A Slow Circle

       I just finished the book Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil. It took me year to read it and it was the most informative book I've ever read. It comprehensively traces the history of energy usage throughout human history. The book also made me a much better GM. Mosts GMs are familiar with worldbuilding as the stockpiling of lore and backstory, as an exercise of mapping and building a fictional world and populating it with non-player characters and monsters and treasures with which to surprise and challenge and hopefully entertain the players. I'm not saying it isn't those things but I do think worldbuilding is something more. The RPG world is the shared fictional enviroment the GM and players inhabit together during play. In traditional play the GM makes up the facts of the world and communicates those to the players through play. Some GMs are better at communicating those details than others, some have more complex worlds some simpler, some re...

This is a record of my process for making an English reading unit based on a book. Rather different than other posts here, I think it could be beneficial to actively record my process and leave it a place I can easily reference it later. I can also refer friends and fellow teachers here so that we can compare our methods. For background: I teach English as a second language in primary school. I think the process is somewhat generalizeable to theme-based learning in other contexts. 1. Choose a book.  Ideally this should be an enjoyable, interesting, or at least informative but working teachers know that this isn't always guaranteed. This can be the hardest part. I rely on years of knowledge of my target audience's reading level and interests. You will be better at this the more experience you have. A good proxy for interest is books you liked (or would have liked) when you were younger. It helps if you can also enjoy the book as an adult. Another factor is how easily you can cre...

This year I feel I have really broadened out the number and quality of information I regularly take in, mostly through a wider intake of blogs and use of Reddit. The books I've been able to read have been of very high quality too. As always I wish I'd read more but I am pleased what I have read. Presented mostly in the order I read them, I wrote these quick thoughts at the time of reading. Please Stand Back From The Platform Door by Vishal Nanda This is a book of poetry by a friend. It's really good and contains poems about mental health and Hong Kong. The author is reckoning with multilayered and differently-valued identities, foreign-nativeness, how social ladders sort and nudge us into behaviors and what home and self mean when half of life is spent online. Extra-recommended if you get a chance to see Vishal read his own work. The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe Interesting, rather distinct from other fantasy I've read recently. If Piranesi was somehow positiv...

Space Shuttle Endeavor Recently my friend Vishal asked me a question about my post on Philosophers, Heretics and Madmen :  I'd be interested in your take on how a GM can not just recreate that experience [of being transported to another place and culture] but also bridge the gap between the players' culture and effectively interacting with an older one.  I've had so many examples running games when players did not know what to make of an alien culture. This is a great question. Coming from the most experienced GM I know, it seems likely to be a topic worth exploring further. It reminds me of a concept, the  player information gap , first brought to my attention by Shea Valentine at the excellent Living Myth RPG blog. In the post Fixing Social Mechanics and the Player Information Gap , Valentine defines player information gap as "the disparity between what a player knows and what the player's character knows." Player information gaps can be an issue when playe...

  The previous post about social interaction  explored the different areas that social rules should cover. A relatively complete system should help resolve social situations when there is conflict and uncertainty, specifically: persuading others and resisting attempts at persuasion lying, recognizing falsehoods (related: seeking secret information, hiding information) maintaining relationships This article will look at different social mechanics in published games and see how (or whether) they represent these concepts. We will also look at how players can affect outcomes and what GMs are directed to consider when adjudicating interactions. Social Interaction Rules in D&D We will start with the big one, looking a social mechanics from the current edition, D&D 5E, and then look at variations from earlier iterations of the game. On page 185 in the 5th Edition Player's Handbook under social interaction the section divides interaction into roleplaying and ability checks. Un...

Camille Silvy In the last post I wrote about how social interaction and modelling unfamiliar worldviews is at the heart of the RPG experience. On the one hand, thrusting ourselves into alien situations and on the other, interacting with other people who are products of foreign milieus can broaden our own experience. There is a degree of sleight of hand here as all RPGs are hosted in our own imaginations, but experience gained through imagination is still real experience. Non-Designed Mechanics Social interaction is an important part of RPGs but it is often underserved in terms of game mechanisms. I think that because tabletop roleplaying is fundamentally a conversation, many designers tend to assume social interaction can be handled in a naturalistic manner without dedicated mechanics. Also, fish probably don't design ttrpg mechanics for breathing underwater. In fact, those pescatory designers are often right! For most interactions players can just use their inherent conversationa...

I have been listening to The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin in audiobook format. The novel is brilliant! It gushes insights in a thick, indiscriminate manner. This post is not about the book but the listening. I have been writing quotes and notes and references but only transcribing from audio. I do not know the spelling of place names or characters. I can only guess at much of the punctuation from the reader's voice and intonation. Normally I feel so compelled to see  a text that I will buy a second copy in printed format to accompany the audio version. This time I have resisted the urge. It is worth a try, though my Shevek and Payye, Urras, Anarras, Ayillo and Abbonai may differ from Le Guin's written spellings.  I can see better what it must have been like to live in a world of oral knowledge transmission. It also explains the ever-shifting spelling we see in Middle and Old English writing - and I am reader steeped in printed, visual texts. I can see all of the words in...