@ludopolitics@dice.camp
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ludopolitics

@ludopolitics@dice.camp

Asst Teaching Prof, CMU. Indie game designer, teacher, scholar, parent. ENG/中文.

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ludopolitics, to random
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Just upped my pledge for
@WarBirds's new game LUMBERJILLS, which is SO CLOSE to being funded. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unrulydesigns/lumberjills-a-war-birds-game

At the higher backer level, you get to suggest an NPC, so I'm poking around to learn about people like the Chinese merchant marine sailors who served in the UK, and then were forcibly deported for racist reasons afterwards, despite many of them marrying British women. https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2022-08-17/How-the-UK-deported-thousands-of-Chinese-men-who-served-in-WWII-1cyfURb1gac/index.html

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Here's a draft cover layout for my game idea inspired by "Robotech: Invid Invasion," featuring everyone's favorite gender-nonconforming musician & revolutionary: Lancer!

I will definitely hire an artist to create a cover image that doesn't infringe on anyone's IP, if it gets that far. This is me just trying stuff out to inspire myself.

ludopolitics, to random
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I just found out about the Adventure Time RPG. What a tragedy.

It would have been so much fun with a rules-lite system + random tables/seeds for adventures.

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

It's been a minute; let's do this again:

If you are a Tabletop RPG nerd and have less than, say, 500 followers (or think you have less than 500 that are actually active):

  1. Write a post to introduce yourself and your particular nerdery, if you haven't already got one pinned.

  2. Reply in the comments with a link to or copy of that post.

  3. Share, check back to find people you want to follow, all that.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@LeviKornelsen

Hi folks, this is me:

https://dice.camp/@ludopolitics/112278380605545658

Summary: I've been making weird indie RPGs for a long time, and I now teach game design at Carnegie Mellon.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Oh no. This is a 1960s Japanese electric banjo available on eBay. Be still my heart.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@Tim_Eagon They vary a lot, especially because you have a lot of options for altering the sound. This one sounds something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_bB3J8kLH8

annaleen, to random
@annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

Where do psyops come from? Find out in my forthcoming book STORIES ARE WEAPONS, now available for pre-order! Want a signed and/or personalized copy? Order one from the glorious Green Apple Books today! https://www.greenapplebooks.com/signed-annalee-newitz

ludopolitics,
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@annaleen So exciting! It'll be REALLY useful to have a recent, updated take on this thread -- the "hidden" history of weaponized Comm & Media Studies, basically -- and your thoughts on how it's continued in recent decades!

ludopolitics,
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@annaleen For sure! We read Simpson's "Science of Coercion" in my Comm PhD program as our introduction to the history of our discipline.

ludopolitics,
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@annaleen No, but their stuff looks super interesting. Thanks for the rec! Actually, Wolfe's books look really useful for something I'm working on right now.

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

When you fully accept that gamers are largely fundamentally competent at having a good time roleplaying, you realize that most design objectives OTHER THAN "save people work" and "get them excited" can be managed with a box of parts and a discussion of how to assemble them.

But those two, hoo boy.

ludopolitics,
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@LeviKornelsen I don't know, friend. I grew up playing Palladium games and we had the hardest time figuring out how to make them consistently fun.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@LeviKornelsen Fair, but I also think the practice of roleplaying can be opaque to outsiders -- maybe less so now that there's video examples. My students, for example, tend to have difficult figuring out how to play "serious" or emotional TRPG content, rather than playing for yucks.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Oh no. I think I just started a new game draft that's a heavy For The Queen hack with a lot swearing?

RAPTOR NEST (working title)

You are a real piece-of-shit who, for some reason, owns a fucking raptor — a semi-autonomous spaceplane gunship. And not because you’re a soul-contracted client soldier, bankrolled by an evil-ass gigacorp or star empire, either. No, you’re the doomed owner of a fucking FREE raptor, beholden to no one but yourself, you poor hopeless fool.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Dreamed about a Muppet film version of Hamlet called "Mupplet," where the only human is Hamlet. I assume Miss Piggy played Queen Gertrude but I have no idea who would play Ophelia. Janice from the Electric Mayhem?

ludopolitics, to random
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That thing in games where game designers are both minor celebrities and also often among the least important people in determining what actually happens during play.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Finally heard back from the guy who made an indie RPG for his MA thesis in architecture.

It stalled out on Kickstarter because HE DOESN'T USE SOCIAL MEDIA and had no way of promoting it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yourtroubledcity/your-troubled-city

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

This guy created a super-indie tabletop RPG for his MA thesis in architecture, which looks really cool. Too bad it's not gotten any traction on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yourtroubledcity/your-troubled-city

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

You don't need a digital Campaign Manager tool if you never have time to play something that's not a one-shot.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I like the look of this cute "trindie" game from the UK about people in space doing little missions, set in the actual solar system.

It feels like the kind of indie game my students would write, something solid and fun but relatively "safe."

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/murkdice/void-above

annaleen, to random
@annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

I have trained my media studies students to refer to Stuart Hall as "Uncle Stuart Hall" and I'm not sorry.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@annaleen Definitely want Stuart Hall and Benjamin to be my media uncles.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Last few years, I've been feeling that @megueyb + @lumpley's Apocalypse World and Avery's most recent half-dozen games (since Quiet Year) -- plus everything released since -- have left me thinking a lot about "responding to a prompt" as the micro-foundation of TRPG play.

I don't know if I can fully articulate it, or put it into a clouds-and-arrows diagram. And, in the end, it's not particularly complicated or insightful. But I think it helps reframe TRPGs (and all play?) in useful ways.

ludopolitics,
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These structures & processes can take the form of designed objects, certainly, but they can also be more abstract, like methods, procedures, perspectives, patterns.

Often a prompt built into the mechanics is not so much a direct provocation -- though it can be that -- as much as it is an opportunity or an affordance. Frex: drawing a card & answering one question in Quiet Year is a pretty direct prompt. But an MC or player-side move in AW is more like an opportunity -- inviting you to pick it.

ludopolitics,
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Anyway, it's been useful for me. Maybe I should write it up for something?

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Thinking more about it, I feel like the "responding to a prompt" stuff was perhaps initially made clear by stuff like Baron Munchausen, Breaking the Ice, @megueyb's 1001 Nights, etc. -- early games that avoided standard RPG design tropes in favor of structuring narrative in other ways. And that came full circle with card larps, Companion's Tale, Quiet Year, For the Queen, keepsake & solo games, etc.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@benrobbins For sure. I feel like your games fit into this structure well. What is a question in Microscope if not a prompt to respond to?

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@benrobbins The first prompt is someone asking if you want to play a game? But your life is also full of past prompts.

ludopolitics,
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@benrobbins It's prompts all the way down, Ben. First prompt was the Big Bang.

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