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…

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  • Firefly, Serenity and Confederate Politics

    I watched Joss Whedon’s Serenity last night, for about the fourth time, and loved it just as much as ever. It is in so many ways such an excellent movie, and like the TV show, Firefly, that it is based on deserves many more plaudits (and much more popularity) than it gets. Watching Serenity, it…

  • Thoughts on Simplifying Warhammer 3

    It doesn’t take me long, does it? Eight sessions of a system and I start thinking about tinkering with it… The main causes of excess complexity in Warhammer are: Resource Management Action Cards Stances The Dice Critical Wound Cards Now, the dice are non-negotiable – they’re a core part of the reason WFRP3’s system is…

  • Tyranny and Structure in Role-playing

    Noisms at Monsters and Manuals has written a comparison of gaming systems with political theories, dichotomized into “top-down” games (D&D 3rd Edition) and thinkers (Marx) and “bottom-up” games (OD&D) and thinkers (Hayek). Noisms makes it clear what side he falls on (he’s a “bottom-upper,” oo-er), which he characterizes as “the right” (vs. “the wrong”), but…

  • Current Reading: The Windup Girl

    I received The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi, as a christmas present, and the lazy season being as it is started reading immediately. I was initially interested and a little disappointed, but the book soon turned a corner and became an excellent and impressive read. The book is set in a medium-future post-collapse Bangkok, after…

  • Rats in the Ranks Session 6: Dubious German Sausage

    Last night was the 6th session of the Rats in the Ranks campaign, so about my 9th session of Warhammer 3rd Edition. This time, we again were missing one of our players (Mr. Camphor) so we again decided to put off the main plot of the campaign for a random side adventure, which is fine…

  • New Year Plans

    I crawled out into the freezing cold with a hangover today to visit the Asami Shrine in Beppu, to burn my 2010 demon-breaking arrow and purchase a new arrow for 2011. Burning the arrow that symbolizes the year before gives one time to pause and think about what one did in that 365 days, and…

  • Current Reading: Surface Detail

    I’m always eager to read the latest Iain M. Banks novel, especially if it involves the Culture, because not only is Banks a great writer but his ideas and settings are really good, and I think the Culture novels have made a significant theoretical contribution to science fiction. So they’re always a pleasure to read…

  • Speculation on the class and culture of role-players from four nations

    I have now had the chance to role-play with gamers from 3 nations – Japan, Australia and the UK – and I’ve seen a lot about American role-players online. From my experiences I’ve begun to get a bit of a sense of the politics, class and background culture of gamers in these 4 nations, so…

  • Fashioning Random Encounters in Warhammer 3

    During their recent dungeon-delving, our heroes ran into some scary zombie children, and after a surprisingly challenging battle they had to retreat from the dungeon to recover from wounds, fatigue and stress. One character was carrying such a high load of fatigue and stress that he was essentially in a state of high panic, and…

  • Survivalism and the Zombie Apocalypse

    Continuing this week’s zombie theme, Grey has raised in comments to my last post the possibility that our modern specialization and lack of basic survival skills – farming, hunting, that sort of thing – would be a major problem in surviving the zombie apocalypse. The obvious implication of this is that your average media studies…