not falling down

More than a third (it used to be more than half) of the things I’ve bookmarked at del.icio.us/xorphus are related to role-playing, in theory and practice. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, until a couple of days ago. Hopefully in a few days it will become clear to you too.

Anyway, one of the links I just got around to reading today is the brilliant Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore. Unfortunately it doesn’t have permalinks or anything, but if you scroll down you’ll get to an entry called “A Small Thing About Suspense,” which suddenly makes clear to me things I should have realized a long time ago about scenario creation and writing in general.

I want to design games for a living, but I come up with ideas for stories much more often than I come up with ideas for games. I want to reduce that ratio, and I’m hoping all this reading and That Which Will Become Clear will help.

Mr. Burns, referral-log ninja, writes in with corrections:

“My point about writing vs. art is that good

writing can excuse bad art — and I won’t trash art in a webcomic,

typically. Just not my thing. The exception is when the art fails to

execute the strip properly (in other words, if you can’t tell what’s

happened or the viewer gets the wrong impression). That would get the

same critical response as bad writing would.

The theoretical reverse is also true — if a strip has bad writing but

gorgeous art, I might well read and snark on it too, and if I did, it’d

likely be to extol the art, not slam the writing.”

I stand corrected. By those corrections.

One thing I should have mentioned in that post was that it is a typical failing of critics to respond badly, even childishly, to criticism of their own work. That’s a trait wholly absent in Mr. Burns, who always responds (and I do mean “always responds”) to discussion of Websnark with equanimity and grace.

I think this is the best story about my parents, although there are many great ones.

In 1988 or possibly 1987, my father gave my mother all of the following as Christmas gifts:

1. A typical Texas Instruments calculator with a slide-on case.

2. A small calculator with metal buttons, fitted into a glass paperweight.
3. A calculator with an AC adaptor, which could print its calculations onto a small roll of paper.
4. A thin calculator that was part of a checkbook.
5. A calculator with tiny, tiny buttons, which was integral to a digital wristwatch.

I think it’s only natural that he got a second, matching wristwatch as a present to himself.