The Difference Between Reasoned Debate and Righteous Smackdown

Here we have Al Franken talking with teabaggers who turn out to be reasonable people who want to discuss something with their Senator that they don’t agree with. Below that, you will see Congressman Barney Frank being very funny and dismissive of an aggressively crazy lady.

Note how appropriately they respond. Franken gives a nuanced response that has the audience wondering if they’ve got the issues wrong and misunderstand his platform. Frank, a gay Jew, replies to a lady saying that universal health care is a Nazi position by telling her she’s ridiculous.

[Oo! Let’s Make a Game!] Episode 2: What’s It All About?

A meeting of transhumans on Oo! Let's Make a Game!

01:00:59 long & 55.9 MB big

In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction), discuss what the transhumanist science fiction game they’re designing—before your very ears!—should be about. What is transhumanism about? Where does the design want to focus?

– We start with listener feedback: Simon C, Paul B, and Sven Holmström
– Sufficiently Advanced
– Eclipse Phase
– The Cyborg Handbook
– The Wikipedia article on transhumanism
– Squids do have brains
– 12:00: Aboutness in game design
– I misquote Jared Sorensen’s big three game design questions, reading instead from Nathan Paoletta’s blog
– Dualism
– The Radio Lab episode we’re talking about is either Choice or Who Am I? (or maybe both (I think))
– Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels
– The game is (possibly) about “identity, change, and human nature.”
– 25:00: What we know is in the game so far: a transhumanist game that supports narrativist play that involves character generation during play, wherein you see how your characters survive the technological singularity
– Charles Stross’s Accelerando
– Possibly stealing Ganakagok‘s tarot-like situation generation
– Vincent Baker’s game Rock of Tahamaat, Space Tyrant
– Cards vs. dice and various systems that work differently for different things
– Connections between the characters
– Ben Lehman’s Polaris
– Currents in transhumanist thought from the Wikipedia article
– The Jeepform The Upgrade by Olle Jonsson, Thorbiörn Fritzon, and Tobias Wrigstad
– Homework: Aboutness, and a pass at character creation
– Talk about the show, do reviews
– The Trapcast forum thread I was talking about
– Listener homework: Give us your “aboutness” answer

You can subscribe to the show by plugging the RSS feed URL into your preferred podcatcher.

The intro music is “Gotta Whizz” by Boris the Sprinkler, from the album Mega Anal. The outgoing music is “Screamin’ Demon Martians Ridin’ Go-Karts in My Head” from the album Saucer to Saturn.

Oo! Let’s Make a Game! Episode 001: What Now?

Oo!
01:05:25 long & 59.9 MB big

This episode is the first in a new endeavor by Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction), wherein they create a new roleplaying game before your very ears! Over the course of the next howevermany weeks, for one hour each week, Joshua and Rob are going to design, develop, test, and publish a brand new roleplaying game from start to finish.

In this first episode, we talk about what the show’s about, and decide what game we’re going to design. Linkworthy stuff we mention:

– Joshua’s earlier game, which makes you cry, Under the Bed
– Kurt Vonnegut
– Primetime Adventures
– R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)
– The Penny Arcade series Automata
– Luke Crane’s Burning Sands: Jihad
– John Wick’s Houses of the Blooded
– HBO’s Deadwood and Rome TV series
– The Mob Justice RPG
– Emily Care Boss of Black and Green Games
– George Carlin on “servicing the account”
– The Shockwave Rider
– Guns, Germs, and Steel
– Sons of Liberty
– Neill Blomkamp
– PALEO-FUTURE
– Dogs in the Vineyard
– COINTELPRO
– The Project Orion engine
– Fritz Lang’s Metropolis
– Eclipse Phase
– Charles Stross’s Accelerando and Singularity Sky
– Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon
– The Joss Whedon TV series Dollhouse
– The Cyberpunk RPG
– The question of whether squids have brains, revealed
– The game may take place over the course of the technological singularity
– Bruce Sterling
– An episode of my other podcast where I talk to Ron Edwards about finding who the protagonist is in play
– Ron’s game Spione
– The Blomkamp film District 9
– The Big Three game design question
– Gardner Dozois edited Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future
– GURPS Transhuman Space

The intro and closing music for this episode is “Gotta Whizz” by Boris the Sprinkler, from the album Mega Anal.

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You can subscribe to the show with this feed url.

The Game Design Studio Opens Its Garage Doors

bauhaus

Let’s try a little thing!

I just put up the game design studio here at xenoglyph. It’s a forum specifically for real, grown-up critique.

I will be applying the standards of studio group critique in order to support the creation of better games and better artifacts according to the publication objectives of their creators.

The forum will be heavily moderated. I want it to generate solid work, so any socialization that happens will be within the context of the stuff you’re actually creating. If you want to chew the fat, meet me at the bar at Story Games. If you want to actually work on your game, put on your apron and let’s work on your thing.

Read the rules. If you have something you feel could use work and you feel like the rules might help you, then we’d love to see your rules, your text, your page design, your cover. If you feel like you can help, please come help.

Matthew/C++/C#

hybrid

I’m an avid follower of development of the HYBRID Tri-Stat RPG. Matthew/C++/C#/CWhat moved the rules over to Blogspot a couple of years ago from Philippe Tromeur’s site, but that’s not news. What is news is that he’s started development of the game all over from scratch.

That is, Matthew/C++/C#/CWhat has deleted the hundreds of rules already in existence and started composing his Magnum Opus, his System of the World, his Philosopher’s Stone, from scratch, one rule at a time.

I hope you’ll enjoy following its development as much as I’ve been.

Buzz Aldrin Is A Smart Dude And People Should Listen To Him

buzz aldrin

I have some real concerns about moon exploration. While I see the value of it being a nearby practice stage for techniques to be used on Mars, the two bodies are really, really different, and going to the Moon will cost us money that we could be using to go farther.

The “practice stage” argument has been swaying me, and I’ve taken the silence of those who know better than I do as an indication that there’s more to it than I know, but no longer. Buzz Aldrin, of the first moon landing, has come forward, saying what I’ve been saying: Let’s go to Mars instead.

But that’s only the part that I already thought of. More importantly, he’s saying to “Let the lunar surface be the ultimate global commons” and share research between parties. You know, actually work together as a planet. We get to distribute costs, we get to learn at a greater rate, and we get to fucking cooperate, already.

A codicil from Wikipedia:

On September 9, 2002, filmmaker Bart Sibrel, a proponent of the Apollo moon landing hoax theory, confronted Aldrin outside a Beverly Hills, California hotel. Sibrel said “You’re the one who said you walked on the moon and you didn’t” and called Aldrin “a coward, a liar, and a thief.” Aldrin punched Sibrel in the face. Beverly Hills police and the city’s prosecutor declined to file charges. Sibrel suffered no permanent injuries.