ars ludi

“Shall I always be chosen?” she said bitterly. “Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown, and find food and beds when they return?”

“A time may come soon” said he, “when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.”

And she answered: “All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.”

–The Return of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien

If you have a discussion about women’s roles in Tolkien and no one brings up this exchange between Aragorn and Eowyn, hang your head in shame.

“Several times I have attempted to talk about music with you. It would have interested me to know your thoughts and opinions, whether they contradicted mine or not, but you have disdained to make me even the barest reply.”

He gave me a most amiable smile and this time a reply was accorded to me.

“Well,” he said with equanimity, “you see, in my opinion there is no point at all in talking about music. I never talk about music. What reply, then, was I to make to your very able and just remarks? You were perfectly right in all you said. But, you see, I am a musician, not a professor, and I don’t believe that, as regards music, there is the least point in being right. Music does not depend on being right, on having good taste and education and all that.”

“Indeed. Then what does it depend on?”

“On making music, Herr Haller, on making music as well and as much as possible and with all the intensity of which one is capable. That is the point, Monsieur.”

– Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse

Find and replace: gaming.

Here we have Ryan kicking all sorts of concise-ass about making awesome characters.

The whole discussion is about political intrigue, but this bit is solid gold. I snipped the quote a little to be even more concise, for I tamper with greatness:

That said, I can boil down the advice to two questions I ask of each character:

* What does he or she want?
* Why can they not just have that?

And point to another character when answering these questions (either or both of them).

It doesn’t get much tighter than that. Kneel before Zod.

“How do you know when you are taking enough risk?

- Brian Moriarty, “The Point Is” (1996)

(don’t read it, listen to the audio)

“[Harvard economist Lant] Pritchett says he has a model of how game-changing ideas are received over time, and it works something like this: “Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Obvious.”

- Kerry Howley, The Atlantic

And yes, the Microscope playtest is going quite well, thank you.

So you love story games but you are drawn by the irresistible lure of the crunchy 4e battlefield? You want to smack some orcs but you want it to have meaning?

Check out Simon Carryer’s Say Yes or Face the Dungeon:

The GM should give a very short description of the dungeon, something like “It’s an zombie-filled labyrinth” or “It’s an orc warren with a surprise at the end”. All the players then brainstorm a way for the dungeon to be related to the conflict at hand…

For example, the PCs are trying to get a village of elves on their side in the civil war. The elves are undecided, and the GM makes the PCs “face the dungeon”. The dungeon the GM has prepared is a nest of harpies at the top of a crag. After some discussion, they decide that at some point during the negotiations, harpies will capture the son of an elder, one of those opposed to their plan. If they can rescue the young elf from the harpies, the elves will join in their cause. The GM marks in the dungeon where the young elf is being held, and play begins again – later that night, just after the harpies make off with their captive.

Yes, it’s a totally different way to play the game. Go read the rest. Very good stuff. And if you don’t get the reference, you owe it to yourself to go look up Vincent Baker’s famous “Say Yes or Roll the Dice.”