False Dawn?

Red Sea denizen (Andrew Wright, 2014)

I hadn't seen him in two years. He'd long since left L.A., teaching, any sort of steady job, steady income, steady life. He was in Aspen, Dakar, Bangkok. Once in a while I got a dirt-smeared postcard from out of the amazing pipeline, exotic stamps, a mad trembling hasty scrawl of which the only legible term was "dude." (Boyle, 1994)

It's been a while. When I first moved from Bangkok to Saudi Arabia, I thought that the lack of a two hour daily commute to work might free up some time for other endeavors, such as this blog. However, the flotsam of life has tossed up plenty of alternative distractions to prevent this. Still, there is hope. In the next post I hope to talk about Beyond the Pit, which has basically taken two years to finish, and how happy I am to finally see it in print!

References

Boyle, T. C. (1994). Without a Hero. London: Penguin.

Keep On Bloggin'

Figure 1. An example of gristle by Russ Nicholson
 (from Morris & Thomson, 1996).

As an addendum to the previous post, I want to add a list of other blogs I enjoy reading. These blogs are probably not as regular in delivering content, and some of them are decidedly irregular at that, but they’re all entertaining and well worth reading in their own right. In no particular order:

1. Russ Nicholson. For any fan of adventure gamebooks, Russ Nicholson needs no introduction, but I’ll provide one anyway:

 

[His] style of black and white line art is at once ridiculously simple in terms of shading and lighting, but utterly over-elaborate in detail and design. He also has a fine sense of over-the-top macabre gore – you only have to look at one of the probably hundreds of dismembered corpses, shattered skulls, or risen dead, from any of the gamebooks he has illustrated, to appreciate his ideal of warped anatomy. As well as all this Russ can also draw the most baroque costumes, accoutrements, weaponry, and tattoos this side of a Terry Gilliam movie. He may not be to everyone’s taste, but there is no denying his impact on gamebooks and fantasy RPG’s during those bright-eyed days of the early-mid 80’s when barbarians were barbarians, amazons were amazons, and dead bodies were so freshly-hewn their gristle still had texture… (Wright, 2009 – and see Figure 1.)

He has recently started an occasional blog where he talks about the methods he uses in creating his unique artwork. As well as including previously published examples, Russ also posts up new and previously unseen work, including odd random doodles that show more talent than most of us could achieve in a lifetime.

http://russnicholson.blogspot.com/

2. The CRPG Addict. I stumbled upon this blog when looking for a free downloadable version of the old classic Bard’s Tale computer game. In his own words, the CRPG Addict is one man blogging about his adventure through every PC role-playing game ever released. As of this blog post, he’s currently playing through games from 1987. If you were of a certain generation during the 80’s that spent a ridiculous amount of time playing early computer role-playing games such as Ultima, Wizardry, Bard’s Tale or Phantasie, among many, many others, then this blog is for you. Best of all, the CRPG Addict writes in an amusing and engaging style that is very entertaining to read. You probably haven’t heard of many of the games he plays, and you’ll likely never play them, but you don’t have to – the CRPG Addict is playing through them for you! The least you could is stop by his blog and revel in the sense of purpose of a man on a holy mission…

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/

3. Fighting Fantasist. I’m not sure how I found this blog by Coopdevil, but I’m glad I did. Part of the focus is on Old School gaming and also Games Workshop products from the 80’s – two things I enjoy. Also, Coopdevil has tweaked the Fighting Fantasy rules-system to produce one of the freakiest things I’ve seen it used for – an RPG based on Formula 1 Grand Prix motor-racing from the 1950’s, when it was brutal and dangerous – entitled The Power And The Glory (Coopdevil, 2010). Fascinating stuff!

http://fightingfantasist.blogspot.com/

4. Realm of Zhu. I found this one through the Fighting Fantasist blog above. It’s a “roleplaying miniature collecting combat world building art blog” by Zhu Bajiee (n.d.), and very entertaining. My favourite post is entitled ‘Eye of the Dragon vs. Hobgoblin Ale’ (Bajiee, 2010).

http://realmofzhu.blogspot.com/

5. Fighting Dantasy. Similar to the CRPG Addict above, Fighting Dantasy is a blog where Dan Satherley revisits the Fighting Fantasy series one gamebook at a time. It’s definitely an amusing read, and although currently out of new gamebooks (the last one he reviewed was Moonrunner (Hand, 1992)), Dan has reprised his blog as a column in the Fighting Fantazine e-magazine (e.g. Satherley, 2009). If you have some spare gamebooks, send them to Dan because we need him to provide some new updates!

http://fightingdantasy.blogspot.com/

6. Turn to 400. This is a very, very occasional blog by ‘Murray’ that features one of the best reviews I have ever seen, namely Starship Traveller (Jackson, 1983) presented as a Star Trek episode guide (‘Murray’, 2010). Priceless!

http://turnto400.blogspot.com/

7. Lloyd of Gamebooks. This blog is by Stuart Lloyd, winner of the 2010 Windhammer Prize for Short Gamebook Fiction, for his adventure Sharkbait’s Revenge (Densley, 2010). It hasn’t been updated in a while, but it’s a good blog to read if you’re thinking about planning and writing a gamebook adventure.

http://virtualfantasies.blogspot.com/

8. Jonathan Green. Jonathan Green is the only currently active writer of brand-new Fighting Fantasy adventures, such as Howl of the Werewolf, Stormslayer, and Night of the Necromancer, which are all rapidly becoming firm fan favorites. He maintains several blogs, all of which are worth reading, particularly when he talks about, and links to other writers talking about, the process and method of being a full-time professional writer. Recommended!

http://jonathangreenauthor.blogspot.com/

http://jongreenunnaturalhistory.blogspot.com/

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading some of these blogs! In the next post (I promise!) I’ll start actually looking at some specific gamebooks.

References

Bajiee, Z. (n.d.). Realm of Zhu. Accessed from http://realmofzhu.blogspot.com/search/label/fighting%20fantasy

Bajiee, Z. (2010, June 23). Eye of the Dragon vs. Hobgoblin Ale. Message posted to http://realmofzhu.blogspot.com/2010/06/eye-of-dragon-vs-hobgoblin-ale.html

Coopdevil. (2010, October 25). The Power And The Glory RPG Bulletpoint version. Message posted to http://fightingfantasist.blogspot.com/2010/10/power-and-glory-rpg-bulletpoint-version.html

Densley, W. (2010). 2010 Prize Winners. Accessed from http://www.arborell.com/windhammer_prize_2010.html

Hand, S. (1992). Moonrunner. London: Puffin.

Jackson, S. (1983). Starship Traveller. London: Puffin.

Morris, D., and Thomson, J. (1996). Fabled Lands: Lords of the Rising Sun. London: Pan-Macmillan.

‘Murray’. (2010, October 17). #4 “Starship Traveller” by Steve Jackson (1983). Message posted to http://turnto400.blogspot.com/2010/10/4-starship-traveller-by-steve-jackson.html

Satherley, D. (2009). Fighting Dantasy. Fighting Fantazine 1(September 2009), 66. Accessed from http://www.unboundbook.org/FightingFantazine/FF1r7.pdf

Wright, A. (2009, March 24). Out of the Pit: The artists (Part nine: The creature artists: Russ Nicholson). Message posted to http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/titan_rebuilding/message/2616

RSS Feed? What's that?

This second post was nearly stillborn after I spent most of today wading through Mystic Mongol’s (2010) Let’s Play archive of King of Dragon Pass. However, I’ve managed to drag myself away from reading about the exploits of a bronze-age tribe in Glorantha, and put something together for this next post.

Getting back to Laws’ (2004) Thirteen Laws of Blogging, the seventh law states “No linkage”, and I’m about to break it by posting up a strange mix of blogs that have all inspired me in varying ways. To be fair, Laws does quantify the seventh law by stating “I shall not commit the sin of linkage! No posts consisting of a one-line comment and then the exact same URL half the blogs on the net are also pointing at today”, (2004), and that’s not what I’m going to do. Instead, here, in no particular order, is a list of five blogs that have me clicking daily on my browser bookmarks, because I’m too lazy to sort my RSS Feed out properly.

1. Robin D. Laws. I looked up Robin Laws’ blog when I found out he was principal designer and writer for The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game, based on the amazing four book fantasy sequence of the same name by the legendary author Jack Vance. Laws covers a lot of ground in his blog, and in keeping with this, I especially like his posts on the Toronto International Film Festival, his ongoing comic series The Birds, and his current play-by-blog concerning a design by committee approach to the fantasy world of Khorad.

http://robin-d-laws.livejournal.com/

2. Cryptomundo. I found this blog while researching online for a still unfinished novel concerning cryptozoology – the study of “hidden animals”. The principal writer is Loren Coleman, who has published widely in this field and is responsible for extremely readable books such as Mysterious America and The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep (with Patrick Huyghe). This blog covers Bigfoot, the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, and a bestiary of other real or imagined monsters, through eyewitness accounts, murky photographs, and rotting carcasses washed up on the shore. It’s always an entertaining read!

http://www.cryptomundo.com/

3. Tetrapod Zoology. This blog is by Darren Naish, a science writer and palaeozoologist, who covers everything from amphibians through to mammals (the tetrapods of the title), extinct or alive. The writing is technical but interesting, and some of Naish’s more amusing blog entries often strangely occur around the beginning of April. Unlike other scientists, Naish is also happy tackling more outré subjects such as cryptozoology and speculative zoology. If you’re at all interested in animals of any kind, particularly strange or spectacular ones you could adapt to a gamebook or RPG setting, then this is a good blog to read. A compilation of early articles from this blog is also now available as a book – Tetrapod Zoology Volume One – from Amazon, and well worth purchasing.

http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/

4. Fabled Lands. This recent blog is by two brilliant gamebook authors who need little introduction – Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson, although I don’t think Jamie has actually posted anything yet! The breadth and depth of material on here is absolutely amazing, spanning classic fantasy worlds such as Tekumel, Legend, and the Fabled Lands of the title, as well as some stunning new vistas, such as Abraxas, and obscure gems ranging from lost gamebooks to card-game prototypes. If you ever find yourself a little short on imagination, this is a blog that will reawaken your sense of wonder.

http://fabledlands.blogspot.com/

5. Grognardia. This blog is by James Maliszewski and concerns role-playing games and their history, classi pulp fantasy stories from days of your, reviews of new products from the Old School Renaissance movement, and accounts from sessions in Maliszewski’s megadungeon campaign, entitled Dwimmermount. It’s a very popular blog, and one reason why is the enormous amount of quality content it generates. When I first discovered Grognardia, I enjoyed it so much I went back all the way to 2008 and read through all the first 1000 blog entries. It’s that enthralling!

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/

If you haven’t discovered any of these great blogs yet, then I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I do!

References

Laws, R. D. (2004, March 5). These things I pledge to you. Message posted to http://robin-d-laws.livejournal.com/2004/03/05/

Mongol, M. (2010, April 21). King of Dragon Pass: Epic fantasy means fantasy about cows. Accessed from http://lparchive.org/King-of-Dragon-Pass/

Why Blog?

Figure 1. The First Blog (picture by
Nik Williams and taken from
Livingstone (1988)).

 

I washed my hands till they hurt then went to my room and smoked several cones. While the water was bubbling I caught sight of the picture of the Empire State Building by the window. I thought about Andy Warhol, and this led me to think about Velvet Underground, and then I remembered the Lou Reed/John Cale tape someone gave me for my birthday. Next thing I knew I had the tapes out and I was mixing Lou singing “Andy was a Catholic” with a sample from ‘Long Live Love’ over a fast dance beat. I decided to top it off with the sound of the bong, and it took me a hell of a lot of cones to get the water bubbling in the right rhythm. By the time I’d finished, I’d made eighty-five seconds and I was stoned off my head, totally unable to do what I was supposed to do – work on Big George’s barbie. Ah, but I had worked. That’s what George and Mum and people like them didn’t realize. I had worked. I’d made eighty-five seconds of something (Stevens, 1996, pp. 32-33).

While the above quote seems like a weird way to kick off a new blog (and do we really need another one of these beasts?), I think it perfectly captures the imaginative process we call creativity. Let’s face it – blogging is being creative. You’re typing out a bunch of text for the edification of yourself or for consumption by others. Gibson (2010, p. 9) notes that “Technocrati currently track[s] over 112 million blogs and over 175,000 new blogs being created worldwide every day”. That’s a lot of people being creative. What harm can one more do?

Waxing mystical about the creative process contravenes Laws’ (2004) Eleventh Law of his manifesto of blogging limitations. Nevertheless, creativity, or as Tolkien would describe it – Subcreation (for only the Creator God of whatever religion you choose to practice can Create!) – is “the building of sound and solid Secondary Worlds, and the goal of all art” (Carter, 1969, p. 90). Blogging as art? Hmmm… While that may prove a profitable future avenue of discussion (although I’m sure it’s been done), perhaps it’s time to ratchet this post back to an immediate and localized past – i.e. mine.

Why am I doing this? Strauss (2005) talks of a moment in his life when:

I was in a whirlwind of learning. I didn’t call my friends. I barely talked to my family. I turned down every writing assignment that came my way. I was living in an alternate reality (p. 144).

While my object of study was far, far more mundane than that of Strauss, I found myself in the similar and common predicament when an adult realizes that in order for them to get ahead or find a better job, they’re going to have to return to university and study part-time while working full-time. When both study and work revolve around acquiring and practicing the same knowledge, life becomes an 18 hour tutorial, interrupted only by sleep.

In my case, it was teaching, and one of the first tenets I learned was the art of reflection, a tool to “examine the present moment, to step back and consider the complementary and competing forces in a past situation, and to forge a path forward” (Snowman et al., 2009, p. 587). Educational reflection is not an easy process however, for it involves revisiting past experiences. Miller (2009) for instance says:

I found the suggestion insulting and disturbing. The idea of returning to a site of agony, shame, and ridicule was impossible. I was trying to forget school, not remember it (p. 909).

One of the ways to deal (or not deal!) with such a process is avoidance, and in the internet age, avoidance is easy! Allsopp (2010) notes most people online are looking for something to fill a need and avoid the school or office work they could or should be doing. In my case, this manifested as trawling through the plethora of blogs and their archives that were springing up on subjects I was interested in (I plan on talking about some of these in a future post). Naturally, this had a kick-on effect, and I starting thinking about things I’d like to see blogged but weren’t. Was there a niche to fill there, no matter how small? Perhaps, and hence this blog…

However, before looking at some of the things I will be blogging about, it’s worth looking at what I won’t do, and that’s nicely summed up by Laws’ (2004) Thirteen Laws in his manifesto of blogging, and partially summarized here:

• No sickness
• No mucus
• No boredom
• No awakenings
• No venting
• No weather
• No linkage
• No cats
• No tech snafus
• No mystical waxing on the creative process
• No quizzes
• No languages I cannot speak

In fact the only deviation, as we’ve seen, will be an occasional tendency to ponder the deeper mysteries of creativity, purely because it’s fun and I get a kick out of it! In addition, I can promise I will be blogging about a long list of hideously geekish ecletica:

• Gamebooks
• Role-Playing Games
• Boardgames
• My Play by Email projects
• Books
• Music
• Films
• Reviews of all of the above
• …and an absolute dumpster-load of who knows what other cringe and wince-inducing obsessions…

Lastly, it’s worth noting that cyber-history has it all wrong. The word ‘blog’ was not originally devised by Jorn Barger, Peter Merholz, or Evan Williams (Baker, 2008). It was concocted by the English fantasy author and entrepreneur Ian Livingstone way back in 1988 in his Fighting Fantasy gamebook Armies of Death:

…you run towards the bush ahead. A small brown-skinned creature suddenly jumps out from behind it, pointing a long blowgun straight at you. You recognize it as a Blog because of its dog-like head and the shrunken heads that are tied to its belt. Infamous for cooking human flesh in large cauldrons, Blogs are hated and hunted down by all human races. A split second later, a poison dart is flying towards you… (paragraph 265 - see Figure 1).

And on that note, until next time!

References

Allsopp, G. (2010). The process that makes me thousands of dollars per month online. Message posted to http://www.viperchill.com/thousands-of-dollars-online/

Baker, J. (2008, April 20). Origins of “Blog” and “Blogger”. Message posted to http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0804C&L=ADS-L&P=R16795&I=-3

Carter, L. (1969). Tolkien: A look behind The Lord of the Rings. New York: Ballantine.

Gibson, A. (2010). WordPress rules! In Beginner’s guide to WordPress (pp. 8-11). London: Imagine Publishing.

Laws, R. D. (2004, March 5). These things I pledge to you. Message posted to http://robin-d-laws.livejournal.com/2004/03/05/

Livingstone, I. (1988). Armies of Death. London: Puffin.

Miller, A. (2009). Pragmatic radicalism: An autoethnographic perspective on pre-service teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(2009), 909-916.

Snowman, J., Dobozy, E., Scevak, J., Bryer, F., Bartlett, B., & Biehler, S. (2009). Psychology Applied to Teaching: 1st Australian Edition. Qld: John Wiley & Sons.

Stevens, L. (1996). Big man’s barbie. Sydney: Vintage.

Strauss, N. (2005). The game: Penetrating the secret society of pickup artists. New York: HarperTorch.