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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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Comments
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Yes, to echo that this was a very good find.
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(Quote) Most of these games work as one-shot sessions, but they generally work better over several sessions. Smallville seems to take 2-4 sessions to really get going — but once it does, it's fantastic. I used it to play something very close to the …
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(Quote) What would you like to know? As for adding Drama System to other games, that's what Malandros did: it mixed Drama System with Powered by the Apocalypse for the "procedural" (non dramatic, i.e. action) activity. In play, you need t…
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(Quote) As prompted by @Apocryphal , here are some focussed games that cover more than the standard "do anything so long as it's combat" style of D&D and similar. But please bear in mind that I'm not up to date with what the cool kids …
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@BarnerCobblewood , you said that this book strongly influenced your gaming. Apologies if I missed it, but I don't think you've described how it did. I'd really like to hear your take on the book and it's influence on gaming.
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> @RichardAbbott said: > (Quote) > That sounds really interesting. Are the changes in description voluntary ("I want to trade strength for charisma" or whatever) or the consequences of action and so not directly willed for E…
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(Quote) There's a huge difference between game-characters being in conflict, and the players being in conflict (or competition). In just about all my RPG experience, the players around the table have been working together to tell a story. But at the…
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(Quote) I've not read it. Perhaps I should.
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(Quote) I think the key to this answer is in the ACH text itself, in the section "Some Generative Metaphors." Most RPGs, and much Western fiction, relies on metaphors of The War and The Lord. Struggle and power. The idea that "all sto…
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World-building and motivations... what a subject. Tolkien wrote Middle-Earth to create a whole new mythology for the English. It was based in his linguistics and mythology, but LotR was written as a story in a world created to have stories. Marvel…
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And near the end, I wanted to say, "No, Ursula, tell me what you really think about 'intellectual property rights'."
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First thoughts: this was an intensely political book. It may have a surface veneer of genteel meandering, but you can sense, just below the surface, le Guin's searing hatred of male posturing, war, violence, and power through domination. But rather …
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Looking up "ashblow hair", I came across this post from Jemisin on the races of Broken Earth (only contains information on The Fifth Season. And it seems "lynching" as a term originated in the US, and seems to be strongly linked…
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Another model for stills hiding orogenes could be people hiding Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. People were kept safe, at great risk to the custodians, even though there wasn't any easy way to get the hidden person to safety.
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(Quote) That's an interesting thought, but we've not seen anywhere in the Stillness for an Underground Railroad to transport people to. The US one moved slaves from where they were slaves to where they could live freely. Where would orogenes go in t…
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(Quote) Broadly true, but I think that reading both sections in parallel is informative, and perhaps even the intended way. There are snippets of worldbuilding information that appear in the "front" stories (e.g. the train, diseases) that …
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I picked up the phrase from Robin Laws's book on story structure. I guess he was aware of the euphemism, being Canadian, even if it's not used over here.
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(Quote) And for that reason alone, I shall use the phrase as much as possible.
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_Gods of Jade and Shadow_ sounds more interesting to me than _Red Mars_. Let's do that!
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(Quote) Without giving too much away, and with the proviso that I can't remember all that many details from when I read these books the first time, things do improve. There's been a lot of exposition and "laying pipe" to set things up. Tho…
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(Quote) Is that because you're not enjoying the book, and want to get it over and done with? Is it because you're caught up in the action and keep turning the pages? Something else? (Quote) Relating this back to gaming, are you saying the violence …
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(Quote) But the word "magic" has meaning only for us, the reader; it has no meaning for Essun. It's an inversion of the word "orogeny" which is deeply meaningful for Essun but is a nonsense word for us readers. Is this intended …
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(Quote) I got the impression the moon's on a long-period solar orbit, not a terrestrial orbit. Maybe it comes back to the inner system every couple of centuries, but it's only a distant and transitory phenomenon, much like a comet. But even so, that…
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(Quote) Structurally, there hasn't been a lot happening so far in this book, especially with Essun. It seems like there's a lot of exposition, lining up people and places for what comes next. (I can't remember the story of this book very well, but I…
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(Quote) ny published authors do it. I suppose Tolkien is the great trail-blazer here, who showed that people will pay for it, and so it is worth doing as part of the business of being an author. LeGuin's Father was an Anthropologist who studied 'Nat…
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Earthdawn's fun because it has in-setting justifications for all those stupid adventuring tropes. The key idea is that magic comes and goes in centuries-long cycles. When magic gets too strong, evil Horrors from evil dimensions can enter our world a…
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I think the "reveal" was the presence of the Machine City, with all its machine intelligence and telecommunications, and hence that the world of the Kesh isn't some "fantasy" world but rather a future Earth after some form of civ…
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(Quote) I think that's true in exactly the same way that fantasy settings are D&D with other elements. After all, a core activity in Tékumel is going into underground complexes, killing monsters and getting treasure. It's just D&D with some …
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(Quote) Thanks! I will check it out.
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(Quote) This has come up a few times before. Is the general consensus that Jemisin is good at physical description? People, places, action, what they look like and what happens? (Quote) There's something here, I think, about Jemisin's thinking on w…