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BarnerCobblewood
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@Apocryphal said: @BarnerCobblewood said: I find that entertainment is starting to really impede and obstruct my relations with people around me, particularly as more and more of our social world is reduced to game of winning and lo…
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I wasn't impressed with the conceit that our shared memories are the stuff that makes 'reality' and the timeline. I thought the whole story lacked a coherent explanation of the relation between perception / memory and actuality. Since it was central…
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I think we should take fiction and playing very seriously - they are how we construct our world, and shape what decisions are possible within it. I think they can be a force for well-being, but I find that entertainment is starting to really impede …
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I felt it was skill directed towards a not-very worthy purpose. It seems clear to me that playing with friends produces far more good than reading this book, and others like it. People seem to get addicted to genres, which suggests something, but I …
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I found the ending unsatisfying. I thought that it was simply shoe-horned in to produce a work of the 'right-size' to bear the price-point. It also made little sense, so that we could have another reveal in another product of how this was a false-me…
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Both playing and reading are important ways we practice what is not present. I'm more and more interested in the ways that the global market continues to affect imagination among local friends, and in that way shape the possibilities of our action. …
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I'm going to get bcak to all the discussions this evening, but in the meantime here's a little nugget from yesterday's news: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/dd-licious-wendys-now-has-a-tabletop-rpg-and-the-villain-is-frozen-beef/
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Hi everyone. Questions will be posted 2 October - I have to go out of town on work Monday, then working until late Tuesday. BC
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@NeilNjae said: ... agree that the book puts forward an atomised view of society. The book is populated by people with one or two strong connections. There's no wider community, whether it supports or subjugates people within it. (In many …
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Yeah, that's her. Wonderful.
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@NeilNjae said: In the interest of discussion, would having an emotionally-engaged viewpoint character have changed your opinion? Would, for instance, a book from Dolly's or Alex's point of view have kept your interest more? First off - I…
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This was really helpful, especially the part about character generation. The djinn seems more like an artefact motivating an NPC than a person of its own.
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@NeilNjae said: I don't understand your point here. Is this a criticism of this book, where you're saying we shouldn't have stories about killers and murders? Or is this a comment about the wider discourse, where stories about terrible and evil t…
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Great thanks.
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I already have checked discussions, but it isn't doing it. I'll check comments and see if that fixes it.
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@Apocryphal said: @BarnerCobblewood In other words "You can't handle the truth of your puny, ineffectual, lives" and the publishing/movie/TV industries are exploiting us? That's not what I said - we can't really grasp our situation. Stori…
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I see. I need to go every month to check the box for the category of whatever book is chosen (e.g. 80. (August 2019) The Chill), otherwise I won't get a prompt that a conversation has started. I making an effort to participate more, but the truth is…
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For the kind of games I am interested in, this looks like a railroading problem. Why not just make things up as we go along that will provide interesting action? To be honest I have never really cared whether the sequence of games make analytic sens…
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Never used them during sessions - I depend on my memory. Probably a mistake. However they seem designed for reveals, for having secret information, which suggests that planning is going to take a lot of time. Look at government planning - it rarely …
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It is a small town in a big city, like most stories which can no longer scale to our social reality. I think most of us can't really grasp our situation, and so these stories provide a comfort that we can understand something which in reality is far…
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The voice creates a reader who is likewise dis-engaged from the action. I think in classic RPG (D&D) gaming this is part of why so many sessions are, to be blunt, boring - the DM / narrator isn't speaking as the character, but as someone like Le…
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One advantage of simile, metaphor, and analogy, is that each lets the reader form their own visualisation in their mind, while using the same language as everyone else, who might have a quite different picture, e.g. the weathered stone can be differ…
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I'm interested to read this also. Perhaps it could be someone's suggestion for an upcoming monthly book?
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For September let's read Recursion by Blake Crouch. Haven't read it, but it's got good reviews, and I think might have a gameable premise. If a lot of people prefer I'm open to choosing Always Coming Home by UKLeGuin, which despite having read, do n…
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* BC By the way Apocryphal, your links on the site e.g. http://diceroller.co/d20roller above all point me to http://www.http.com, e.g. http://www.http.com//diceroller.co/d20roller. Something about the http:// prefix I guess.
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What I mean is that Lem's characters (in the non-comic stories) don't ever really 'solve' their macguffin. If heroic has something to do with defeating tragic necessity, he is not your guy. Still I think many of his protagonists are heroes, who just…
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Love Lem. He recognises that science is the study of causality, and that causality depends on both external events and internal understanding, that causality is relationship not thing. Also is keenly aware that our agency is much less than what we t…
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I think this is a good idea. BC
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@Apocryphal said: I suppose that come more to the heart of what I like in RP Gaming, is challenging both character beliefs and player beliefs - or better yet, having the characters do that to one another. If you mean playing / enjoyi…
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@Apocryphal said: What is the distinction between religious and secular in Tibetan culture? There has not been a lot of research into this. As I understand it Tibetan religion after the 10th century drew a theoretical / dogmatic distincti…