anyway.

lumpley games
In a Wicked Age
Dogs in the Vineyard (buy!)
Poison'd (buy!)
kill puppies for satan (buy!)
Mechaton (buy!)
Matchmaker
the Abductinators
Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore

solace
Alas, a blog
Autodidact-at-large
Boing Boing
Building Rome in a Day
Creating Passionate Users
glyphpress discussion
ldopa.net
Long story; short pier.
Meguey's Dollz
MetaFilter
MonkeyFilter
Monkey Do, Monkey See
My LiveJournal Friends
naked and alive
Parthenia's blog
Real Live Preacher
Relentless Toil
Still the original Matt Wilson

comics
Beaver and Steve
Bolt City
Cat and Girl
the Comics Curmudgeon
Dicebox
Diesel Sweeties
Dresden Codak
Electric Sheep Comix
Finder
frankandfrank
Gone with the Blastwave
the Hotel Fred
Overcompensating
Pan
Penny Arcade
Questionable Content
Scary Go Round
scottmccloud.com
Seven Arrows
Shortpacked!
the Silent Penultimate Panel Watch
Sinfest
Some Dailies
Trollbabe Comics
Wapsi Square
Wondermark

endeavor
Fair Game
Planet Story Games
RPGnet Forums
Spione :: Spione forum
Story Games
I'm a Forge twick
the Forge forums
the Forge Bookshelf

Worth a Post?
Eat Poop U Cat
indexed
giant creepy things want to eat you
DrawerGeeks!
How to Make a 3D Paper Snowflake - WikiHow
All octopus, all the time
BibliOdyssey
Conic - Juggling in a Cone (Preview)
Rogue's Gallery
New Scientist - "Chameleon" Snake
The Power of the Dark Crystal
Drawspace

treats
the Book of Ratings
BookFilter
Buzzle.com: Carol Lay
Buzzle.com: Keith Knight
Cockeyed.com
Cooking for Engineers
Cooking for Losers
Enantiodromia
explodingdog
Fantasy Quest
Get Religion
the Gilded Blog
Hitherby Dragons
Jenn Manley Lee
Killing the Buddha
the Law of the Playground
Lore Brand Comics
Meta-Swap fora
Monkey and the Razor
the Moral Character of the Monkey
one desperate fanboy
the Raving Atheist
Richard Packham's website
Sincity
Slayage
Things my girlfriend and I have argued about
Thor the Barbarian
Tony Dowler's blog
Uncle Bear
Whedonesque
William Shunn

2007-12-13 : Mechaton rules questions?
Hey, if you're stopping by looking for answers about Mechaton's rules, welcome, and I'm at your service.

38 comments. Thread: from the top; first comment; first unread comment

2007-08-24 : Poison'd errata and Q&A
1. The cruel fortune accursing is all wrong. All wrong!
2. Ask the player if her pirate is enduring duress.

Click in for the rest.

28 comments. Thread: from the top; first comment; first unread comment

2008-01-11 : In a Wicked Age: Four Oracles
In a Wicked Age: Four Oracles.

Also check out the Oracles page at Abulafia. Dave's got the Four Oracles and the original AG&G Oracle, plus space for new "unofficial" oracles. I believe I'll be submitting some new unofficial oracles myself, come a day.

In a Wicked Age
sword & sorcery roleplaying

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2008-07-04 : God emailed me

From: Jehovah Almighty [Add to Address Book]
To: lumpley@earthlink.net
Subject: Killing puppies for satan
Date: Jul 2, 2008 10:51 PM

Hey! It's the Big G, the Man Upstairs, Jehovah! The Almighty God, God. Listen,
I would have done this in another way but I really like your site and, hey, it was
more entertaining this way. Now you can post your Official Correspondence with The
Creator on your fancy website!

I think I've got to apologize. Some of my fans, well... they are fanatics. My
son's been stealing a lot of attention lately, but I'm getting over that
jealousy and genocide thing. Deep down, most of them are decent people, if a little
narrow-minded. Sometimes I wonder if free-will was the right choice after all! Don't
get discouraged when people don't see the humor -- they just haven't been
paying attention to mine in the Bible, I guess.

I bless thee,
G/D

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2008-06-30 : A Really Good Weekend
1. Everybody should see WALL-E, but J? You should especially see WALL-E.

2. I have written the ultimate social conflict rules. They're for Storming the Wizard's Tower. They let you roll dice to seize social power over your opponent, but without disrupting the natural conversation. In fact they enhance the natural conversation, they don't impose formalism onto it the way Dogs in the Vineyard's dice do, and they don't cut it short the way lots of other social conflict resolution rules do. Also they handle NPCs' lying better than Dogs in the Vineyard does, while nevertheless showcasing the characters' psychologies. Furthermore they're lightweight, in fact one of the lightest weight subsystems in the game. They may be portable to other games, I dunno, but they fit into Storming the Wizard's Tower like it had a hole in it just their shape.

Don't ask what they are! It's a secret. I'll tell you soon.

3. We spent all day yesterday at the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown NY. We are weary but happy. They have a working small-batch print shop there with these great old hand-cranked hand-set printing presses, and I think I'm in love.

4. I'm not going to get punched in the eye! Probably. I guess there's still time for me to screw it up.

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2008-06-17 : Cordelia's Dad followup
It turns out that I never told you about the coolest thing from Cordelia's Dad's acoustic set. I thought I had, but no! Anyway it doesn't matter. Now you can see it for yourself: Tim Eriksen: Fiddlesticks on Mt. Pollux.

(Stay through the credits.)

11 comments.
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2008-06-04 : I am culled
Ryan Stoughton is undertaking an undertaking: a new "I go through it all and report on the worthwhile" review blog called The Cull. I admire it as an undertaking and I hope he sticks with it - but I'm fully aware that I'm part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Particularly, I'm honored to be one of his first subjects: antiquated anyway part 1. I don't know how many parts he intends to chop antiquated anyway into, but so far he's covered only December '04. He says that three of the threads from then are worth reading.

If anything from the threads he's picked out strikes you as interesting, please say so! I'd love to revisit, maybe revise and update. Somebody kick us off?

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2008-06-02 : The Fire Spell

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2008-05-23 : So, yeah.
My friend Travis passed away on the night of the 16th. I'll miss him.

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2008-05-12 : Expressionism in Roleplaying
I think it was Cape Fear, the original. Emily and I watched it a bunch of years ago. There's this one moment in the film. As I understand these things, it's an example of the influence of German Expressionism on American Film Noir.

The villain is going to come into her house and kill her, right? In this moment she comes down the stairs or around the corner into the front hallway. There in the shadow behind the door is a guy - long coat, hat pulled low, hunched shoulders, this sinister figure we can't quite make out. Quick reaction shot, she startles and covers her mouth or something, and then we cut back: it was just a coat stand. Hat on one hook, coat on the one below, maybe an umbrella at the bottom too. She only THOUGHT it was a guy. The director had an actor stand in for the coat stand to give us her point of view.

So, sure, German Expressionism influencing Film Noir, no big.

Here's a made-up moment from a roleplaying game. It's Poison'd. I'm playing Ned McCubbins, murdering pirate; Mitch is playing Ned's shipmate Filthy Peter. Emily's the GM.

Me: I come up behind Filthy Peter while he's leaning against the rail watching the lights of Kingston. He has no reason to fear me so I don't bother sneaking.
Mitch: [narrowing his eyes]
Me: I put my pistol against the back of his head and blow his brains out through his face.
Emily: Cool. Roll brutality vs soul to attack someone unsuspecting.
Me: [rolling] Mother crap.
Mitch: Ha ha.
Emily: You flinch at the last second, and so do you, and the bullet opens his scalp above his ear but doesn't blow out his brains at all. Filther Peter, what do you do?
Mitch: Oh I bring the fight, oh yes I do.

I propose that "blow his brains out through his face" exists in our Poison'd game the way that the guy in the shadow behind the door exists in Cape Fear. It doesn't turn out to be real, but it sure does matter.

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2008-05-06 : Fantasy lit and rpgs
Oh by the way, Eero Tuovinen is kicking Fantasy's butt on his blog, Game Design is about Structure. Two articles: Cultural subtext of modern fantasy gaming, followed by My hate-on for big swords.

If you ask me, he's doing a thorough and satisfying job.

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2008-05-02 : I kill puppies for satan
When he was visiting the other day, Rob interviewed me for the Independent Insurgency about my first real game, kill puppies for satan. It was a fun interview, I like telling those stories. Give it a listen, it's episode 10.

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2008-04-30 : Movies and TV
The Shield, Battlestar Galactica, The Office, Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Michael Clayton, maybe some more.

There may be spoilers. Avert your eyes.

1. I'm caught up on The Shield. It's kind of an uncomfortable feeling. For some reason I liked knowing that, out there in the world, there were people who'd seen the future.

Shane is a colossal cock-up. Vic too. My money's still on Ronny. He's more unlikeable the less he's opaque.

2. Dear Battlestar Galactica,

Who's a Cylon isn't a gripping mystery all by itself. When I know that there's one Cylon unaccounted for, trying to create suspense by casting suspicion on several characters doesn't work. That doesn't create suspense, it only tells me that it doesn't matter who the cylon is. If it could be any of them, it might as well be any of them, and I'm non-gripped.

Your friend, Vincent

3. Look, I already knew what was going on between Michael and Jan. I really didn't need to see it layed out, so uncharacteristically, in all its nakedness and filth. Generally The Office strikes such a sweet balance between making me laugh and making me cringe, but that episode was way too cringe-y.

On the plus side, when Rob was up we watched a couple episodes of Coupling, and while funny it showed just how unstudied The Office seems. Dinner at Michael and Jan's aside, what a good show.

4. Judd Apatow likes his characters and is good to them. The opposite of, oh, Alexander Payne, Neil LaBute, or Christopher Guest.

5. Oh yeah, The Office and Michael Clayton, what they reveal about suspense.

I watched a half dozen episodes of season 4 of The Office, then went back and watched the whole series from the start with Meg. Here we are in seasons 2 and 3, and I know full well what's coming between Pam and Jim in season 4, and the suspense is killing me anyway. Every barrier makes my heart sink, and I honestly fear that they'll never be okay.

In Michael Clayton, we see his car blow up in the first ten minutes. Nevertheless, when time catches up with that preview, and his car's about to blow up for real? Suspenseful anyway.

Why is that? Why is it that I can know what's going to happen, but not TRUST it?

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