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: Reviews

  • Barbarians of Lemuria: Fast-paced Barbaric Fun

    Late last year I ran a one-off session of Barbarians of Lemuria, a simple and stripped down sword and sorcery RPG. The session report for that adventure is here. Barbarians of Lemuria is intended to provide rules for sword and sorcery adventuring in the style of Conan, the Lankhmar series, and Thongor, in a light…

  • Respectable: When Someone Writes a Book About Your Life

    Lynsey Hanley’s Respectable: The Experience of Class is a book that, in many respects, is about me. Hanley was born on a working class housing estate in Northern England in 1976, which makes her three years younger than me, and unlike most of her peers she left her working class origins to become middle class,…

  • Rogue One: Making Star Wars Great Again

    Rogue One is a great movie. But more importantly, it’s a movie that brings the original Star Wars feeling back to life. It is a lively, intense romp through the Star Wars universe, replete with all the things that made the original movies so enjoyable: characters you really want to win, a plot that unfolds…

  • Fantastic Beasts: Great Fun, but an Idea that is Unravelling

    On the weekend I saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the new offering from JK Rowling. This movie is set in the Harry Potter world before the events of the Potter books, and I guess is intended to flesh out that world for a new generation of audiences. The movie itself is great…

  • Everything Wrong with Christianity, in One Renaissance Tweet

    On the weekend in addition to a fine session of Vampire: The Masquerade I managed to get my philistine arse down to the Tokyo National Art Center for an exhibition of paintings from the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. I went with a Japanese friend, and while my friend was oohing and aahing at all the cool…

  • Independence Day Resurgence: Everything that is Wrong with Modern Action Movies

    Today I saw Independence Day: Resurgence, because I wanted to watch something stupid with big explosions and I have forgotten enough of the original to make it feel like I was doing something novel. Of course it was fun – big things got blown up, there were tidal waves and monstrous destruction, heroic fighter pilots…

  • Did School Condom Programs Really Lead to Increased Teen Pregnancy Rates?

    Hot on the heels of a (probably wrong) paper on ivory poaching that I criticized a few days ago, Vox reports on a paper that claims schools that give away condoms have higher teen pregnancy rates. Ooh look, a counter-intuitive finding! Economists love that stuff, right? This is a bit unfortunate for Vox since the…

  • Did Legal Ivory Sales Really Boost Elephant Poaching in 2008?

    Today the Guardian reported on a new study that claims a large sale of legal ivory in 2008 actually led to an increase in illegal elephant poaching. Basically in 2008 China and Japan were allowed to pay for a large stockpile of legally-obtained ivory, in the hopes that this would crash the market and drive…

  • Degenesis: German Primal Punk Post-apocalyptic RPG Beauty

    My group’s regular member Grim D returned from his annual Christmas holiday in Germany bearing a sleek black rule book for a German RPG called Degenesis, revised and newly translated into English. We were astounded by this book, both for the beauty of its contents and the scale of the project it represents, and as…

  • Library Wars: A Chaotic Disquisition on Librarian Vigilantism

    I’m in grim London for a week, doing some work at Imperial College while the looming skies glower down on me. One great thing about flying ANA to London is you get to see Japanese-language movies with English subtitles, something that’s almost impossible if you live in Japan. Since my Japanese is not yet good…