Observations of the Fox

I first remember hearing this term a few years ago. Here's a link...   It was first proposed as a paradigm for comedy by A. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren at the Humor Research Team / Humor Research Lab (HuRT / HuRL).   The topic was raised in the last couple of days, when she asked "Why is a fart funny?" and I tried to explain how a fart is generally unable to hurt you (it's generally benign), but is a violation of the senses. Some people don't find them funny, and that may be because their do not consider the gaseous aroma to be benign at all and this they are left with the violation which simply offends them...or they may not consider it a violation because they regularly encounter far worse assaults on their senses as a part of their daily lives, thus leaving them with the benign and something which really doesn't make much impact on them at all (farts are just a part of everyday life). We can similarly see how some people might perceive racist comments as ...

    It's an interesting theory, and I've certain seen players like this at a number of tables that Ive either been a part of, or have run, at various stages over the past few decades. In the last couple of posts I mentioned narcissistic players, and this is certainly in the same ballpark as that phenomenon (I can almost hear the player screaming "Fake News") . The screenshot post goes into a bit of depth, regarding the subcategories and it's nice to see a social media post that actually scratches a bit below the surface. I've heard players explicitly use each of the types of displacement mentioned, and in some cases I can think of players who've used multiple examples during my time gaming with them... however, when things go well, they love the GM, they love the rule systems, they love the unfolding story, (they typically see everyone else in the group as supporting characters to their success, and don't often think about them) . If this type of play...

I've been collecting posts from online to respond to... some giving me positive reactions...and some... ...seriously, for fuck's sake!!! Let's deconstruct it a bit... bearing in mind that I don't have a lot more context,and I'll be inferring a lot of details based on patterns I've established over the years in context with my assortment of recent posts.  I've just finished Lanterns as well, and it was a great show. I can see how someone would want to tell stories in that universe, or stories of that nature. But...   Any one or two of these c ould be modified to bring D&D closer into alignment with what we see in Lanterns, but we either start drifting from the core concepts of Lanterns, or we start drifting away from the core concepts of D&D. We have a tension between the diegetic source (Lanterns) and the non-diegetoic rule systems (D&D). If I had players who were hell bet on playing D&D, but who wanted the Lanterns style of storyline, there...

The liminal space is a powerful thing. The idea of being able to step out of yourself for a couple of hours, inhabit a character in a shared world with friends, where there is a ritual8se space with instruments sacred to the moment like dice and possibly maps, figurines, tokens, cards, or anything else that might help create a stronger link between the real and the imagined. Texts that describe the interactions within the world, or how the sacred instruments can be utilised to affect the imagined world. Some of that text is written by Prophets (game designers), published in hardback and purchased...other parts of the text are defined by the the local arbiter/priest (DM/GM/MC/etc.), perhaps in hastily written notepads and journals, maybe printed in a folder... then there's the elements of the text written by the congregation (the players), who might be writing accounts of their own experiences in the liminal world, and those accounts may be fed back into the space when the GM says ...

 If you're reading this, you're either: A. an uber hispter delving into arcane knowledge from an obscure designer who'll probably never make it big, so it's safe to read and maintain your indie credibility... B. someone who has followed a link from a social media site because it seemed interesting, but otherwise aren't sure... C. a person who has come here in the far future from when this post was written, because finally the authr actually has made it big in some way... D. an AI trawler bot that has been programmed to go through blogs and collect data for the LLM that drives other parts of the algorithm... E. someone who founf my moderately successful series of map drawing tutorials, and you wondered what else might be around here... F. someone I haven't accounted for... ...either way, here comes a bit of a rant.  In my experience, most people who participate in the hobby of TTRPGs don't run games for themselves, and most of them only ever play games under ...

  There has often been a debate between "Rules and Written" (RAW) and "Rules as Intended" (RAI). The debate goes back to the earliest days of gaming, and can probably be traced back to the concepts of rules versus rulings. I've indicated a number of times over the years that I'm not a big fan of systems that build convoluted sets of mechanics that detail different ways of resolving different types of task. I prefer an overall system that will basically approximate everything, and keep the complexity of the game to a manageable level. I know it's not as "realistic", but what is "realism" in a session of fantasy escapism anyway. The post above prompted my thoughts on this. It's kind of the reason why I'm developing the "SNAFU Cookbook". Cortex had its "Hacker's Guide", showing ways you could adapt the system for various purposes. A lot of this comes down to issues I've discussed many times here on the...