Lorc aka Thomas T

Ties into how some games with a strong enough promise (eg call of cthulhu or mork borg) skimp on designed play incentives and still get celebrated for creating great play.

Playing the promise seems like a take with legs.

I understand why sometimes games are hard at the start so you can't progress without learning their systems.
And I don't hate games that give out incremental upgrades.
Just the ones where doing so invalidates all the skills it forced you to learn.

A friend pointed out that it creates the illusion of getting better at a game.
That's a frustratingly plausible reason for the model to be so common.

It's weird and fucked up when a computer game is hardest at the start, and then it keeps handing you incremental upgrades to trivialise its systems over the course of play.

John le Carré - The Night Manager

John le Carré - The Night Manager
I'm always impressed by what a confident writer John le Carré is. He makes his sentences work so hard. But his books always leave me so tired.

This coaster is still one of my favourite comics ever.

No no, I get it.

Sometimes I want to ask a friend of mine a question that relates to their technical expertise.
And then I remember all the times they tell me how and why my question's wrong.
And I delete the question unsent.
It reminds me that I should always try to be helpful before I try to be right.

seraphim

It heckin' WIMDY

*steps off another, larger soapbox*

PS: I use the word realism because we all know what it means in context. It's not helpful or insightful to point out that fiction isn't real.
Verisimilitude is a term that only gets carted out to appease disingenuous pedants and a waste of everyone else's time.

Preference for level of realism and preference for level of abstraction exist along separate axes. The tendancy to conflate them has caused a lot of dumb arguments and a lot of unfortunate game design.

*steps up on a soapbox*
90% of arguments about realism in RPGs are actually about abstraction.
*steps off soapbox*

Just realised that calligraphy is literally beautiful writing.
I guess that's just been staring me in the face for decades.
("literally", heh)

Book cover

Philip Pullman - The Secret Commonwealth
Feels a deliberate reaction to the caricature of Pullman as "The Atheist Writer" and it's working for me. Pretty funny that a major plot driver is Lyra getting into Ayn Rand at university. But some elements left a bad taste in my mouth.

Book cover

Phillip Pullman - La Belle Sauvage
Great job of having a competent, brave adventure protagonist who is nevertheless convincingly A Child. And an evocative blend of grounded practicalities and otherworldliness.

Love that clanner.
The way that the tattoos and unusual cut of her clothes warp the proportions of her head and neck.
And the guts-like design of the pilot suit's coolant channels is both beautifully grotesque while making perfect utilitarian sense.

Slightly diminish a game:

An Untitled Turnip 27 RPG

Teeth

It's nice when people laugh at my jokes.
But best is when I weave it into conversation so naturally that someone goes "really?" because they didn't realise it was a joke.

Tametsi screenshot with irregularly sized squares

I think this puzzle is still my favourite though.

Tametsi screenshot squares

Tametsi screenshot hexagons

Greatly enjoying Tametsi - it's like minesweeper advanced, with entirely bespoke puzzles.
On the left you see an abomination that provides nothing but tooth-pulling agony.
But afterwards it gives you the hexagon - a beautiful three-way butterfly waiting for you to unfold its wings.

I honestly thought that skipping the "tell everyone" step would help.
It does at least alleviate some of the guilt.

Oh that is a STEEP burn.

I maintain that most of what the Wraeththu rpg was pilloried for was the fault of the novels on which it was based.
The RPG should have been judged primarily on how accurately and thematically it implemented that batshittery.

It should go without saying that I'd defer to an actual trans person's take. There's going to be angles I'm blind to.

IIRC it has some trans characters who engage in sex work to pay for their transition. I've no authority to say whether that's more about reflecting what really happens or a fetish trope. But I remember it being presented without being leering at or lingering. It felt sincere.

Have you read When Gravity Fails (and its sequels) by George Alec Effinger? Cyberpunk detective fiction set in the middle east with surprisingly good low-key trans representation for a book written in 1987.

It's reassuring to read you being enthusiastic about this project again.
Good luck!