TRPG General Chat - 2015-07-19 (page 1 of 3)

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12:24 AM

yeah, but you're also dealing with somewhat higher velocities here.

(I'd actually think that dragon hardiness would be DR more than raw HP in a sense -- no amount of hardening of the scales is going to make making a crater any less painful)

In GURPS, HP is a function of mass, rather than measuring toughness directly.

So big heavy things get more HP for being big and heavy.

12:56 AM

Historical hairdressing tutorials.

Quotes from Exalted:

> There is no safety for a GM. No chance at a normal life. You knew this when you took the job. Godspeed.

4

@Shalvenay Do note that fall damage dice cap just short of the 9th-level spell meteor swarm in 3.5, and do not offer a saving throw for half like those do.

1:26 AM

@Iron Heart -- how much damage is that though?

@Shalvenay 20d6, compared to 2d6 (impact) plus four instances of 6d6 (to which fire resistance applies only once across the whole spell), saves half each instance.

aaah

This means by the time a dragon is Large, it's probably guaranteed survival of falling damage (roughly CR 8, for most dragons).

(By contrast, the spell control weather is available to casters at level 13.)

Note also that once again since D&D does not follow the rules of real physics, the turbulence will be a penalty like any other, which the dragon might still be able to overcome.

1:41 AM

Even the most vicious of natural wind-based weather effects in D&D 3.5, the tornado, is CR 10. Huge and larger creatures still don't take any damage, they're just knocked around if they fail a DC 30 Fort save. Smaller creatures who fail that save are pulled toward the funnel, meaning they might get caught in it (GM's discretion) for 6d6 damage each round for 1d10 rounds, followed by falling damage at the GM's discretion.

There's no more granular iteration of wind-based effects in the system: it's abstracted out to penalties to checks, and Fort saves to avoid forced movement and some (usually nonlethal) damage.

2:00 AM

I guess that isn't just to a fault of D&D, though.

We humans do not seem to think regularly of force in a way that is congruent with reality.

That is why things like this exist.

If I am trying to make a narrative experience that is not too focused on realism, I also wouldn't want that to be a thing.

It's... not really that, I think. This sort of discussion eventually gets down to the inescapable fact that RPGs are abstractions of reality, and abstractions are leaky. Each system just chooses (consciously or accidentally) which bits are going to be the leakiest.

@BESW Might be that too.

An RPG that was able to simulate physics accurately in every potential scenario would need to draw on a better understanding of the world than humanity currently has, and it would take a very long time for actions to resolve.

D&D's given its abstractions more detail and granularity (though not really more real-world accuracy) around the bits which it considers most important: name, combat.

yeah

Stuff like weather and gravity get abstracted aggressively, to the point that it's hard to even pretend they're a simplification of real-world physics.

A common way to "game" the system is to find places where the abstractions break down so they're obviously insufficient for real-world extrapolation, and then to convince the GM to use real-world logic instead.

2:08 AM

yeah

yeah

IE, "Falling out of control that hard is going to be impossible to survive, so don't roll the falling damage." It's consistent with real-world expectations, but it's inconsistent with D&D universe expectations. The group should be very much aware of the difference when making that sort of choice, or it'll easily turn irrelevant any choices made based on the expectations of D&D itself.

The big problem, I think, arises when the developers or players treat the system as less abstract than it actually is.

D&D 3.5 has a lot of leaky bits where the guidance insists it can handle stuff that it's not actually designed to deal with usefully.

yeah

A group of players aware of those pitfalls can avoid them by mutually agreeing not to have their game run into those scenarios, or by finding other abstractions to patch it up with through homebrew or using other systems as needed.

yeah (I see what you did there... pitfalls...)

2:14 AM

@BESW -- it's part of the reason I'm somewhat leery of the idea that D&D 3.5 even has rules for things like "your char just got run over by a vehicle"

user image

@Pixie What this is I don't even...

Never played animal crossing.

@Althis A pitfall. They appear randomly in the ground. You can also bury them to prank NPCs or other players.

which part of the picture is actually the pitfall? I don't think i see it.

Hey @BESW, do you think you can succinctly explain what The Big Model is to me?

I was reading something about Fate and other current narrative RPGs being a fad.

And it made some mentions to that, and I've been unable to scrutinize the point it was trying to get at from wikis alone.

@Althis The Big Model is one in a long line of attempts to find an organising principle for describing the spectrum and interaction of playstyle goals.

2:19 AM

@Althis The big hole the character is shocked to be stuck in. Another one.

@BESW It mixes thing which seem to be disparate, like putting social contracts and roleplaying techniques in the same model.

@Althis It's the little brown bit under the character, that looks like a funny-coloured shadow.

@BESW Oh, now I see it.

@Pixie Now that I think, isn't this an item in Smash?

@Althis Mhm. I haven't been able to wrap my head around it entirely, and I don't really want to try. The whole discourse is... a useful exercise for those who are conducting it, but I'm not sure any structural result is going to be useful as a universal organising principle.

@Althis My apologies for the confusion. xD And it's been a while since I played Smash, but I wouldn't be surprised.

2:22 AM

@BESW It does seem very technical and self absorbed.

I was just wondering if I was missing anything by not understanding it.

@Althis I'll brb, but if you're interested in this sort of thing, The Forge is probably the place to start to understand both the ideas and the culture.

The article was saying that narrative RPGs put too much focus on Drama, where it was previously lacking, and eventually there will be other games that will focus more on Mechanics and Simulation as they fade to nothing.

@BESW Well. I am not interested, I just don't want to be out of the loop in design principles. If you say it isn't important in practice, I do not see why I would spend my time trying to decipher it.

@Althis It's important if you're going to participate in the discourse, because the Forge is where this discourse was first codified.

And yes, there are pendulum swings in the focus of RPGs, but I think it's easy to miss how broad the RPG market is these days, and to make inaccurate generalisations.

The Forge's focus was on the idea that system mechanics can force players (not just characters) to feel and behave in desired ways.

Their overarching goal was to challenge a then-prevalent notion in the RPG discourse that system was the least influential part of the game experience.

They did this by focusing on emotion, because the sense at the time was that emotion was something generated by the skill of the individuals and the system had nothing to do with it--so it was the most obvious glaring gap for the Forge to fill.

yeah

yeah

2:29 AM

This is not to say that prior to the Forge this concept didn't exist, or that RPGs were uninterested in it.

Just that the common perception was dismissing that facet of RPGs.

Because the Forge was where "System Does Matter" discourse got formalised, the language of the discourse on the impact of system on players ever since has been rooted in Forgeite philosophical syntax.

As RPG developers gain more experience and proficiency in consciously using mechanics to influence player choices and experiences, the discourse expands to encompass other expressions of influence than the blatant emotional manipulation which the Forge is best known for.

I think the Drama/Mechanics/Simulation triad your article speaks of is a false split.

I'm inclined to agree that it's false

The whole point of games like Fate is that drama is best when it's actively encouraged and guided by mechanics.

There are mentions as well to something called Threefold Model.

Which isn't as difficult to understand.

most people's hearts would be in their throats if they were in the jumpseat of an airliner sim during LOFT exercises

And "simulation" is a poorly-understood phrase at the best of times.

It doesn't mean only "making things accurate to the real world."

2:34 AM

Yeah, those three things are all intertwined, from my estimation, or at least there's no reason they can't be. They feed into each other.

The term mechanic I quoted wrong.

They used Game.

That's... vague.

Simulation, as RPG design jargon, means "making abstractions least leaky in the direction of a model you've chosen to simulate." That can be the real world, but it could also be a romantic comedy or Loony Toons.

But still, from what I gather the point isn't to separate the three facets.

It is to say that people play primarily for one of them.

And systems should be designed to attend to one of them particularly well.

Instead of trying to mix all of them.

@Althis If that's Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist... the Big Model is intended to supplant that concept.

2:36 AM

At least, that is what Wikipedia says The Big Model says.

@Althis Yeah, the Big Model is a description of how games are played, rather than of games themselves.

It's a spectrum of priorities held by players.

And there are a TON of games out there for people wherever they fall on the spectrum.

But the "System Does Matter" discussion you mentioned says that systems influence how people play, right?

Yes.

A good system, in my opinion, has a playstyle group it caters to.

So, if the point was that narrative games are in fashion now, doesn't that means that they are oppressing players that play for the Game or the Simulation?

@Althis No.

2:38 AM

And that there eventually will be a resurgence?

Two things.

First and most importantly, "more things other people like oppresses my ability to do what I like" is a toxic gamer culture fallacy.

Well for one, "in fashion" means popular with the tabletop gaming "elites" which are a small minority of all players.

@BESW It "kinda" does though, because in my town, there aren't many opportunities for me, a new player, to join a group.

I most likely will have to play what is most played at the moment.

By "elites" I mean influencers, which is not to make a value judgement on the tastes of the "elite" and "non-elite" groups.

Which might fit what my style of playing is.

2:40 AM

@Althis That's a location/population size issue. The games are still available, the "Old School Renaissance" is quite alive.

It's a pretty strange idea for me that a system wouldn't influence player behavior, but then I've never been excessively exposed to a game culture that thinks that way. It's just odd to think of that as a dominant perception.

@BESW -- very much so. I'm playing 2e as we speak :P and enjoy it, for all its infelicities

@BESW That doesn't stop being an issue. You cannot say it is a fallacy, because you cannot assume optimal conditions to all instances.

(I can understand why WotC put D&D on the d20 system when they acquired the IP from TSR)

"Narrative" gaming (there's gotta be a better word than that) is popular, but not at the expense of other game styles. The RPG community is just splintered enough that if you're in one bubble it's easy to miss the other bubbles.

2:42 AM

@BESW Again, not everywhere.

There's a lot of conflation going on.

@BESW I think I'm coming around to "Dramatic" rather than "Narrative".

@Grubermensch That's also... poor? 'cause it kind of implies that Tomb of Horrors isn't dramatic.

One problem is that this argument seems to be conflating "games that are published" with "games that are popular."

Hah HAAAA

Everybody get in here!

And almost any statement about that sort of thing is going to be necessarily anecdotal.

Which doesn't invalidate the experience of the individual, but is not generalisable.

I can't find any group in my area that plays something younger or more "dramatic/narrative" than D&D 3.PF.

2:44 AM

@BESW The thing, is that "games that are published" is directly influenced by "games that are popular'.

And not necessarily in direct ways.

A game might be published because there is a vacuum in the market for the kind of gameplay it provides.

@BESW Is it though? (Not having ever played) Drama to me evokes interpersonal tensions, not just fear of loss. Does Tomb of Horrors do that?

@Grubermensch And that's why "Drama" isn't a workable term for me. It's kinda vague.

Fair enough.

@BESW Narrative seems best.

Fate's been around for about as long as the d20 System. It's not a new game.

2:47 AM

It hints that the game is more preoccupied with what makes sense and what is fair than with what makes a good story.

@BESW Hasn't it been heavily revised in it's latest iteration?

@Althis Less than, say, any of the last three changes to D&D.

I've never seen the old version, but from what I got from Kickstarter, it went through some serious revisions.

@BESW By the last three you mean 5, 4 and 3 or 5, 4 and 3.5?

Because if you mean the former, it is still a HUGE change.

D&D was a very different game prior to Wizards.

Heh heh I love this episode of the Boondocks

Its not as good as the kickball episode

But its still pretty great

@Althis -- this much I know very well

"I think I can see the gun now"

2:52 AM

@Shalvenay I still try to get a game of AD&D going.

I'm still not sure what the actual topic of this discussion is.

But the fad argument makes a comeback, and not many people want to play it.

There seems to be a claim that narrative games are new. They aren't.

@BESW There was never a claim narrative games were new. Just that they were in.

There seems to be a claim that narrative games are "oppressing" people who don't like them. That's... inflammatory and ascribing motive and action to a trend.

2:53 AM

Things were simpler in AD&D

Except thaco

@Sandwich -- oh, things were way more complicated in AD&D, at least when it came to the math

I've got no qualms with the idea that when an area gets excited about one kind of game, it's hard for people to find groups to play other sorts of games in that area.

THACO, some things are roll others are roll high, tables everywhere, yeesh!

err THAC0

and don't get me started on per-round init and weapon speeds

But that's not oppression, and it's not universal. My FLGS and the people who play there, have never heard of anything except D&D and Pathfinder.

@BESW oppressing was a word Iused (once), does not relate to the article, and I meant exactly that by it.

2:55 AM

@Shalvenay You can just houserule those though

@Sandwich -- yeah, not all of those are mandatory, but still -- it's a mess

So, if you want to argue against that, we are no longer discussing the article and it's ideas, but my wording on that one instance.

3.x has plenty of warts

but the number crunching isn't one of them

3.x Has Pun pun

@Althis Since I've not seen the article, your words are all you've given me to work with.

2:56 AM

besides, Pun-Pun still doesn't rank all that high on my absolute power scale, if you will

@BESW It's ok.

I'm trying to establish what the concern actually is.

So: narrative games are seen to be popular. I can get behind that.

@BESW There was never a concern. I thought we were just discussing some ideas I came across.

Will they be popular forever after? Obviously not.

@Shalvenay I always think of Oyasumi Punpun when people mention Pun-Pun and it's an interesting mental combination.

2:57 AM

Pun-Pun technically has infinite ranks in every skill, ability score, and save and has every ability that could be considered beneficial

Trends swing.

@BESW -- I'd say narrativism is common more than narrative games, even -- due to freeform RP

@Shalvenay I really like that neologism, sir.

Narrativist games seems like a reasonable term for this thing.

I do think that the GNS Theory has a LOT to answer for, though.

It was never intended to be a triad of exclusive options.

@Shalvenay I do not like number crunching.

2:59 AM

Narrativism, on its own, is basically freeform.

:(

You need some element of other gameplay approaches in order for narrativism to congeal around a published system.

@BESW -- yeah. a system like FATE is Gamist-Narrativist, if you will

@BESW If it were more influential of a theory, it would more or less have that effect regardless, because it would be directing people to design towards one playstyle specifically.

As a means on analyzing already published works, it doesn't have that dramatic an effect.

@Althis mmm. What's happened is that its terms have entered wide use without their intended meanings and context.

3:00 AM

Since it pretty much accepts that games are in an spectrum, not a category.

Personally I think it's more interesting, in terms of trends, to look at the way games are being sold and played now.

@BESW I would not say wide use. I've only come upon them like twice in my entire life, and I would say I am reasonably RPG-savvy.

@Althis Within discourse about game design and playstyle goals.

Inter-system discussion uses it a lot more than intra-system.

As in, I've read and played many a RPG, even though I've not researched much into it in terms of design.

Digital distribution and online gaming have expanded who can publish a game that will reach a wide audience, and also expanded the pool of people an individual can play with.

3:03 AM

About digital stuff.

What I am most impressed, out of this whole discussion, is the fact that there haven't been published books on this subject.

The whole discussion is something that exists primarily in sites and blogs and forums.

@BESW -- agreed, albeit online RPing has only really come of age recently with the advent of virtual tabletops such as R20 -- MUDs are very user-hostile, while MMOs have a nasty habit of being RP-hostile in a sense that neither the game nor the rest of the playerbase even really allows for RP

Even though they are actively researched by people with actual competence behind it.

That is so unusual...

@Althis I know of exactly one RPG-focused journal.

And makes it all a mess to research.

@BESW Which?

I'd have to go looking again.

Another challenge to academic publishing is that it's almost impossible to get representative samples.

3:06 AM

@Shalvenay I know what you mean about MUDs, and about MMOs, I think it goes back to our discussion that they are not really designed with Narrative in mind. Primarily Game, I think.

It is hard to be serious about tone and theme when there is someone dancing naked in front of the auction house.

@Althis -- the issue with MUDs is that the UI sucks hardcore (blame telnet)

An unknown but very large section of the RPG population is effectively "off the grid" and doesn't intermingle with the community in visible ways.

@BESW Which is terrible for game design in general.

@Shalvenay So...what does?

@Althis MMOs are rarely designed with human-to-human RP in mind at all. RPG in MMORPG is in context of RPG elements in video games, which have some connections to the kind of RP we're talking about, but they're not the same thing.

3:08 AM

@BESW But from what I gather, a lot of designers actually know each other personally, right? So it kinda compensates.

@Miniman A character run by a player who knows how to manipulate the GM will always overpower a character not run by such a player.

@Miniman -- not sure what you're asking about?

@Althis If we're talking about academic research, then no it doesn't.

@Pixie I get that.

But have you ever tried actually RPing in an MMO?

Yep.

3:09 AM

It is hell isn't it?

@Shalvenay If Pun-Pun does not rate well on your 'absolute power scale', what does? Also, you can see what a message is replying to by clicking the arrow next to it.

@BESW True.

You know what could become a trend?

If game designers, as they grew older, started publishing their years of GD experience in books.

@Miniman -- aah! the top end of my absolute power scale lies in "oh shit, was that a nuke? HOLY #$()!@)$$ IT'S RAINING THERMONUCLEAR WARHEADS WE'RE ALL DOOMED!!!!!"

@Shalvenay As a player or as a character?

I would totally buy "Insight's into Game Design" by Tim Schaffer for 59.99.

3:11 AM

@Shalvenay Hover your cursor over a message and you will see an arrow on the right side of it that you can click to respond to that particular message.

@Althis mmmeh. Some I'd read avidly.

@IronHeart -- as in "that's what the character can do to you"

@WorldEngineer I don't know, because I don't know FR or Greyhawk. I do know that PoL is generally very loose with alignments and deities, but the deities are present. The deities are also much less well-defined than in either FR or Greyhawk, because the PoL authors left everything very undefined (for our betterment as storytellers). You should know, and cover it appropriately, if you're answering that question.

@Shalvenay Ok, Pun-Pun can create infinite nukes at will. Or, yanno, just destroy the universe on a whim.

So if nukes are the top end, Pun-Pun isn't even on your scale.

@Althis Yes, and that's precisely why -- because we're using them as a medium for something they weren't remotely intended to do. MMO design really isn't material to the discussion of Narrative vs. Gamist in this context because it's not taking either into account in terms of tabletop RPG. That was my point there.

3:12 AM

@BESW Shigeru Miyamoto, dude.

@Miniman -- I wouldn't stretch Wish that far...

But, for example, White Wolf's original designers' book would basically be "Doood, we were so totally high."

What that guy could tell us...

@BESW ...It might still be funny to read...

Meby

@Althis Who said anything about Wish? Destroying the universe would require the usual check to destroy an object, and no matter how high you set the DC, Pun-Pun can meet it.

And D&D under Wizards would have a lot of [redacted], executive interference, and cult-of-personality. Revealing about why the games are the way they are, but less useful for future designers.

3:14 AM

@Miniman -- :P my power scale is decidedly not grounded in 3.5 mechanics, let me put it that way. I don't think he could get close enough to a magnetar to destroy it

@BESW But I would totally read Gygax's.

besides

Which, if I am not mistaken, is a thing that was already done, and actually exists in book form.

Let me check.

And a lot of the guys I'd really want to read? Their books would just be trimmed-up collections of the blogs on this chat's ticker feed.

@Shalvenay Ok, you've just changed the scale, because previously nukes were the top end, and now magnegtars are on it. In any case, he could.

3:15 AM

@BESW Would still buy for them to save my time in looking for them.

Yes, Pun-pun has infinite hit points and cannot be killed

Blog trekking is seriously frustrating.

So he could get as close to anything as he wants

@Sandwich Not that he'd need to, of course

And there is very little accountability in blogs.

3:17 AM

@Miniman -- not even by having his atomic orbitals stretched to the point where the chemistry of life flatly quits working?

besides, a SGR burst can kill at light years

...also I'd totally read @Bankuei's series of books on RPGs.

(It'd be a series, because he can hold forth usefully on enough different topics that you'd need a book for each one.)

as in "planetary level extinction events"

@BESW Do I know him?

Pun-pun has infinite caster levels and therefore every spell he casts has infinite range

and the nukes example was "what my characters are capable of"

3:17 AM

He outranges an SGR by large amounts

@Shalvenay Well, if that's an instant death effect, he's immune. And if it's not, it doesn't matter how much damage it does, it won't affect him. Or he could just go ethereal and walk up to it without any ill effects.

well, a SGR has practically infinite range as well...just takes a little while to get there

@Althis Most people know him for the Same Page Tool.

I link his blog semi-regularly as a resource for issues of RPG culture as well.

Pun pun can teleport anywhere as a deity, so he could affect the SGR and use Perfect teleport or plane shift to teleport away long before an SGR Burst would even get close enough to affect him

@BESW See? We need more books, dude!

This kind of blogging isn't really very productive!

3:19 AM

besides, I don't know what would happen when you started casting spells on an object made of pure neutronium.

@Shalvenay What's the hardness on that? Oh right, less than infinity. It's tissue paper to Pun-Pun.

@Althis Aye. Interestingly, the sort of gaming-culture topics he collects and addresses are part of wider societal cultural challenges that are only just recently being commonly published on by the people who are affected by them.

@Miniman -- it has NaN hardness.

Pun pun could use Bigby's grasping hand to move it.

as in describing the material with a hardness score stops making sense

3:21 AM

Or just flick it away like a pebble because he has infinite strength

@Shalvenay That's fine, we can ignore hardness.

Not sure if anyone knows, but this exists as well.

What you're advocating is, I think, a shift that's slowly happening across many fields of academia: the idea that people can and should write about themselves in scholarly ways.

But it focuses more on story and production than actual design ideas, philosophies and post mortens

Which I think would be waaaaaaay more interesting.

@Shalvenay I'd go with an infinite number of Disintegrate spells, personally.

3:22 AM

Eh, I'd disagree that blogging isn't productive in this case. Books don't appear out of thin air, and most any book published with the actual authority that would set it apart from a blog is going to be distributed for money (if you can get it published in such an avenue the first place). Blogging is accessible to both the writer and the audience. It's not ideal, perhaps, but the way things work currently, it's incredibly useful.

But I'm kinda bad at this sort of thing, there's bound to be more efficient methods.

@Pixie Most colleges have publishing houses. And will actually pay you to publish your book.

It's opposed to the older belief that objective scholarship is attainable, which leads to the conviction that outside observers are superior reporters of experience than those who have the experiences.

@Althis "Actually pay you" as opposed to what model?

They usually have very tiny printing runs, like, 10 at most, but they are also digitized and made available online.

@BESW Print-on-demand.

@Althis When I say "distributed for money," I mean "your reader must buy it," not "you must pay to publish it." This is a good thing for the author, who deserves to be paid for work, but if the author's goal is maximum accessibility rather than profit, it stands in the way.

3:24 AM

...at what point is print-on-demand not also a publishing model in which the author receives compensation for her work?

@Shalvenay Also note with reagrs to Wish spells, Pun-Pun knows everything, including the exact phrasing of a Wish spell required to achieve any desired outcome.

@BESW They do indirectly. Very little, but lets not get stuck on this. You are right that people usually get paid for their work, no matter how little.

He can also instantaneously create Epic spells to achieve any desired outcome.

@Pixie Accessibility is the very thing I am criticizing about publishing on blogs.

I think the confusion might have been that you have to put money up front for some print-on-demand/self-publishing avenues. That's what I was attempting to clarify. If this is not the confusion, ignore that. :P

3:26 AM

Blogs are often very hard to find and even when we find them, there is very little in way to verify their credibility.

And as I said, there is very little accountability.

Having something actually published solves a lot of that.

Fair enough. I was mostly just alerted to phrasing that creates misconceptions which lead people to be exploited and conned. (I work adjacent to the publishing industry.)

But I was excluding print-on-demand/self-publishing in my comments to begin with because there is often no more accountability than a blog.

And even if you just go online anyway to find the works you are looking for, they are still held in the archive of an institution that can verify your credibility.

And in response to your question of much earlier, @Althis: The International Journal of Role-Playing.

Apocryphal is the word for what I mean, I think.

@BESW My god, is this using the live journal format?

3:32 AM

How do you link a tag in a comment?

As academia, publishing is certainly ideal for accountability, but for-sale book distribution doesn't necessarily increase accessibility to the community. I would not be any more likely to encounter the information in a published book than I am a blog -- in fact, I'm pretty sure I'd be much less likely to ever find it. To that end, distributed journals like the one @BESW posted here have value as accessible community resources.

Magazine and journal distribution are not always but definitely can be more accessible than book distribution.

@Sandwich use the word with the link between"[" and "]" and add the link between ()

user image

@Pixie I see what you mean.

@Sandwich A tag is [tag:tag-name-here].

3:35 AM

Still, a culture of publishing such works as I mentioned earlier with Miyamoto and Gygax could still serve as a good incentive get works from people with experience.

Thanks @BESW

And before I am criticized for it. I mean experience as in industry experience, instead of academic experience.

It would be best to have something for 59.99 than not have anything, right?

It could have undesirable effects on the current blogging culture, though...

There IS stuff like that extant, though.

As people that might actually stop blogging because they feel they are entitled to the same incentive.

There's a Fate magazine which talks about design principles, for example.

And I use Nightmares of Mine regularly as a horror manual.

3:39 AM

@BESW That is a game design magazine?

@Althis No, it's a 170+ page book deconstructing horror tropes and reconstructing them for use in tabletop gaming.

Amazon cites it as a source book for the Rolemaster system.

@BESW -- that might be a worthwhile read -- I suspect The Birds would be a good idea to watch as well

@Shalvenay That movie is scary as shit.

@Althis It was published as part of that system's line of books, but it's written to be system agnostic.

3:42 AM

Specially when you live in a big town, shock full of pigeons.

BIRDS, EVERYWHERE!!!

@Althis I don't think it would negatively affect the current blogging culture. This sometimes already happens anyway -- someone who's had a successful blog venture does go on to clean it up and publish it as a book. :P Which I am not criticizing. If you did work people are willing to pay for, there's no reason you shouldn't be paid for it.

I'm not opposed to more books at all. I just don't think that the blogging community isn't productive. It's a unique tool with its own pros and cons.

Yeah. They aren't mutually competitive.

Ursula Vernon's blog helps to cultivate and retain an enthusiastic community of fans who buy everything she publishes.

Foremost is accessibility to both author and reader. Tied up in that is the flaw of unreliability, but that has to be contrasted with flaws of the traditional publication model, which can include excessive commercialization (rather than raw practicality), disinterest in marginalized voices, and financial lack of access to books.

The hairdresser I linked earlier today has published academically, but also puts tutorials on YouTube.

Yeah. Blogging is also a great tool for promotion, as with Ursula Vernon and the hairdresser linked earlier.

3:54 AM

Which hairdresser?

Fred Hicks blogs only very occasionally, but it's primarily insights into Fate which will be useful to other designers using that system.

Since he's affiliated with the central company associated with Fate, it's in his best interests to help third-party Fate content developers produce high-quality work (avoiding the d20 Bust effect).

3 hours ago, by BESW

Historical hairdressing tutorials.

chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/19850830#19850830 << re: the whole drama & simulationism thing

@BESW Wow, that is a VERY specific field of study.

@Althis Apparently she radicalised a lot of historical interpretations.

Historians who don't know hairstyling would look at art, or accounts, and come to totally the wrong conclusions like "All women of this period wore wigs because nobody's hair can actually do that," or "This phrase about sewing as a hairstyling tool must be misinterpreted because that's just silly."

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