Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

recent posts

about

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

Category: Nerd Culture

  • Will the Tory Education Reforms Reduce Inequality?

    On the weekend I spent an hour in a bathtub with a dyed-in-the-wool conservative[1], discussing the merits of various solutions to the world’s problems – not a very fruitful discussion, since we disagree on many things, but we are easily able to agree on the horrible situation the UK faces, and during the discussion I…

  • “Meta” Reviewing Early Reviews of Warhammer 3rd Edition

    Today I stumbled on another one of the many early reviews of Warhammer 3rd Edition, this one published at Uncle Bear Media. It seems to be a review based entirely on the pre-release advertising for the game, judging by the way it is written. This type of “review” is not unusual – I’ve stumbled upon…

  • The Daily Mash Proves Comics are the Ultimate Chick-Magnet

    The Daily Mash today has an excellent article on how women prefer me who like comics. It even has a warhammer reference: They should make Warhammer condoms, shaped like balrogs and space marines So this is where I’ve been going wrong my whole life…

  • A Brief Look at the Mathematical Theory of Chess

    Professor Quiggin at Crooked Timber has introduced a discussion of what President Obama will do after the next senate elections with the title “Zero Dimensional Chess,” which led some of the bigger wankers in the audience to wonder how 0-D Chess could occur, and from there to ponder the deeper details of the mathematics of…

  • Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – Warcraft Style

    The issue of gender inclusivity in gaming has been around the traps for as long as gaming, and is something I’ve discussed on this blog before. One of the main reasons for this in both the computer and table-top gaming world is the images that are used, which signify gaming as a man’s world where…

  • Stranger Hobbies Than Ours: Budgies

    Recently the Guardian had a news report about a prize budgerigar breeder whose birds were killed or nicked in an act of industrial (sport? Hobby?) sabotage, and now they have a follow-up (with pictures!) of a budgie fanciers show in the UK. See any parallels?  

  • Questions for a potential interview of a Japanese Grognard

    I mentioned previously that I think I have stumbled upon a Japanese Grognard, who I shall call Mr. 123, and it occurred to me recently that I could try and ask him some questions about his attitude towards gaming, his opinion of old school, etc. I’ve noticed that the people I play with here, though…

  • An example random dungeon table from Make You Kingdom

    Continuing my series of posts on the Japanese RPG Make You Kingdom, here I present a single table from the random Kingdom generation section. In this section you choose how many rooms your Kingdom will have (1 to 9), then you generate each room randomly. To do this, you first roll a d6 to see…

  • Additional Notes on Tolkien and Racism

    Comments on my last post have become bogged down in a debate that makes it hard to think clearly about the things I’ve been discussing in this series of posts about Tolkien and racism. Specifically, I think we’ve drifted off the main thread of the arguments, and become distracted from the issue of racial essentialism…

  • Jumping Someone Else’s Train

    Over at “Discourse” and Dragons there is a “rant” about the new edition of D&D, which being inside the OSR echo-chamber is largely agreed to by its respondents, until a chap called Shazbot (from Points of Light) turns up and delivers, in comments, his own handy little rant about old school logic. I believe a…