Categories
FATE Games

The Jedi mind control is working… on Fate designers

Recently, two different Fate designers have been starting up Star Wars campaigns and discussing how they modify the rules to match.

Rob Donoghue’s take: Shadow of the Sith blank character sheets, completed characters, and rules.

Meanwhile, Mike Olson has been working on a Faith Corps of Rebels for this weekend’s con. Overview, Maintaining Tone, Long Lasting Conditions, and Ships.

Each looks like a fun interpretation, though I don’t know Faith Corps (I haven’t seen the book yet), so I’d probably go for Rob’s take for now. Interestingly, both use a series of defined consequences, rather than Fate Core stress & consequences. I wonder if there’s a reason they both moved toward that design space…

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Uncategorized

Dungeon painter and other cool links

Dungeon Painter a cool online tool! (via Tenkar’s Tavern)

Categories
Politics

Elie Mystal: I’m With Her… I Guess

I’m With Her… I Guess is basically where I am. It’s not super exciting, but it makes sense to me.

One good bit:

But I don’t understand liberals who hate Hillary Clinton. She is authentic; she is naturally bad at running for office and that painfully shows through at almost all points. But maybe you would be bad at campaigning too if you had been subjected to over two decades of vicious and often contradictory political attacks.

We’ve forced Hillary Clinton to change her hair, her clothes, and her accent. We’ve criticized her for taking too prominent a role during the Bill Clinton administration, then questioned whether being First “Lady” qualified her to run for office. She’s been the most investigated politician since Richard Nixon, yet has never been found to have committed a crime. People have said she has all of the “Clinton baggage” but none of the “Clinton charisma,” which is odd because the “baggage” is her husband cheating on her and the “charisma” is what allows her philandering husband who perjured himself to be loved, while she’s gets called “untrustworthy.”

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Uncategorized

An interesting story linked for me

The City of Roses.

Categories
Books

Armada by Ernest Cline

A book that overtly acknowledges and plays with the tropes of “kid plays video games, recruited to pilot a space ship and save the world”. I liked it, but didn’t love it–much like Ready Player One, really.

I suspect that Jennifer will appreciate it more; I’ll be sure to pitch it to her.

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Uncategorized

It’s not my fault!

A quick generator for Fate games, both character and setting. Very cool.
It’s not my fault!

A standalone room generator: Mood of the Room

FAE and alternatives to approaches and Wrestling with FAE.

Categories
Roleplaying

New Blog: Jules Ingame

Jules Ingame a roleplaying blog, nicely written.

Categories
Roleplaying

Cool map trick

Dave Younce originally shared:
I found the next town map for my D&D game thusly:
1) go to https://www.mapbox.com/editor/#style
2) select ‘Pencil’ style
3) find someplace suitable; in this case the NW coast of France somewhere.

This map will stand-in for Leilon in the Forgotten Realms, which has no port but is coastal. Several other features of this little French town make it work well for what I have in mind.

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Uncategorized

Stretch/Touch

I recently wrote an article on Medium called Stretch/Touch. It was a burst of creativity captured and set down in one go.

(Archived below the fold in case I outlast Medium.)

Stretch/Touch

If you see me walking in the morning, you might think you’ve encountered a madman. As I walk, my gaze almost never rests straight ahead; my neck bends forward until my chin touches my chest, or my head rolls in a grand circle around my shoulders as if held by a few tendons. It’s the lingering effect of one the most influential classes I had in college — a one night class offered in a neighboring dorm’s living room.

I grew up knowing the value of massage; I was trained to exacting standards by Dad. He taught the skill with a wink as to its value in seeking a mate, but proved eager to offer himself up for our practice. Many nights, while watching TV or talking in the living room, he’d slip off the couch onto the floor before my brother or me and ask for a few minutes of work on his neck, or for someone to work out a knot just below his shoulder, or maybe work the spine?

The class was offered for our cluster of dorms on a Tuesday night. Turnout was light; maybe 14 or 16 students showed. We swiftly divided into partners, which was when I discovered that I was one of two guys who’d showed up alone — everyone else was dating their partner.

The initial lecture and demonstration I’ve carried with me ever since. It was about self-care and stretching, simple exercises you could do alone. Stretching to prevent stress and tension from locking you up or fixing you in position — or being dependent on a faraway father for working out knots accumulating from study and worry. She taught us to slowly rotate our head, chin down to the chest, then held over the left shoulder, then chin up and straining back, rolling right and hovering over the right shoulder, then chin back to nestling on the chest. Balancing tension, sometimes edging into soreness, muscles warning of accumulated rust, inflexible muscles deeply reluctant to stretch far enough to dip your chin onto the waiting shoulder.

At the time I was more interested in the partners’ portion, “real massage”. I sheepishly paired with the only other stag guy. He sat before me and I followed along as instructed, my hand muscles experienced and firm, working tension from his neck. When we switched, the instructor encouraged us to relax as much as possible; I quietly blew out breath and sagged into his hands over the sounds of laughter at my boneless posture. His hands weren’t practiced, but I appreciated his efforts to follow instruction and work some tension from my neck and shoulders. It almost counteracted the weight of eyes on me, reminding me that I wasn’t one of the couples, one of those who really belonged.

After that hour I avoided further massage classes. Massage was clearly marked out as a couple’s space; something I’d known intellectually, but I was left disappointed once I’d internalized the message. I had hoped that massage would be a community of people giving relief and easing tense muscles, but found again the same exclusionary pairing that limited access to so many spaces.

Had I only thought twice, I’d have realized that uncoupled women wouldn’t show up for a massage class. Massage is too often tied to seduction. Letting some strange guy run his hands over you wouldn’t dissolve tension for many — they’d develop knots that’d resist an amateur’s fumbling efforts to relieve.

Over the last few years, I’ve smiled at the ergonomics and workplace stretches handouts that HR sends along. Some instruction is new (like “concentrate on an object at least thirty feet away for ten seconds every hour”), but the seated exercises almost always incorporate elements of that long ago class in a dorm living room.

These days, I get up early and go for a walk before returning home to shower and work at desk and computer. The light exercise wakes me to a degree that I can’t match any other way. When I skip my morning walk, the first hours are a struggle; concentrating proves so very hard.

If you happen to see me in the morning as I walk, you might see shoulders rolling, lifting, falling in their sockets. Hands swing forward to bump each other, rebound, arc out to the sides, disappear behind my back, slowing then crashing and rebounding, swinging forward again. I’ll wave sheepishly, but return to my odd stretches as I turn right down the next street.

How useful that class, one evening, so many years ago.

Categories
Books

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

I recently finished City of Stairs, which was good but didn’t impress me as much as others seem to be experiencing. I wonder if the stuff that makes it a step above requires looking more at the world building.

It’s fantasy on the verge of Victorian (though without extensive steampunk). The lead character is interesting, as is the murder she’s trying to solve. The setting is very interesting, and events both recent and a couple of centuries old have resulted in a world with recriminations and colonial resentments.

Well done, there was just something “sparky” missing to make me eager for more.

(Edited to add: Something that came up in conversation, that speaks to the world building, is that it handles colonialism and its backlash directly and well. I agree that it’s well done, and can see how world builders in particular appreciated seeing it handled well in a fantasy story.)