LockeBlog
Below are the 9 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Dev" journal:
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07:26 pm
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2 topics meme
Comment and be given two topics. Answer one earnestly and by providing new insights into what you're about as a person (even if the topic doesn't seem to call for it). Answer the other more frivolously (as much as is appropriate).
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Tagged by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7) sandmantv: topic 1 of 2: Nick Cage
you MSPAniacs don't have a controlling interest in mr cage, you realize
Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit [youtube]. It's over four minutes, and "Requiem for a Tower" is in the background. Watch it all in one sitting, if you dare. Trigger warnings: nick cage, crazy, deformities, violence, bees.
The lesson is: take good care of your finances and pay your taxes carefully so that you don't have to make a bunch of Ghost Rider sequels.
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06:29 pm
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your various "7 topics" memeposts
I have been enjoying them. You all write well and thoughtfully.
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12:20 pm
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last chance game chef
This year's Game Chef is Last Chance Game Chef. Not the last once in theory/actuality, but it is 2012 after all.
Ingredients: coyote, lantern, mimic, doctor, and [random forge threads].
I'm specifically tapping thekinginyellow and occultatio on the shoulder for various injoke-y reasons, but I always like seeing take a shot at this competition and I'm happy to read and provide comments/support.
ETA: and my post at the Tap-In thread
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02:01 pm
[Link] | I don't think you need a nohari or a johari.
I think you're great just the way you are.
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09:45 am
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at Vericon: Dance/Dawn/Dungeon and Spacerpunk V12
Vericon is this weekend! I'll have rather little time there, sadly, but I'll hope to see people (at least at alum stuff if nothing else). I wanted to mention two games I'll have available.
D1: Against The Queen Of Ice is a D&D (4E) module I'm creating as a Kickstarter reward for thekinginyellow's The Dance & The Dawn LARP. I'll have the first revision of it ready for play, and perhaps ready for someone else to run.
Spacerpunk: V12 (i.e. Vericon '12) is a version of the Spacerpunk tabletop I've been working on for a while. This will be in a notebook and ready to play, though probably not ready to be distributed unless you like photocopies from a spiral notebook.
If anyone has time this evening for an online playtest of either these this week (or afterwards, for that matter): let me know!
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04:45 pm
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[larp] worthy clarifications from my past post
* The "Art & the Hour" series of LARPs are fantastic. If you don't play in one, you lose. If you play in one, you gain +1 SAN or +1 CHA (your choice).
* I'm in favor of "find true love" / "hookups in the engineering room" as LARP goals, especially if (a) you respect players' lines/veils and (b) are reflective about what those themes mean. [I mean duh I wrote the tabletop man.]
* I always try to accept honest feedback, good or critical, with graciousness and gratitude. ("Try" is a key word.)
My previous post should be considered as an illustration of an extreme case: the epitome of selfish LARP authorship and play. Don't look for a single event to pin it on: look towards ways to avoid certain ends and make your own experiences better.
For example: "Did you achieve your goals? If you did, please leave positive feedback and reviews." Consider the opposite: Nearly a day of play, and hours focused on singular goals that have fallen through, and wasted time due to minor rules errors and random chance. Wouldn't you find fault in the authors, the rules, your fellow players, for the fact that you did not succeed? I have, and it led to pointless and bitter feedback. It was selfish of me.
"Did the GM forget to finish your character sheet? Please read more design theory before (erroneously) leaving feedback." I did this, literally, with a player in the Spacerpunk LARP whose sheet was entirely lacking in - get this - ABILITIES. She was very sweet about it and made the most of using roleplaying to achieve some goals and abandon others. I respect that she didn't make me feel entirely horrible during the game. Her gameplay experience suggest that, in some circumstances, a great set of clubbing boots are more important than game mechanics.
"This game is about roleplaying..." There is often a gulf between what players say they want, and what authors end up giving them, and what it is they are in fact interacting with and enjoying.
"One of the GM's four friends..." Well, there is a problem that, if you have some specific, tricky plot that will be attached to certain characters, you are more likely to attach to players (and: people) you know and trust. And yet: this is insular. I did this in my last LARP since I'm inexperienced enough in the LARP arena specifically; I may branch away from this anti-pattern next time.
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06:45 pm
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new HRSFA larp (compressed version)
This is just the rules, but you can flavor this however you like.
CHARACTER GOALS:
1. Find true love.
2. win the MINIGAME!!!11111111
2a. This game is about roleplaying, not mechanics.
CHARACTER WRITEUP:
1. i heard you like fanfic
1a. This game is about roleplaying and improvisation!
2. Are you one of the GM's four friends? You get two fanfics.
COMBAT RULES:
1. You are given a deck of (40-120) cards.
2. Flip a coin to determine a winner, unless you were given red cards, in which case you will lose combats.
2a. This game is about roleplaying, not combat.
ENDGAME:
1. Did you find your true love? No, you did not! GM narrates an ending.
2. Were you one of the GM's four friends? If so: You were part of the MINIGAME metaplot. You won!
FEEDBACK AND CRITIQUE:
1. Did you achieve your goals? If you did, please leave positive feedback and reviews.
2. Are you a (current/past/aspiring/hypothetical) larp writer? Please tell us what you would have done better and differently.
3. Were you uninterested in MINIGAME, or were you bad at MINIGAME? Please leave negative feedback.
4. Did the GM forget to finish your character sheet? Please read more design theory before (erroneously) leaving feedback.
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01:52 pm
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the deal with firefly
You know I do love Firefly & Serenity, right? So here's the deal with Firefly. The Independents - with whom the audience is sympathetic - believes in the following:
"The Feds, dominated by rich business interests, tried to interfere with our way of life out on the agrarian border where we have a simple lifestyle and keep to ourselves. They went too far in interfering with our self-governance, so we had a war for independence, which was an honorable but doomed effort. Even still, we have our own humble virtues, and I think that we'll rise again."
The parts I've bolded can be referenced to specific quotes within the Firefly series. This section, above, can literally - without further edits - be used to describe the Lost Cause ideology, a cluster of beliefs that aims to discount the cruelty of the American South, justify the Civil War, and apologize for the acts of state terrorism that followed. We cannot ignore the references to the American Civil War because the Firefly was written by an American author for an American audience and referencing a very American trope, the Western.
Of course, the Independents believe in freedom, and are not fighting to preserve slavery. This fiction is, in fact, precisely what Lost Causers believe: that the Civil War was not about slavery, that the institution of slavery would have gone away on its own, that this was a war about freedom or honor. We can't ignore this very creepy, very dangerous parallel. We can't ignore the fact that someone who truly wanted to believe in Lost Cause ideology is going to feel very comforted by the manifesto of the Browncoats.
Do you empathize with the Browncoats? Me too! Firefly is some moving fiction - but you must accept that this narrative borrows deeply and uncomfortable from this poisonous well. You can enjoy problematic things, but you can't ignore the truths around them.
And I mean it that I love Firefly. Part of me longs to be on a crew with some true friends, to get out from the oppressive bootstep of modernity, to get advice from Shepard Book and play pranks with Kaylee, to outsmart some borderlands grifters and deliver some meds to a struggling colony...
But the western narrative trope is, itself, about that fantasy: starting clean, a fresh start, feigning a separation from the very real and bloody and unfortunate history that got you to this point. The real "frontier" was never any of these things, and we have done nothing to possibly deserve a fresh start.
Enjoy your fandom.
ETA: Please log in or sign you're post if you're coming from elsewhere. Thanks!
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02:05 pm
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Read: the Magicians by Lev Grossman
Upon the suggestion of novalis (and with further elbowing by sandmantv), I finished The Magicians by Lev Grossman, and I recommend it. It is ostensibly about young adults discovering and learning magic, but it is more clearly about ambitious and being gifted and being youthful and experience and fantasy narratives. It has many flaws, but - for perhaps obvious reasons? - it was compelling to me and may be compelling to you. It's a fast read but it is not necessarily a forgiving one.
Spoiler-driven comments ahead.
( Read more... )
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