My last post was provocatively titled “Fuck content, it’s how it’s presented that matters”. Good conversation occurred in the comments. But to summarise Rob Lang (of thefreerpgblog) pretty much hit the nail firmly on (or at least around) the head:

I _think_ you’re not complaining about your own “exposure” but instead feeling the pain for those people who create lovely content, which is ultimately ignored because of poor presentation. Perhaps you’re also reeling against those people who have gorgeous sites but the content is toilet.

I was surprised that there was disagreement on it, that the value of how something is “presented” (be it marketing or layout) is sometimes more important than the content itself. (Content is still important of course but…)

It’s interesting then to see this article popup in my twitter stream (via @daveconcannon): How I got a blank book to the top of the Amazon charts

He summarises how he did this in three points:

1. A great PR company, which reported stories about the item: The London PR Agency.
2. A YouTube Video – that showed me and the book too.
3. Some clear, professional images.

You could argue that “content” is the novelty of the idea or that this simply proves the exception rather than the rule. But I’m no so easily convinced. For a start the “blank book” idea isn’t new (there was one done in the 70s called “Everything Men Know About Women”) and the author, Shed Simove, says this:

I’ve launched novelty items before, and arguably some have been cleverer or funnier than this book, so why did this book become a global phenomenon?

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• My initial impressions on the Nintendo’s 3DS
• My Three Axioms of Not Being a Dick that Discriminates
• My thoughts on the new Doctor Who Episode (S06E01)
• If all web-comments were read like this!

Last Saturday we had to spend the day in the city. My daughter was doing her first (and probably her last, she doesn’t want to continue) ballet show and rehearsals were in the morning and the show itself after lunch. So, me, my wife and my three year old son wandered Dublin city for a few hours.

The city used to be my second home before we had kids. And it was lovely to spend the day with no real purpose there. Everything’s changed but it’s still the same. Different shops, same streets. It was on Grafton St. where a busker was performing. A puppeteer. We stopped and watched for a while as the “silly statue” (as my son called it), interacted with the small crowd that gathered. The puppet itself looked old like a ragged classic jester but the puppeteer played loud modern dance music. A weird mix as this puppet made modern poses to the music while pretending to “steal” passerby’s shopping. It was quite obvious the skill and art the puppeteer had in bring his puppet to life.

I explained to my son that if you enjoyed a busker’s performance you should give them some money as a thank you but he was much too shy to come near the puppet.

I’ve wrote a little about my experiences on creating something for fun and my thoughts on creating as a product. But I also think how you present and frame your outpourings is as important, if not more important, than the thing itself.

For some reason, after I saw that puppeteer performing I thought of this article where a world famous violinist decided to busk in a subway station instead of a $150 per ticket concert hall. He dressed in ordinary clothes and just played his violin. Barely anyone noticed. By any definition or expert opinion, the music would be among the best in the world.

The article kinda makes some point about people rushing too much, not slowing down to listen and other such things. But I’m not surprised either. Any urban dweller learns to tune out things, “chuggers”, buskers, blaring music, glaring advertisements, smells from rubbish trucks and restaurants, etc. Sometimes something catches your eye and sometimes, like last Saturday, you don’t mind being distracted.

The puppeteer picked a street that’s popular for busking, on a weekend when people are browsing and willing to be entertained. The street is also popular for tourists to the city. He interacted with anyone who did stop. He framed his performance. His presentation was nearly more important than his actual act: he choose the best location, time and how to engage his audience. He stood on a box so he marked himself as not someone else on the street. If, like the violinist, he had chosen to perform in a busy train station, early on work day and refused to interact with his audience, do you think he’d have gotten the crowd we saw on Saturday?

And it’s like that with the internet. People prefer short blog posts than long winding slow-to-the-point ones. The internet is so full of spam, adverts, attention-whores, me-toos, trolls, re-posts, etc. that any good internet citizen, like any urban dweller, learns to tune out these things. Normal. Though we always slow down for certain voices (like specific friends or authoritative personas, reputations), certain trends (cats) and so on.

Producing a good or great work and putting it online means nothing without promoting it and sharing it in the right places and presenting it in a way that doesn’t automatically turn people off (like say presenting it as a “wall-of-text” or as a Word document instead of a webpage).

I remember arguing years ago that putting something, like say a free RPG online, was pointless because no-one would attribute any value to it. If they had to pay for it, they’d sit up a bit more (but also expect more). To be honest, that was a terrible simplistic view point. But “free” does have it’s own value indicators.

Which brings me all the way around to me being a moany git really. My frustration at my lack of ability to better present stuff I make. It’s not about validation. Going back to my previous blog posts on “making it for fun” or “making a product”, there is some thing to be said in treating the “making it for fun” as “making it a product for fun”. Which is a whole package of skills, that make introverts like myself don’t have by default.

What say you? How much does the way something, like a free RPG or fan-fiction, is presented/packaged (artwork, layout and other media) or how it’s framed (it’s relation to other similar things, it’s author’s profile, interaction with the audience, etc.) determine how you perceive it?

Related Posts:

• The value of presentation continued
• My initial impressions on the Nintendo’s 3DS
• My Three Axioms of Not Being a Dick that Discriminates
• My thoughts on the new Doctor Who Episode (S06E01)
• If all web-comments were read like this!

I’m sure most internet geeks have heard of Wheaton’s Law: “Don’t Be a Dick!” – I’d love to think it’s that easy. However life is much more nuanced than that. People can be asses without even realising it. And so we can all discriminate, not even stopping think we’re being a dick and worse then justify it afterwards, nah, even defend it!

Despite being a white heterosexual male, the older I get the more aware I’ve become of how this plays out and it’s easy to let it slip and “forget” so I created this mental shortcut. Three axioms to remind me of how every one of us can be a “dick that discriminates” and how to sniff out the bullshit in others.

I’m not going go into huge amount of details. These three axioms distil a lot of information and concepts about discrimination and how it affects others. It’s a shortcut and certainly leaves gaping holes. I don’t keep a list of sources for the info behind these concepts either, I’m not an academic and I’m not really here to educate you (that’s you’re responsibility). But a lot of what I know about discrimination comes from these three core ideas.

It’s always important to remember, the more you try to distil real-world social-complex information down to basic points, the more information you lose. Nothing is really black and white. Everything is a shade of grey and painting it black and white means you cut everyone out except the two extremes. People, like you and me, don’t come in the two flavours: Dick and Not a Dick.

Axiom #1: We all have Privilege

Privilege has become a really loaded word these days. Everyone has some privilege over another. Though that does not make every privilege equivalent, forcing women out of the workplace because they may get pregnant is no way the same as men having to pay higher car insurance, though both are forms of discrimination.

Discrimination is based on privilege derived from your social group be it gender, race or whatever. And we all use privilege, otherwise it’s not privilege. Example, if you are rich, you will spend your money to buy better things and make better opportunities for yourself.

There are two aspects to Privilege which I find very striking and nearly form two sub axioms. It is very hard to recognise what privileges you have but it is very easy to recognise when someone has privilege over you.

Taking the rich man example. Everyone who is not rich, knows that man has money and spends it. It’s obvious to them. They may be jealous of him, they may want to be his friend in the hopes it rubs off on them. Business may give him free stuff in the hopes he spends big there later. The rich man though has become used to his money (and it’s perks) and he may even consider himself a good man, doesn’t look down on others and treats everyone equally. But sometimes he forgets that others don’t have as much money as him. He probably justifies it too, that those without money are lazy.

You may not recognise what privilege you have, but you still use it. Worse, if you don’t recognise it, you will still defend it. The rich man may get angry and defensive when someone is angry with him because he gets his way. The rich man will justify it by thinking why should he feel guilty for being rich?

If you don’t recognise what you have is privilege over another, you will justify why you are allow do some things, and others are not and/or why you should have it. Anytime you hear or read something where someone is justifying why they should be allowed do this or that or moan about why they must change their ways? Alarm-bells should ring in the back of your mind. Ask your-self are they trying to defend some privilege they don’t recognise?

Axiom #2: Equality does not mean everyone is equal

Just because something is open equally to everyone, doesn’t mean it’s equally open to everyone. I’m sure that sounds wrong to many. But it’s like Animal Farm, everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. It’s just that no-one states that last part (i.e. privilege, first axiom).

If an industry or hobby is dominated by one social group, then folks from other social groups may not be as comfortable entering the industry or hobby (subtle discrimination can play a big part here, my third axiom). “Equality” may also be framed in such as a way to encourage one type of participant over others, even though technically it’s open to all.

Why make the effort to get someone from a marginalised social grouping when you’ve got all these people over here? If someone is good enough in that other social grouping, they say, they’ll have every chance. But often the marginalised ones have to work harder to be seen than the majority or privileged social grouping. While it should be the other way round, people should work harder to ensure equality. (If you don’t recognise the privilege you have, how would you even realise this? First axiom).

Quotas are often used to try and solve or break this problem in professional areas. The come-back from those with privilege is that it devalues the ones the quotas are designed to help, because now people will think they got in by quota instead of their actual value. This would only be a valid argument if there is genuine equality in the first place. I think long term quotas can have a negative impact by signally divisions to others where equality exists, but as a short/medium term solution, it can be useful to force others to make an effort to ensure and encourage equality and equal representation.

Really this Axiom is about framing. How we frame an argument or discussion can control and determine the outcome, not the value. This is pretty powerful form of control and is used very well in politics. If you can frame the debate, you can force you’re opponents to defend themselves to their disadvantage rather than present their own side and come to a equitable answer. If we start with the idea that “we’re all equal” then it’s impossible to talk about discrimination, because how can people be marginalised if we’re all equal. We’re not all equal. Some are more equal and they don’t even know it.

Axiom #3: Difference between Subtle and Explicit Discrimination

For this one, I do have a link! “Subtle Racism Harass Brain”, though not exactly on point. What I really picked up from that and what I keep in mind is that there is a distinction between overt discrimination and subtle or ambiguous discrimination. And it affects social groups differently.

The overt kind we can all recognise. Good people, we all hope, will say no to it and not do it. But then for some groups, we may not realise the subtle or ambiguous messages we send out to others. You could probably get away with your Dick jokes, but when there is more subtle or rather ambiguous cues surrounding it, then some may get uncomfortable about it because of the overtones of such jokes.

The media influence us greatly not matter what we think. What does the media tell us? If we don’t really recognise our own privilege and we miss the subtle or ambiguous negative cues targeting other groups, coupled with stuff like filter bubbles, it’s very easy to get caught in the framing trap of “everyone is equal”.

Being a father of a daughter and a son, I worry some about the cues the world is telling them. How toys are marketed, the stereotypes directed at them from cartoons, peer pressure in schools, etc. My son seems to be keenly aware when “something is for girls” even at three, yet he loves to collect flowers, unaware that some might perceive that as “girly”. How long is that going to last?

Telling someone their stupid every day, even if they are not, at worst may make them think they are stupid and worthless or at best make them angry and unhappy. You don’t really need a degree in gender studies or marketing to see the stereotypes aim at you and others. The really blatant ones can be easy to ignore (but they still affect you) and the subtle ones can affect you without you realising. Apparently even knowing that the source of message is biased before reading can influence your later thinking.

You can forget about what privilege you have, but you consider yourself a good person so you would never explicitly be a dick to another, but what subtle or ambiguous signals do you or others in your social group give out, that you may not realise? If you think everyone is equal, why are others complaining about being marginalised or feeling uncomfortable?

So that’s the three axioms I keep in mind anytime I read a heated discussion online about sexism or  an opinion piece in a newspaper. I hope you can see how the three axioms bleed together but I’m sure they don’t give a complete picture as there are probably things I think are simply too obvious or I’m utterly unaware of.  If you have a moment, please tell me what you think in the comments. Thanks for the attention.

Related Posts:

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• Fuck content, it’s how it’s presented that matters
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Damnit! I wish I had read some spoilers because then I would have waited till the second episode next week. And then watched the two in a row. If you’re reading this, expect spoilers, you have been warned.

That was a dark and intense episode and not what I was expecting. I can’t wait to see the next one but it really felt like it was throwing the audience into the deep end with this one. Seeing the Doctor die… in the first few scenes. A little bit of mind-boggling time-messing next. Bloom’in hell. No cheery gun-ho adventure here then.

The trailer hinted at a lot of possible things, which got blown out of the water with this episode I though. There is that shot of the doctor in a strait jacket… thinking perhaps some terrible fate landed him in mental asylum, but we find in the “next week prelude” that he’s been made prisoner by the American military, which felt a little of a let-down to me. Then River Song makes some reference to a terrible day coming, worse than death… makes me think that some awful horror is going to be inflicted on the Doctor, but no, it’s just River Song lamenting that the Doctor is slowing forgetting River Song as he travels in the opposite direction to her. While it does add pathos to their story, it suddenly felt that scenes had been inserted into the episode, just to use in the trailer and that the trailer is indicative of nothing.

And of course I can’t really make any predications for the next episode, it is Doctor Who. They do have a tendency to upend expectations. The new aliens are rather cool, with their “blink”-like forget me if you not looking at me thing. There was a couple of odd things, the future Doctor said something like, lets go somewhere I’ve never been, 1964. But then that’s where the current Doctor and companions end up. Isn’t that interfering in his own timeline? Is that the get-out clause of the Doctor’s death?

I’m not sure Amy’s pregnant either… if Amy is only basing that on her bursts of sickness, River had the same after seeing the Aliens. For a moment at the end I thought that the little girl in the space suit was actually Amy’s future child but I find that unlikely (but not impossible). Would give a reason why the future Doctor let himself die (so that the child could survive)? And if that is the thing that Aliens want Amy to tell the Doctor, what’s the relationship between the spaceman, Amy’s child, the Doctor and the Aliens? (Seriously it can’t be Amy’s future child…)

Also, that spaceship they found… didn’t that look eerily like the freaky time machine that was killing people in the episode “the lodger” (S05E09)? Are the Aliens time travellers then too? Or is the spaceman or the little girl a hologram of the spaceship or vessel for it’s pilot?

Too many questions, head going to explode!

Related Posts:

• Tardis Translation Error, a little reason why I love Doctor Who
• The value of presentation continued
• Fuck content, it’s how it’s presented that matters
• My Three Axioms of Not Being a Dick that Discriminates
• Look, being a parent is not what you expect or think it is

This article entered my media stream a little while ago and it may surprise you, it annoyed me. I was surprised when I read the comments on the post how people were affected by the post and how they felt it was so true.

The article gives off about a scene the blogger witnessed:

As Noah and I stood in line to make a return, I watched as a little boy (he couldn’t have been older than six) looked up at his dad and asked very timidly if they could buy some ice cream when they were done. The father glared him down, and through clenched teeth, growled at the boy to “leave him alone and be quiet”. The boy quickly cowered to the wall where he stood motionless and hurt for some time.

The line slowly progressed and the child eventually shuffled back to his father as he quietly hummed a childish tune, seemingly having forgotten the anger his father had just shown. The father again turned and scolded the boy for making too much noise. The boy again shrunk back and cowered against the wall, wilted.

…

We were three from the front now, and the boy started to come towards his dad yet again. His dad immediately stepped out of the line, jammed his fingers into his son’s collar bones until he winced in pain, and threatened him. “If you so much as make a sound or come off of that wall again, I promise you’re going to get it when we get home.” The boy again cowered against the wall. This time, he didn’t move. He didn’t make a sound. His beautiful face pointed down, locked to the floor and expressionless. He had been broken. And that’s how his father wanted it. He didn’t want to deal with him, and breaking him was the easiest way.

Now as a father myself I have a big issue with anyone that uses any sort of physical punishment. I believe that slapping is never required. That father should not have jammed his finger like that. That’s not what the article is about or rather not exactly, because it goes on, saying what fathers should be.

Damn it. I don’t understand that, and I’ll never understand that. Loving my son, building my son, touching my son, playing with my son, being with my son… these aren’t tasks that only super dads can perform. These are tasks that every dad should perform. Always. Without fail. There is nothing special about me. I am a dad who loves his son and would literally do anything for his well-being, safety, and health. I would gladly take a rake in the face or a jackhammer to my feet before I cut my own son down or make him feel small.

“Without fail”, huh? Really? Okay, by that standard I’m not even a good Dad! I love my kids, I’ll do anything for them. But I’m human and I shout at my kids, way more than I like. They make me angry. I’m tired.

Dads. Wake up! These precious souls that have been put into your care are unique and so very sensitive. Everything you say or don’t say will impact their ability, success, and happiness throughout their entire lives.

I understand the sentiment of the article, I do. I can’t justify physical abuse of any kind against children. But then saying that Dads have to be perfect beings, all the time, that a single moment of failure will affect your child forever, isn’t helping! It’s quite the opposite, it’s setting you up for failure. Aspire to perfection and if you can’t make it or you slip, even a little, well you’ve just broken your child. Forever. That’s putting more stress on top of already stressful work, that’s the last thing you need to do. It’s not what you want to tell parents. Let me explain further.

It’s only 9pm in the evening when I start writing this, my kids are finally in bed, hopefully asleep. I’m struggling to write this post as I’m fighting the tiredness, seriously, it’s only 9pm and I could crawl up to bed right now and be asleep in minutes. It’s Thursday nearly the end of the week, but it’s not like the weekends are particularly restful with the kids activities and their inability to sleep past 7am. I’ve been up since 6am, getting the kids up, dressed and ready to school, then work for 8 hours (or more), late lunch, then picked up the kids (my wife brought them to school) who seemed to be bouncing off the walls with energy this evening. I then struggled to get their dinner and get them bathed by myself (as my wife has to work later than usual). My son is still potting training, so in the middle of this balancing act I had to clean poo from his trousers and his legs while he refuses to stand in one place (he thinks it’s a game, to run off with poo on his legs and he’s feck’in fast!). And that isn’t the half of it. My point? It’s not easy. It’s barely fun.

I’ve practiced meditation for years, but I’d have to be a zen master to keep calm all the time. Thankfully my wife and myself tag team. When it gets too much, I walk away from the kids and calm down and my wife takes over. And vice-versa. The article writer is right, getting angry with your kid doesn’t help the kid, but it also doesn’t help you. Anger begets anger, something I learned recently thanks to the Internet again, it’s better to calm down and defocus.

On the other side, my son babbled to me about a new game he did in school and my daughter decided that my new hair cut is super soft and kept trying to rub my head. I read my son a story about Fionn, a Celtic mythic hero, and a dragon and my daughter decided she would call me her “fuzzy bear”. We listened as my daughter tried reading from a reading-along book. These are wonderful, joyful, moments. More important than poo on trousers.

I came across a phrase that describes parenting pretty well: “All Joy and No fun”. It’s hard work and we modern parents have a tendency to stress ourselves out much more than our parents did. I got this phrase from the title of this article, one which I think gives a very good idea of what modern parenting is like. Really, read it. Parents are not happier than non-parents, it’s a myth to think parents are happier because they have kids, one I find very hard to understand why people believe it. We may feel more content in one way, but not happier. Do you know, we spend more time with our kids than our parents did with us, yet we still think it’s not enough?

Take this scene described in that article:

’m going to count to three.”

It’s a weekday evening, and the mother in this videotape, a trim brunette with her hair in a bun and glasses propped up on her head, has already worked a full day and made dinner. Now she is approaching her 8-year-old son, the oldest of two, who’s seated at the computer in the den, absorbed in a movie. At issue is his homework, which he still hasn’t done.

“One. Two …”

“I have to get it to the part and then pause it,” says the boy.

“No,” says his mother. “You do that after you do your homework.”

Tamar Kremer-Sadlik, the director of research in this study, has watched this scene many times. The reason she believes it’s so powerful is because it shows how painfully parents experience the pressure of making their children do their schoolwork. They seem to feel this pressure even more acutely than their children feel it themselves.

The boy starts to shout. “It’s not going to take that long!”

His mother stops the movie. “I’m telling you no,” she says. “You’re not hearing me. I will not let you watch this now.”

He starts up the movie again.

“No,” she repeats, her voice rising. She places her hand firmly under her son’s arm and starts to yank. “I will not have this— ”

Been there (though I would not do the physical pulling part). Been there every morning when it’s 7.30am and I know if we leave just 5 minutes later we’ll be 20 minutes late (stupid Dublin traffic), yet my son doesn’t want to go because he’s started playing with his cars. I’ve got them dressed, brushed their teeth, got breakfast ready for them, readied their bags and got their coats and winter hats ready. I’m running at 100mph, but my son is at 0mph wanting to play with his cars. It’s like running into a glass door. But I shouldn’t get angry right? I should cherish this moment, I wouldn’t want to break my child right?

It’s easy the first time to not get upset. You change the routine the next day, give more time to the kids in the morning. Get up even earlier. Prep the stuff in the evening first, biting into that precious, child-free-time. And so on, but there is only so much you can do. And every day you’re rushing at 100mph and some morning, one of the kids won’t want to rush. Hey, they’re kids. Or instead they’ve woken up in the middle of the night, so you only get two chunks of a few hours sleep or they wake up an hour before you have to get up. That’s a real killer. How can you not get angry and annoyed at this point? Please tell me how? I have a tendency to just shut-down when I get so exasperated about it. My energy just goes out of me. It’s not the kids fault, but you can’t keep emotions under check all the time, you aren’t Spock. I just wonder how anyone can be such a “good” Dad (or Mom) 24/7? Parents are people.

My wife and myself use to watch “Law and Order SVU” a lot, not at all now. I remember one episode about a baby that had been shaken and had died. Lots of twisty turns and it ends up the single mother did it and tried to blame it on the babysitter. The mother couldn’t handle the baby crying all the time (this was before Facebook/Farmville was the excuse). But it was at the end of the episode that had an impact on me, when Detective Elliot describes a moment when his child wouldn’t shut up crying in the middle of the night and he found himself about to shake his child. The inference was that any parent, give the “right” circumstances, could be pushed to the edge. Of course, being an entertainment show, it little more than pure fear-mongering. But there is a grain of truth in there.

I have different advice for parents.

Dads (and Moms too of course), enjoy every moment you can with your child. There is no such thing as “quality time”, all time is “quality time”. Cherish them, cherish the memory. Love them every way you can. Make them your priority over everything else. Enjoy them for who they are and who they’ll become. Because this will get you over the dark times. The times when you’re tired and can’t handle it. The times, in the middle of the night, when the baby is screaming and you haven’t slept properly in weeks. The times when the family is so tired and stressed out wandering around a shopping mall that getting a coffee seems like an insurmountable chore and your son is demanding (or at least to your stress-addled brain it appears that they are demanding) something you told them they can’t have 10 minutes ago.

Dads. Play with them when you can and when you can’t. It’s often when you don’t feel up to playing with them that they can make you the happiest. Understand that they just want your attention and your love. Even when they do “bold” things, they do it because they want you.

Dads. Know that you will get angry. Know that you will get depressed. Frustrated. Know that you will not be happy. Just don’t take it out on your children. Walk away, take a breath. Let chaos happen for a while. It’ll pass. Make sure you have things to keep you sane, be it’s friends, gaming or writing a blog. Remember that you’re still a human being.

Dads. Understand there are other ways to discipline your child. In this day and age there are enough books, TV shows and courses that slapping should be completely unnecessary. Don’t let anger cloud your judgement because you are much stronger than your kids, more than you probably realise. Catch yourself before you do something. It’s the kids job to push their boundaries, which means pushing your buttons. And believe me, they get good at it quickly.

Dads. Don’t expect your child to be perfect. Don’t expect your child to be a genius. They’ll be who they’ll be and know they won’t always do what you want them to or be what you want them to be. When you can, go at their pace. It may be slow, but it’ll be worth it.

Dads. Try to be good parents. It’s hard, but make sure there is more good than bad. Be there. And yes, what you do will affect your child, often in ways you can’t perceive yet. Try to be better, because they’ll learn from you even the things you try to hide from them. But that’s important too.

And Dads, you’re not alone.

I could probably write more, but lets leave it that.

Now I’m in work, the next morning, considering hitting the publish button. I have my doubts I should post this. The kids were great this morning, up and full of energy. Running around like bulls in a plastic shop. My daughter got dressed herself and my younger son was full of hugs and play. I love my kids and would do anything for them. But I’m also not just a parent and neither is my wife. The kids were at school early this morning.

Related Posts:

• Parental Time Zone
• The value of presentation continued
• Fuck content, it’s how it’s presented that matters
• My Three Axioms of Not Being a Dick that Discriminates
• My thoughts on the new Doctor Who Episode (S06E01)

For some reason I was thinking about the differences between Facebook and Twitter but within the scope of designing a roleplaying game. Yea, odd connections I know. That’s how my brain works and why I’m pretty much a scatter brain about things.

When designing or modifying a roleplaying system (for pen-and-paper here like DnD, not computer games), there are two levels. First is designing a game that’s playable, the second level is designing an experience. For example White Wolf’s Vampire games try to model and hence allow the players experience the Vampires’ losing grip on their humanity, via the humanity (WOD1.0) or morality trait. We insert restrictions and limitations into the system to help better focus the player’s experience and fun. Individual GMs and player groups additionally apply their own restrictions (to better focus the story-experience they want to use). Sometimes players grumble but most of the time it’s accepted and even seen as good.

With software and particularly social media websites, we look at features. What features does it have. Facebook has it all: status updates, photos, link sharing, privacy settings (debatable), filtering, “likes”, and so on. Twitter has a very small, strict subset of features: status updates, following, minimal privacy settings… But where Twitter wins out is the experience. And it does this, like in roleplaying game design, by inserting restrictions.

The big thing: 140 characters. Sometimes I use two tweets to say something, but I try to avoid that. If you can’t say it in 140 characters, post it somewhere else and link, or don’t post at all (it’s probably not worth it anyway). By restricting a tweet to 140 characters, you avoid over long and often boring posts but it also improves readership. Most people now skim through headlines or titles of posts in RSS/News Readers… but if the headlines are the posts, aren’t you skimming it by reading the full content?

I also love the way replies work compared to Facebook’s or even traditional commenting systems. You only see replies from people you follow. It allows conversations to generate as people see only people they know engaged in the discussion. I find reading comments from people I don’t know on a Facebook post on someone I only half know, annoying, in fact a bit of disincentive to comment. Or when you see a post from a band or a group and it already has 114 comments… why would I bother when my comment will be lost in the sea of existing comments. But if you feel (not necessarily think) that you’re first to reply, you’ll probably will then and if you see only your friends reply, you may reply or even reply to your friends. It’s restriction created by the interface but helps focus and improve the experience, much like explicit limitations of roleplaying games.

Which is why I think I don’t like Buzz (there goes my scatter brain making links out of no where). Leaving aside the privacy issues of Google Buzz’s launch, the second mistake was importing all your other feeds associated in some way with your Google account. Twitter works because of it’s restrictions, importing it into Buzz, it falls over. You lose all the wonderful reply experiences I describe above and copy over the disincentives of Facebook. It doesn’t even format them very well, long ‘RTs’ are cut off at the end. It’s not as obvious now because Buzz, at least among my circle of contacts, isn’t as busy or full as Facebook yet. Yet Buzz isn’t even as feature rich as Facebook, so it doesn’t even have that going for it. While I don’t mind using a single Google account to manage my Google Analytics for my websites, my email, my Google Reader, etc. importing all that into a single “social media” stream seems a bit creepy because I may not want them all publically associated with one person and there isn’t enough ways to control it. You either import you’re entire website feed, or twitter feed, or not at all. At least with Facebook there are apps that you can use to selectively import website posts and twitter feeds.

And even with what Buzz does import, the layout is strange. Buzz is trying to overlay a traditional but nice and clean interface over interfaces that work because they are non-traditional.

In my simple and uninformed opinion, Buzz should have been part of Google Reader, which already has social features I use (sharing items with friends with comments and likes). It shouldn’t have tried to auto-populate itself by importing all your other feeds or all your email contacts. It should have focused on figuring out how to improve the experience, even by restricting what it does. Shows us our friends in a different way.

Okay, that’s my ramble over for today.

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Back when I was wee, there was a TV show called Quantum Leap. Quantum Leap was about a Scientist named Sam Beckett who got caught in a botched experiment and ended up “leaping” into people in the past (but within his lifetime) and changing and improving their lives. Putting aside the whole “higher power” thingy going on, it was a great idea.

I remember when a teenager discussing with my friend what you do if you leapt back in time to a younger you. It was a fun thought-exercise. And for some reason I started thinking yesterday… “what if I, the adult me, leapt back into being a teenager?”

The amazing thing I realised was that I’m a completely different person. Completely. My attitude, my opinions and my perspective are all different. Besides all the knowledge that I’ve accumulated (which would be enormous advantage… imagine knowing how big the web is going to go big…), the way I approach things and life has changed. Part of that is probably becoming a father, your priorities change but also part of it is just life experiences, getting married, buying a house, working in a professional environment and so on.

While I would never willing leap back to being a teenager, I realised that I’d wouldn’t want to change anything either, good or bad. It’s not about regret or not regretting. I love my wife, love my kids. Changing the past, even subtly, could change everything that I hold dear.

What a life-affirming conclusion!

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I only offer one possible explanation (there may be others) but this one certainly applies to me. By trade, I’m a Software Engineer and, as my project leader said “you’re being paid to be pedantic.” This is quite true: I have to be pedantic, because that thing that fucks up shit at some point in the future (i.e. the devil) is in the details. So I dissect, criticize and over-analysis stuff. You wouldn’t want it any other way though (just think about the software that runs in your set-top-box or medical equipment even).  This need to critically analysis stuff spills into everything else I do though.

It’s not bad, it just means we see more “levels” to things. Take a flower, sure we can appreciate it’s beauty and why others find it beautiful, but we also appreciate it’s construction, the clever mechanisms of it’s survival and how it gets insects to carry it’s seeds and so on. Same with the movies we love, and because we love them, we take them apart, argue over what seem like trivia to others, recognise their flaws, etc. It doesn’t diminish our love for such things, but sure as heck pisses everyone else off. (Not that I have a problem appreciating something at a surface level. I love drawing and despite my amateur skills, I enjoy studying the surface and physical level nature of things when I draw).

My wife sometimes cuts me off when I correct our six year old daughter, because not only do I give the basic correction to her simply mistake, I try to address the underlying mistaken assumptions. I try to share with her my love of the details underneath.

It’s why, being a huge fan of Lord of the Rings (I’ve read all the books only three times so I’m not heavyweight) I didn’t like the movies but I accepted and enjoyed them for what they were.

Of course the side-effect is that with experience it makes you cynical. It’s why we hate marketing and “buzz” as it appears to be an attempt to gloss over and even give a different impression of (what we expect to be) the details. And to us, someone who is very enthusiastic about something can sometimes appear to be either a fool who hasn’t looked under the surface or a salesperson.

In conclusion, some of us geeks/nerds are pedants with good reason and hence we can appear to hate the things we love because we appear to be over-critical (but we are simply enjoying it in a different way).

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There is an interesting discussion going on right now over on the igaming mailing list (and cross-posted to LiveJournal), but one I’ve consciously chosen not to comment on. The people involved have much bigger stakes in it than I ever have and I’ve had my share of being on the virtual battleground but I have little to add on this.

So I guess I’m doing it here. If you take the time, read the original post. It’s roughly about now in the year that some argument occurs (though the last few years have been quiet). The discussion is about how scenarios, or rather TableTop RPGs, are run at Irish Conventions. Apparently we do it differently to everyone else and one of the “old hands” in the scene has strongly suggested that cons change the way they do things.

Unlike most of the people involved in the discussion, I’ve only GMed at a few conventions, submitted only two (may be three, I can’t exactly remember) scenarios, attend conventions every few years and I’m not really part of the “scene” though I know a lot of the oldies and some of the younger ones by face or name. We’re a small enough country you know.

I’ve GMed at conventions but only in my younger teenage years (15+ years ago, maybe even more), when the offer of free entry and T-shirt were a big thing for me. I ran only systems I knew but I barely remember the experience. I do remember being called up a few days before one Gaelcon and being asked if I’d GM some game because I did it the year before, I could hardly refuse. I remember as youngster it was the systems I knew that I want to play.

As I entered collage, I wasn’t really involved at that level again. The only scenarios I submitted were because friends asked me to, no other reason. I put a lot of effort into them at time, getting them in on time, trying to layout them out to support GMs, etc. But I found as a newbie scenario writer, I was given the short stick for a lot of it. My second scenario was ran on the dreaded Sunday morning slots where one of the players arrived and promptly fell asleep, because, like everyone else, he had been out drinking at the pub quiz the night before.

The complaint in this discussion is that numbers are dwindling and the organisation behind scenario submissions and finding GMs is breaking down. Writers submit their scenarios late, GMs don’t get them until five minutes before the session starts, everything is a mess and with dwindling numbers, it’s just badness. The solution, proposed, is that the writer is the GM and there is only one table per scenario (ran by the writer). So no bad GMs to run that scenario, but then you have lack of tables, people don’t get to play the games they want, and so on.

I have to agree, at the few conventions I’ve been at, I’ve been lumbered with GMs who didn’t know the system but knew thew world (we still had a good game), with GMs who only got the scenario as we sat down (that game sucked) and games that didn’t run because there wasn’t enough players. Hell, in one case, I heard about game that was going to be scheduled and offered to be a GM, but that fell apart because of not enough players.

From my writer perspective though, it was always a one writer-table experience. Unless you’re one of the “superstars” of the scene or writing one of the stable games (like D&D or in the olden days Vampire), you only ever got one table. Most of the games I’d like to play are not the big name games (and this was before the big “indie revolution”), I play those with my regular troupe, it’s the unusual or less popular ones that I grab my interest. They regularly only have one or maybe two tables. To me it seems like we have the two systems already in place, but then I don’t have the vast amount of con-experience to validate that assessment.

So on side we have the big popular games or writers with several tables and GMs running the scenarios. This is the given impression of how cons are ran. And on the other side then, lesser popular or well known games and writers often only get one table (possible two).  So it already looks like, to me, we have a hybrid system of multiple GM to one scenario and single-table-writer-GM scenarios. The commonality is how the scenario is submitted to the con as a scenario writer must assume that other GMs may read their scenario and can’t just run with a few notes in their head.

So is the issue really with the scenario submission process? Should it be more flexible, lower the bar to get more in or raise the bar to get only the high level of quality? Or am I missing the fundamental difference in the two styles of organization?

It would seem to me that the clog in the pipe is the scenarios received by a con more than anything else. Cons need to have a better submission process that encourage new writers to contribute but keeps a high level of quality. Not easy I guess when everyone involved is volunteers. The more I think and write about it, the more it seems to me that conventions are like publishers in many ways. They need to be to maintain a high level of quality of submission. Yet unlike publishers there is very little feedback from the cons until the actual day of the convention (i.e. the public launch of the scenario in a live game), (in my experience but if yours differs, that great). If you don’t care about the quality than the model needs to change and give more flexibility to writer/GMs to just run stuff.

If we keep the old way, you need more writers to get involved. I think the first thing to do is reduce the foreseeable “barriers to entry” as much as possible, provide some sort of enticement to get new writers in and then provide good and decent feedback before the convention.

For example, one of the “barriers” people throw about is that people don’t know how to write scenarios and so there should be workshops and guides etc. These are all great but don’t necessarily encourage writers to submit their work to cons. Perhaps cons could start with a “Style Guide” that gives suggestions on format and layout, sections/chapters and notes on readability, much like you’d get from a publisher who may solicit freelance work. Of course they shouldn’t necessarily be about how to design the scenario though as there is “more than one way to skin a cat”, but guides and references are always useful, if well presented. You could use the wiki to “crowd-source” it even.

Also, why not promote the scenarios submitted last year? Make them available from the con website, with snippets of positive quotes from the players. I always find it odd that last year is forgotten, websites deleted and and the scenarios get banked and gather dust. I don’t see an issue with an old scenario being run again if there is demand for it. Also, by using last years scenarios as promotional material you’re also playing to the ego of the writers, encouraging them to come back and write more this year.

And you need to entice writers as early as possible. Awards don’t do it BTW. Not saying awards are bad, they serve their own function, but only one person can win an award, the rest are losers. You don’t want you’re new writers to be losers, you want them to write for the con next year. I know cons aren’t going to pay writers, and while it’s nice to provide them with snacks and give free entry, its not a particular enticement for someone like me. It’s nice, but really not enough. Instead it’s the little bit extra that con might do. As way of example, I write some free software. People  use it and come back to me for support. A small small minority of users will donate a few Euros my way to say thanks. That’s nice. I also provide a wish list of books and that is really really nice when I receive a surprise parcel with one of those books. It’s how I discovered Watchmen. Those little things, are what keep me developing the software and trying to help and support the users. GreyGhost who publish Fudge RPG, for example, will send you free stuff if you run a fudge game at a convention. So to get new writers and keep them, there has to be that little extra something to entice them and keep them. Perhaps a free signed RPG book, a piece of art from a local artist or even getting their scenario illustrated for example. I don’t know whats available to the budget or ingenuity of con RPG organisers, but it doesn’t have to be expensive. Con goers know what to expect from the con experience, but it’s that little bit extra that can make it memorable.

There are less physical ways too, such as proper feedback. If you have a hard deadline for scenarios and those that arrive on time should be reviewed and feedback provided back to the author. For a new writer, knowing that someone took the time to actually read the work in its entirety and make a point of providing useful feedback is great. In fact, feeding to the egos of the writers is cheap but just as effective as physical gifts. Send them a copy of the con pamphlet with their name highlight and their scenario listed.

In the end however, we’ve got to recognise that on all levels of these experiences are people who volunteer and provide their creativity and effort for very little return. So I can imagine it’s hard to change the way things are done or to take criticism from people like me who haven’t done their time. So I offer my thoughts as is.

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I only a few minutes to blog today, on the last day of 2008. I may not even get to finish this post, depending on when my son wakes up from his nap. I don’t have a checklist or wishlist of things I had planned to do this year. Nor do I intend to do it for next year. Too many things have happened this year that it would be unfair to summaries as a bullet point in a meme. The scary thing is that it only seems like yesterday that it was the previous Christmas as I can vividly remember what the kids got then and now.

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas and that next year brings you good things.

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