Dungeon-obsessed

I'm suffering from dungeon-obsession right now. I catch it sometimes, like an intermittent fever.
Not that I'm interested in playing any old-school games or anything (alright, there's Tunnels & Trolls, there's Kata Kumbas… but playing any of those requires jumping through hoops I don't want to be through right now; this moment, even Jason Morningstar's incredibly streamlined and promising Dungeon Squad 2 looks a bit heavy on the "DM" side to me). Rather, I'm obsessed with the idea of designing some kind of game which will again make dungeons work for me — except I've been running circles around this particular idea for, I don't know, two years now?
I draft down bits and pieces of rules, but the whole thing never gels, and I start from scratch again. I've got multiple notebooks half-full of this stuff by now. Only one thing I nailed down for sure: I want the map of the dungeon to be in the middle of the table during play, visible to all (the full map, yes).
Which finally brings me to the reason I posted about this today… I think I just realized something about my obsession, which is: I'm primarily in love with the graphical representation of dungeons — with maps, especially if cute, hand-drawn and detailed. I should have known: that's why I follow Tony Dowler's sweet Year of the Dungeon to get my regular fix, for example. In fact, what triggered this untimely realization was probably learning about Paul Hughes's kickstarter project for a giant random dungeon poster-map (I sure like his drawing style, involvement with the Gary Gygax personality-cult notwithstanding). Or was it the One-Page Dungeon Contest launching?

Webites spawning other websites: picking a date to celebrate

Parti di Testa: Figli dell'Orgasmo Cerebrale (Children of a Braingasm) 

I've been working on this little thing, in very small installments, for a long time now. Most or all downloads linked from this blog are actually stored there since more than a year. Time I turn on the lights and show you all the front door, don't you think? 

I still consider it a work in progress, but really it's a collection of works in progress: thus I think it appropriate enough to "open" it now. So, it's just a simple website where I keep track of the things I write and keep those available for downloads: games, accessories, essays… A companion site for this blog, safe from the endemic chaos plaguing blogs. Everything you find there right now you could find either here or somewhere else already - I just made it easier for everybody to find, or so I hope.

  

Per i miei lettori italiani: ci sono anche le schede del personaggio di Kata Kumbas, l'articolo più scaricato (o l'unico?) dal mio blog precedente, se qualcuno ancor le cerca.

Baccanale scapigliato

Non è ancora finita! Imperterriti continuiamo a marciare, noi, i diavoli del carnevale.

Yes, I like to think I have this Key. So what?

Key of "You think you know me?" 
It happens all the time. Some player sitting 'round the table says to you: "Oh, man, and now you're so going to tag your Key of [Something] again because of this! Easy money!" (or variations). But in fact you…
1 XP = Can't tag your Key of Something, because it doesn't apply.
2 XPs= Don't have the Key of Something at all.
5 XPs= Can and do buy off your Key of Something right now.
Buyoff: They're right, your Key of Something applies and you tag it for 3 XPs or more.

Behold an awesome, awesome human being!

The awesome human being in question being Levi Kornelsen, who single-handedly and sorta-understatedly begun a feat worthy of a hero of the ages to come, deserving a huge badge of awesomeness.

Levi is developing a fantasy role-playing game, Awen, built on the bones of his long-time-in-development project "The Exchange", plus a set of new ideas he more recently came up with about "world creation" being a consequence of character creation, etc. Something like the latter is found in Apocalypse World, sure, but way less formalized, and Levi may well be the first after Vincent Baker to implement new tools toward that end, in a time when everybody seems content with making Apocalypse World hacks. But this is only half the story…

Like so many of us these days, Levi is running a crowd-funding campaign to fund the development of the game (in other words, to at least partially re-pay himself and/or any helpers of the hours spent working on the project). The big deal is: Awen will be released into the Public Domain as soon as it's completed. Thus, by pitching in your five or ten dollars you're not "buying a game", you're helping make a game for everyone in the world who may want to play it. And you're making a gift today to all of the friends you will ever want to play the game with, or pitch the game to — including those friends you haven't yet met.
Way to make Levi climb to the top of my personal chart of awesomeness.

Please, join in. Everybody who's reading this, please chip in the five bucks if you have those, but especially, please, tell all of your friends, and tell them to tell their friends — you know how that works.
My expectations regarding the game as a game are high enough, really, but even if they weren't I'd still be urging all of you to help Levi out. Because we're living on the edge of something huge. As small as it may look now, Levi is (marching in the front line and taking the risks) trying out a new model for artistic work: one more sustainable, more civilized than the rotting and rotten one we have today. I really think supporting Awen means to support change for the best, if just in this small, small world of ours which is role-playing games.
Thank you.

Il più indie di tutti i crowdfunding

Al via un mio nuovo, piccolo progetto. Il sito appositamente allestito dice già tutto, penso, perciò visitatelo:

animaprime.lapo.it

Why I'm not on Google+

Having a large number of friends — and not in the Facebook sense — I'm not surprised that I received several invitations to Google's new "social network", Google+. Instead of rushing headlong into it, though, I let those invitations rest for a while, while considering whether joining would actually do me any good.
I'm glad I was cautious. In almost no time, and with no effort on my part, I received enough off-putting, if unsurprising, news to decidedly make my mind.
Google+ terms of service and policy are as always geared towards the benefit and safety of Google, not my benefit and safety. They are explicitly sex-negative, even going so far as removing a specific exception for art nudes which was previously in place. They are chicken-hearted blanket statements meant to empower the company to arbitrarily disallow content on a case-by-case basis, which amounts to censorship. Cue the completely arbitrary ban of Anonymous. What does that remind me of? Oh, yeah…

Well, I'm not joining. I didn't resist joining Facebook for so long just to impulse-subscribe a service which is just the same, affected by just the same liabilities and involving just the same dangers. For the time being, I'll go on using the Status.net (specifically identi.ca) as my sole "social network" provider.
My connections — the real-life ones — are an asset to a company like Google, and what has Google done to merit me gifting them with my assets? My demands weren't that high either: just by doing nothing at all they'd have qualified as exceeding my expectations. But no, they censored content and people, instead.
I'm actually beginning to feel uncomfortable having my e-mail, blog and a couple in-development websites all hosted by Google: surrendering this much of myself to a company was a mistake. At the time, they looked like the safest of companies, but I was just young and naive: big business is big business, and in the end their friendly facade is crumbling and revealing the extent of the lie. I will go looking for alternatives. So, maybe I ought to thank Google+ for raising my awareness of the problem.

La colletta è stata un successo

Mi scuso innanzitutto, perché questo post sarebbe dovuto comparire due giorni fa, al momento in cui — nel pomeriggio del 29 giugno — l'obiettivo designato è stato raggiunto. Dovevamo raccogliere 800 euro entro il giorno 29, e infatti…

ABBIAMO RACCOLTO 830 €

per portare Ben Lehman a EtrusCon Estate 2011.

(un successo al 104%)

Grazie a:

Andrea, Antonio, Ariele, Barbara, Davide, Evelyn, Lapo, Lorenzo, Luca, Luca, Mario, Matteo, Mauro, Niccolò, Nicola, Paolo, Raffaele, Simone, Simone, Tazio, Teresa, Vittorio, Yves,

Associazione Culturale Janus e Hotel Royal Palace.

Ciascuno ha contribuito secondo le proprie possibilità e alcuni hanno dato tutto sé stessi per passione.

Un po' di statistiche, per soddisfare la vostra curiosità. Abbiamo ricevuto:

• 1 donazione generosissima di € 280
• 1 donazione "supporter" di € 100
• 1 donazione "platinum++" di € 50
• 4 donazioni "platinum" di € 30
• 2 donazioni "gold+" di € 25
• 7 donazioni "gold" di € 20
• 4 donazioni "silver+" di € 15
• 2 donazioni "silver" di € 10
• 2 donazioni "non ci perdi niente" di € 5

e l'hotel ha contribuito offrendo sconti a tutti ai donatori e ospitalità a Ben Lehman.

Ancora grazie a tutti, ma questa volta a titolo personale, da uno che spera in un mondo nel quale i giocatori si spostano e si incontrano cento volte di più — perché, lo credo sinceramente, confrontare esperienze diverse fa bene a noi e fa bene al gioco di ruolo.