Observations of the Fox

I'm trying out a new social network by the creator of Wikipedia, it's called WT:Social and it's seems to already seem positive. A few local game designers are hoping to push is forward as the replacement G+ that many of us have been looking for over the past few months, and with that in mind a number of gaming groups have already started to become established on the network. If I've done this correctly, my link on WT:Social is here. If you read this blog, it'd be nice to see you there.

This article on Medium has been doing the rounds on Facebook. It feels like only a year ago that people were still defending him and fawning over him... actually, I think that was only a year ago. From what I've heard through numerous sources, this couldn't have happened to a more appropriate guy.

When I moved to this part of the world, I tried to find out how to get in contact with the local indigenous community. The first few people to give me an answer generally told me... "we don't have any". That rang alarm bells for me, because I'd seen from a few sources that I'd moved into traditional Barapa Barapa lands. Here's an example website that shows this . But I've also seen images of indigenous massacres since colonialism, and there's a notable marking in this part of the country. I'd been told by a couple of people that they'd be interested in hearing the story of indigenous communities here, and what happened to them, but I'd also been told that there might be some people with a strong interest in keeping those stories unknown. Either way, I really want to do something relating to the river, probably as a sourcebook for Walkabout. The name of the river on maps is the Murray, but in one of the indigenous languages it...

Thankyou Yu. Sergeeva for your translation of one of my blog articles into Russian. It's always great to know that my thoughts and writings are being read by people in various parts of the world and that my small contributions might be influencing other parts of the design community. I probably wouldn't have even noticed this ping on my radar except for the experiment I did last month where I didn't make any posts at all on the blog and simply looked at the traffic every couple of days to see what happened. Strangely there was s little bump of traffic from a Russian site, and it didn't look like a porn site so I investigated... it looks like I'm even a hashtag over there , with my entire ' Worldbuilding 101 ' series translated to Russian. This was a little series I'm pretty proud of, so I consider this a great piece of flattery and praise. It makes the whole effort feel worthwhile.

"Lovecraft was a racist"..."but he was just a product of his time"..."but he was overtly racist, even beyond other authors of the era. His stuff is problematic, was problematic, and as long as he is idolised always will be problematic"..."so you're saying he helped fuel the pulp-era's equivalent of the alt-right"..."no, maybe, sort of". Identifying factors for characters can be descriptive or prescriptive. By my definiton here, prescriptive factors are applied to the character before the story occurs, such factors guide the intended actions of the characters, and in some cases a character's actions are even bound and limited by the identifying factor. Descriptive factors manifest as a result of the actions taken, a character who has a tendency to act in a certain way or repeat certain types of activities can be described as possessing traots associated with those acts. A soldier, who has been trained to show courage unde...

I still have my love hate relationship with the OSR, so today's " controversy " doesn't surprise me. My Facebook feed today has been scattered with people proudly proclaiming to have joined the club of gamers who've been blocked by Zak S. My G+ feed has been scattered with people saying "not all OSR", and providing rationales about how it's only a few bad eggs.  Honestly, I don't know if his whole incident is related to the new podcast involving RPGPundit, and Venger Satanis... who are curiously a pair gamers who court controversy purely because it gets people talking about their nom-de-plumes...  [STOP TO DO SOME RESEARCH] [RESUME] No, actually they look unrelated, there's just a whole heap of OSR related victimhood, and anti-progressive shit going down. It's curious that the OSR has a stance against progress in gaming (tending toward conservative, if not regressive, models of play), and these prominent figures in it...

This article from the Australian Broadcasting Commission , reinforces and draws on a lot of the ideas I've previously heard. Ideas that have been confirmed by the elders I've been speaking to, but it also doesn't quite go far enough.  As Australia's first city, the pathways of Indigenous people were certainly used as the basic method to get from place to place, and those paths eventually became the accepted methods used by settlers, then paved for use by carriages and cars. But in addition to the Sydney basin, this occured across the whole country. Explorers typically followed the paths linking different communities of Indigenous nations, often aided by native guides. When later leading surveyors across the land, the explorers took the paths they knew, and the Aboriginal pathways became locked into the settlers maps as the roads between towns. Often the Aboriginal settlements were located on strategic waterholes, places where paths crossed rivers, or trading...

I've held off on this one...knowing I wouldn't get a mention on anyone else's responses, but curious to see who else has been mentioned. I've seen a few of the usual suspects come up, so I've naturally decided to go with a designer who hasn't been featured so far... ...another Aussie game designer. Nathan Russell  (he doesn't seem to have done much on G+ lately, so it's probably a bit silly linking to his profile there, but I feel dirty linking to Facebook.) The Peril Planet Website can be found HERE The DrivethruRPG Shopfront can be found HERE Nathan is the founder of Peril Planet games, while also being a drama teacher, father, and all round nice guy who lives in Newcastle, just north of Sydney, Australia. I first met Nathan almost a decade ago at GenCon Oz 2008, but had known him a little while before that online through forums such as Storygames and 1km1kt. I've since been to his house at least once, visited his gaming club in New...

Heavy guitar distortion and fuzz... Oh. You still mean regarding game making... Most beneficial form of feedback, and favourite feedback are different. My favourite feedback would be hallowed praise and words claiming my genius, along with numerous sales and seeing word-of-mouth spreading across the internet. My most beneficial feedback is constructive criticism, where it really shows that someone has read the work, possibly even put it into play. I don't expect people to know what was in my head when I've put together a cluster of mechanisms to create a game, I don't often try to expose those processes in the final product, but when someone gets it, I'm happy. Conversely, when someone offers a "suggestion" which returns one of the problems I've been avoiding in the ecosystem of play, that bugs me... bit at least it makes me think. Feedback that makes me think is good.

We won. So, you've probably heard that the serial hater, the precursor to the Westboro Baptist Church, Jack Chick is dead. Here's the article that first alerted me to the fact. ( Boing Boing ) And another, that I saw a day later. ( AV Club ) Here's what the other side has to say ( Christianity Today ) Like the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and more recently Collins and Wertham's " Seduction of the Innocent ", the Tracts of Jack Chick were hateful pieces of propaganda designed to boil down a message to stereotypes and caricature, building false images of a concept with lies, rumours and innuendo, then make a "righteous" attack against the false edifice. Conspiracies and prejudice fed into the tracts attacking the Catholic Church, the Freemasons, Homosexuality, Science, and anything else that offended Chick's "Southern Baptist" sensibilities. One of those things was roleplaying. In recent study regarding fiel...

A young local Aboriginal girl is having trouble finding a voice. She's struggling with numeracy and literacy, and is chafing at the traditional mainstream education system. She hates the rote learning, so I've been called in as a tutor by her mother and grandmother (one of the Aboriginal elders I've been working with over the past few months). Apon hearing that someone would be guiding her homework experience, she instantly took a dislike to the idea, but I had a plan up my sleeve. I asked her if she liked computer games, and she said that she didn't like "homework games". Her grandfather (another of the elders I've been working with) said that she was always playing computer games. I aksed her what sorts of games, and she opened up a bit. I asked her if she'd like me to teach her how to make her own computer games. Parents and grandparents looked at me a bit suspiciously at this point, so I explained that programming computer games would be good becau...

What is it about groups of people that cause them to degenerate into petty squabbles once a certain critical mass group size is reached? Well actually, I should clarify that, as the group reaches a certain size petty squabbles develop, as the group reaches a slightly larger size those squabbles become full-on arguments. I say this on reflection of three social groups I'm a part of. The LARP group I've been a part of, is starting to fracture because certain members are being continually kowtowed to. The community of aboriginal elders are having major issues with the land council board members who do not respect the old ways and are simply in it for personal gain. The ferret welfare society to which I belong is also crumbling. Maybe it's just my presence causing an increase of entropy. Or maybe there is something deeper, something that can be exploited as a resource for driving tension in games. I'm not sure at this point, and a lot of the political issues are sti...

Just a quick post to see if any readers out there might be interested in joining a design collective. A group of designers who are interested in cross promoting their games and game ideas, who will help each other out with industry ideas and game design advice. This group will probably also work on a few communal projects, as well as getting the support they need to get their own games going. There are a few core members, and the finer details are being worked out. I just thought I'd share this news to see if anyone else was interested. Reply to this or send me an email if you'd like more information.

With over 50 episodes under it's belt, " Theory from The Closet " (referred to hereafter as TFTC for this post) seems to have become one of the heavyweights of unconventional/non-traditional/independent roleplaying podcasts. After being referred to a recent episode in regard to my Game Chef entry, I decided to download the entire back catalogue. I figured that I needed a bit of context before I just sat and listened to a new podcast, and I can be a bit obsessive so I just went whole hog and downloaded the lot. It's not like Here Be Gamers which I started listening to from close to the beginning (besides, I know Nathan from GenCon Oz, so I understood a bit more where he was coming from in his podcast)....but I digress, this post is about TFTC. I've been plugging away at listening to the whole thing, in my spare moments and when I'm writing away at my assignments and own gaming projects. Trying to listen to the whole thing in chronological order where possible...

This would have to be a moment from the type of RPG I usually run... Prisoner Makes Gun from Match Sticks

Almost always found among the top ten lists for the greatest fantasy artists of all time, and certainly one of the finest artisans of the latter 20th Century, Frank Frazetta's name is synonymous with sword-and-sorcery paintings and illustrations of fantastic fiction. I've been aware f him ever since I was given a book of fantasy illustrations as a young boy in the early 1980's. My love of the fantasy genre can be attributed to Frazetta and other luminaries such as Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Keith Parkinson and later H.R. Giger (but that was when I got into my dark phase). Recently, my fondness for Frazetta has increased as I've been collecting the Death Dealer series of comics from image and the assorted comics that tell a back-story to each of his paintings. He is one of those great artists I'd love to have met, but now that opportunity has passed. I was alerted to this news through several of the groups and contacts I've made on deviantArt , and the news seems...

Rollerblading down rollercosters.

Yesterday I had one of those moments that teenagers and twenty-somethings might call a life defining event. Personally I thought that I was too jaded to really feel this way before such an event occurred, but now I've had 24 hours to look back on it and reflect, it was pretty cool. Certainly not life-defining, earth-shattering or paradigm shifting (well actually, maybe the last one isn't too far out, my cynicism has definitely wavered...) I won tickets to an exclusive preview screening of excerpts from the movie "X-Men origins: Wolverine", it was a part of a radio promotion. I got to see the breakfast radio team "Merrick and Rosso and Kate Richie" , and given that I've been a fan of Merrick and Rosso for a few years this was a bit of a treat. It was an early start, waking up at 4.30am to get into the city by 5.30am for a trip across Sydney Harbour to Cockatoo Island (where a few key sequences of the Wolverine movie were shot). The radio crew were pretty...

Occasionally I do searches on the net for illustration ideas, or images that might provide some inspiration. Many of these searches end up producing a couple of potential ideas, some don't. Every now and then I find something that really strikes me as odd, either resonating with something that I've previously thought, or simply making me re-assess thoughts that I've had. I'm always open to new perspectives, but it's human nature to get a bit of an ego boost when someone agrees with your previous thoughts. So either option is valuable. One of the blogs I found tonight revolves around conspiracy theories...or at least it seems to, I haven't delved too deeply into it. I was busy searching for images of rocks and clouds. What I found interesting is here . It's an interesting view on psychopaths within society, and I can really empathise with a number of the authors ideas. Especially after my time working within a national level office of a major retail chain. Pe...

I went to a fair yesterday, not surprisingly (given the heading) it was in Newtown. One of the things I've always enjoyed doing is imply walking around to soak up an atmosphere. Whether it's feeling the rush of emotions at a rock concert, the feeling of support when spectating at a sporting event, the desolation of a forgotten industrial area or the tranquility of a natural area of parkland. Each has a vibe, something that most people don't seem to acknowledge. I try to take it in, try to get a feel for what other people may be seeing in a situation, and try to see what they might be missing. Maybe it's the Asperger's. I've taken Okami to dog parks, with other dog owners and have watched them enjoy the antics of their pets. Everyone so focused on their own dogs that they don't seem to see the other people around them (until the dogs start to fight, then blame is inevitably thrown at the other "two-legs"...). The fair was different, probably because...