Malcolm Craig

I can heartily recommend The Quatermass Experiment by @tobyhadoke.bsky.social - a fascinating read about a landmark televisual moment.

"And as a result, thousands of miles away in South Africa, Thabo M'beki was swept to power..."

FiveEvil Double Feature is here in print and looking great. It’ll hit the webstore tomorrow I reckon.

This book collects @mytholder.bsky.social and @malcolmcraig.bsky.social’s pdf scenarios into obtangular paper form.

My friend Phil's parents house had a basement, and that's exactly where we played sometimes. Although for most of the time, we played in living rooms and dining rooms!

D’oh! It was right there!

Well, it's my plan to open University Burger, offering the following menu:

The Double Workload
The Chicken Out (of tough decisions)
Stress Fries

and so on.

I suppose that they could argue that this is all just a bit of games related fun. However, this are using the words:
Faculty
Professor
Seminar
Curriculum
and so on.
It would be hard to argue that they are not an 'educational provider'.

I think - and I'm not a lawyer (far from it) - that as they are providing 'educational' services they could well fall foul of the law as it stands.

www.officeforstudents.org.uk/for-provider...

And as @flintlock.bsky.social points out in his thread, there's already a DMU (De Montfort University) in the UK and they are not likely to be pleased about another DMU popping up in Darlington. This all strikes me as being done without the least awareness of what they are getting into.

I have a sense this will not end well. I also suspect they have very little awareness of the UK legalities of all of this, or how academic cultures and titles are different from the US (eg.: the US use of Professor for any academic as well as a rank vs. UK usage only as a distinct promoted rank)

I get the sense they will try to use it in the US style. Best of luck with that.

1) Probably not - it's certainly protected by law.
2) They will.

Try explaining that to government and the managerial class. The system is screwed.

This is a bloody disgrace amongst a whole series of other bloody disgraces within UK higher education.

As well as giving talks at @conpulsion.bsky.social, I'll also be on the @handiworkgames.bsky.social stand, where you'll be able to browse* and purchase some of the finest RPG products on the market.

*I promise to stop using my "First browse is free, 50p a browse thereafter" line

For those interested in the academic research of role-playing games, we have just released our latest issue of the International Journal of Role-Playing (17!).

221 pages of work, all for advancing knowledge about this medium.

journals.uu.se/IJRP/issue/v...

Ah! I was going to drop you a line about meeting up for a coffee, but I will now refrain. Hope you, Margaret, and Rebecca are all doing well.

Have you read Gravity's Rainbow?

You shouldn’t be! But we should organise a game of RT sometime. I’m only 90 mins drive away, and I could easily swing over to your neck of the woods.

Gregor and I played Remember Tomorrow together just about a year ago, which was the first time in an age. Immense fun, and a game that still really stands up.

It will be delightful to see these in print. Glasshouse was my first go at writing an RPG 'scenario' in decades, and I was delighted with the way it turned out. So if you fancy a double bill of dark goings on in space and equally dark (and fungal) goings on under 1990s London, then this is for you!

That's very kind! I suspect your money is safe for the next little while though!

Well, that's my first attempt to find a publisher for my book on TTRPGs, the Cold War, and nuclear fear sent off! I really hope that my first choice publisher takes it on, but it's a tough market and there's a lot of competition for space and attention.

FiveEvil takes the underlying basics of fifth edition, skins them, guts them, turns them inside out and sews it all back together on a really solid skeleton of solid iron. FiveEvil delivers horror roleplaying to your table, using the system you know so well against you.

FYI @ljmuimpact.bsky.social @ljmu-ris.bsky.social @ljmuhistory.bsky.social

They're not up on the site yet, but I'll be giving 2 talks at @conpulsion.bsky.social in Edinburgh on April 11/12:

11th: 11.30-12.30: World War III: The 20th century's most important war?

12th: 15.30-16.30: Better Dead Than Red: RPGs & the invasion of America

More on the talks in the images below

Available for pre-order now: Cold City and Hot War
handiwork.games/cold-city-ho... #ttrpg

Opinion | Trump says Iranians should rise up. Regime change isn't that simple. Kelly J. Shannon: The administration's message for regime change was undercut by its own actions.

I know this was posted a few days ago, but here’s my op ed on Iran. In all of the noise from overnight Iran “experts,” as a historian of US-Iran relations, I’m trying to center the Iranian people. Hopefully this is helpful for readers.

www.ms.now/opinion/iran...

We're bringing the two FiveEvil scenarios to print! FiveEvil Double Feature collects THESEUS PROTOCOL by @mytholder.bsky.social and Glasshouse by @malcolmcraig.bsky.social in a glorious full colour softcover. With a cool beetle with a razor blade on the cover.

handiwork.games/fiveevil

Vice-chancellor calls for review into student loans for those without A-levels Adam Tickell, of University of Birmingham, says money is loaned to people who ‘are not really capable of graduating’

Which universities are offering places on degrees without a foundation year first to students without A Levels? And is this intended to target foundation students, who usually come from marginalised backgrounds and frequently excel.

www.theguardian.com/education/20...