benlehman

I want to write an essay. I want to write an essay about role-playing games. It would be about how, in a media saturated age where everything tells us that entertainment should be expensive and done by pretty people, that tells us that our creativity is for shit, that we are by analogy for shit, and that even community needs a dollar sign, people are making their own fun. This isn't an idle passtime. What I mean by entertainment could also be called community or ritual or even, maybe, mysticism. It's something we need, as animals. It's making our own fun like making our own salt.

I want it to be anarchist, punk rock, beat poetry, early christian, hippy, hip-hop and everything else that has ever been awesome. I want it to be about radical fun, radical love, and radical people.

I want one of the lines to be "It's about creating community as much as it is about destroying society."

That's what I want today.

Yesterday I had tea in SF's Chinatown with the inestimable 半鬼, including an excellent wulong that had a delicious plum flavor. We talked about games, including his really extraordinary Nausicaa / Dark Crystal / Ferngully RPG, which has such a truly fantastic plot-arc idea that I am sorely tempted to steal it. It's like The Mountain Witch x5, with an environmental message. It makes my nipples stiff just hearing about it.

Then, we had lunch w/ my brother in the Mission, and talked about all sorts of shit in this fucked up world. Saw my China article laid out and edited not quite enough. I ended up staying far too late, and a great time was had by all.

Today... I'm being a lazy slacker.

Well, I'm totally stumped for writing today, so I might as well do more previews.

The play of Polaris is now totally mediated by the use of Key Phrases. There are ten in total -- four which are used for the game at large and six specifically for conflicts.

The Four Key Phrases are:
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Old Forge Filter:

Emily Care's awesome Game Design and Psychology thread discusses story structure, human psychology, and how it relates to RPGs.

To those that are curious about Breaking the Ice, the dating RPG that I was tossing around recently, here is an actual play thread.