The Ash, the Elder, and the Hen Elm

This month's book is both spoilable and utterly not so, and I can't even really explain what I mean by that. Suffice to say that much of the plot is tales within tales, and the physical, psychological and narrative realities are often going in quite different directions. All that said, unmarked spoilers for this and also one significant spoiler for Brideshead Revisited ahead, but honestly I don't think 'spoilers' could spoil the actual experience of either of those books really. The covers of this book simply DO NOT MISS - my copy's the top left one, which is understated but very beautifully done. Review The first half or so of The Magus made me go 'I'm going to need to read a fucking journal's worth of critical reviews after this in order to understand it, aren't I?' This wasn't for lack of engagement - the main character starts in a very normal world, a sort of post- Brideshead Revisited witty satire of the dullness of Life After Oxfor...

 Saw the blog bandwagon and went to the laptop like a shot. This is an ideal opportunity to rant about the things that've made my game design and writing what they are. Kinda following the model that Traverse Fantasy did of sharing general game-running inspirations, rather than for a particular game/design. (If you want to see my longer list of inspirations for a specific game, my Pillar of Velkith Tales of Theon campaign, have a look here .) Going to start with the things that mean the most to my way of doing things and keep on going. Babylon Berlin Weimar Germany neo-noir, 2017-22, created, written & directed by  Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries and Henk Handloegten I really like a game with a strong base of plausibility. The world ought to exist beyond what's 'plot-relevant' - even if there is an established plot, the rails need to be comprised of PC wants and needs rather than hard boundaries beyond which everything turns into the fucking Minecraft far lands. B...

Squeaking in under the wire of not being two months behind... N.B. this was originally going to be a double-feature w/August - I forgot to change the title before posting, silly me! fixed now. August book-blog forthcoming. July Book Review: Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality Technic and Magic , by Federico Campagna, is a marvellous rare bird - the book of metaphysical speculation that is reasonably well-written, comprehensible for laypeople,  and attempts to make definite suggestions for how to live on the basis of its outline. Campagna even describes it at one point as being self-help adjacent, which I think is not wholly inaccurate - it falls a little short on practical vision, but nobody's perfect. I think you should probably read it. I will now snipe at it for several hundred words.  Also the cover is amazing It has been noted that explaining something to others is one of the surest signs you've understood it, so let's give this a shot: We live under a sys...

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 ...