But I want to set aside their games for a moment, because they really do speak for themselves. It’s the two behind them that are worthy of praise.

Jason is a kind and generous guy. One of my first interactions in indieland was talking on my LiveJournal (yeah, back then) about getting to finally play The Roach. Jason responded with a comment that made me feel like he was excited to hear about folks playing the game. It’s that interaction, where Google Alerts is used or whatever to see people talking about your game, and coming in to say “thanks”, that I still think about to this day. He’s been kind even when people he’s dealt with online have been assholes to him and his work.

Jason is the high water mark for being magnanimous.

Steve is much like Jason, generous and awesome. He’s taking up the mantle of Games on Demand this year for Gen Con, and naturally as a skilled editor I find in him a kindred spirit. When you talk with him, you feel like you’re important, that he thinks you’re worth the time for conversation. He’s engaging and friendly. And you way away from a conversation feeling somehow more awesome than you did before, either because of just pure niceness or because he dropped a bomb of wisdom in your mind.

Ka-boom.

I guess I’m using many words to say “They’re two of the most decent, generous folks you’ll meet.” So…they’re two of the most decent, generous folks you’ll meet. Seriously.

And as craftsmen of games, I seriously admire the work they put into development. I got a peek at their process when I gave them some notes on Durance, and I’ve had post-play test conversations with them about Fiasco and Nine Roosevelts Against the Impossible. The questions they ask, the way they mine feedback, and how they process it is one of the most mature processes I’ve seen to date, and I’m including all I’ve been involved with.

Steve & Jason are wonderful people, they make great games and they’re serious about the work.

I raise a glass to you two fine gentlemen.

- Ryan

Check out the Kickstarter video:

If this sort of thing sounds up your alley, a PDF is as low as $5. $12 for a print as well, and from there.

Rock on, Elizabeth. You may have just made the angel game I’ve been waiting years for. Here are some highlights, for those just tuning in:

• Play during the game, and the decisions you make, will drive your fallen angel toward an endgame, much like in Polaris, or if you’re not familiar with that like Fiasco’s aftermath (though, it doesn’t feel like Fiasco at all, just there’s an endgame you’re going toward).
• There are two GMs, one playing God/the forces of Heaven/cosmos/etc. and one playing Humanity/people who need & want stuff & have feelings and junk. (And may or may not be as emo as I just suggested, your play will vary.)
• It has the same sort of vibe as, say, My Life With Master, where the things that you are…well, not so much “good at” but “are inclined to do” is based on descriptive phrases. Each one is tied to their connection to God, to Humanity, and to their Fallen brethren. What sort of connection you use is important, because that informs your direction. It’s, of course, the job of the GMs to challenge that.
• It uses far fewer dice than Mythender. :)

So, yeah, I’m all over it.

- Ryan

[1] Yup, all caps. Like God is saying it, in the way that God is depicted as speaking in media. If I were a thoroughly heretical person, I would recommend that someone tell God where his caps lock key is. (Pro tip: I totally am that person. :)

Rob Donoghue on Experience Rewards

Given my thoughts on Dungeon World lately, Rob’s post is up my alley. He talks about creating a game log to track the creation & interaction of fictional elements as a way to trigger character growth, rather than the typical focus on destruction or defeat of fictional elements.

While I think the idea is rough and I’m unsure about the level element (though, if it were more framed through the lens & construct of Primetime Adventures’ Screen Presence, which rotates around from session to session, there could be fruit), it’s a blog post. Those are for rough, unfinished ideas. Yet again, Rob hands us a football and says “hey, run with this.”

Bajjutsu Masters, a game by Daniel Solis & Josh Mannon

This new game looks a bit like a cross between Sagefight (in the physical activity & structured play sense) and Hit a Dude (in the physical artifact at conventions sense). It isn’t really, but that’s a way to look at what it’s doing. Daniel & Josh are doing some live development, which is always a neat process to watch.

And yes, I did a quick developmental editing pass on the text. Because even a small game needs those sorts of eyes. Perhaps especially such a small game, because you’re going to take in 100% of the game in one gaze.

Paul Tevis talks about making smaller chunks of work

Paul talks about this idea from a software development perspective, about how the methodology he uses at work, Agile, causes people to commit code more often and in smaller slices or chunks than other methods. While I have software experience here, I’m also thinking about it from a creative standpoint.

Committing code to a repository is analogous to sending documents to peers for review. I could write a whole comic script before handing it to my artist, or I could slice it into chunks: an outline for review, and then a couple pages for review, then ten, etc. Rapid cycling is one way we could get things done, because it helps keep honesty and transparency up.

It’s one thing if I’m not expecting to hear back from you in two months, and then find out you’re going to be too weeks late on your draft. It’s another if I expect to see little slices every week or two. And that translates back — if I’m having to evaluate 35000 words, that’s different from evaluating 5000 words. Obvious, but it means the time slices to deal with this are smaller. And smaller means more, well, agile. I’ve been eyeing the parallels more and more here, about how “eating an elephant one bite at a time” is something we need to keep in mind.

There are ways of doing that wrong. We at Evil Hat did for a bit, as we were learning how to do processes. But that’s a future post I need to write: on transferring responsibility on creative projects.

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

I am a Mac user, and an iPhone user, though for most of my life I’ve been a PC user and looked down at Mac users.

Many people talk shit about Apple & Jobs, for various reasons. And I’ve been thinking about that sort of things for a couple years now, but it hit home thinking about Jobs yesterday. I’ve seen people talk shit about me and people I’ve worked with & for. I’ve talked shit about other people. It happens. But here’s the thing: when you talk shit about someone you don’t know except in a famous or nerd-famous or business context, they’re still touching your life. You’re talking shit because somehow there’s an impact on your life, however small or otherwise irrelevant.

When you talk shit about Wizards or Hasbro, you’re also saying “they’re big enough to have my attention” even if you wish that weren’t the case. When you talk shit about D&D players, you’re saying “that part of my hobby is too big or loud for me to ignore.” When you talk shit about folks like Vincent Baker or Ron Edwards[1], you’re saying “They did a thing that cannot be ignored.” When you talk shit about Fantasy Flight’s rulebooks, you’re saying “I cannot ignore these games.”

To talk shit is to claim something is unignorable. And the impact Steve Jobs had is the ultimate expression of that. Sure, you’re also saying whatever frustration you’re saying, about stupid-ass business decisions you see or microcultural differences or whatever. But the undercurrent is that you can’t ignore that impact. And that’s something worth thinking about.

Why I’m doing Caught My Attention

Did you ever do current events reports in school? The exercise there being part-stay in touch with your world and part-writing instruction. Lately, I’ve felt like I’m not staying in touch with my world enough, and so I’m doing this to keep me a bit honest about that. A link round-up wouldn’t be enough for that. By writing about my reactions and thoughts on something, I’m engaging. So this is me taking that exercise from school and applying it to my life today.

Which I find amusing, because I so fucking hated those assignments in school. :)

Maybe they’ll interest you. Maybe not. But this blog is one of my tools for making me a better writer and, I guess, person overall.

- Ryan

[1] Which is to say, “when I did”. I’ll cop to that.

That includes me. Jennifer Brozek got me starting in this life of being an editor, and it’s Amanda who has helped forge who I am today.

I wrote this for Amanda’s blog bio:

Athena. Freya. Hera. The goddesses of old inspire devotion and grant power. Today they’re myth, but we have a new goddess to revere: Amanda Valentine, goddess of editing.

Many writers, including everyone at Evil Hat Productions, would march with her to the ends of the earth if it meant she’d work over our manuscript. Her eye for prose, for flow, for content, for context, and for rules understanding are top notch.

I’ve seen her work on the Dresden Files RPG, Smallville RPG, and other projects here and there, and she’s amazing; she truly grants power to these works. And I have high expectations for the upcoming Marvel RPG, expectations I know she’ll meet and exceed.

Oh, and Amanda, don’t you dare edit this for content. I want you to feel ridiculous when you post this on your site. :D

And while I had fun writing that, I meant every word.

Amanda taught me how to better interact with writers that I didn’t already have a strong rapport with. She’s made me & Leonard Balsera get out of our own heads when writing rules in Dresden, with some techniques that I’ve since used on other projects as an editor. Things like Socratic questioning, asking for explanations in different ways, various ways she’s learned on how to get a writer to break internal patterns that can lock us up in how we explain rules.

She’ll be editing Mythender, when it’s done[1]. She’s working with Evil Hat on Fate products, and with Margaret Weis on Marvel. I’m pretty jazzed that she got to edit the Fiasco Companion, even if I’m a bit jealous of that specific job. (One of the rare times that I am envious of a fellow editor.) All in all, she’s a “take no prisoners” editor, while still maintaining a personable nature with her writers. That isn’t easy, and some editors don’t even bother[2], but she pulls it off well, making a partnership where there could be friction.

Amanda is starting to post more to her blog. Like me, she has thoughts on editing and how it’s viewed in the community. If that sort of thing interests you, I recommend following her.

- Ryan

[1] If it’s ever done. I keep pondering letting it go and just accepting it to move onto other projects, but that’s a different post.

[2] Not that that’s a bad thing, especially if you’re a submissions editor. Dear god, especially then.

After a year of PDFs and incremental releases, Sage Kobold Productions will proudly have the Dungeon World Basic Game on sale at GenCon through Indie Press Revolution (IPR, booth 413) for $15. It’s a striking red book featuring four classes playable to level 5, all the rules, equipment, and an included adventure. The cover is by Edwin Huang, artist of the wonderful Skullkickers comic.

The included adventure is really something special. It’s the first time we’ve tried to write a module for DW and it’s pretty great. It features a wonderful new map by Tony Dowler and an awesome contribution from none other than Jason Morningstar, designer of Fiasco and many other great games.

(Click for the rest of the press release.)

If you’ve been following me over the years, you know that normally I would never tell you to check out a pay-for “preview edition” (or playtest edition, or ashcan) of a game. They’re usually unplaytested, unfinished crap that someone’s trying to get out early so they can claim some indie cred.[1] But I’ve been watching the game & the twitter streams about it for the last year, and it’s clear to me that Sage & Adam have actually Done The Work. So I’m likening it more to incremental products like the Dragon Age RPG box sets from Green Ronin, which I think is a pretty neat model.

I’m showing some love to Dungeon World because they’ve take ideas from the old school revival and from Apocalypse World, and have made it their own. It’s like a sweet little idea baby from an odd but loving marriage. I hear they’re doing interesting stuff with layout, which excites the fuck out of me because I’m looking at doing similar with Mythender. And they ended up inspiring a fix for a problem I had in Mythender — Bonds came directly from Dungeon World (though they do things differently in terms of mechanics, the language around the idea solved a lot of stuff). And Sage tweeted about having an editor, so yay!

Granted, that doesn’t say shit about the game play. And I haven’t had a chance to play it myself — every time I’m at a con where a game’s happening, the fucker fills up fast. But I got to hear an entire group be Excited As All Hell at the May #BarCon[2] in LA. Colin Jessup ran the hell out of Dungeon World down there, and all of his players came back with that sort of high you get from an exciting, phenomenal play experience. Them raving about it makes me want to play Dungeon World. Maybe at Gen con.

It’s a sweet, sweet idea baby. Go check it out. Flip through it. Play it at Games on Demand. And if it look like it’s up your alley, like it’s worth your $15, buy it & take it home for your group to play.

- Ryan

[1] Which I did when I participated in the Ashcan Front, and which is what the ashcan model in 2007-2008 felt like. It was a place where several people wanted spotlight without Doing The Work, which was a shame.

[2] Which mortals call Gamex.

• Robin Laws talks about “RPG Scenario Pro Tip: Triumphing Over Will“. He talks about how to punch up your adventure writing (and writing in general) by removing some words you’re probably using. When Robin talks about language or design, you’d do well to listen.
• Brad Murray on “Robots and Role-play“. He goes into some detail about taking ideas from the Mythic GM Emulator (which I was previously unaware of) and automated question-answering to an online process. It’s Brad, so of course it’s interesting from both an engineering standpoint and from a human psychology standpoint.
• Josh Roby muses on why “Steampunk is not a Genre“. This is relevant to me because of the steampunk game we’re working on together, Atlantis Risen, but it’s also got some things to say in general about the difference between genre, theme, motifs, etc.–as well as understanding how to produce what you’re working to emulate.

- Ryan

A lot of time.

But I like it when I see other peoples’ takes on it. A friend yesterday tweeted this:

The @realjohngreen talks about @RyanMacklin. I mean, about editors and the editorial process and why it’s important. #ShitIBelieveIn

So I viewed it. I like what he has to say, but of course I would, since I’m an editor. :) I hope that even one “editors are horrible and evil and no I’ll never work with one” writers thinks twice.[1] Given he has a hell of an audience, there’s a chance.

I haven’t read any of John Green’s work yet, but now I’ll have to check it out.[2]

So that’s one bit. The other came across my virtual desk today. My dear friend Lillian Cohen-Moore (who was the other half of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple‘s editing team) wrote a short post at Inkpunks yesterday giving advice for finding an editor. She talks a bit about knowing the kind of editor you need and some tips for finding one.

There you go. I’m sure I’ll mouth off[3] with my own words later.

- Ryan

[1] But if they don’t, that’s cool too. No good comes from working with writers that don’t actually want to be edited.

[2] I am bound by the covenant of bacon to read Harry Connolly’s Child of Fire first.

[3] Still celebrating being #1 on Google for “mouthy fuck.” I know it won’t last, so I had to screencap it. :)

I figured noticed him because he did what I foolishly thought was impossible: he got me interested in Vampire. Being a GURPS-head hanging around game-snobs, I looked down at Vampire and larpers in general[2]. So I was predispoed to hate. And Will forged this idea anthology that blew my fucking mind.

We talked some at the bar, along with folks like Jeff Tidball, Paul Tevis, Ken Hite, etc. I was a friend of Paul’s and well, this was long before I was “Ryan Fucking Macklin,” so I’m not even sure he remembers those conversations. (To be fair, there was a lot of alcohol involved, so I barely remember that there were conversations.)

I have heard nothing but praise for Damnation City, which I need to pick up at some point. I’ve heard it referred to as the best Requiem book by a number of folks. But this is Will Hindmarch, so at this point I’m unsurprised.

Enter Things We Think About Games. Again, mind blown. (Enter this post’s theme.) I had a response to most of them on my Livejournal some time ago. The whole Gameplaywright project is amazing. He’s changing how many people think about games and stories. That is an uneasy task.

So, yeah, I’m a goddamned fan on the dude Paul Tevis & I call The Wolf.[3]

Over the years, I’ve gotten to know Will-the-person. He’s one of the hardest-working people I know. He’s hard on himself in the way I’ve come to expect of the most brilliant people — never feeling they’re brilliant because they live inside their heads all the time. They see the polished effects of others, and while intellectually they (or we?) understand that it’s polished and refined, still they hold themselves up to a lofty goal. The difference between Will and some others I’ve met, though, is that he rises to that internal challenge, and keeps making beautiful, mind-blowing things.

When Will Hindmarch makes a book, a game, a story, I check it out. I’m not a blind fanboy; I wouldn’t just buy is grocery list on OneBookShelf[4]. But he’s not yet failed to impress me, and I doubt he will.

He often expresses his doubts on Twitter. Some people (including me, at times) brush this off and tell him that he’s fucking badass. But I also understand the desire to say “sure, okay, but I still have doubts, you know?”

Just as Will holds himself to the standards of the refined effects of others, I hold myself to the standards of his work. If I am half the creative badass Will is, that’s still like being a sorcerer-king of awesome. I would like to consider myself a peer of his. And that he expresses his doubts, his fears, his humanity — more than I’ve been willing to[5] — I feel like maybe I am a peer. If one of the sharpest minds, a mind that can distill a wide range of ideas, has doubts, fuck it, I can too.

Will Hindmarch gives us all permission to vocally doubt ourselves, so long as we never let that doubt cause our inaction. And while he has doubts, he still pushes forward, still churns out words. I admire that he puts himself out there like that, both in his works and in his humanity.

Here’s to The Wolf.

- Ryan

Edit: I forgot, Will’s the very inspiration for this series.

[1] That including not owning the core book. I have borrowed it and others, though.

[2] If someone had told me at 21, “Ryan, larping means getting laid,” I would have had a very different take on that.

[3] Which is its own story, and has nothing to do with White Wolf.

[4] But I would offer to playtest it.

[5] Which is an even longer story, and has nothing to do with Will, so it’s one to be told over drinks.

[Real quick: Dresden teammate Rob Donoghue has similar thoughts to share & Fred Hicks talks about the awards in overview.]

Of the RPGs nominated, the only one I have yet to play is DC Adventures by Green Ronin, though I did get my copy at GenCon. This game is fucking gorgeous, and looks to be nothing short of a love-letter to DC.[1] I have had the joy of playing the Dragon Age RPG (also by Green Ronin — you’ll notice a theme in the awards this year), both over skype with Daniel Perez and in person with DARPG’s line developer, Jeff Tidball[2]. I find the AGE system to be pretty sweet — other games can learn from that dragon die/stunt mechanic. And Gamma World was a joy to run for my friends. I’ve only gotten to play it once, and only as a GM, so clearly I need more Gamma World time.

Fiasco gets it’s own paragraph, because it’s…it’s fucking Fiasco. There isn’t a game out there quite like it. I’ve been promoting the hell out of Fiasco for a year now because it’s impressed me, because the guys at Bully Pulpit Games are total fucking gentlemen[3], and because the game has honestly changed my own design philosophy. (There’s a Forge and post-Forge sentiment with fictional components where one asks “how is that mechanically reincorporated?” Jason and company ask “Does this need to be mechanically reincorporated?” That is the smarter question.)

I don’t really have any contact with the supplements…yet[4]. So, moving on to the Best Boardgame, I’ve only played one: Castle Ravenloft. I fucking loved it. But since the Origins Awards serve every year as a beacon of awesome, I know I must now hunt down and play Defenders of the Realm, Fresco, Lords of Vegas, and Nuns on the Run. Lords of Vegas was already on my radar from months back, but every time I had my hopes of finally laying it up, they were dashed by the lords of chance. One day! One day! (And in looking for links, I’ve discovered Defenders of the Realm is a 1-4 player co-op game, which is like saying “Ryan, you want to play this hashtag-eye-see-emm-eff.”)

Similarly, I don’t have a lot of contact with most of the other products nominated (though we played a fun drinking game variant of Zombie Dice after hours at RinCon last year). Again, they’re beacons of awesome telling me I should seek them out. I’ll end by talking about one of the Game-Related Publications that greatly impressed me: Hamlet’s Hit Points. There are proper reviews on the interwebs, but if you like making stories, thinking about stories, playing out stories, or any other verbing of stories, this book is for you. It’s a master class on story analysis. If you haven’t read it, I have but one question to ask: why do you hate freedom?

Okay, I lied, I’ll mention one more: the Green Ronin The 100 Best series is really fucking awesome[5]. They have very much earned their nomination for Family Games: The 100 Best.

Go check out these beacons of awesome. And if you’ll be at Origins (which sadly I’m 99% unlikely to be), please vote!

- Ryan

[1] It’s also the origin of my “Batman has only two powers” joke that Sage LaTorra mentioned on his blog a few months ago.

[2] That’s a damned beautiful website, Jeff.

[3] Outed!

[4] Insert joke about including my own in that. Someone who is cleverer than I can make that joke.

[5] Bummed to find I can’t link to them as a category on their site.

Chris is one of the sharpest minds when it comes to marketing hobby games, having been in involved in marketing in technology before spending years selling to consumers face-to-face. (If you like the fact that The Dresden Files RPG was split into two books rather than one large, heavy, more-expensive volume, thank Chris.)

He’s on the podcastosphere, notably 2d6 Feet In A Random Direction with Brian Isikoff, but also some episodes of That’s How We Roll with Fred Hicks, and Concept To Shelf with me (which is getting off the ground much slower that we expected). Wisdom flows from his mouth, as does passionate jackassery. *grin* He’s my kind of people.

And there isn’t another person I know who has stronger community building chops. He’s about to host the fifth anniversary Endgame Minicon. For five years, he’s built a community of indie/story gamers that flock to the store once a quarter to play all sorts of games. It’s an amazing event, and Chris puts a lot of work every time into getting people to run events, getting the word out, handling scheduling, all that jazz.

Hell, I moved down to the Bay Area partly because of the people I met at Endgame coming down for the minicons.

I bring him up because he’s got all this great insight into our hobby from an angle few of us have — meeting with gamers day in and day out for years. He’s pretty willing to share that with you, if you’re willing to listen. You can reach him at chris@endgameoakland.com or on the twitters @chrishanrahan. Seriously. He’s helped Fred & I. He works with other small-press dudes. He’s taken orders directly from folks.

Chris is good people, a man I’m proud to call ally and friend.

- Ryan

P.S. Dude can’t hold his liquor. Man alive, he can’t. :)

This makes me happy. And since I also like posting #HappinessIs things, I share it with you. You can check out what they wrote on the official Leverage site: http://www.leveragefans.com/featured-posts/leverage-rpg-hits-the-stands/

Don’t mind me. I’m just going to be over here rather damned content.

- Ryan

I just (at the time of this writing) tried to buy something on e23 because I couldn’t find my copy physically around — GURPS Cabal, by the master of gaming horror, Kenneth Hite. It’s been years since I used my e23 account, so I’ve forgotten my username. Here’s the really crappy user experience I just got to deal with on the login screen:

If you don’t remember your username, or you’ve changed the e-mail address you registered with, please contact us for help.

Which directs me to a form that apparently goes to a human. It’s 1am Sunday morning in Austin. No human’s reading that. Whee.

I used to write this sort of software for a living. It takes, like, 10 minutes of code to add to what they have now. Hell, with rigorous testing, half an hour. And it’s just as secure as the human method–both methods are just going to look up an email address, find the corresponding username, and email it to that same address. So if the email address is compromised, either way that user’s fucked and the other end has no way of knowing.

Which is to say: security is no excuse here. It’s just an oversight, but since e23 has been around for several years, I find it disappointing.

To add to the frustration, the reset password page is misleading:

If you don’t remember your username, please enter your email address below, and we will send you a reminder.

And if I follow those instructions, hey, no dice. I get the joy of this response:

Error – Please enter your username and a valid e-mail address.

How I know this? Because my eyes went to the “reset your password” link before seeing the first text I quoted, and was then frustrated that the page lied to me. Then further frustrated that I have to wait for a human to get back to me so that I might have the privilege of giving that human money.

(That gets into a long lesson about user experience, expectations, and things like that. But that’s a derailment.)

I’ll probably find my copy of GURPS Cabal before then, so it’s doubtful that I’m now going to give that human my money.

[EDIT] Further awesome: It’s nearly 1am on Tuesday and I haven’t received it yet. Yay for human intervention systems.

- Ryan

Look at the bottom:

Win $100K to do what you love

The problem is that we live in a world where people think this is how you “do what you love.”  That you need to quit your job, or be independently rich (or, as I’ve joked in the past, independently middle class). And sure, there are things that in order to do them in certain ways requires a significant time & monetary investment. But that’s only if you go extreme, and that’s foolish territory.

Want to be a world traveler? Start by going to one place for a few days on vacation.

Want to be a writer? That’s what mornings, evenings, weekends, lunch breaks, whatever are for.

Want to be an artist, or entrepreneur, or otherwise “do what you love”? You don’t need some big break to do it. You need to just do it.[1] Do it a couple hours a day — if you can, you probably love it. If you can’t even do that, then this “thing you love” is probably just a romantic escapism from a boring life, in which case you probably don’t actually want to do it as your full-time job. It would stop being the thing you love.

It’s okay if something’s romantic escapism. It’s okay if something’s a thing you really want to do with your life, and you don’t have 100% free time to do it. If you’re playing what I call “the long game” — assume you’ll be alive for a long time and don’t need to achieve a mountain of work and notoriety in only a year or two, then you have time to build up a thing you love into something viable as a day job. No matter how you slice it, though, just remember:

Thousands of people around you are doing what they love, through sweat and effort. No one gave them some sort of big break, they don’t have a sugardaddy or sugarmama, they aren’t independently middle class. They work in the mornings or evenings or weekends or whenever they have time. They have one thing is common: they didn’t wait for some magic bullshit to start doing it. They just did it.[2]

You don’t need a magic $100K to do what you love. If you think you do, you aren’t ready. That said, hey, if you are ready, go for the contest. $100 grand wouldn’t hurt. :)

- Ryan

[1] </Tidball>

[2] And be aware that this could change over time. Maybe in the process of doing it, you love it less. People change, and that’s cool. Just be aware.

Graham Walmsley posted this bit, which I thought was brilliant. Truly, truly brilliant[2]:

You can’t just give people +1 for fucking and expect it to work.

I will now and forever refer to this as the Walmsley Principle.

You can read his full comment (#6) and the thread for more context, but I don’t think you need to in order to understand that idea. We could talk about what that means regarding encouraging, incentivizing, and reminding people about various behaviors and motivations, and I think we should, but Graham’s comment is enough to remember those things exist. It’s sharp. It’s to the point. It’s like the tip of the iceberg — there’s more underneath, and when you see that tip, you know the whole thing’s there. And if you ignore it, it will fuck your day all manner of up.

Remember the Walmsley Principle. It applies to more than just, as he says, “fucking.”

- Ryan

[1] One of the few things great about S-G is that it’s a place where you can talk about such things without people yelling at you for, god forbid, considering mixing sex and games. At least until around comment 40 or 50, when the thread derails into crap the usual suspects piss about.

[2] And awesome.

I’ve known Jenn for years. She & I met through a mutual friend (who has enjoyed talking about how she knew both of us before we were nerd-famous), and we hit it off. A fantastic writer and a fair editor[1], Jenn’s helped me become the writer and editor I am today.

She has a monthly web magazine, The Edge of Propinquity, that I was a part of for the first year. She was the first editor to treat me like a professional writer (well before I deserved it, frankly), and we’ve worked together off and on for the past few years. When I think of people who are making it as freelancers, I think of her. When I think of people to model after as a professional, I think of her. When I think of people who can turn random things into inspired stories, again, I think of Jenn.

Jenn wrote for me back in 2007, for my anthology, Finis: A Book of Endings. (Which is–or will be very shortly–on sale until the end of the year, for $10 or $5 for PDF. And then won’t be available again after that.) Those of you who have praised my editing have Jenn to thank. Working with her as a writer and on Finis taught me how to do this job, and I am in her debt.

She and I have kept in touch, and lately she took a story of mine for an anthology due out next year, Human Tales (to be published by Dark Quest books). She leaked the table of contents a bit ago. Hell of a line-up there.

So, if you’re a fan of mine, check out some of the stuff she’s worked on, either in fiction or gaming. If you happen to have one of her books, she’s asked for one thing for her birthday: to have pictures sent to her of folks with her books. (I’m about to go do that, since trying to take one of myself holding a book looked ridiculous. I’ll edit this post with said picture once I got it.)

[PRETEND YOU SEE A PICTURE HERE, INTERNET!]

- Ryan

[1]I still sometimes wince at the…fairness. And use that as my model for editing.

I admire the hell out of E. Foley, on Twitter as @geeksdreamgirl. And I think she should be on your radar.

I found out about her back at Gen Con 2009, when I saw this flyer for her dating profile service, Geeks’ Dream Girl. It caught my attention mainly because I was (and still am) a single geek dude[1], so I checked out her site. There I found a lot of advice. She has a small team of writers blogging and answering questions that folks have.

More importantly, I found a sense of hope. I found a sense of encouragement. And while I wasn’t looking to take her up on her services at the moment[2], I respected the hell out of her and what she’s doing. I mean, here I am making nerd stuff that people enjoy, but it’s an ephemeral joy. She’s helping people who typically have low confidence in the turbulent arena of dating get some, get out there, and try. If you succeed, that’s a lasting joy. This thing she’s doing kicks ass.[3]

(The astute reader will recognize her name from an episode of This Just In From Gen Con! 2010 alongside Adam Jury.)

This past Gen Con, she did a dating doctor clinic, seminar on dating success, and a speed dating event. I’ll admit that I was a little incredulous to the latter idea (not that I voiced it — I’m no expert on such things), being a place where geeks are flying across the country and possibly being too lopsided on guys attending, but she made it work and it sounded like a wicked success.[4] She tried this chancy experiment and it paid off. And I respect anyone that takes bold chances when others, even me, would nay-say.

I say all that to say: folks, she’s going to be at NeonCon this weekend. While I don’t believe she has anything on the books at the moment, if you think you could use her services or even just a few minutes talking with her, man, that’s why she’s there. Let her help you be awesome. Follow her on Twitter; I’m sure that’s where she’ll announce stuff.

For some of you–like, say, me years ago–you need a little more emphasis: Guys, gals, she often takes on people who think they’re hard-luck cases. She can help you, if you want her to. But she can only help you if you ask.

To cap this off, I admire her because she’s genuinely trying to help people find that happiness that so often eludes us. I’ve gotten to hear her be super-excited about her marriage success stories. If more people on the Internet were about helping people and building them up rather than tearing them down or proclaiming doom, the world would be an infinitely better place.

- Ryan

[1] …ladies. (Man alive, the compels I have to deal with.)

[2] NeonCon will be my 20th appearance this year. That sort of schedule kills a potential dating life. Which is one of many reasons next year I’m going to reduce my travel considerably.

[3] Seriously, it totally kicks ass. This is a footnote of emphasis.

[4] To be fair, I wasn’t there and mine is not a universally-held opinion. But my point on trying something stands, especially when it yields results.

See, every book I’ve seen with Will Hindmarch as editor or developer has impressed the hell out of me. His name is one of those that, when seen, will cause me to buy a book without hesitation. (Jeff Tidball, the other half of Gameplaywright, is like that with me for board games. The two together are a fierce combination against my wallet, yo.)

Enough of my verbal fellating.[1] What I want to do is tell you a story. But first, I’ll do a little copy-paste from GPW to tell you what this book is about:

about the book

This isn’t about math. It’s about unlucky breaks and victory against all odds.

This isn’t about percentiles and probabilities. It’s about late-night game-ending rolls where everything hinges on that climactic moment when one single die skitters across the table and determines the fate of a hero, a city, an empire…

The Bones gathers writing about fandom and family—about gamers, camaraderie, and memories— and ties them together where they meet: our dice. These are essays and anecdotes about the ways dice make us crazy, about the stakes we play for and the thrill we get from not knowing what the next roll will bring.

Step back and look at how we play with dice.

When they announced the hardcover[2] on Monday, I ordered it.[3] I got the PDF Tuesday morning. I was in quite a bit of pain from a gout flare-up that started the day prior, so I was in a pretty piss-poor mood. I decided to take a slow that morning at the kitchen table, and downloaded the PDF. Sipping my coffee (which I walked down the damn block to get, because I really wanted that coffee), I opened it and started flipping through.

(Note: if you don’t have a Mac, you don’t know the joy of trackpad gestures. I can honestly feel like I’m thumbing through a book with how swiping up and down scrolls the page. That sort of natural motion is what’ll drive me to buying an iPad. And I’ve been a Windows monkey since 3.1 — you know, back when they used civilized version numbers. Get off my lawn.)

I started with John Kovalic’s Foreword, forgoing the “random essay/article” roll that you can do on the table of contents. (Which, by the way, I think is keen. I may never roll on it, but I love the personality there.) I grinned. Here I am, the big toe on my left foot in a crapton of pain, my left calf aching from having to walk weird, my back complaining about having to use a cane again…and I’m grinning.

And then I read Will’s introduction. That’s when The Bones clicked for me. It’s distilled Gamer Joy. From the history of dice as told by Ken Hite, to Fred Hicks talking about how diceless gaming made him love dice, to Paul Tevis sharing a story about dice and his gaming group[4], to Jared Sorensen sharing with you the random places he’s found his dice by describing it as a random table, to…well, you get the idea. All these people love this thing we do. And it reminded me how much I love this thing we do, why I keep doing it, making games for other people, things like that.

I kept reading. I kept smiling. I’m not saying The Bones made the pain in my leg go away. That’s crazy talk. But it did cut into the foul mood I had that morning, and made the rest of the day just a little easier. And I know I’m not the only one on the planet who has foul moods. I’m looking at you, Internet. You’re a moody bastard.

So, if you’re looking at The Bones and wondering to yourself “well, that’s neat, but it’s not a game or an advice book, so why would I want it?”, I’m here to tell you: because, if you’re a gamer, if you love this thing we do, it’ll put a smile on your face. It’ll teach you something. (I don’t know about you, but as a nerd, that puts a fucking smile on my face.) It’s about our tribe and being connected to it.

And when you’re having a piss-poor day, there’s that random essay table…

- Ryan

[1] Or is it?

[2] I typed and deleted “hardcore.” Thought you should know.

[3] Yes, I still don’t know where I’m living at the end of June. But I hope to know that by the 15th.

[4] Which I have heard at least three times before, in person over drinks. Still, the man can spin a fun yarn.

If you haven’t checked out this game, you owe it to yourself to watch this short movie (2m 6s):

(Holy damn, that Solis kid has himself some amazing design wizardry. I’ve seen this video a few times, and it never ceases to impress me.)

The PDF is gorgeous. I’m looking forward to sending this book to my sister in Colorado. She’s got three kids and another on the way, and I think they would just absolutely love HBR.

Good news for you is that you can still get the PDF now if you join the Kickstarter. Daniel’s doing a good job of building up buzz and getting people interested while its available. If this sort of thing is your bag, help him out! You can find out more at danielsolis.com/happybirthdayrobot.

(As an aside: I’m totally envious that Adam Dray landed this project.)

- Ryan

P.S. I’m not exactly unbiased here. I think the world of Daniel and his awesome talents. And he decided one of the stories we made playing HBR was good for the book, so my name’s on it (even if it a very minor capacity). You can see the story Justin Smith and I made over a lunch break by going go Daniel’s HBR site and looking at the third story.

…but I can’t. And that makes me a sad panda.

Specifically, I would like to spend money on the new superhero RPG by Steve Kenson, ICONS. I hear people already geeking about it now that they have their pre-order PDF copies, and that’s got me excited. Leonard Balsera was IMing me today about the characters he was making. That taunting bastard! :)

And if I could right now buy it, I would. But since I didn’t pre-order, it’s not available to me. From one of the posts on Adamant’s site:

The commercial PDF of ICONS will be available beginning June 1st, and the print edition of the game should be available to stores (and shipped to pre-order customers) by mid-June.

Well, fuck. I didn’t pre-order it even though I was genuinely interested, because I didn’t know where I was going to be living in mid-June. (And I still don’t, but hopefully I will in a couple weeks.) And I don’t have a lot of shelf space these days, so I don’t order as many books as I used to. Thus, I’m waiting on the PDF.

The PDF won’t be available for another 13 days.

That is a year in Internet time. That is a long time for me to lose interest in this “SQUEE WANNA BUY” state, enough time for something else to take up my impulse dollars, enough time to hear things about the game that would turn me off — not necessarily something that would make me not want to play the game, but something enough to cause me to stop being excited about it.

I like Kenson and his work, and if I had a PDF today, I might be able to get a pick-up game together at the Memorial Day con in L.A. — my vacation con that’s before June 1st. But since I didn’t pre-order, no dice. (Pun intended, baby. That’s how I roll.)

So while my friends are geeking on it, they’re doing so when that geeking can’t generate sales. And such excitement doesn’t last long. Hell, this blog post might even generate sales, since people click on shit (and I buy that “There’s no such thing as truly bad PR” philosophy). But by the time you can buy the PDF, this post will be old news. The only thing it’ll be good for is collecting spam.

(Now, maybe the PDF isn’t finished. But it’s not like the power to send purchasers an updated PDF doesn’t exist. That’s what Fred did with Dresden. And it worked pretty well, I think.)

But, yeah. Guys, on today, May 18th 2010, in response to the geekfest on my Twitter feed, I want to give you money. Might not have that interest on June 1st. And ICONS probably deserves better marketing treatment than this.

- Ryan

People buy on emotion and justify with logic.

For context, I need to talk a little brain theory. Please note, I’m not a psychologist or a neuroscientist. I just have friends who are and love to read books they recommend me. And although the theories below are used by many psychiatrists, they are not accepted by all researchers in comparative, evolutionary neuroanatomy.

The triune brain theory says there are three distinct layers in the brain. Each layer dominates different brain functions.

The R-complex (reptilian brain) is responsible for physical survival and maintenance. It takes over in fight-or-flight situations and is responsible for establishing reproduction and social dominance. It’s obsessive, compulsive, rigid, and automatic. It’s not capable of change and will repeat behaviors over ad over, never learning from its mistakes.

The Limbic system is responsible for emotion, attention, and emotionally charged memories. It’s critical for creating links between emotions and events, and plays a dominant role in storing and recalling memories. It drives our value judgments, deciding if we like something, and dominates behaviors that involve avoidance of pain, compulsive seeking pleasure repeatedly, and determines the amount of attention we give something.

The Neocortex is responsible for voluntary movement, processing sensory info, logical thinking, and abstract thought.

The take away point here is that although the Limbic system can override the R-complex’s habitual and unchanging responses… the Neocortex is often reduced to simply rationalizing the Limbic system’s value judgments. Hence people buy on emotion and justify with logic. So marketing often focuses on our emotions, our avoidance of pain, our desire for pleasure, and our emotionally charged memories (which is why nostalgia is so potent)… all controlled by the Limbic system.

Not all marketing is bad or evil. As I mentioned in a previous post, a lot of effective marketing is very useful to customers and doesn’t lie. But there are issues above that if not handled carefully, make me uncomfortable.

Sadly, it was on a S-G thread so the message was lost by half the crowd. But, hey, that’s an internet forum for you. In any case, I wanted to archive it somewhere, so with John’s permission I’m reposting it here. And now for the color commentary:

I see everything involving interpersonal reaction like this. We buy novels in order to feel something from the story; we want the author to play with our heartstrings. We play games with each other in order to feel something and to produce feelings in others, whether it be joy from victory or from accomplishment of telling a great story, whathaveyou. We’re all about manipulating each other — usually positively — and it’s all a part of the social contract that is living in civilization.

So when I use my pitch for Mythender, Do you want to stab Thor in the face?, yeah, I’m totally emotionally manipulating you. Technically. But I’m not trying to coerce you. If you don’t feel anything when I pitch that to you, awesome, cool, I wish you a good day. But if you do feel something, if your eyes widen and you say “Yes!”, well, then that’s under the social contract of positive emotional manipulation.

I’m intentionally using loaded language of “emotional manipulation” here. I could easily avoid that and say “I’m passionate about my game, and if my pitch conveys that passion to you, awesome!” But then it would deflate my point: positive emotional manipulation exists and is a part of our greater social contract, and we do it all the time (both consciously and sub-). If you disagree, stop reading or watching media, stop communication with other human beings. John’s talking about marketing in specific above, but I see it as a general thing.

I find it sad that explicit knowledge of human interactions and psychology makes folks like John & I look like bad guys. Pro tip: if we were, we wouldn’t fucking tell you. Why would we out ourselves and share such a “weapon”?

- Ryan