Observations of the Fox

I just saw this, and it's really linked into a lot of the posts I've been making lately.   It seems to be an advertising point for D&D-adjacent products that you don't need literacy , and you can use tools to do the heavy lifting for you. I don't know if this is an AI product, but it does seem to be a package that combines the features of a virtual tabletop and a rapidly accessible database of the rules. It's a tool, it might be a good tool, it might not....but like every tool it probably needs a degree of expertise in it's use and in the environment where it's to be used. It could be right in certain circumstances, it could be wrong in others. A player wouldn't know unless they had read the rules. It's a shortcut that offloads the burden of literacy onto something else and then says "trust us".   I know I'm not the target audience for this, because I see TTRPGs as having the infinite scope of artistic potential, while this reduces ...

Wow, I probably shouldn't have started digging down the literacy rabbit hole... As someone who is currently teaching Mathematics (among other things), I'm seeing stuff like this.   Now this isn't a post about mathematical skill, but the responses to this image are fascinating. Some people are working out the part inside the brackets and the part outside the brackets separately then multiplying them together due to the brackets. 800 ÷ 4 = 200, 5 x 10 = 50... 200 x 50 = 10000 (This is wrong) Some are simply working left to right. 800 ÷ 4 = 200, 200 x 5 = 1000, 1000 x 10 = 10000  (Another way to get the wrong answer)  Some are simply working right to left. 5 x 10 = 50, 4 x 50 = 200, 800 ÷ 200 = 4. (Which gets us to the right answer but using the wrong logic)  Some are doing the work inside the brackets (5 x 10 = 50), followed by the part immediately outside the brackets (4 x 50 = 200), then the operator by itself on the side (800 ÷ 200 = 4). (Co...

I was alerted to this post over on Wordpress through my socials (in this case it was BlueSky). It kind of touches on a lot of the stuff I've been thinking about in recent years, including the comments made by students in the TTRPG club I ran at school for a couple of years (before the troubles), my work to make game rules more "user-accessible", my studies in linguistics over the years, and my work in general as a teacher. There's generally been a lot of discussion about literacy as an issue in various fields lately. This is not just gaming related, but also touched on media literacy, social literacy, political literacy, and how the decline in each of these has had ramifications on the world around us. It's not just about whether someone can read the words, but also about whether they understand the meaning being conveyed. In the case of music, it might touch on the idea that conservatives are calling Rage Against the Machine or Bruce Springsteen woke, because it...

  So, while exploring an internet rabbithole, I've just found "The Housebooks of Nuremburg or the Twelve Brethren Books". On a project that bears some resemblance to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying, I was searching for a fairly comprehensive list of the types of occupations regular people might have had during the middle ages, and these books came up. In 1388, the wealthy merchant Konrad Mendel had an old people's home built to provide accommodation and meals for twelve needy old Nuremberg craftsmen and had it endowed with capital for permanent management. From around 1425/26, each ‘Mendel brother’ was portrayed with a full-page portrait in Mendel's Housebook. By the end of the imperial city period, it had grown to a total of 857 illustrated pages with 765 portraits of craftsmen in folio format.   The website for a project focused on digitising the work can be found at https://online-service.nuernberg.de/viewer/hausbuecher/ , and elements of it can be found at...

Today I watched a traditional smoking ceremony. I've seen a few of these in my time working with indigenous communities, and the commonalities between the ceremonies used by various groups across south-eastern Australia gives me a confidence to use them as a common ritual in Walkabout. The fact that they are used publically in front of non-indigenous Australians also means that there's no real fear of spreading secret knowledge to people who shouldn't be seeing it. Given the opportunity, I approached the local elders who ran the ceremony, asking them if they'd be willing to share some of the stories. I usually tell people I'm writing a comic book when I first make contact with them, because this is something people quickly understand as a storytelling medium. It's after a couple of meetings that I reveal how much more there is to the project. At this stage, I've once again been welcomed into the community. I've been offered a guided tour of t...

This week in Australia, it's Reconciliation Week   but for most of the wider community this doesn't seem to mean anything. This particular week isn't bounded by a Monday to Sunday, or a Sunday to Saturday, it's bounded by two specific dates of importance to the Indigenous communities of Australia. The first of these is the date of the 1967 referendum when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities were given the right to vote and citizenship (in a vote that was 90% for, and 10% against). The second is the date of a High Court decision granting land rights to Indigenous communities (in 1992). These were powerful moments in the colonial narrative, but there is so much more to do. How these dates might play into Walkabout, or even if they need to, is going through my head now. Generally, the idea behind Walkabout is that traditional communities hadcrespect for each other and for the land. While the invaders wanted dominance, spirits of vengeful conquest imbue...

There seems to be a common thread among a lot of the popular games at the moment, whether they are indie story games, OSR, Powered by the Apocalypse, Cortex, Fate, D&D... in each case the originators of the product have developed a great framework, and they've detailed a few bits and pieces, but in a lot of cases they only really become interesting when other people get hold of them and start adding in their own flavour to the mix. This isn't true in all cases... As an example, Into The Odd from Chris McDowell certainly has some quirky flavour and interest from the outset. But generally I find a lot of the well played and over-hyped games are either blank canvases, or canvases where the starting elements can be easily stripped out so that other designers and gamers can add their own nuance to the experience. It's one of the things that I've been trying to do in my designs, but the trick seems to be developing enough interest to lure people's attention, but not...

This is European Celtic symbolism. This is Asian Shamanic symbolism This is North American First Nations symbolism. This is Australian Aboriginal symbolism. Yes, each of these examples are indocative of the continents they are from, but they are each on a narrow subset of the rich diversity from the continents indicated. I've tried to narrow down similar types of imagery from pre-modern eras, and while the first three sets are derived from quick Google searches, they're typical of the kinds of imageey sets I've seen numerous times over the years. The last set of images is on a piece of paper I recieved from Indigenous artists in Moree last year, again similar to many of the image sets I've seen on websites and in books about Australian Aboriginal artwork. I know a lot of the "Australian" symbols aren't native to the Gamilaroi people (who live in and around Moree in northern NSW), they're just the kind of symbolism that is expected of Au...

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. It's a science fiction cliche, but it stands out because it's so similar to what many of the world's religions claim to teach. The problem is that those in power have always lived by the adage of "do as I say and not as I do". It has always been the problem in the western world, and most other civilisations across the planet for that matter. Power breeds corruption, corruption breeds power. Imbalance leads to individuals with power, and the only way they see to gain more power is through further imbalance. Walkabout has always been about restoring the balance. That means It's always been about sticking it to those in power. Confronting the bullies, giving hope to the masses, toppling the tyrants, allowing nature to take it's course. Years of study with Australian Indigenous peoples from various parts of the east and south-east haven't shifted those thoughts, they've reinfo...

I need to start following  Chris Tamm's Blog . He's a local (or at least another Aussie... he seems to alternate between Sydney and Adelaide), and he's doing the kind of stuff that I actually appreciate in the OSR. Here's a link to a project he's been working on, in collaboration with a range of other folks. It is Planet Psychon. It pushes boundaries, it provides ideas, it seems to work brilliantly with a bunch of ideas I've been having for my Dark Places setting. Actually, I think some of my ideas and some of his ideas have mingled in various facebook groups and other forums across the net, talking at cross purposes but feeding off one another none-the-less. A lot of the ideas in this book have instantly inspired me, they aren't exactly the way I'd handle things, but nothing ever is. That's all a part of gaming, translating the source material to your specific table... It's a part of all art, translating the artist's message into so...

Apparently the RPG Research Project has been going for decades, but I've only just heard of it. They claim to predate the research work of Ron Edwards and The Forge, so I really have to wonder what they've been researching. I'm going to dig through this site more thoroughly at a later date, but here's the link for other people who might be interested (and so I can find it again myself). RPG Research

I've been instructed by the local Aboriginal community, and by an Aboriginal elder in charge of Indigenous education policy in this state, that I have to finish my game Walkabout . I was given a few indicators of elements that might need to be altered, or at least carefully explained to avoid being problematic, but on the whole, the concept of an RPG exploring Aboriginal spirituality through stories and metaphor was considered exciting.

It always pays to have some extra sets of eyes looking over a project before it gets released for public consumption. If anyone out there is interested in taking a look, and willing to offer some critique, send me a private message via G-plus, Facebook, Messenger, or even make a post here with your preferred contact details. If you manage to get something back to me before the weekend is over, indicating elements that might seem confusing, or even just simple things like spelling mistakes of grammatical errors, I'll add you to the "special thanks" list, and send you a signed, numbered physical copy of a Release Edition ashcan of the game.

Thankyou to everyone who read, shared and responded to yesterday's post . Throngh direct comments on the post, G+ responses, and private messages/emails, I've managed to accumulate over 100 articles on the topics of gaming and roleplaying. Now it's a case of distilling my vague direction of inquiry into a series of specific questions to investigate, each of which might contribute toward a larger pattern of understanding. That's generally how research in academia works... If you pick a topic too vast, the scholars say that you are speaking in generalities and vagueness. If you pick a single topic to small, a different group of scholars claim that you are cherry picking your dataset and narrowing everything down to a focus that happens to match your preconceived agenda. So you work piece by piece, feeding off the work of others, and allowing them to feed off yours (the more referenced your work is by others, the more respected it becomes). Once I've knocked over a...

I recently finished my university degree, a Bachelor of Arts focusing on Social Analysis and Sociolinguistics. The final stage of that included research into play, particularly focusing on the cosplay community, but touching on elements of LARP. One of the things I found was that there really isn't a lot of research work being done into the field of adult play. There is a bit coming from the Nordic scene, but most play research is focused on the elements of children's play and the realm of computer gaming. But there is a lot of adult play going on. I'm writing this post as a call out to anyone who reads the blog, and who might know of some academic papers, journal articles, or other sources, that discuss adult play. I've been thinking of doing some serious research work in this field for a few weeks, and there seems to be a drive in the local community (at least partially driven by  +Keiran Sparksman ) to get some more formal work done in this sphere. I know a few...

After three weeks of sharing stories, learning about culture, politely asking about local history, and generally being respectful to the local Aboriginal land council, I've informally been taught all sorts of things. I've been told how to identify sacred trees, ritual grounds, and burial sites in the local area, and I've been given the specifics on how to "point the bone" at someone, and what this entails. A bit like "voodoo dolls", it loses some of the significance when you take this knowledge out of context. I'm wondering if this might just be some joke the locals are playing on the "curious gubba"... (where "gubba" is a derived contraction of 'government', and refers to a "white fella"... but strangely can be a general connotation for white... "How do you want your coffee?" "Two 'n gubba") ...or maybe it's some kind of general knowledge that everyone in the community is exp...