This is a mirror of my substack containing my older posts and a backup of new ones. You can find the original of this post here. This post is what you get when one reads a post on the nature of orthodox art vs catholic/mormon/atheist art, and furthermore looks into a discussion on what is the fundamental core, the essence of tabletop role-playing games, then ponders on procedurally generated images, which I’m sure we’ll be stuck with colloquially calling it “art”, and what truly differentiates…
I’ve made little secret of how I’ve come to dislike Pathfinder. Oh sure, the core system all in itself can be played properly, assuming you spend hours on your character sheet or invest in a handholding database program like Hero Lab, but even with that, the setting is strongly encouraging of the type of play involving intricate backstories, and combat-focused, on - rails gameplay with closely tailored challenge levels. Worse, society play, back when I bothered, was very much on rails. More on…
After a long hiatus, I'm writing again. As to why I stopped - I realized I was constantly miring myself into point and shriek. It is one thing to use current events to fuel a discussion of principles, systems, and patterns. It's even valid to point to those as bad examples. It is another to constantly find oneself tearing apart hot takes one step removed from "destroyed this viewpoint with a single statement" style clickbait. I had really run out of any useful commentary on things beyond pointi…
I'm still working to sort this out, but eventually updates in the underlying blog platform have come into conflict with the theme. I didn't catch it because, bluntly, I haven't been posting. I'm temporarily resorting to the default theme, but that lost me some of what used to be the sidebar modules and navigation. I'll either end up paying for an update and updating the sidebar elements, or finding another clean looking theme. As to posting, no promises. I don't plan on moving to substack, but…
This book from Pilum press, doesn't really neatly slot into any categories. It's set in the 1970's, a world I dimly remember from my childhood, in a Texas I have even fainter memories of. Nevertheless it captures something that I have glimpsed the afterimages of, and grew up in the fading echoes. It is real and grounded and almost utterly matter-of-fact, not written at all like your "standard" sci-if or fantasy book, especially of the last couple decades, yet it is magical. It pulls this off wit…