It s hard to figure out which of this past year s books was my favourite. None were perfect. There s one chapter in The Daughter s War that may be the funniest I ve ever read in the fantasy genre (if you know you know). Governing the Commons was an interesting book that reminded me of Mushroom At The End [ ]
My character in Skyrim was a werewolf. The way this works is you can choose to turn into a werewolf at any time. This gives you super combat powers for a short period, like 5 minutes. To me, this felt disingenuous to how werewolves work in fiction. It’s not a bonus, it should be a [ ]
I ended up reading surprisingly few books this past year, as I focused on more tangible sabbatical projects. A few of these books I read async with a group of people; I m excited to share how to do this well in the future. For my favourite book, it s a toss-up between The Taming of Chance, [ ]
Every community of creators should have a regular playtest series. This is true whether it s an ad-hoc community of independent creators, an academic research group, or a large corporation. If there isn t a playtest series, you should start one. This post is for you. I have been involved in several recurring playtest series. I first [ ]
I am playing Marvel s Midnight Suns. Like any big modern game, it is a sloppy mess of systems, for which the balance and neatness of design doesn’t matter as the point is the joy of the complex systems smooshing together. Many characters can take actions to add the Lifesteal modifier to attacks. Traditionally, Lifesteal (or [ ]
Based on recent events, I propose that we should all be aware of a new meta in psy-op strategies Obviously, no sensible person believes that JD Vance had sex with a couch. The humour of this claim, fair or not, is about whether one can argue that “he seems like the kind of guy that [ ]
This week, I’m staying at a house in the middle of nowhere in Northern Arizona, after a visit to Las Vegas. When I walk from the upstairs bedroom down to the ground floor kitchen, the time zone changes. This is reproducible, reliably. It took me a couple days to notice, since the purpose of this [ ]
Imagine the TV show Connections, but it’s a stream of consciousness series of errors because I m an impulsive idiot. I d call it Missed Conceptions. 1491, a book that came out in 2006, is a reframing of what the Americas (continents North and South) were like before Columbus arrived. Contrary to general colonist perception, the people [ ]
Looking through this list, I read an incredibly good set of books this year. In each of my annual books read posts I try to pick the best or most impactful one, and this year is very hard. It s the first full year of my sabbatical, so I delved deeper into non-fiction topics, many of [ ]
This fall, I ve been working intensively on directing and producing a new immersive theatre show out of The Lower Case, called The Nose. The full title, in true style is, The Nose: A Full and Complete Explanation For The Events of Nov 14-16, 1983. The show opens tonight, and runs for all of January. Grab [ ]