I just saw the latest in an ongoing series called The Worst Ninja over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It details the trials and tribulations of a gamer determined to play Ultima Online without assistance. "Without assistance" is the key here, meaning the author is trying to learn how to play the game using just the included materials; no Googling, no ( Read more... )

Don't know why I've been ignoring LJ so much. Weird. I imagine I'll come back to it eventually.

In the meantime, I'm really making this post as a note-to-self more than anything else. I found this article recently and it's a very interesting discussion of the mechanics of choice in games, inspired specifically by BioShock. It highlights the fact ( Read more... )

In San Diego at the SIGGRAPH Sandbox conference. Warren Spector is giving a keynote about emergent gameplay and how cool it is when players figure out how to break your game. He's going on about the moral dimension of gameplay and our responsibility to interactivity.

This is wonderful.

A couple quick things, direct from the internet to you:

• If you didn't already know that March is Boycott-the-RIAA month, well, March is Boycott-the-RIAA month. I'll be participating, since it requires almost no effort on my part. I'm mostly happy to listen to years-old CDs and very rarely buy music. Still, you might be interested to know whether the ( Read more... )

Well, I'm growing. I've crossed into what the Peace Corps calls "Conscious Incompetence": I'm starting to understand how much I need to learn about being a DM. Here's a partial list of mistakes I've made.

( No big spoilers, but this probably falls under the category of 'Talking Too Much'. My players might be better off not reading below the cut. )

Well, first post in a long time, anyway. I've been doing a lot of not-posting recently. I didn't post about how much it hurts to lift weights for the first time in months. I didn't post about the moral quandries that surrounded surreptitiously checking out a girl at the gym. I didn't post about getting wii-nied for a third week in a row - although ( Read more... )

Turns out I have no conception of Black Friday. I mean, I knew it was crazy, and I knew that I didn't understand it, but I honestly had no idea how much I don't understand it.

I woke up way early this morning, around 6:45. I want to stress, this is basically the earliest I can imagine getting up on the day after Thanksgiving. I headed over to EB ( Read more... )

I'm watching Harry Potter 4 because, hey, I'm on holiday, I'm pretty much required to chill and watch movies on HBO. Anyway, Doctor Who is in it, apparently. I don't remember him at all, so I'm not sure if he shows up again of if he's just a random throw-away evildoer ( Read more... )

Oh, well. Best Buy is supposed to get another shipment next week - if that's the sort of schedule we can expect, then there should be better availability in a few weeks ( Read more... )

I just got off my second 13-hour workday in a row. My head has hurt since Friday. I took the freeway home, so it was a short drive, but I still had trouble keeping my eyes open ( Read more... )