Observations of the Fox

Those who've been reading from the beginning will be aware that I've been generating this Vector Theory because I was getting annoyed at the semantic warfare raging on in the shadows of The Forge and Story Games. Five different people with five different interpretations of the term "Narrativism". Four people with six definitions of "Simulationism", because two of the two four can't make up their mind about the true definition and their version of the term changes depending on the context in which it's being used. One person with an adamant view on the phrase "Step On Up", despite their view running contrary to standard grammar and everyone else who has input regarding the topic. GNS and The Big Model have evolved, and arguably they are a great way to define the theory about what happens between a group of players when they meet on a gaming table. But for a newcomer they can be really hard to penetrate, just when you think you understand it,...

I've just finished creating a font for Bunraku Nights. It depicts the dominoes from a standard set of 28. I'll make it available shortly if anyone's interested. But the font creation bug has hit. I'm looking at creating a few new fonts, depicting dice of various types with each possible result. 4 images of a d4 6 images of a d6 (may 12, 1 set depicting numerals, 1 set depicting pips) 8 images of a d8 10 images of a d10 12 images of a d12 20 images of a d20 But with 128 characters possible in a font, that will leave more than half of the potential characters empty. So what do I put in the other potential character slots for my new gaming font?

Good versus Evil. Light versus Darkness. Form vs Function. Truth versus Lies. When we see a dualism in the world, we naturally try to compare it to other dualisms with which we are familiar. It's easy to say Good equates to Light and Darkness equates to Evil. This is a common theme through a lot of western thought and it has become deeply ingrained in our psyche. But a comparison of the "Good versus Evil" dualism and the "Truth versus Lies" dualism starts to touch on some grey areas. Is it always good to tell the truth, what if you hurt someone's feelings in doing so? What if you expose things that make the world a darker place? Is it better to tell a "white lie" and let things progress more smoothly? This could be argued semantically for years...and I'm sure it has been. The reason I'm thinking about this topic is the notion of "Clocks versus Clouds". It has just been brought up in a thread on Storygames. My first response was h...

There's some ideas posted at Games for Goblins , if anyone's interested in having a look. Just some games I threw together, based on some of the ideas I had when I was illustrating the book. They aren't meant to be complicated games, just simple things that help get creative juices flowing. The first is called "Defending the Horde"...though that should probably read "Defending the Hoard", a tactical game where a single powerful antagonist tries to raid a goblin treasure pile while everyone else defends it. Each player takes turns as the antagonist. The second is called "The Maiden" and it's all about Goblin courtship. I'll be creating a few more idea for the project over the next couple of weeks regardless of whether anyone else decides to provide input. I'll be trying to make sure a combination of all the different components are used in the various games I write up.

I just put this post up on The Forge, it's one of those things I've been trying to get towards with Vector Theory, but losing my lobe in mid-March has caused there to be a general disruption in services for the blog. (Most of my attention has been focused on activities that have a slightly better chance of earning me some money...eg. Building my suit of Iron Man armour, illustration, and actually doing the legwork and looking for jobs). But anyway, here's a cut down version of the post (I've cut out a few of the points referencing this very blog, to avoid a post-modernist perspective loop). If you leave it alone, a story/beam will continue traveling in a straight line. If you put mirrors in the way of the story/beam, you deflect it in a premeditated way. If you focus the beam through a series of lenses, you have a tendency to divert it to a specific point (this might be a climax, or a specific scene along the story). Colour theory emerges with some of the deeper co...