Tessera
Folgen

Adam

@afcbrodie.bsky.social

Blog here: https://afcbrodie.mataroa.blog/. I write about TTRPGs and history and probably other things.

410 Posts102 Follower684 Folgt
michael lutz@ztul.bsky.social · 4d ago

GIZMO: Never fear! My simulations show a 76% chance of Farmhouse Mystery Kid victory FOOTBALL CASEY: *held upside down by kraken* not the stats I wanna hear, Einstein! JOLLY ROGER: *slashing with cutlass* —and for Ada and Tessa and the winter sister born on the voyage, ye took them all from me, aye—

Adam@afcbrodie.bsky.social · 4w ago

Really enjoyed being an asynchronous interlocutor on this episode (with apologies to Thomas for his needing to read some overlong comments :D). Looking forward to the new season, and in the meantime have made a mental note to blog about the setting mechanic I made for my homebrew Heart campaign.

Thomas M, Full-time Rascal@newmadras.bsky.social · last mo.

New episode of Rascal Reading Club is one of the best yet, lots of great responses from listeners and GMing discussion. Thanks to @scenefour.bsky.social for being a great collaborator on the episode (and also thanks to the internet for not failing on us) www.rascal.news/talkback-sto...

Adam@afcbrodie.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I don’t think I can hang anything on it analytically, but, it’s fun to think about the scene in Two Towers where Sam and Frodo climb down a cliff, with the scene in Storm of Wings, where Tomb the Dwarf climbs up one

cmrn knzlmn@ckunzelman.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Extremely good stuff from melos here as always, especially this (which is amplified by 100x in the TTRPG world for reasons I cannot discern but nevertheless see)

I think there is partly a ritual function to these discourses: the participants are able to strengthen their identities as gamers and people who value games. So in this sense, the point of discourse is not to reach any concrete end (and base on seeing the same discourses for decades, there seems), it's really arguing as a means towards having the identity as gamer/game designer. Which... is not really an issue unless someone goes overboard and like, drags someone into it who doesn't care. (But idk... sometimes you do really want to change the world with discourse and it's hard to do that without encroaching on other beliefs...)
melos han-tani@hantani.bsky.social · 2mo ago

new post on misc. topics! like.. - is cyclical game discourse a ritual for gamers - what is "BS" in games + AngEra design - what do I even want out of games?? - do games have artistic movements - losing award shows, fame... - religious change and internet - fruit buttondown.com/melodicambie...

Omar Wasow@owasow.bsky.social · 3mo ago

“Writing is hard.” Thrilled to share that this simple idea led to a new paper in Political Analysis! Where most text methods focus on content, I test if expression is also effortful action. I find simple measures like character counts reveal attitudes and predict voting. cup.org/4cUmoXi 1/

Text as Behavior Text as Behavior published in Political Analysis by Omar Wasow Abstract Text analysis typically focuses on content—such as sentiment or topic—but expression is also a form of effortful action. Building on this insight, I propose using simple features of open-ended tasks to study text as behavior. This approach treats expression, such as writing, as cognitively, emotionally and temporally “costly” for subjects but inexpensive for researchers. I show basic statistics like the number of characters can approximate effort and significantly improve estimation of quantities of interest, including candidate choice, the probability of turning out to vote and psychological states about which a subject may not be fully aware. Further, these methods can convert nonresponse into informative data; validate survey instruments; serve as mechanism checks; be hard for a subject to “game”; work across different languages and analogize well to real-world situations. In sum, text as behavior can help address a range of issues related to quantifying attitudes and actions.
jess@jessfrom.online · 3mo ago

or, tbh, a lot of mainstream actual play, in which what is primary is the narrative they are sculpting away from the table. fiction-backwards: deriving the present from the past. fiction-forwards: considering all emergent possibilities from this present moment of gameplay & choosing one. then

jess@jessfrom.online · 3mo ago

the campaign to that arc. fiction-backwards & fiction-forwards are still fundamentally about emergent narrative, it’s just a question of what direction you look for that emergence. they are, at least in the ways that matter to me, more alike with each other than they are with play cultures where

Adam@afcbrodie.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Pacing my house back and forth on repeat because I just finished James Ellroy’s White Jazz while drinking an instant coffee, and now my mind feels like sweaty dynamite

Adam@afcbrodie.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I really enjoyed the Quinns’ Quest review of Stonetop. It celebrates what is good about the game, and also helped me to see some mistakes I made running it, that if I hadn’t made, would have made my game way better. AND ALSO…

michael lutz@ztul.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The daemons from His Dark Materials are their souls! It's a story you dipshits!! The idea is their souls live physically outside them!!! If you believe in souls in this world, good news: it doesn't have to a Pikachu to talk to it because it's already you!!!! You're souling right now motherfucker!!!!

Adam@afcbrodie.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Finished Zoha Waseem’s Insecure Guardians, an ethnography of police in Karachi, Pakistan. It is a feat, a level of access to and therefore insight into police corruption I would not have thought possible. The observation below in particular has been ringing in my head since I read it.

BildBild
Adam@afcbrodie.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Having just read ‘The Machine in Shaft Ten’ I can see why MJ Harrison got annoyed at the reception of ‘Very Afraid’. Kinda feels like a ‘Triton’ & ‘Reading the Dispossessed’ situation. The story and the essay emerge from the same ground, but the story does so much more.

Ty@mindstorm.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Here's a random GMing thing: when the group needs to talk with someone, look for a natural countdown and anchor the scene off of it. The florist only has time to talk while he prepares the bouquet. As the convo goes on, keep coming back to him working and being closer and closer to finishing.

Ada Palmer@adapalmer.bsky.social · 5mo ago

A bonobo’s pretend tea party suggests that imagination predates humans. A study in Science shows that Kanzi, a 43-year-old bonobo, could track imaginary juice and grapes in during a tea party, reliably distinguishing pretend from real objects. buff.ly/7ysy0fq #ShareGoodNewsToo

A bonobo’s pretend tea party is rewriting what we know about imagination

A bonobo named Kanzi surprised scientists by successfully playing along in pretend tea party experiments, tracking imaginary juice and grapes as if they were real. He consistently pointed to the…

buff.ly