Game Pile: Most of the Quest for Glory Franchise (1-4) (Video)
Thumbnail and script below the fold!
Continue Reading →Repugnus
I talk about Transformers from time to time. It could be assumed that I’ve watched a lot of the shows and movies that make up this franchise, but the reality is that not only have I not watched much of it, but what I’ve watched has been sporadic. Transformers is a series broken into pieces that we sometimes refer to with big, broad, sweeping terms like ‘Generation 1’, but understand that there are at least 28 tv series of definitely Transformers media, and a lot of other things that connect but which most Transformers fans have nothing to do with.
I’ve read some books, I may have read a few comics, but for the most part, my experience of Transformers as a media form is character guides. Back in 1987, the relentless media machine published a paperback book called Transformers Universe, which I was deeply invested in as a gift from my grandmother, and it explained all the different personalities and complexities of the different characters that would absolutely never show up in the TV series, but which I assumed was there.
The Transformers Profile Card has been stamped on my brain as the predominant ‘canon’ of the Transformers universe, and it means that for all that I love these stories and these characters, the stories are largely the ones in my head that connect to these profile cards. Sometimes this means I have a hook into a character that the series actually expresses clearly, like Blades. Sometimes it means I learn about the lore of a character in a way I think is really interesting, like the monster gestalts.
Let me tell you then, about the character of Repugnus, a character who basically appears nowhere and does nothing.
Continue Reading →Dev Pile 2025-14 — Prompt Refinement And Final Product
Well, generative image software has been around for a few years now and it has managed to reach a level of popularity and success that makes it roughly as exciting to most people as in-mall advertisements. The aesthetic of Shrimp Jesus and its associated horrorshows have created an existing language of fascist aesthetics, which is also fascinating because of how the worst people in the world seem to agree on the worst possible choices for this kind of trash. But the tools are capable of more than that and notably, the tools produce stuff like that when you’re using them to produce bulk volume garbage.
Because this month I’ve been working with students to understand these generative tools — to both recognise them, understand their limits and their applications — I brought up a meaningful use case for them . Specifically, one of the use cases is to make prototype art quickly rather than use unrelated stand-in art to help a prototype feel more real.
Content and Spoiler Warning: There’s going to be some examples of generative images in this post, and a discussion of how to get them.
Continue Reading →Talen Month 2025!
Hey, it’s Talen Month, again! Short summary, in April I spend my time indulging my desire to talk about things I like!
“Hang on, this is your blog you’ve been writing for twelve years, don’t you normally do what you like?
You, probably
It’s a little more complicated than that and it’s really stupid and it involves talking about dessert.
Content Warning: Food?
Continue Reading →Story Pile: Orblivion, by The Orb
Well, let’s get well the hell out of my comfort zone shall I?
Orblivion is the fourth studio album by English electronic music group the Orb. It came out in 1997, and it was published by some people, and made by some other people. I always feel cautious about just how much of my introduction can just be copied from wikipedia, and because if you’re not familiar with the people or the industry, they’re just names. It’s just noise. Telling you this album is from 1997 kinda informs some of how it works, because there is meaningful history here (and I’ll get into it), but telling you if it was Fat Wreck Chords or Nuclear Pizza or Sofa Kings publishing (it was none of them) doesn’t mean anything unless you’re already in a conversation where those names are relevant or I’m going to make them relevant.
Orblivion is an album of electronic music, and I am told by again, Sir Wiki of Pedia, that it is known as IDM. I thought this would mean ‘industrial dance music,’ but turns out it’s ‘Intelligent’ Dance Music, which … sure? I guess? I have no idea how to describe what that is.
March 2025 Wrapup!
It has been a fraught month full of happenstance and circumstance, and I sit here, at the end of the month of March with a platter of articles and stories to share with you, in case you missed some of it. This simple stop is meant to give you a chance to see articles you may have missed and gives me a chance to reflect on what I did in an otherwise very busy month.
Battletrap!
Transformers is dumb.
I love talking about Transformers, because as a rule, the narratives presented in their stories and story space are told with a deadset seriousness that also means absolutely nothing. It is a little child playing let’s-pretend with the object permanence of an adult wiki composer. Any detail that gets pulled out because ‘that’ll do, for the moment’ gets tracked for later re-use by someone looking for inspiration or just something to do with what is otherwise some very thin soup. What’s more, as a long-running franchise of its type, there’s a value and legitimacy to making new material that references old material, helping to reinforce that Transformers is a media space with its own meaningful identity.
In that space, I want to tell you about a beloved fave that I didn’t know about until last year: Battletrap.
Game Pile: High Magic Lowlives
Ah, a concept can get you so very far.
High Magic Lowlives is an indie TTRPG available on itch.io from Gem Room games. It was begun somewhere around 2019 and released somewhere after that point (and I mean if it’d been released before that point, that would be impressive). It is a work worth examining, and definitely has some ideas in it I like.
I don’t like any of them for High Magic Lowlives.
Ah, let us speak of these complexities.
Writing Into An Uncertain Tomorrow
One of the unconsciously stranger things about writing blog posts that are then thrown very far forward into the future is that at any point when the future is uncertain, these posts then get dislocated in time.
Continue Reading →Dev Pile 2025-13 — Adversariality!
My plan for this week was to put up a post showing some examples of how I’d step through generative media with my students using Moonshiners as an example. The schedule has changed a little and I want some lead time so instead I’m going to talk about a potential pitfall of Mooonshiners’ design as it relates to time, catch-up, and symmetry.
Making Art In Jod’s Own Country
There’s this joke, in The Locked Tomb. Well, it’s kind of a joke. It’s a character’s name, and when it shows up it’s definitely funny but it’s also while a slightly mentally unwell woman is talking angrily about the human she made with her uterus to try and kill god. I guess this is veering pretty fast into spoiler territory, so let’s do the warning:
Spoiler Warning: I’m going to talk about the world and setting of The Locked Tomb in a way that explicates some things that are unclear in Gideon the Ninth and largely are explained in the main of Harrow the Ninth. If you don’t want to know about it, bounce, go have a chocky milk or send me a message about how ‘that’s not how chocci is spelled.’ We can have a fun conversation around the unspellable phonemes of Australian English.
Story Pile: Lower Decks, Again
I haven’t been a Star Trek fan for ‘long.’ I mean I have been watching Star Trek since I was a child, but not seriously, and only since about 2018 have I been dedicating much time to watching large chunks of it. It is a wonderful science fiction anthology story space, where everything can be referencing everything else, or nothing at all.
Crucially though, I am a fan of Star Trek for long enough and with enough context to know the bits I think were pretty good and I liked (most of Deep Space Nine) and the bits I thought were pretty bad and disliked (most of Picard), but not so well versed that I can get mad when Star Trek spends time referencing Star Trek. I can see why it might get tired, if you’ve watched hundreds and hundreds of hours of a self-referential media form to see it do things you’ve seen it do before, but fortunately, I’m not there yet, having only watched six or seven whole series of Star Trek and not yet run into the thought ‘you know what that one series needed? A lot more of it.’
Though I kinda come close with Lower Decks.
Spoiler Warning: I’m not going to talk about meaningful spoilers for what happens in Lower Decks overall, beyond the idea that this is a series that does plant and payoff. I don’t need to explain to you how various seasons end or what that means or the specific references to actual events.
Continue Reading →What is Media Literacy?
About six months ago I saw a Youtube video titled YouTube and the Death of Media Literacy, by Zoe Bee.
I’ve linked but not embedded; when you embed a video into the body of an article, I feel it creates the impression you read to the video, then you play the video, then after the video there’s further reading. If the video is like, ninety seconds, that can be almost as useful for breaking up the flow of the article, or showing a method, as an image or diagram. Of course, in this case it’s a video that’s an hour and a half long, which creates the idea that I want you to open this article, click that video, and then, after a movie, read the rest of my article, and I don’t want you to do that.
After all, it would be pretty unreasonable of me to ask you to watch a video that I clicked out of after I think two minutes.
Now, look, I think this video’s introduction is so bad I’ve ignored the rest of the video. I’m going to say things that are critical about the way a person describes approaching an idea with an approach that I don’t think they did. But I don’t want this to be about being mean to someone, but rather the way that a Youtube Video Essay format helps to encourage you to do a bad job of being, well, literate.
Still, it is me talking smack about five minutes of a 90 minute video from someone you may like whose full time job is being informative on the internet for free, and it is me talking about something from my modest area of expertise to a woman who I am sure is much more well-educated than I am in a whole host of ways, which runs the risk of just being a bad look and a bad time. I’ll understand if you’d rather go elsewhere. To that end, though, going forward, I’m going to refer to ‘the video’ and not ‘Zoe’ or ‘Bee’ because I want to make it clear, I’m talking about the choices in the introduction of this video, not about anything this Youtuber does or does not do in general.
Continue Reading →Can Fox Have One As A Pet: Aetherdrift Edition!
Game Pile: Flocking Hell
Thumbnail and transcript below the fold!
Continue Reading →The Drow’s Dark Demense
‘Drow’ is a loaded, politically challenging term in Cobrin’Seil. The word brings with it stereotypes, and in a world where actually dangerous monsters exist, bringing the weight of a ‘monster’ to a culture of people who actually exist and have lives and jobs is one of the roots of how dangerous and harmful ideas get promoted and delivered. Cobrin’Seil has a dark history with how Orcs and Goblins have had to both claim some legal protections and recognitions across the majority Bidestran cultures, and it is this cultural darkness that encourages researchers to be careful and cautious in what they ascribe to ‘cultures.’
Here’s the rub: Drow refers to a heritage of modified Elves, yes, but Drow also is the term used to refer to the political culture and identity of Drow’ith’drow, the one Drow settlement from which the word Drow and its two pronunciations derivce, and whether or not any individual Drow complies with that political body, Drow’ith’drow is the primary Drow culture. It doesn’t matter if a Drow individual isn’t okay with isolationist expansionist imperialism, though, because the Drow culture as a whole is acting as if they are.
Presented here then is a guide to Drow’ith’drow and the Drow culture it fosters and protects.
Content warning: Drow culture in Cobrin’Seil is xenofascist and engages in slavery. This isn’t going to be weird about sex, I don’t think there’s room to talk about sex at all here. But still, it’s a culture with slavery, which can be not-fun to talk about, and brings with it an assumption that sexual exploitation is happening. Proceed as warned!
Engagement warning: Look, this is 5,000+ words, written as an in-universe explanation of a culture in Cobrin’Seil. It draws on ideas I like for Drow culture that separates them fron conventional depictions of the same. There’s a lot here and it’s designed to be at least a bit ambiguous while also describing a culture that sucks, so like, don’t expect to pop this one open and blitz through it in your lunchbreak and get a cool idea at the end.
Continue Reading →Dev Pile 2025-12 — Finite Space
Gunna talk about material limits
How To Be: Kaedehara Kazuha (In 4e D&D)
In How To Be we’re going to look at a variety of characters from Not D&D and conceptualise how you might go about making a version of that character in the form of D&D that matters on this blog, D&D 4th Edition. Our guidelines are as follows:
- This is going to be a brief rundown of ways to make a character that ‘feels’ like the source character
- This isn’t meant to be comprehensive or authoritative but as a creative exercise
- While not every character can work immediately out of the box, the aim is to make sure they have a character ‘feel’ as soon as possible
- The character has to have the ‘feeling’ of the character by at least midway through Heroic
When building characters in 4th Edition it’s worth remembering that there are a lot of different ways to do the same basic thing. This isn’t going to be comprehensive, or even particularly fleshed out, and instead give you some places to start when you want to make something.
Another thing to remember is that 4e characters tend to be more about collected interactions of groups of things – it’s not that you get a build with specific rules about what you have to take, and when, and why, like you’re lockpicking your way through a design in the hopes of getting an overlap eventually. Character building is about packages, not programs, and we’ll talk about some packages and reference them going forwards.
His white hair flutters; the river spins in its slow and wending way around him, the wind dancing with its surface. The stone beneath him is cool, his clothing resting and barely shifting by his breath. Head forwards, he contemplates the world full of complicated feelings.
A sigh;
his lips part;
and he speaks, as if to the trailer;
There’s literally no difference between good things and bad things. You idiot. You absolute imbecile.
Let’s talk about a Genshin Impact character.
Story Pile: Neru: Way of the Martial Artist
Neru: Way of the Martial Artist is a 2021 manga series by Minya Hiraga, and when I say a 2021 manga series, because that’s when every single issue of the manga was published in Shonen Jump. Started in July, it lasted all the way to November, which may lead you wondering if hey, this is going to be a time where I tell you about a series that’s short, sharp, punchy and built around a strong central hook that the author is disciplined enough to explore quickly, then wraps the story up satisfyingly?
No! Not at all!
Neru: Way of the Martial Artist is short, because it got cancelled after four months, which is a bit under nineteen weeks of publication. It is a failed manga, and it is neither a tragically short-cut masterwork nor a deservingly roastable turd. It is fascinating to me in the way so many successes are, because their success makes no sense in light of its failure.
Spoiler Warning: I’m going to spoil what this manga is about but this is a story that never really gets started, so you’re not missing anything, there’s no twist to save up for.
There’s nothing really ‘content warning’ in here unless swords and kicking people is a problem for you in which case I am going to recommend you do what you can to just avoid Shonen Jump in general.
Continue Reading →4e: Who Wants What Weapon Groups?
One of the design choices in the structure of 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons is the way that weapons are given categorical signifiers that let you treat them in shared, mechanically related ways. An axe can be just an axe, but there are some axes that are also hammers, and there are some light blades that are also capable of being maces. This category system meant that the game could have character options that looked at those categories and responded to them.
Basically, the game could say ‘hey, rogues use these weapons that are small, and get to do more with them,’ for example.
It didn’t wind up doing that, which is pretty funny, but still.
What did these groups do? And when you’re building a world, do you want to consider what these groups encourage, and how you can expand on them to create more weapons that may have inter-related groups and categories? Do you want a light blade axe in your world? What about an flail hammer? It’s worth understanding what the groups are, and of course… who needs help.
Dragon Regulation
Dragons are cool
I don’t think that’s a controversial opinion. I think that, broadly speaking, if I put a thing in a fantasy universe and put it within certain benchmarks for what constitutes dragon-y-ness, it’ll be accepted as a dragon. And maybe you’re much more loose and casual about it, but I think about how there are rules for dragons. Or if there aren’t any, shouldn’t there be?
Continue Reading →Game Pile: So Clover
I promise I’m not just going to spend this year talking about word puzzle games with no meaningful narrative or creative fiction. I promise.
Hey, this is So Clover! It’s a critically acclaimed internationally successful game! It’s real good! Let’s talk about it!
Stupid Christianity
There is a deliberate enshrinement of stupidity in the Christianity with which I’m acquainted. It is a faith that seeks, nae, begs you to to take critical reasoning and factual information and discard it.
This is not a bug, this is a feature.
Dev Pile 2025-11 — Blood And Bones
Starting next week, I will be in a classroom with a bunch of students talking about ideation and experimentation. That’s going to involve some generative tools and showing them ways that they can use those tools to launch off ideas. My plan is to take them the skeleton of Moonshiners and show them the way that these tools can be used to generate the templates of card faces. Then, when I have those concept assets generated, I can show them the steps I go through to take those ideas and make them into my own.
The aim here is to demonstrate the use of these tools as a kind of word calculator. I use Excel to do math for me, and I use it to generate random things. I use texture libraries and public domain art, I know that there is a value to having convenient things to prime the pump, to set up a template.
Anyway, because I have Moonshiners in a skeletal form, and I want to use that class exercise to demonstrate the process on that skeleton, what I’m going to do this week is talk a bit about progress on Bloodwork.
The Parallel Universes of Entry Hazards in Pokemon
Stealth rock.
For the invested competitive Pokemon player, there are two reactions to this name. One group recognise the word as indicative of one of the most powerful things in the game, a single power that represents, unaddressed, something like a whole Pokemon’s worth of actual health for one button click. One group recognises it as a power that exists, and ruins the format the other group play.
It is a philosophical seam between two groups of people who consider themselves to be, as a group, competitive Pokemon players. Two houses, alike only in difference, and I am going to try, to try to be nice to Smogon in this article, I promise.
Story Pile: My Adventures With Superman
Since 1938, there has pretty much always been a Superman piece of media being made. While the line of continuity has its fuzzy points and its deliberate gimmicks, Superman is a character who has carried the concept of the superhero across his shoulders for a long time, in no small part because he is very simple and the novelty of his existence can be used as a contrast for pretty much anything the writer wants to do. Superman is a story infrastructure that everyone you knew grew up with, even if they don’t much care for him. That means almost any time there’s a new piece of Superman media, the response can be equal amounts ‘so what?’ and ‘what’s interesting this time?’
Enter My Adventures with Superman, a competently made and animated TV series about Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Clark Kent, set in a sort-of-current day sort-of-place that’s sort-of-familiar. I really enjoyed it, and I love the things that it doesn’t think it has to do.
Content and Spoiler Warning: I’ve watched the first season of My Adventures with Superman and I’m going to draw some information from that. There are going to be some spoilers, but the most significant thing to mention is what’s ‘not a spoiler,’ as it were, the assumed knowledge.
Continue Reading →T-Shirt: Noodle Love
This month’s magnet-sticker-shirt design is one of those designs I love that’s meant to look like something very ordinary that, a moment later, is obviously not. It’s the nature of a sports logo for a team that doesn’t exist, which I’ve also done and am really proud of.
There’s a particular kind of t-shirt you can find on stores that are marketed for, you know, ‘crazy pet lover!’ where you can get things that show your pet’s name on stuff, for example, so you can wander around with a t-shirt that says ‘schnookums’ or whatnot. It’s not something I personally want, but whatever for the people that do.
Anyway, while thinking about those shirts I realised there’s a fun idea you can get with the implicit visualisation those shirts use when you want to, say, represent a dog with six legs instead of four. See, it’s a The Locked Tomb joke!
If you like this design and want to put it on something, you can get a sticker here, and a version for putting on dark colours here.
3e: Alignment Is Invisible
The entire alignment system is sick from the top to the bottom and racist too.
Content Warning: I’m going to talk smack about not just Dungeons & Dragons‘ morality system in 3rd edition, but also, in the process, talk some smack about Christians, and more specifically the Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you’re not here for that, you should find yourself a door.
Continue Reading →Game Pile: Star Realms, Frontiers, and Playing With Your Food
And script and thumbnail below the fold!
Continue Reading →‘Form Factor’
Form factor is a term used generally to refer for the specifications for the physical dimensions and configurations of a thing. It is a term that describes a host of traits, sometimes as broad and general as ‘what does it weigh,’ but can include a host of extremely specific points like what the thing does, how you handle it in operation, and whether or not it’s intended to be obvious. Form factor is a term that I use perhaps too often without providing an explanation and it’s a term that sometimes, you may think you know, but only through osmosis. And of course, prototype theory, if you understand, more or less, what a term is used to do, you mostly understand what the term means, but it is nonetheless, a term that’s worth understanding and exploring.
Continue Reading →Dev Pile 2025-10 — Instructions
Rules are magic. Rules are a way for you to to put words on paper, and then, without any involvement from you beyond the words you put on that paper, another person can come along, read that paper, and play a game that they did not know existed before you put those words on that paper.
Rules are also incredibly hard and it sucks to write them and it sucks to read them.
