Help offset server costs by donating. This is totally optional. Any overages will go to library fines or new books.
BarnerCobblewood
About
- Username
- BarnerCobblewood
- Joined
- Visits
- 2,761
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member
Comments
-
(Quote) Couldn't agree more if it turns out that way, but I'm not sure that Priest doesn't have a map. Maybe it's just the characters. However it certainly opens a door for laziness about craft. And I think it raises a question about what grows fro…
-
(Quote) The World Priest - sounds like every wannabe GM ever! Priest is pretty confident in the reader's motivation. Why do we continue reading these books? And I wonder about calling this a novel. Novel seems to mean nothing more than a certain nu…
-
K thanks
-
Is this ebook Kindle only?
-
(Quote) I don't know if I would call it a style - it's still quite SF, but the conceit is detecting chains of previous events. I was really impressed with Chain of Chance.
-
(Quote) Yeah, he really does write the best first contact books. They have kind of ruined almost all hard SF with aliens for me - they all seem just too speciest, which destroys my ability to suspend disbelief and participate in the world. I find th…
-
I'm in, rolled a 2.
-
3 pts B: The Islanders / Dream Archipelago / The Evidence 2 pts C: Dangerous Visions / Again Dangerous Visions 1 pt A: Dune (+ Dune Messiah, sounds like)
-
Note to self: Try to be more constantly engaged this year. Here are my picks in order: The Islanders + The Dream Archipelago + The Evidence, by Christopher Priest. This seems interesting. At the top because unread. Dangerous Visions + Again, Dang…
-
(Quote) Thanks @RichardAbbott. Couldn't agree more about the improvements in publishing, and the opportunities for readers that self-publishing provides. But while the term 'vanity publishing' may have disappeared, I think it is alive and well, e.g.…
-
I mostly agree with the group assessment of the book - I didn't like it much. Everything was kept too far off from us - I didn't find that there was any sustained presence in the book. I don't have this reaction to either Verne or Melville. Very dif…
-
(Quote) And yet what we do imagine is more than the world.
-
Sorry to be late, but was away on vacation last week. @Apocryphal I think the current word for this kind of writing is 'pastiche,' as opposed to 'fan fiction.' Somehow fan fiction is childish, because it has not been authorised by a profit-seee(eek)…
-
I saw this trailer as well. Lots of nice pictures, but still early days. I'm not sure at all that they will be able to capture the 'talking' about 'ideas' which, is what in my memory made these stories worthwhile. From what I recall there was not a …
-
(Quote) I agree she did use them, because that is our present and already developed situation. Her moral premise (should not use) is defeated by everyday life - of course people use other people, and should use them, and should be willing to be used…
-
(Quote) This is why I don't think ACH (which certainly has an aspect of being things thrown in a bag) should be considered a novel. That said, it doesn't help us much figure out what it is. My point is the reader it produces isn't the of the same ty…
-
Janitor perhaps.
-
There is something disturbing here about the relation of imagination and everyday, something that RPGs could play with, but I think in practice such play is rare. Imagining and constructing, though related, are not the same activities, and construct…
-
I don't think Pandora is an observer. LeGuin says in Pandora Worries About What She Is Doing: The Pattern (Quote) Pandora is someone who opens a box and takes the things out, looking at them simply out of an insatiable curiosity, uncaring as to wh…
-
I want to know how these games' systems worked in a session, and across sessions. Did your play group want to play these more than once (or maybe not what you do)? How long did it take people to grok what was happening? It seems quite artificial (…
-
(Quote) Thanks for the list. I'd like to hear about Smallville and the Drama System. Do you think Drama System might be added to other games?
-
(Quote) Quite a lot, so I am going to focus on just a few things. Happy to discuss anything else though. (Quote) What about RPGS as finding out who you are, and who you could be? (Quote) What ACH did for me was open a way to think about playing in…
-
(Quote) Mediæval as a description fine with me. As long as we understood that no matter what word we use, in the context of discussing this culture in ACH, it has to convey the idea that the author (Pandora? perhaps not the narrator) thinks the cult…
-
(Quote) Looking forward to your longer post coming up. (Quote) If you mean the process of playing the game, yes - see my comment a moment ago. And yet, despite a rhetoric, often in introductions, I have rarely seen e.g. grief given any role in role…
-
(Quote) I think that it depends on whether we are involved in competitive gaming, or recreational gaming. One of the things that attracted me to RPGs was the recreational and communal aspect of the play (as opposed to say organised sports, which I a…
-
(Quote) Not sure why you think Manichaen thought is not dualistic. I'm using the term in a very loose sense, where the key point is that good and evil actually exist and are in a conflict that we cannot avoid (by i.e. running away). In more detail,…
-
(Quote) Marvel Comic Universe - The Avengers movies et al.
-
Edit: moved from other thread. What do you make of the spiral radius? I think she means that the spiral is not infinite, but that one arm goes out to a straight-line distance of 4 from the source, while the other goes out to 5. There is a straight …
-
Edit: moved to other thread
-
@dr_mitch I too find that it goes better the more it goes. I also find this each time I read the book, which disrupts my idea that it was somehow getting in harmony with the work depends on knowing it. Reading the end without the beginning doesn't h…