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
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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.