T w e n t y S i d e d
Live free or die, man. Live free or die.
– Shamus, Dec 11, 2006
Now, finally, actually XL!
From The Archives:
Programming Vexations
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
The Gameplay is the Story
Some advice to game developers on how to stop ruining good stories with bad cutscenes.
The Best of 2018
I called 2018 "The Year of Good News". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
Good to be the King?
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
Batman v. Superman Wasn't All Bad
It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.
If you were to stop me in the middle of the day and tell me to quote one specific DMotR page on the spot it would be this one.
Decomposing of my own free Will is definitely my go-to image from the series.
Silly GM.
Surely Boromir’s other brothers Coramir, Daramir and Eomir have too die first before you can introduce Faramir.
That reminds me of a player who used to game with me long, long ago. He was one of those types who absolutely, positively MUST play a specific character, and if that character dies, they’ll just roll up an exact duplicate of the dead character, only with a different name. This guy didn’t even do the last part and just named them “Azrais Deathblade I”, the II, the III and so forth. It got to a point where another player jokingly cracked “Poor Mrs Deathblade. She’s lost EIGHT of her sons!” XD
Ironically, perfectly consistent with his father later on. Denethor: “I will rule my own end!”
Finally, a good ending.
There’s a piece somewhere on geek social fallacies. Turns out, the poor social skills that lead some people to this hobby are well suited to holding onto broken, borderline-abusive relationships for far longer than is healthy. It’s hard to walk away, but it is for the best.
Well, the absolute best would be talking through these concerns and addressing the pain points before you get to the point where you’re so sick of the people that you leave the game. It takes time and effort to do this, and sometimes people are more than happy to stop doing things you thought were inevitable, while sometimes they really don’t. Always a balancing act, how much energy to spend on maintaining existing relationships versus finding new ones.
No one is responsible for fixing the people they spend time with. Everyone is responsible for communicating, though. Sometimes a compromise can’t be reached, and walking away is the best outcome. If concerns are never brought up until they explode, that can’t end well.
Except as comedy, I suppose. I’ve found a lot of jokes are a lot less funny when what looked like hyperbole ended up being miserably realistic.