What is the point of me linking Zak’s blog, since you all read it anyway (right?)?

Because hidden away in a review of weird fiction is the best advice I’ve read since “don’t bother with art that’s trying to look like art”:

I just have to put the best of what I have to offer and nothing else out there by itself and see what kind of story it is. And if ( Read more... )

One of the worst/best things about D&D is its propensity to swallow other games, genres and settings whole, incorporating them into its ever-expanding, relentless gumbo. On a bad day this can lead to a kind of hyper-flavourlessness, where you know that nothing in the "vanilla" D&D game means anything special, it's all just reduced to a common ( Read more... )

I see the Daily Show recently did a bit on the visual display of information* and the cognitive style of Powerpoint. Brilliant.

Here is that unbelievable chart. Which I think might repay some closer looking. Not in order to learn about the situation in Afghanistan (for which I think it just perhaps could be useful in a highly abstract way, if you ( Read more... )

In the ever-growing list of projects I'm unlikely to get to anytime soon: a study of roleplaying as a genre of knowledge.

Alas, I don't think this could be called in any way scientific. It would produce the sort of paper that frustrates me as a reader. ( Sympathy for the Heideggerian obfuscator )

When I run a course on the business of history and the myth of objective reporting I think I'll use a bunch of Nigel Holmes infographics to talk about methods of argumentation. His (slightly slow) piece on the national debt has a delightful Powers of 10 kind of emotive clarity to it.

It also has an honesty about its purpose (while being sneakily ( Read more... )

This is a little premature, I'm still halfway through it, but I don't think I'd compare it to Borges. It is tiresome to speak of labyrinths here, so I'll just say that my favourite Borges stories open up vistas, sometimes long after I've read them. He had a knack for containing a whole world in a few pages and for unfolding that world just far ( Read more... )

So when your blog is called "Playing D&D with Porn Stars" I'm guessing you don't have to work very hard to get an audience. You don't, for instance, have to post hilarious and thoughtful write ups of all the creatures in the Monster Manual or deceptively deep ruminations on the very strange activity that is roleplaying.

You want a sample? Fine.
( Read more... )

Here's one for the kids' bookshelf: Gary Crew's Strange Objects is a Young Adult novel in which...

1. the protagonist is taken over by the spirit of a 17th century psychotic rapist and murderer.
2. the events of the Wreck of the Batavia, 1629, are recounted. These involving the murder of 120 shipwreck survivors by their fellows in a Jonestown meets ( Read more... )

Concise, basic advice on essay writing. Almost universally ignored by academic conference papers.
( (in Dutch) )

1) WHO WANTS WHAT?
2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT? (sic)
3) WHY NOW?

IF THE SCENE BORES YOU WHEN YOU READ IT, REST ASSURED IT WILL BORE THE ACTORS, AND WILL, THEN, BORE THE AUDIENCE, AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO BE BACK IN THE BREADLINE.

SOMEONE HAS TO MAKE THE SCENE DRAMATIC. IT IS NOT THE ACTORS JOB (THE ACTORS JOB IS TO BE TRUTHFUL). IT IS NOT ( Read more... )