Coronas Hide

Being the judge’s understudy was staining Zimn’s soul. Propelled inexorably ahead on rails of faith and obligation, Zimn carried out his grim assignment. He told himself, as the judge did, that high stakes warranted extraordinary action. It was hard to believe. “Am I the sacrifice, or am I the cause?” He felt sick.

Here is something that I have wanted to do for a long, long time, which is to blogify the pile of philosophy notes I still have left over from university. I was a marvelous student, but aimless. I blundered into graduating with two majors that I didn’t know what to do with, and made the bewildering choice to decline a minor in philosophy even though I had the credits to do it. Anyway, I am reasonably sure that with very few exceptions I took all the philosophy courses that were available at my little country alma mater. The other perplexing thing about … Continue Reading

Here is the second part of what I began with the origin-skill-trait chart. The idea here is to go through the “lifepath” to borrow Burning Wheel term of your guardmouse, building up a history as you go. Not every decision point gets fleshed out. Telling the story of every single skill acquisition would get stale, and would take forever too. So it’s just the main points, although it focuses a lot on the early stages of life. There are many other questions I might try to add to these charts over time — we’ll see. The charts don’t take into account Nature, … Continue Reading

I studied literature in school, in both French and English. It may not be apparent to an English speaker who didn’t study French literature, but to do any reasonable criticism you need to change mental gears and come at the book as a French speaker would. Language is more than just a code for ideas. History and worldview are part of language, and if you don’t understand that you won’t understand the book. You might pick up the basic plot, but so much of it will make so little sense that you’ll come away with just a hazy concept of … Continue Reading

I download the Mouse Guard playing card set (available from here), scrubbed all the text off the conflict cards, and put my own text on instead. I did it for two reasons. First, the text was rasterized, and as a design professional this offends my soul. (Just kidding, I don’t have a soul. But text through a JPEG meatgrinder like that. Ouch, man. I appreciate why it was done, but I can still hear a sad little dirge for every artifact-laden letter-halo.) The second reason was because I didn’t find the text entirely helpful. I … Continue Reading

I think the Mouse Guard recruitment section is well done (as is all of MG) but it is missing two things to make it really great. First, it’s not apparent from the text that this should be a collaborative process. Nobody should be making this stuff up in a vacuum. You bounce each piece off the other players and the GM, everyone contributing. Second, I wish there was more guidance, or at least a set of questions, to turn character-building choices into roleplaying backstory. My inclination is to build some of this second part. We’ll see how it goes. … Continue Reading

People without religious faith are often flabbergasted by the things believers say in defense of their beliefs, not least because what can come out of their mouths is unequivocally false.  Atheists will joke about “lying for Jesus” — the idea that Christians, or people of any faith, would deliberately lie in order to prevent believers from doubting, or to bring doubters back into the fold, or even better to convince the unbeliever to believe. Could they not know they are lying? Well, it’s possible, but as far as I can detect they’ll continue to employ the lie even after the … Continue Reading

Creationists point to the eye as evidence of design. This is a sorry strategy, because the human eye is not very well put together. But it isn’t the poorness of the design that gets me, though, it’s the inability to explain the poorness that I find most intriguing. This, I find, is absurdly common in religious belief. When confronted with the question of why the eye sees things upside down, for instance, the creationist must shrug his shoulders and proclaim that this is a mystery we are not meant to understand. What this really means, or ought to mean to … Continue Reading