Yesterday, at NELCO, was the first-ever demo of Querki. ("A decade from now, you can tell your family that you were there.") Overall, I think it went pretty well
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I boggle at people that use LARP-writing systems that don't make gender easily swappable; except when writing a game set in a historical setting or such with strong gender roles, it doesn't make sense to me to assign characters strong genders before casting. This is presumably because of my origin in the Guild and the two main game-writing systems in the Guild, both of which assume variable gender.
LaTeX-quality PDF output and support for variable gender and similar qualities are both features I'd need to be well-supported before I'd consider using something other than GameTeX or Gameki (my own mostly-working homebrew wiki thing).
It's interesting to think that the tools you use influence what game you end up writing. (I guess this should probably get mentioned in my perennially-unfinished post on my opinions on gender at Intercon/in LARP...)
This is presumably because of my origin in the Guild and the two main game-writing systems in the Guild, both of which assume variable gender.Yeah -- it depends heavily on the systems and games you're used to. It's not something I've worried about much, for several reasons
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But I don't find it all that natural while writing: I want to be able to speak naturally while I'm blasting out text.
Thinking about the problem, it really did seem to me like the technical side of it would be much more straightforward than making it easy for an author to use / fit naturally into the flow for an author. I mean, presumably after using just about any system for a while, an author would get used to it, but making it smoother facilitates adoption.
(And a non-useful but fun aside: a non-tech alternative - albeit a difficult and time-consuming one - is to write character sheets such that they avoid gendered pronouns in the first place. I did this for a tabletop one-shot with premade characters.)
It was a good demo, if it did get bogged down in the technical weeds occasionally. I blame the technical audience for asking questions needing those answers. But I think overall, people walked out with a good sense of what Querki -will- be, and that it isn't quite there yet.
And I'm always happy to be the smart-aleck in the room. I think it reminded people that it was an interactive session and that larp-writing should be fun.
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LaTeX-quality PDF output and support for variable gender and similar qualities are both features I'd need to be well-supported before I'd consider using something other than GameTeX or Gameki (my own mostly-working homebrew wiki thing).
It's interesting to think that the tools you use influence what game you end up writing. (I guess this should probably get mentioned in my perennially-unfinished post on my opinions on gender at Intercon/in LARP...)
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Thinking about the problem, it really did seem to me like the technical side of it would be much more straightforward than making it easy for an author to use / fit naturally into the flow for an author. I mean, presumably after using just about any system for a while, an author would get used to it, but making it smoother facilitates adoption.
(And a non-useful but fun aside: a non-tech alternative - albeit a difficult and time-consuming one - is to write character sheets such that they avoid gendered pronouns in the first place. I did this for a tabletop one-shot with premade characters.)
Reply
And I'm always happy to be the smart-aleck in the room. I think it reminded people that it was an interactive session and that larp-writing should be fun.
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