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May 22, 2014
May 21, 2014
Check Out this DramaSystem LARP Report
I was wondering when someone would run a DramaSystem LARP using Emily Care Boss’ brilliant live action adaptation of the rules as seen in Blood on the Snow. The answer, it turns out, is last November. The Twin Cities’ LARP House, a group dedicated to Nordic-style play in America’s Scandinavia, ran two events using the “Family Business” Series Pitch by Aaron Rosenberg. They’ll be running it again in June; see announcement in above link. While you’re clicking, check out these notes on play from participant Adam McConaughey, who makes some key observation about the nature of power and the weakness of coercion in DramaSystem.
May 16, 2014
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: The Elvis of the European Occult Underground
In the latest episode of our spectral podcast, Ken and I talk ghost scares, Borgesian physics, first adventures, and the Comte de Saint Germain.
May 15, 2014
May 08, 2014
May 02, 2014
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: The Whacking Shovel
In the latest episode of our punctilious podcast, Ken and I talk Lovecraft film fest, newbie-friendly rule books, punctuation and Cagliostro.
May 01, 2014
April 25, 2014
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Al-Qaeda Doesn't Read Their Comments
In the latest episode of our hospitable podcast, Ken and I talk guest players, tradecraft books, miniatures in narrative games, and Circe.
April 24, 2014
April 23, 2014
Hamlet’s Hit Points Applied to User Experience Design
A Thing I Always Say is that the beat analysis system from Hamlet’s Hit Points can be used to look at much more than what we traditionally consider as narrative. News broadcasts, commercials, and political speeches all resound with the emotional up and down beats that engage our attention over time. One area I’ve never thought to examine, because I know nothing about it, is user experience design—the methods used to navigate us through web sites and keep us from closing that tab.
Matt Leacock, who we in the tabletop world know better as the genius designer of Pandemic, knows a lot about user experience design. In his civilian identity he does it for Sococo, a virtual office space site. And in the presentation below he applies beat analysis not only to the play experience of his board game Forbidden Island, but to the process of engaging with a site like LinkedIn. This last choice is not coincidental, as he’s speaking to designers from that company.
The entire talk will well reward your time, even if you don’t care about user experience design. It includes great insight into his process, the development history of Pandemic, and even the German market’s preference for meeples over abstract pawns.
Thanks for the insights, Matt!
April 22, 2014
Hardware Store Found Poetry Corner
“Do you have screws with white heads? I don't want to paint.”
“No. Do you have white-out?”
“No.”
“You can put that on the heads.”
“Buddy, I don't white-out nothin’, buddy.”
April 21, 2014
That Demon Within
In Dante Lam’s That Demon Within, now in limited North American theatrical release, a tightly-wound police constable (Daniel Wu) loses his already tenuous grip on reality after donating blood to a stabbing victim. The beneficiary of this reflexive act of altruism turns out to be the Demon King, cop-killer and leader of a ruthless armed robbery ring. The intensity of Wu’s internalized madness places him alongside Keitel and Cage in the cinematic cop-on-the-edge hall of fame. Nick Cheung, previously seen as the soulful MMA trainer in Lam’s rousing fight pic Unbeatable, vibrates with grinning menace as the Demon King. Lam’s oppressive, wildly expressionistic direction situates the audience inside the protagonist’s skewed reality, even as it keeps up the cat-and-mouse crime thriller tension. As such it recalls the director’s previous portrayal of a policeman’s spiral into insanity, the classic Beast Cop.Cinematographer Kenny Tse again shows that Hong Kong is the world city that was made to be photographed in beautiful digital.
Lam knows how to escalate a third act, and here serves up an outer conflagration to match it’s anti-hero’s inner disintegration.
A must-see for fans of Feng Shui, gritty crime flicks, and hallucinatory cinema.
HK movies now routinely show up on streaming services, so if you can’t catch it now, remember That Demon Within for later.
April 18, 2014
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: History is Replete With Idiots
In the latest episode of our privateering podcast, Ken and I talk d20 Cthulhu, piracy, setting clichés and True Detective.
April 17, 2014
April 11, 2014
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Those Punk Magicians Killed My Elephant
In the latest episode of our top-hatted podcast, Ken and I talk voice work, mob magicians, prehistoric drinking and Franz Anton Mesmer.
April 10, 2014
April 04, 2014
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Chekov’s Squid Throwing
In the latest episode of our entangling podcast, Ken and I talk monster ability awareness, stolen passports, William S. Burroughs and the Mary Celeste.
April 03, 2014
March 28, 2014
Ken and Robin’s Tiny Dolls Talk About Stuff
In the latest episode of our eerily familiar podcast, Ken and I talk PC/NPC asymmetry, clone dolls, starting in media res, and murdering Alexander the Great.
March 27, 2014
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