I recently published what I consider my debut novella, “Merchant Magician”. As part of the process, I had a number of beta readers provide feedback on it. Overall, it was mixed experience. What is a Beta Reader? A beta reader is someone who reads your about-to-be-published work and gives you feedback from a reader’s perspective. […]
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Styles of Role-Playing Games
Role playing games are interesting for many reasons, one of which is how difficult it is to actually explain the game and how it’s played. Often it’s easier to just play a session with someone and let them experience it, rather than trying to describe what can be a somewhat unusual activity / past-time. In […]
Players “Topping From The Bottom” in Role-Playing Games
I’ve been role-playing (with some large breaks) for decades. Often when I start a game, I’m introducing brand new people to the hobby, so I tend to set the tone and have found things run smoothly. A while back, I started talking to people about playing online (via Roll20 or Discord) and have found a […]
Recruiter Spam is a Waste of Everyone’s Time
Like many technical people, I regularly get e-mails from FAANG (Facebook Amazon Apple Netflix Google) recruiters starting “Your experience as a developer combined with your educational background could help us tackle some of our tallest tasks…” Without fail, the gist of the message is that they have a job posting that they want me to […]
Getting A Cover For Your First Book
With most activities there is a problem of “expert blind spots”. The idea is that once you start understanding a domain of knowledge, you forget what other people don’t know. When you talk about it, you assume a background similar to your own – other experts. USUALLY, it would be reasonable to listen to the […]
Dogma in Role-Playing Games
I’ve long been fascinated by the role of dogma in RPGs. As a child in the 80’s, role-playing was going through the Satanic panic, but was also quite a trend. Somehow my brother and I got a copy of the basic D&D box set and tried to have our babysitter play it with us – […]
Playing Dungeons And Dragons With Perverts
The following is a true story. Not in a, “hey, nudge, nudge, this really happened!” way, but in a “this is my best attempt at capturing the truth of these events” way. About six months ago, as the Covid-19 pandemic was dragging on longer than expected, I had the idea of running an online role-playing […]
The Problem With Online Discussion Forums
I’ve been a part of online communities for around 3 decades. Before I got onto the Internet, I was on BBSes (kind of mini, proto internets where typically 2 computers would talk to one another at a time). Discussion forums have been around since these olden times, from messages forums on BBSes, to Usenet, to […]
First Reactions To Thousand Year Old Vampire
Like anything, role playing games (RPG) have their “trendy” releases. The currently trending product seems to be “Thousand Year Old Vampire” by Tim Hutchings. Rather than a review, since I haven’t even played the game, this is my first reaction to flipping through it and getting a general sense what it’s about. My reaction is […]
Feedback on Creative Work
I’ve just finished the first chapter of a book I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’m happy with how it came together generally, but had a feeling that I often have at the early stage of a creative project. “Why don’t I get some feedback and figure out if this is worth developing?” It […]