again

glory lasts forever

More from teh stimulating Vyx, I promise I will start thinking of my own original post content soon but the gears are a bit rusty and besides she always has such fun ideas. Here are the rules:

A…

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The contents of my life (I'm back)

Well a year ago I decided to take a break from blogging and more recently made my blog invisible yet here I am back at the pixel-face with my arse out, metaphorically of course. There are…

December 13

Sunday morning 9am

December 9

made me think of Haraway and her shift from Cyborgs to Companion Species

November 21

Link

November 17

“ The fashionable ideology that “artificial” lacks the inherent goodness of “natural” is an appealing, but hopelessly simplistic notion of the intellectually chic. Artifice is the result of a deliberate intent to make. Nature also “makes” things, using a set of basic building blocks common throughout the universe. Exchanging infinite time for deliberate design, nature has ingeniously built plants, planets, galaxies and unimaginable constructs which seem to structure the universe itself. What we call “natural” is simply the result of whatever set of rules nature has followed in fashioning our observable reality. On planet Earth, nature has manipulated the common elements to fashion everything from bacteria to the molten core of the planet. Discoveries in the “nano” technologies of bio, molecular, and micro engineering will re-edit the nomenclature of “natural” versus “unnatural”, blurring if not erasing the line of distinction between “machine” and “organism”, “natural” and “unnatural”, “God-given” and “man-made”. Syd Mead

November 3

RPG jargon

Image by Narisa via Flickr

Role Playing RPG - Role Play Game

PBP - Play by post

PBEM - Play by email

PBC - Play by chat

PBW - Play by wiki

RPB - Role play blog

MUD -Multi-User Dungeon, Domain or Dimension (multi-player computer game that combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash style computer games and social chat rooms)

GM - Game Master

PTB - ‘Powers that be’ (admin, moderators, GM and the like) Free-form - Minimal formal rules and restrictions.

OTBRPG - Online text-based role playing game

God-moding - Making a character like a god with unbeatable powers.

OOC - Out of Character

IC - In character

ASL - Age/Sex/Location

RL - Real Life

November 2

Loy krathong

October 27

“ The later Runequest was dedicated to “Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, who first opened Pandora’s Box, and to Ken St Andre, who found it could be opened again.” This sums up rather well the final contribution these games were to make on RPG history. Simply by existing, by being made, bought and played, they were proving that role-playing was more than just D&D, and that this new concept was something that was above brand names, it was something that would last, something that was revolutionary, something that was good. http://ptgptb.org/0002/history2.html

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“

The original edition borrowed Chainmail’s form of three separate booklets, and a lot else besides. The rules were written for the gaming circles to which Gygax and Arneson belonged, and presumed a familiarity with the rules and style they were used to. For first time gamers, though, it could be confusing and frustrating: at one point the rules actually say “Combat (here) is conducted as in Chainmail”. The spell system was incredibly vague, and the combat statistics tables were almost incomprehensible.

Suprisingly, though, this was to work in favour of the hobby rather than against them. This was for two reasons. Firstly, the impenetrable rules forced players to invent their own rules and interpretations, and to begin thinking about rules systems and their design. It was here that the future RPG designers were being born.

Secondly, players were focusing not on the game itself, but the idea behind the game. Though the rules were far from perfect, people recognised the potential of the new and incredible concept around which the game revolved. D&D is perhaps the first game that players purchased with the knowledge that at least half of the rules would have to be discarded or seriously altered.

http://ptgptb.org/0002/history2.html