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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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(Quote) I've just realised I completely missed the recent move towards this performance art: the streaming crowd! (That's mainly because I don't have the patience to watch them.) But is the increase in capturing the performance of RPG play changing …
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(Quote) So then what's the relationship between the game designer/author, the publisher, the fan community, and the people at the gaming table? Who is, or should be, central to the RPG hobby? And what about the value of RPG books themselves, and th…
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(Quote) If Severian is destined to become the Autarch, father of his people, is little Severian his first subject? If so, is elder Severian a good ruler? Should he have anticipated the danger of the ring, or was he right to allow the child to have s…
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(Quote) There wasn't much space in the book for us to explore the characters' personalities: they were generally driven by events to move quickly through decisions. But I think that's pretty standard for thriller type books. Another issue was the i…
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Not much to add about the book's ending. I agree with @RichardAbbott that the chair is likely to be rapidly rediscovered, in one form or another, which would reopen the whole history-rewriting issue. As for gaming, just about all my gaming is at MK…
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I'm with @dr_mitch in finding no difference between indie and corporate TTRPG producers: they're just about all "indie", with only a precious few people actually making a full-time living from the games. One of the problems of low barrier…
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Going back to the book, was it about dementia? Dementia was the motivation for one character, but I don't think the game was really about that. It was more about how our memories define us, and how our different memories of the "same" even…
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I think good fiction needs to be about something, to elevate it above a simple sequence of events: it needs to say something about people, or contemporary issues, or something like that. However, it's easy to lose sight of that in RPGs. It's very e…
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I think there's a couple of aspects to this question. One is about time travel, and the other is a wider point about narrating events out of order. The book could have followed Helena's subjective timeline from the start, only introducing Barry whe…
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Like others, I enjoyed it. I read it quickly, so it must have held my attention. The writing was clear and snappy. Like @RichardAbbott , I was underwhelmed by the deus ex machina ending: how was Helena able to discover a way to remove false memori…
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(Quote) Thanks for the comments: they've clarified why I said this encounter was "unnecessary." Yes, the encounter did show some development of Severian's character. But it was completely unmotivated by any previous events in the story. Wh…
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(Quote) I think it was that Piaton was mouthing words to Severian, and Severian was able to lip-read enough. Piaton was still there, alive in his head, but he didn't have any voluntary control over his body since Typhon was grafted on to it. This i…
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(Quote) I could say much the same about the whole episode. Why was it there in the story? Typhon seemed unconnected to anything else in the story, apart from a way to give us readers some additional exposition. What we got was that Typhon claimed to…
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And finished. That was fun. I enjoyed that.
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(Quote) If the Conciliator is Christ (and I don't doubt you), what's the Claw? What does it correspond to in Christian mythology? (Quote) I thought this creature wasn't a notule, but was the same one that attacked Jonas in the antechamber prison in…
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(Quote) It seems like the start of a story, and not the end. We get a lot of detail about how Frog was brought up, but then he meets his sister and it just ends. There's something in there setting up the tension between hunters/ranchers and farmers…
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(Quote) The first book of Halo Jones, a miniseries from 2000AD (British SFF comic), was set in an SF consumer/capitalist culture, large wealth disparity, mass youth unemployment, etc. Kind of like the 1980s with arcologies. The "Different Drumm…
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(Quote) Perhaps that will be the moral of the story? Not that power corrupts, but that only the corrupt (and depraved) seek and gain power.
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(Quote) (I thought chapter 20 was for next week, but it didn't take long to read it anyway.) (Quote) Agreed. It's perhaps a sign that Severian is changing more. First he was guided by duty, then self-interest (including thinking with his genitals).…
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(Quote) Interesting thoughts, thank you. I don't have much to say in response, except to agree that the book puts forward an atomised view of society. The book is populated by people with one or two strong connections. There's no wider community, wh…
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(Quote) I'll look forward to it! (Quote) So it seems I'm unusual in having an r-map based prep for RPGs. When I'm doing a blood opera style game (my preferred style), my prep consists of an r-map, a list of NPC motivations and objectives (mostly in…
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(Quote) I can agree with all that. I think Archer is very dispassionate and looks at events in that way. I think some of the text acknowledges that people have very strong feelings (Alex and Alice come to mind) but Archer is dismissive of these emot…
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(Quote) In the interest of discussion, would having an emotionally-engaged viewpoint character have changed your opinion? Would, for instance, a book from Dolly's or Alex's point of view have kept your interest more?
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(Quote) Thanks. Yes, in this set up the djinn isn't really a person. There's no need for this to be the case: you could have djinni be full-blown characters in the situation. But a lot of the situation revolves around the secrecy of Tish's identity…
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New threads appear regularly in the site's RSS feed, if that's at all helpful to anyone. But that's only new discussions, not notifications of updates to existing discussions.
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I thought it would be illuminating to describe how I'd use the relationship map and backstory for The Chill in an RPG. For the sake of argument, I'll transfer it to the game Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk, a Middle-Eastern/Persian inspired game that's a pulp…
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To ask the question another way: does Archer bring any special "investigator" abilities to the situation, beyond his improved access to experts like the psychiatrist and lawyer? If, say, the story was about Alex Kincaid's attempt to discov…
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(Quote) I agree with some of your points. Archer is generally unemotional and looks at events (and people) dispassionately. Archer isn't that upset by the historic crimes, but he is upset by the emotional impact on Dolly and by his failure to protec…
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(Quote) I don't understand your point here. Is this a criticism of this book, where you're saying we shouldn't have stories about killers and murders? Or is this a comment about the wider discourse, where stories about terrible and evil things are f…
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> @Apocryphal said: > Speaking of style, the dialogue is very wry. Is this what makes an investigator like Lew Archer 'hard boiled'? Is it his thick skin, or what is it. He's not especially one for fisticuffs, I didn't think. But he does dogg…