Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

Category: Nerd Culture

  • Wolf Hall and the Liberal Stand-in

    I just finished reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which is an excellent book about one of UK history’s more influential non-regal people, Thomas Cromwell. Wolf Hall tells the story of his early rise to becoming Henry the 8th’s chief advisor, with lots of reflection on his childhood, his past in Europe and his religious beliefs.…

  • How Much do SpaceX Rocket Launches Really Cost?

    Recently in conversation with one of my players I was led to ponder whether or not SpaceX is revolutionizing space travel, and whether it has driven costs down to new record levels. My initial response was skeptical, but upon reflection I thought there should be data on this, and it should be possible to make…

  • Why Is Durin a Man?

    There has been a lot of racist backlash against the decision to cast some non-white characters in the new Lord of the Rings tv series. Tolkien fanboys and fascists (a not very distorted circle on a Venn diagram, it would appear) are very angry that a few new characters – some Harfoots, Durin’s wife, a…

  • Initial Reactions to the Rings of Power

    Having spent a lot of time writing about Tolkien and racism on here, and having watched fanboys consistently misread Tolkien’s novels in various ways to justify their racist and anti-semitic imagery, I was looking forward to the inevitable backlash at the new Amazon Prime show, the Rings of Power. Being a big Tolkien fan, I…

  • Rereading the Mists of Avalon: MZB’s contempt for women

    Update [2023/12/6]: This is number 2 in a series of posts, and the original post in this series is getting a lot of attention, so I thought I’d link the entire series of posts together for those reading, so that they can follow the entire journey down memory lane. Here are the other posts: A…

  • Re-reading the Mists of Avalon in Light of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fall From Grace

    Update[2023/12/6]: This post is getting a bit of attention, but it’s actually only the first of a series of posts exploring this topic. Here is the full list, which I will update as I write them, so that those interested in this journey down memory lane can follow me all the way to its grim…

  • My Campaigns are Combat-lite: The “You’re not like other girls” of GMing

    I recently posted some of my criticisms of the Genesys combat system to a forum for Genesys-related material, and received a surprising amount of resistance to the idea of making any changes to the rules. In amongst the resistance there were a large number of people telling me “you shouldn’t be doing that much combat…

  • Which Parts of Online Role-playing will you Transplant to Physical Gaming?

    Yesterday I wrote a post about the ways in which online teaching and supervision can be superior to physical teaching and supervision, and today I want to follow up with a short post about what aspects of online gaming can be transferred to physical gaming. I finished my Coriolis campaign online, and we have started…

  • Assessing the Benefits of Online Teaching and Supervision

    We are now eight months into the coronavirus pandemic with little sign that most countries will be able to get it under control without a vaccine, which means that many countries are now attempting to return to normal while managing the virus. For most countries I predict this is going to be disastrous, and even…

  • The Rise of Skywalker: Time to Bury this Travesty of a Once-Great Saga

    It’s that time of year again, where I hate -watch the latest Star Wars dump so that you, my dear reader(s), don’t have to. I’m a little late to the party because I was on holiday and had much better things to do with my time than watch a shit movie for this blog[1], so…