In the latest episode of our punctilious podcast, Ken and I talk Lovecraft film fest, newbie-friendly rule books, punctuation and Cagliostro.
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
March 21, 2014
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: If I Were an Otter
In the latest episode of our numinous podcast, Ken and I talk imaginary psychogeography, elastic vampires, word clusters and Ioan Culianu.
March 20, 2014
March 14, 2014
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Vulnerable to Attack by Panzer Leaders
In the St. Patrick's Day edition of our green and defiant podcast, Ken and I talk Aaron Allston, genre emulation, Octagon City, social media and Ireland unconquered.
March 11, 2014
Special ID
If you watch action movies for the storylines, you will find much to deride in Special ID. If on the other hand you want to see Donnie Yen direct some inventively punishing martial arts sequences, you can now catch it in a limited theatrical release in North America, or grab it on iTunes. Yen plays an undercover cop caught between his triad boss (Collin Chou) and his triad protégé (Andy On.) At one point the case takes him to the mainland where he meets a winsome/comically strident female counterpart (Tian Jing.) Other than that it's, shall we say, loosely plotted. But what you’re there for is the action--particularly the climactic car chase/martial arts battle which is possibly the best combo of those two elements you could hope to see. The subtitling is tad iffy for a Hong Kong flick getting an English-language theatrical release nowadays. Weirdly, at one point the translator drops in a line from Glengarry Glen Ross. Yes, you’re right, triad guy. You should keep your mouth shut until you know the shot.
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