Robin D. Laws's Blog, page 105
July 28, 2011
July 27, 2011
Status Me On That
I was thinking this might be one of those Gen Cons where the annual buzzword is allowed to arise spontaneously over the course of the event. Not every year brings us a wheelhouse, after all. And the most praiseworthy four years in gaming are nothing if not about creation in the moment.
However, I have been informed that this laissez-faire attitude will not fly. In this era of social media 3.0 and HTML5, advance notice must be given.
After much deliberation, in which such candidates as toasty and curated were weighed and rejected, I have arrived at a choice. As per the rules of the game, it presses the boundaries of douchy business-speak while maintaining a scintilla of plausibility.
Status (when used as a verb) meaning to update, inform, or establish communications with:
As in:
"Status me on the dinner situation."
"Text Hal and status him in on this."
"This will require ongoing statusing."
"It is crucial to reach out and status our fan base."
As always, the object is to work the term into conversation, as if this a thing people of good sense actually say. Full points awarded for each straightfaced use to an unaware subject. Points deducted for detectable irony.
Extra points will be granted for slipping it into podcasts, seminars, public announcements, and the like.
In past years bonus points have been awarded for causing the usage to catch on beyond the game. As that would be awful in this instance, consider this incentive suspended for 2011.
July 26, 2011
Finessing Expository Dialogue
A number of pitfalls attend the writing of dialogue that conveys information, whether in fiction or drama.
It can undermine character credibility, when one person tells another what he already knows.
It can sound flat, when the language slips from the loose and conversational into the persuasive mode of the essay or editorial.
Even when you finesse your way past these issues, the chunk of exposition may signal its purpose too heavily to the reader. As readers we crave information, but only to answer questions that we've already been made to feel a sense of curiosity about.
Mitigate this whenever possible by making the speaker a reluctant provider of information, who gives it up only after offering resistance. If you can turn the dialogue exchange into a victory for the scene's viewpoint character, the emotional charge we get from that distracts from your turning of the structural gears.
Alternately, find another double purpose for the exchange. It might establish character, evoke a sense of place, or change the mood. The extra layer disguises your intent.
Or you can simply ensure that the information is riveting by presenting it in the form of a story or anecdote with a beginning, middle and end.
July 25, 2011
Post-Outage Link Catch-Up: Remembering Elwy, Distilled Elixir of Battle
I first came down with my lifelong case of cinephelia via public broadcaster Elwy Yost, who passed away last week.
This article on barrel-aged cocktails:
a) is chock-full of fascinating food chemistry
b) makes me want to drink a barrel-aged cocktail
c) contains the following delightful piece of period prose flapdoodle, which I now conmmend to your attention:
"But the other barrel" said the bartender "did you ever put on a straw hat with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a pretty girl, with $8,000,000 in your pocket all at the same time? That's what 30 drops of it would make you feel like. With two fingers of it inside you, you would bury your face in your hands and cry because there wasn't anything more worth while around for you to lick. Yes sir, the stuff in the second barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money and high life. It was the colour of gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now you'll get a drink like that across the bar."
July 22, 2011
Korad: On to Palth
Last week we determined a bit more about the Veytikka, as follows. I have taken the liberty of extrapolating details of their social organization.
The snow-white skin of the hairless, humanoid Veytikka contrasts sharply with jet-black lips. Their frames are lithe, if somewhat hunched. Their horizontal pupils and nictating eyes lead some scholars to trace their descent from birds or reptiles. Enlarged jaws provide ample room for rows of triangular, shark-like teeth.
The basic social unit of the Veytikka is the totem society. When Veytikka come of age, they embark on a vision quest, in which they encounter their totem animal. They then join the tribe-sized group venerating that totem. This may entail a long journey, or require the individual to remain with the totem group his mother and father belong to. Veytikka marry within their totem societies.
Now it's time to detail the last of our provinces, Palth, whose only settlement of note is the frontier trading village of Bridlepost.
Who are the rural people of this depopulated region? What unites them? What divides them? What do they believe, and what are their customs?
As always: keep your idea brief, so I can fit it into next week's poll—12 words or less. And that's an actual 12, folks, not a notional 12. One idea per commenter. Pitch standalone ideas rather than building on someone else's proposal. Get them in before early Monday evening (eastern time.)
July 21, 2011
July 20, 2011
Next Time Leave the Cream on the Side
Well, there was no shortage of personal drama at yesterday's phonehack hearings. Even before the amateur performance artist decided that the event was not sufficiently about him. As far as favorite Wendi Deng Murdoch highlights go, my pick was not the volley-slap to the head of the shaving cream interloper. Instead I place my vote on the comparatively underrated moment early in the testimony when she none-so-subtly snaked her hand out to pat Rupert, signaling him to stop pounding on the desk quite so much. Murdoch pere convincingly portrayed himself as too doddering, befuddled and detached to share culpability in wrongdoing or run a multinational corporation. Murdoch fils likewise essayed an immortal characterization as a terrified sputterer of corporate buzzwords. Sadly I had to tear myself away to work and missed out on any penetrating character moments from Rebekah Brooks' set. Pointers to piquant video clips are henceforth solicited.
As a connoisseur of real-life political drama, I have to call this easily the most compelling since Iran/Contra, if not Watergate itself. The shocking implosion of the Murdoch empire has all the key elements:
larger than life characters topples from great heights the feared become the fearful resignations and criminal charges a look past the veneer of power a nation revising its view of itself low comedy oddly-timed deaths on the story's fringes, furrowing the ground for the conspiracy-minded the tantalizing (if inevitably illusory) possibility of cosmic justice Suffused with the fumes of the last-mentioned item, I will climb out onto a limb for the following prediction: Rupert Murdoch will not be running NewsCorp a year from now. Once all the shoes have dropped, it's the lawsuit seeking to amend the company's differential voting setup, which grants control of the corporation to a clan controlling 13% of its value, that will push him out, likely to some face-saving emeritus status. You'll still have 20th Century Fox and Fox News and the other valuable pillars of the media empire. The latter will retain its lucrative ideological slant. Though still informed by the back-alley Murdoch ethos, it won't be commanded by Murdoch the man, or any of his kinfolk.
July 19, 2011
Moonlit Link Review: NewsCorp Impunity, Rain-Spattered Fight Choreography
How NewsCorp buys its way out of industrial espionage / hacking cases.
Everyone in HK is doing an Ip Man movie. The first trailer for Wong Kar Wai's long-simmering project, with Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Zhang Ziyi, is fightier than expected. No sub-titles, but none needed.
Borders of Destruction
As you have no doubt heard already, the US big box chain Borders, unable to find bidders, has announced plans to liquidate. To compare the scale of the 11,000 jobs lost, the US economy added only 18,000 jobs last month. As the creative destruction from the final collapse of an unsustainable business structure ripples outwards, the rest of publishing will take a big hit. Publishers will be left holding unpaid invoices. Competing retailers will experience a slump as buyers divert their book dollars to liquidated product. This in turn will lead to other unpaid invoices, and so on. The book sector operates on thin margins and under shudders under the stress from systemic changes. These range from the rise of Amazon to the consumer adoption of e-readers.
To the extent that the hobby game business is a niche product sold through niche venues, it should remain largely insulated from the aftershock. The caveat lies in publishers' exposure to Borders in particular and the mainstream channel in general. The bigger you are, the better your big box presence, the harder this will hurt.
However, all of hobby gaming remains vulnerable to the aforementioned liquidation effect, where money that would have gone to retailers and direct sales is instead spent scooping up books sold off by closing Borders locations.
