The Ash, the Elder, and the Hen Elm

 October this year, I found myself suddenly a lot more intellectually occupied than I have been for a year or so. You'll have noticed, if for some reason you're internet-stalking me, that I haven't posted anything in a couple of months.  I was very clear when I started the blog that it wasn't going to be another chore for me, so I don't mind letting it sit for a time. Posts will come when the moment strikes. Letting the book-blogs go by the wayside was a shame but also, to be honest, a relief; the exercise of regular writing on a pre-chosen topic is anathema to the state of creative flow I normally try to enter when working, and it's been nice to be able to put aside the painful push to finish in favour of letting things just be. Of course, such an approach has its limits, the main one being that I tend not to make anything. Instead, I spark off little bits of art, plus pushing on doggedly with whatever game I'm running at the moment (a mage game currently, ...

Please note: this post's a bit incoherent. It's been rushed out around the schedule of writing the game, which has taken way too long. DTW is a good history. It starts with a rigorous methodological discussion, starting from the merits of history as a discipline and building out to define the terms of its analysis: examining terrorism's effects along a schema of strategic and tactical successes which looks like this: '1. Strategic victory, with the achievement of a central, primary goal or goals 2. Partial strategic victory, in which:     (a) One partially achieve ones' central, primary goal(s)     (b) One achieved or partially achieved one's secondary ... strategic goal(s)     (c) One determined the agenda, thereby preventing one's opponent from securing victory 3. Tactical success, in terms of:   (a) Operational successes      (b) The securing of interim concessions.     (c) The acquisition of publicity     (d) The ...

(Last month's book-blog is taking longer than usual, unsurprisingly as it's, er. A whole wargame. So I'm returning to my series  where I write a blog post in an hour, do one edit, and post, to fill the gap. This time, I try to discuss politics and GMing theory! I beg your forgiveness for the inevitable incompleteness). There's a lot of leftiness in indie TTRPG design. Notably, Belonging Outside Belonging , the diceless game family born with Avery Alder/Benjamin Rosenbaum's Dream Askew/Dream Apart, is also known as 'No Dice, No Masters'. This is of course partly a joke, but a quick reading of Alder's description of the system also shows it being framed as an extension of the political side of things: https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/belonging . Note how discussion of the mechanical elements, in explicitly political terms, directly follows a laying out of political aims. This is not a post saying that the system is bad politics . Frankly, in this day and ...