roadtrip music

Have been spending time this week digging through my current iTunes library (~12,000 songs) looking for the tracks that sound the best when on the road. Have come up with an "On The Road" playlist of around 2,400 songs. Now I just need a six-day roadtrip to test it all out.

[Note: I don't actually prefer giant playlists like that; they're too unshapely. So the On The Road playlist will actually form the raw material from which iTunes will auto-generate a "Smart Road Playlist," which will be a more-manageable 25 songs in total. So it can really be tested out perfectly fine on a shorter roadtrip of about two hours.]

Anyone want to recommend a favorite album to listen to while driving?

Labels: music_commentary, personal, projects

Sunday, April 04, 2010
10:49 PM
2 comments

inevitable news

Whew, I've been busy lately, and I'm sorry to have been letting this blog languish. I've been really active elsewhere on the Internet (Facebook, etc) but I'd really hate to let this blog die forever. (I am going to need to figure something out in another few weeks, when Blogger ceases its support of FTP publishing...)

But anyway. The number one thing I've been blasting away on lately is the Inevitable project, which shouldn't come as a surprise, given that the only posts on this blog for both March and February are Inevitable-related.

The latest: I re-designed the look-and-feel of the in-game Catalog to make it easier for new players to find what they're looking for. Four complete pages (and a bunch of other junk) are available for free preview over at the Inevitable "leaks blog."

I also generated a promotional postcard (using these folks) and distributed tons of them at gamer Mecca PAX East. Whether this was a useful endeavor has yet to be determined, but if you want to see the front of the postcard, this link may work.

Next piece of merch-like stuff is stickers, I think.

The last piece of exciting news is that Jon Leistiko, Inevitable's co-designer, just got nominated for an Origins Award for Best New Card Game (for his earlier game, "The Isle of Dr. Necreaux"). So Inevitable is now officially a game "co-designed by Origin Award Nominee Jonathan Leistiko." Bonus!

Labels: personal, projects

Friday, April 02, 2010
12:09 PM
0 comments

call for funding

Saturday, March 06, 2010
2:22 PM
0 comments

i made this, part three: "inevitable"

Inevitable is a board game, set in a slapstick dystopian future.

Inevitable is a work of commentary, satirizing the contemporary landscape of corporate and political power.

Inevitable is a device which uses what Matthew Kirschenbaum would call the "procedural granularity" of complex rule-systems to produce robust narrative experiences in a deep imaginary world.

"Inevitable is a game of layers within layers; the product of analysis, deconstruction, reconstruction, and meta-analysis. [It] overtly and covertly works to thwart you and subvert the board game experience overall." —Jonathan Leistiko, the game's co-designer.

So... what is Inevitable, really? It's something that I began designing a long time ago—the earliest sketches I own of Inevitable materials are from 1988. It's something I have continued to tinker with, on and off, throughout the years: it enjoyed heavy play and extended development with my college crew circa 1991-1993, and then went into a re-development process in 1999-2000, right after I finished up with graduate school. Now it's alive again, and slouching towards a commercial release. It has a dedicated website and you can follow it at Facebook.

Is it playable? It is playable! I just playtested it again this Sunday.

Is it perfect? No, it's not perfect. (These recent playtests have reminded me often of game designer Jesse Schell's "Rule of the Loop," in which he declares that "The more times you test and improve your design, the better your game will be.") But tinkering incrementally with a long-running piece of design feels strangely satisfying at this point in my life.

Labels: game_design, me, projects

Monday, February 01, 2010
8:43 AM
0 comments

i made this, part two: a baby book

Not long ago, I wrote the following on Facebook: "As someone who does not have children and who does not particularly like babies, one would not think I would be a good person to illustrate a baby book. And yet I think I did a surprisingly good job."

Yes, it was an improbable turn. But my collaborator Amy L. Clark had written a baby book, and needed some illustrations, and I've been trying to draw more, so... we came together on it.

She wrote passages like this: "Eventually, you became a child. Most people are so busy being children that they end up being young people for a long time. There are important things to do during a childhood, some fun, some scary, some mysterious, some which require practice, many of which make a bit of a mess. You _______ and once you ________."

and I accompanied her passages with illustrations like this:

See four other illustrations (and the accompanying text) here. Copies of this baby book are not presently for sale, but if that changes you'll of course hear about it.

Labels: i made this, illustrations, projects

Thursday, January 28, 2010
7:24 PM
0 comments

i made this, part one: "know your polyhedra" six-button set

OK, so this is the part where I start talking about things I've made, like I promised.

First up is my recently completed six-button set, "Know Your Polyhedra." Anyone who has done much in the way of tabletop gaming should instantly recognize the commonality between these six dice geometric solids:

They come in a nifty little packet with a hand-numbered inlay card:

Mostly I just wanted to show these off, but if you're enough of a math nerd or a gamer geek that these make you itch with desire, I'll shoot a set your way for $5.95—less than $1 per button! Just pop in on my humble Etsy storefront. The proceeds are going into the coffers of another gamer-related project that's in the pipe... but more on that later.

Labels: i made this, projects

Saturday, January 23, 2010
1:27 PM
0 comments