliver security and/or peace.