Life Flashes By
This is my birthday month–in just over a week I’ll be 42. I am young enough to eagerly anticipate the unexpected twists on the journey of my upcoming year, but old enough to wonder why the last year’s journey seems to have gone so quickly. My partner, Rachel, and I have an agreement that we don’t buy each other obligatory presents on prescribed holidays. If we do commemorate a birthday by spending money, that money must take a back seat to the time and/or effort that the gift represents. This can be time spent together, time spent with others, the effort of creating the gift, or the effort made possible by the gift. For example, I gave Rachel an embroidery

Nov ‘09 Blogs of the Round Table #bort1109
The structure of the Round Table is changing dramatically, at least for a time. After a trial run of three months or so, we’ll assess how things are going and retool if we need to. But for now–welcome to the new Blogs of the Round Table! The Blogs of the Round Table is an open-contribution collection of essays based around a central literary design challenge. Each month a book is assigned and contributors are asked to design a game that reflects the core themes of the book. The challenge is not to merely design a game base

Table Top RPG Perspectives
With the discussion of camera perspectives in video games (and how 1st and 3d person cameras affect “presence”) popping back up on Twitter over the weekend, I got to thinking about perspective in table-top RPGs. In RPGs, the Storyteller Prime/GM traditionally sets the stage in 3rd person: The ninja clambers up the drain pipe and disappears over the edge of the roof. While the storytellers/players (re)set the stage in 1st: I follow and try not to lose sight of her. This evolved for obvious reasons–the Storyteller typically plays as a single character while the Prime is responsible for th

Oct ‘09 Blogs of the Round Table
October ‘09 Designer DenouementsHow can the denouement be incorporated into gameplay? In literary forms, it is most often the events that take place after the plot’s climax that form your lasting opinion of the story. A well constructed denouement acts almost as a payoff, where protagonists and antagonists alike realize and adjust to the consequences of their actions. Serial media often ignored the denouement in favor of the cliffhanger, in order to

Sept ‘09 Blogs of the Round Table – UPDATE 10-02
After a long hiatus, we’re back ! As always, the BoRT is open to anyone who wishes to participate. To ease us all back into the BoRT habit again, we’re going with a very open topic this month. I hope you have fun playing with it. September ‘09 Isn’t That Spatial? Every video game has certain benefits and constraints in the way it represents space. Interaction fiction, arcade titles, 2D side-scrollers, isometric RPGs, and first person shoot