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…

Tag: controversy

  • My Favourite Two Journal Articles

    Today, while preparing lessons, I was reminded of one of my two favourite journal articles of all time, which reminded me of the other one, and  thought I’d give a brief review of both of them here. One is an example of the kind of research that is often sneered at for its social sicencey-content,…

  • 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…

  • On the importance of learning from Computer and Board Games

        Many people in the RPG world think what I’m about to say is heresy, but I actually think that board games and computer games have some interesting ideas to teach RPG makers and players, and a lot of them are based on making available new and specialized content – that is, objects and…

  • Explaining Daily Powers in Actual Play

    This post was inspired by a discussion at Sarah DarkMagic’s blog about how to justify daily powers for fighters. I’ve read a few spots where people say they find daily powers for fighters hard to comprehend – how come you can only do your power strike once per day? I put an explanation on the…

  • 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…

  • Multiculturalism, diversity and political alliance in the Lord of the Rings

    As a follow-up to recent posts on race in the Lord of the Rings, I think I should have a look at the possible multicultural symbols in the books. This is both a nice counterstory to my recent criticisms of his politics, and provides useful background information on the politics of Tolkien’s fascist admirers. How…

  • The C&C Fascist Reader

    While I was travelling my blog attracted the attention of a Danish Fascist group, the Danish National Front, for its posts on Tolkien and fascism. A post went up on their message board indicating that the Tolkien books are recommended reading for fascists and giving my post on Tolkien’s racial theories as an explanation of…

  • Perfidious accusations of sandboxery

    In a recent skype conversation, one of my players from London accused my GMing style of being “very sandbox,” and even went so far as to imply that there is little difference between me and the OSR. This has me a little confused as to what sandboxing is, since I don’t do any of the…

  • A Svalbard Whaling Campaign

    I think this idea could work well with warhammer. I watched the 8th episode of the BBC documentary Oceans today[1], hoping to see video footage of polar bears killing whales, and the documentary featured a visit to the old whaling town on Svalbard. Apparently – according to the scientists who were chatting on the screen…