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BarnerCobblewood
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Yeah, that's her. Wonderful.
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(Quote) First off - I was interested enough to read to the end of the book. Lots of good stuff - writing, plotting, etc., but my initial reaction once done reading was that while the parts were all good, somehow the whole was not. Not really finishe…
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This was really helpful, especially the part about character generation. The djinn seems more like an artefact motivating an NPC than a person of its own.
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(Quote) This is a detective story so there must be a crime, but a story where the protagonist is so lacking in agency, where the crime is greeted with such lack of affect, and where justice is unable to function, leaves me cold, and I think when tol…
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Great thanks.
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I already have checked discussions, but it isn't doing it. I'll check comments and see if that fixes it.
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(Quote) That's not what I said - we can't really grasp our situation. Stories which explain it could provide comfort, but most stories available don't. Who knows what the truth of our lives is? Lew Archer doesn't, so why listen to him? I just didn't…
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I see. I need to go every month to check the box for the category of whatever book is chosen (e.g. 80. (August 2019) The Chill), otherwise I won't get a prompt that a conversation has started. I making an effort to participate more, but the truth is…
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For the kind of games I am interested in, this looks like a railroading problem. Why not just make things up as we go along that will provide interesting action? To be honest I have never really cared whether the sequence of games make analytic sens…
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Never used them during sessions - I depend on my memory. Probably a mistake. However they seem designed for reveals, for having secret information, which suggests that planning is going to take a lot of time. Look at government planning - it rarely …
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It is a small town in a big city, like most stories which can no longer scale to our social reality. I think most of us can't really grasp our situation, and so these stories provide a comfort that we can understand something which in reality is far…
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The voice creates a reader who is likewise dis-engaged from the action. I think in classic RPG (D&D) gaming this is part of why so many sessions are, to be blunt, boring - the DM / narrator isn't speaking as the character, but as someone like Le…
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One advantage of simile, metaphor, and analogy, is that each lets the reader form their own visualisation in their mind, while using the same language as everyone else, who might have a quite different picture, e.g. the weathered stone can be differ…
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I'm interested to read this also. Perhaps it could be someone's suggestion for an upcoming monthly book?
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For September let's read Recursion by Blake Crouch. Haven't read it, but it's got good reviews, and I think might have a gameable premise. If a lot of people prefer I'm open to choosing Always Coming Home by UKLeGuin, which despite having read, do n…
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* BC By the way Apocryphal, your links on the site e.g. http://diceroller.co/d20roller above all point me to http://www.http.com, e.g. http://www.http.com//diceroller.co/d20roller. Something about the http:// prefix I guess.
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What I mean is that Lem's characters (in the non-comic stories) don't ever really 'solve' their macguffin. If heroic has something to do with defeating tragic necessity, he is not your guy. Still I think many of his protagonists are heroes, who just…
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Love Lem. He recognises that science is the study of causality, and that causality depends on both external events and internal understanding, that causality is relationship not thing. Also is keenly aware that our agency is much less than what we t…
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I think this is a good idea. BC
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(Quote) If you mean playing / enjoying a simulation, then this together with the present social interaction is what I like as well. I like rpgs when they amount to a topical conversation about the problems of getting things done in some situation. B…
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(Quote) There has not been a lot of research into this. As I understand it Tibetan religion after the 10th century drew a theoretical / dogmatic distinction between 'religious' monks who use Buddhist moral rules to benefit themselves at the expense …
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(Quote) Hop this brief and crude answer helps: So in Tibet everyday life was organised around valleys and clans, which had their own social structures, and even languages. These can be thought of as similar to islands, and just like islands the peo…
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Hi @Apocryphal. At the beginning you seem to be grounded in a European stance to the world, but the second part is about something else. I'm just not clear what. Seems to me that religion is the original declaration between what is and what might /…
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Thanks for bringing this forward. I think I understand what he is meaning to say (e.g. no story has any end, no picture a frame), but I too disagree with what he has said. Perhaps it's because he is writing to a young person. I also think it is int…
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@Apocryphal As to reproducing it, I could see Ged and Arha both being played, and a GM. But what I meant is that this book could be a report from a game - where the plot was initialised. I read somewhere that role-playing was an aspect of making the…
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(Quote) Thank you for your comments. A counter-point: There is dance and so forth in the Nameless One's religion, and Arha enjoys it. It is in her interactions with the God-king religion and its practitioners, the religion of politics, where difficu…
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I think this could have been played with the Amber system.
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I liked the tombs, and liked the way in which 'rules' (e.g. no light) are for the childish Arha, and her servants. The community of the Nameless Ones is small and 'left-behind', compared to the God-king, but finally the unseen destroys the God-king'…
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I think a theme running through a lot of LeGuin's work is an idea that growing up is taken as putting aside religion, and it is used here to drive the plot (Sorry @Apocryphal ). The Kargish are grown up in that they have put aside religion, and Arha…
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I find it a bit depressing that Tenar's growing up is complete when she puts aside the 'childish' religions of the God-king and Nameless Ones, and becomes a secularised member of the wizard (technological) society, which she seems likely to never be…