Robin D. Laws's Blog, page 100
August 26, 2011
Korad: Tomorrow's Ideologies
Last week we asked ourselves which crises threaten the empire's stability, making room for the new ideologies that will soon arise to threaten the dominant ethos. According to the new comment-and-like system, they are:
Debates between religious scholars erode faith
Imminent invasion by long-absent powerful aliens, in clandestine partnership with the scholar-lords of Montvale
More men are being born than women, sparking to a patriarchal, atheistic youth protest movement
A new belief system has been born somewhere in the Koradi vastness. Today it is obscure and tiny—much more so than the rapidly growing patriarch movement. Over the next few centuries, the new way will rise, persevere through a period of tumultuous struggle, and in the end eclipse the old order. Over the course of this transformation, it will change in response to the tests it faces. It is not the only nascent ideology. Two other competing belief systems will rise alongside it, challenge its hold over the people, but ultimately fall by the wayside.
This week we'll define those three nascent belief systems. Propose your idea for a new belief system using the comment system below.
To add a new answer to the question, start a new main comment thread.
To add a modifying riff or detail to someone else's answer, append a reply comment.
Show your approval for an idea by liking the comment in question. Like as many comments as you want.
The original author of any main idea can count a riff on his or her idea as part of the main idea by saying so in a reply to the modification. If the original author does not make this approval, it is incorporated anyway, when the number of likes on a modification equals half or more of the number of likes on the main idea.
August 25, 2011
Link Round-Up: Qadhafi Mana, Diamond Planet
Recently discovered diamond planet sounds like something out of Jack Vance's Gaean Reach books.
Libyan rebel triumphantly acquires Qadhafi's mana (in numinous headgear form):
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August 24, 2011
Link Round-Up: Ouija Payoff, Lager Reveal
Universal pays Hasbro $5 mil not to have to make a Ouija movie.
Secret origin of German lager traced to creepy-looking orange galls on Argentinean beech trees.
FanExpo
I'll be making one appearance at Toronto's FanExpo later this week. The DMing Mastery panel features Ed Greenwood, Phil "Chatty DM" Menard and myself, and happens this Friday, at 4:00 pm, in room 715B.
Despite great attendance last year, the show's upper powers have this time around scaled back tabletop panels to this one event. I'll be dropping the show from my commitments list from next year onwards, so if you want to see me there, this will be your last chance for the foreseeable future.
August 23, 2011
What Attack the Block Nerdtropes
Earlier, I discussed nerdtroping, the process of popularizing older genres via the addition of geek-friendly tropes.
The delightful SF-horror-actioner Attack the Block (go see it, right now in mid-sentence, before continuing to the rest of this post) nerdtropes a surprising genre: the social realist docudrama. The genre represent the underrepresented, placing its working class or underclass characters in struggles typical of a broader struggle against difficult social circumstances.
Its classic presentation, as seem in the films of the Italian Neo-Realist movement, emulates cinema verite documentary in its pursuit of polemical credibility. The genre has long held a fascination for British filmmakers working from a leftist perspective. Pioneering films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (both based on Alan Sillitoe novels) continue to shape UK film today.
Attack the Block concerns itself throughout with the social conditions that made its delinquent heroes who they are. The council housing project that defines them is the object of alien attack—a dynamic mirrored when the police come calling. The final character turn that brings the alien-conquering protagonist salvation from outside authority comes when the audience viewpoint character finally understands the circumstances of his upbringing. It wraps the message in thrilling chase scenes, bloody surprises and refreshingly lo-fi monster effects. The realism may be dustbinned, but the social message throughlines the script from alpha to omega.
August 22, 2011
[Classic Post] Neologism of the Moment: Nerdtrope
nerdtrope
verb
To make an old genre palatable to a contemporary, audience through the addition of fantastical, geek-culture elements.
Deadlands nerdtropes the western. 7th Sea and Legend of the Five Rings nerdtrope the swashbuckler and chanbara genres, respectively. Mutant City Blues nerdtropes the police procedural.
We're used to seeing nerdtroping in the definitionally geeky of hobby gaming world. Now that geek culture has gone mainstream, we're seeing it in big commercial films. Cowboys and Aliens nerdtropes the western as Deadlands did before it. Reel Steel nerdtropes the boxing flick.
Classic Posts: A Meta Note
Efforts to fully port the entire LiveJournal over to this here new blog mothership have proven fraught. I'm declaring this an official disguised blessing. Much of the 7+ years of material on the LJ is ephemera and doesn't need to be preserved forever. I won't be deleting the LJ, so if you still want all my backdated tomfoolery, you can still find it there. Until such time, that is, as the platform deletes itself and sails forlornly to its post-digital Valinor.
However, I will be reposting key entries from the LJ here, as I need to refer to them.
These "classic posts" will be called out as such in the post titles for easy skipping by those reading from an RSS feed. Nor will you have to worry about my link-announcing from Twitter, Google+ or Facebook, as I do the fresh posts.
The Three Reveals of Gen Con (Part Three): DramaSystem / Hillfolk
At Gen Con, brave questioners heard details on up to three unannounced projects. Over the last weeks, I've been making those revelations here.
The first: New Tales of the Yellow Sign
The second: Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff
Now the third and final reveal: my new rules engine, DramaSystem, as expressed by its first game iteration, Hillfolk. The tagline for the project is: If Hamlet's Hit Points is the theory, DramaSystem is the practice.
Specifically, it picks up on the HHP observation that the core scenes of any narrative can be broken down into two categories: procedural and dramatic, and that RPGs have traditionally excelled at the former and given short shrift to the latter. You know those magical sessions where the rules melt away and you just find yourself freely interacting for four hours? And next week you can't recapture whatever lightning found its way into the bottle? DramaSystem makes the free-flowing story-making happen as a matter of course. It changes the roleplaying dynamic, allowing you to create ongoing collaborative stories that unfold like serialized drama shows ("The Sopranos", "Six Feet Under", "Shameless.") I've been in-house testing this for most of the year and am beyond excited by the results.
The first game is Hillfolk, in which you play the core members of a clan of uplands raiders at the dawn of the iron age. Their personal stories play out in a crucible of competing civilizations. Do their histories change the world forever?
Pelgrane Press will be publishing; I'll be talking about it in stages in the weeks and months ahead. For the moment, here's a peek at the character sheet. This is my playtest rough and has yet to undergo graphic design beautification. But you get the idea.
August 19, 2011
Link Round-Up: HHP Goes Boardgame, RPG PhD, West Memphis 3 Released
Chris Farrell applies the Hamlet's Hit Points method to board game analysis. See if you can spot the line that is exactly what I'd hoped a reviewer would say about the book.
Dissertation by Doctor of Roleplaying Michelle Nephew now available in affordable e-form.
The West Memphis 3 are to be released today, thanks in large part to a series of documentaries about their clearly unjust murder conviction. The third installment is due to play the Toronto International Film Festival in a few weeks; the directors are now rushing to add an updated ending. Among the celebrities helping their cause, it turns out that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh provided funding for the forensic tests that finally forced prosecutors to act. The three were released under something called an Alford plea, which stops short of an exoneration, leaves some charges on their records, but does not (contra early reports) require them to admit guilt.
