This is no longer my Blog

Hey, guys. The Great Firewall and a general frustration with Blogger
as a tool and Blogspot as a host has led me to take up Thomas
Robertson's generous offer to host This is my Blog on his site. The
new URL is http://benlehman.thesmerf.com/ , and I've already got up a
new essay. Please update your bookmarks accordingly.

Note from Thomas: Update your feed links accordingly. Posts should be findable from http://benlehman.thesmerf.com/?feed=rss2 and there's a Comments feed at http://benlehman.thesmerf.com/?feed=comments-rss2

Skype Game and Fucking Blogspot

Two items:

1) I'm thinking about gathering a Skype game of either Drifter's Escape or Primetime Adventures for Saturday night (9 PM eastern.) Anyone interested? Give me an e-mail with your skype nick at the usual place.

2) Blogspot ate my most recent post (publicizing Drifter's Escape playtesting.) Have any other blogspot-users been having similar problems?

New Feature

I'm toying with a new feature for this blog, which I think I would call "This is your Game." The basic idea is that someone submits their game, with power-19, for feedback, and I and other commentors comment. The idea is to have a more focused, directed set of comments than the Forge forums give.

Thoughts?

[Bliss Stage] Oakland

So I finally played Bliss Stage last night. There were some bumps, but on the whole it was full of pain and despair and traumatized children and psychotic adults and love and sex and hope and bitter costs of war. The crowning moment was definitely seeing my friend Kate (whose been unhappy with RPGs for the last 2-3 years) put her hands over her heart and gasp in admiration during someone else's interlude scene.

So the game is good. Long term playtesting, ho!

This about That

(Not all links work yet. I will fix it up when I'm not on the clock.)

Over on anyway there's been some argument about shared character ownership, and whether it's possible to make useful thematic statements with any of these.

Let's view this problem in terms of elements of exploration. When we talk about power in an RPG context, we're talking about the ability to introduce and change elements of exploration.

If you can use your ability to introduce and affect elements of exploration to help achieve your group's creative agenda, then you can be satisfied as a creator. If you can't, there is no way to be creatively satisfied. (You might be satisfied by other things, like the social interaction or the observation of other's creativity, but you won't be creatively satisfied.)

Is your ability to help achieve your group's creative agenda strictly grounded in the sole control over a protagonist (a subset of character)? No.

Is your ability to help achieve your group's creative agenda strictly grounded in sole control over any character at all? No.

Is your ability to help achieve your group's creative agenda strictly grounded in having any control over the character element of exploration? I'd venture another no.

Is it possible to have significant control over multiple elements of exploration and still not be able to help achieve your group's creative agenda? Yes.

I venture to say that it is impossible to make a direct 1-1 correspondence between control over elements of exploration and the ability to help achieve your group's creative agenda. If we're talking about different methods of controlling elements of exploration, whether or not some method will let you help fulfill your group's creative agenda is a total red herring. To address that, we need to take it in the broad context of the other rules of the game.

As far as I'm concerned, this is really basic-level stuff. What's with the hew and cry?

Dreamation

There's going to be a ton of designers hanging out at Dreamation next weekend in northern Jersey, coordinated by Tony Lower-Basch (author of Capes) and Michael Miller (author of Fvlminata, Discernment, and With Great Power.) We have a full schedule at Indie Games Explosion, and folks like Michael, Tony, Emily, Joshua (Newman), Luke, Jared, Judd, etc. (also: me!)

KueiCon Day 2 (I want burrito delivery)

Played:
General Mud
Dogs in the Vineyard
Dog eat Dog

Theory talking

KueiCon day 1

I showed up late due to transit difficulties.

I played Falling Leaves (half game), Polaris, and Drifter's Escape.

This is a note to myself for future writeup purposes.