LARP Storyteller

@larp-storyteller

I enjoy Live Action Role Playing games, the history and future of game design, and methods of positive social organization. My favorite colors are Seahawk Blue & Seahawk Green.

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LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· 1d

well shit

Godfrey Hates My Wallet (proof of purchase)

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jun 4

I think this bit is the most compelling- a movement that is interesting because of who it feeds (teens to u30s) will, by neccessity, be less sparing to generational touchstones

Gen Z actually likes going to the movies, and the impending inevitable YouTube takeover of the film industry. Many film industry observers are suddenly seeing echoes of the seventies, when the Film School Brats (Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas) proved that the aging studio execs had lost touch with their audiences.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· May 6

I love how this piece explains the self-created barrier between Silicon Valley and the process of creating culture:

This value reveals the key way in which the culture of Silicon Valley is deeply antithetical to how actual culture forms. Culture is born slowly out of communities of humans coalescing around shared ideals and experiences. Silicon Valley's value system, with its emphasis on snap decisions, sharp U-turns and immediate outcomes, on profits over people, is diametrically opposed to the ways in which culture develops and art flourishes.

The main obstacle Silicon Valley faces in its bid to learn taste is that it simply doesn't have the patience. You cannot outsource to AI the years, even decades, of deep learning, reading and thinking it takes to develop taste. True taste is formed through internal interrogation, real-life conversations and not shying away from the friction of the human experience. It's expansive, slow-burn work that takes time -- a concept the tech world views strictly through the lens of economic productivity.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Apr 24

What about Notre Dame's 2025 season made NFL teams believe that there were multiple first round running back talents on that team?

Spencer congratulating us on a 25 plus fees donation to NewAm Pathways

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Apr 21

interesting effects on the main board too

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Apr 21

Its a downtown Seattle lunch, what could that cost, twenty dollars?

1991 Natty & fees to add onto all the other huskies that decided that 11am was the time to donate

Spencer confirmation blackout name and card number

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Mar 20

A good post, that I'd only add on to note this man's ideological underpinning to do this (this being in the image) to himself, rather than being an accident. This is a man who wants to optimize for a personally-positive "TESCREAL" outcome. Eternal life, exploring the cosmos, 90s Star Trek ascension

So since we’re doing quasi-scientific polemics, I’ll throw my own in. I’ve been wondering for a while why many of our Silicon Valley overlords behave like they’ve repeatedly sustained traumatic brain injuries ... cognition doesn’t decline for some people as they age ... if you don’t use one of your languages on a regular basis, you start to forget it — even if it was your first language. Writing by hand is better for memory; predictive text leads to boring writing.

I am now going to extrapolate from this: If you stop using some skill, mental or physical, you lose it and its benefits. We’ve already seen signs of this with heavy users of AI, along with AI psychosis, which may occur because chatbots are too sycophantic. So I’m going to suggest that overreliance on AI is bad for you — which suggests a corollary: Whatever is happening to normal people as a result of AI overreliance has already happened to the ultra-wealthy.

Consider: ... I have a lot of opportunities to hang out in my mind palace, because I do a lot of mundane chores, like grocery shopping, laundry, and picking up after myself.

The ultra-wealthy don’t have to do any of this. They pay people to do it for them... There are no periods of the day where they are forced to figure out how to entertain themselves in the face of repetitive chores. If you don’t use it, you lose it — so maybe a lot of them lose introspection. In fact, they can offload any cognitive activity ... whatever gets consistently offloaded, they lose.

But, worse, they don’t notice they’re losing any skills because they are constantly surrounded by people ... aggressively financially motivated to flatter them and agree with them. If that yes-man tendency in chatbots is what’s driving AI psychosis or social skill atrophy in normal people, then the same thing has already happened to the very rich.

We’ve got ourselves a philosophical zombie right here, and possibly a methodology for creating them at will

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Mar 14

"I apologize to absolutely no one" Eric Spolstra about Bam scoring 83

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Mar 14

A good essay that I've been gnawing on; if anything, Actual Play to TTRPGs is like if there was a competitor to the NFL that sought to make money by selling alternate rulebooks rather than broadcasting games. A game runner often manages the game through the strike zone and defining a catch.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Mar 11

The difference between being interesting Reposts vs being of interest Quotes, right here

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Mar 3

My theory is that games work as a language; one learns the multistep resolution of a *Span board like grammer and syntax. The pleasure of "conversation games" is when your rules and resolutions enrich the interpersonal language- your mechanical thirst becomes metaphorical becomes material.

IS THE JUICE WORTH THE SQUEEZE?

Or to put it another way: Does the effort and energy required to play out a given mechanic (or game) result in a unique and interesting enough experience to be worth that effort. While ultimately what's "worth it" is a matter of taste, it's still something we as designers, game runners and theoryslop writers should be mindful of - Does this dice system that takes 3 minutes to resolve really smooth the experience of running a grand ball? Does every step of friction I add to this combat system add far more depth and intrigue as a result?

Another key component here is unlatching the "squeeze" from the "juice" - A complex games with lots of steps and resources can be ultimately quite shallow, while a light game packed with intention and direction can be doubly effective. This isn't to say those complex games are bad by nature, but rather that if they're asking the player to squeeze so much harder that juice better be worth it.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Feb 26

sidebar: Hawlucha visited CMLL in mexico and Mistico would 100% slap La Mística on Ash and make him tap

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Feb 20

In this lovely Harper's article about, essentially, how social media has cooked the brains of San Francisco, Scott Alexander runs headlong into Moravec's Paradox. If only someone could program by Q4 what it took millions of years of evolution to develop! harpers.org/archive/2026...

“Humans are great at agency and terrible at book learning,” Alexander told me. “Lizards have agency. We got the agency with the lizard brain. We only got book learning recently. The AIs are the opposite.” He still thinks it’s only a matter of time before they catch up. “If you were to ask an AI how should the world’s savviest businessman respond to this circumstance, they could create a good guess. Yet somehow they can’t even run a vending machine. They have the hard part. They just need the easy part that lizards can do. Surely somebody can figure out how to do this lizard thing and then everything else will fall very quickly.”

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Feb 19

A nice little review of a LARP festival in Leeds:

The Anatomy Lesson

My third run of this new black-box larp, after Grenselandet in Dec and The Smoke in Jan. And the first to be in a non-black-box space — it was just an ordinary room, with regular ceiling lights and a portable MP3 player rather than the theatrical lights and sound that I’d had before. I wasn’t sure if it would work as well without those atmospheric supporting elements — but actually it seemed to go ok, the participants looked like they were having an interesting time and said nice things about the experience. So I was happy to see that — it makes it much more usable for other people.

On which note, here it is now on my website! — you can download it and run it yourself, whenever you like. Please do let me know if you do decide to give it a try.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Feb 9

Benito uses the power of Woke 2 on Jake Paul! Its super effective

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 21

While specifically about Sweden, this is about everywhere. The conception of "belonging" and in-groups as a continual test that can be failed in a moment casts every citizen as a watchmen and proctor. Judge me not, and let me judge no one.

I should be able to be on sick leave, have a bad day at my job, speak English once in a while on the phone with my friends from Denmark, steal your awesome girlfriend and still feel that I am no more of a burden on society or get judged harder just because I’m a PoC.

The current racist debate climate in Sweden tries to divide PoC:s into those two camps, “The talented immigrant/PoC” VS “The lazy immigrant/PoC”.

And some fall for this argument and support it because “Of course, we only want good people here".

But all that argumentation does is to create a fake safety and a fake goal that can never ever be won.

It also shifts the focus to us instead of where it should be: namely, that the racist climate in Sweden has increased immensely and our government is backing it up. That is not okay.

We need to stop with the racist rhetoric and start to view the whole image.

Immigrants and PoC have the right to be in Sweden on the same terms as everyone else, and we have the right to do exactly as much or as little as we can without being shouted at about deportation or laziness.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 20

In "Monster Mash" games I've been in and run, one of these Dominant Mechanics is called the Wolverine Effect, named after the Marvel superhero with regeneration powers. Games with Werewolves and their infinite regen health became paced to and about the Werewolf plots in the spotlight ecosystem.

Obviously, rules influence play. That's not novel. What I'm suggesting is that some rules influence play and censor others. If you include these rules, you exclude others. They exert an overwhelming influence.

I discovered this in my playtests. "What if my system had the puzzle but also single-digit hitpoints? Meta-currency? Tiered monster phases? Difficulty classes? Nested hit dice?" I ground through iterations. Trying to get novel outcomes (new gameplay) with familiar mechanics. The same thing kept happening. No matter how much I formalized and incentivized the gameplay I wanted, if certain mechanics were present, the game I desired disappeared.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 16

found this out there and thought of this right here

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 8

The end of the piece serves as a good thesis for her coming term as mayor: putting a limit on the vision's active extent to a single or pair of terms, but positioning that work as part of building a powerbase that lasts beyond that.

“As a socialist, I believe that we need a profound transformation of our socioeconomic system,” Wilson says. “And I’m also realistic about what can be accomplished in four or eight years. We’re not leading the revolution here.”

Wilson sees a parallel between her pragmatic ambitions for office—fewer people experiencing homelessness, more affordable housing, better public spaces, safe streets—and those of Milwaukee’s Sewer Socialists who held office nearly continuously from 1910 to 1940. They were lauded for improving quality of life with public housing, city planning, expanded parks and playgrounds, and the municipalization of street lighting, water treatment and sewer systems.

“That results-oriented outlook is absolutely something I’m carrying into the mayor’s office with me,” Wilson says. “I believe that my administration will be judged by the improvements people see or don’t see in their daily lives, and that’s something I’m taking very seriously.”

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 7

I think I know why that last guy is needing to find big data and AI to find love.

The system, the men say, is intended to go beyond a user’s “general mate value factor” to honor each user’s idiosyncratic desires. Mr. Ash, who writes in Keeper’s institutional voice on X, provided an example from his research.

“If the woman is about half a standard deviation more agreeable than the man, that’s the optimal point for relationship durability,” he said, to which I must have emitted an observable psychometric signal.

“Look at your face,” Mr. Zervas said. “You’re horrified.”

Later that evening, Mr. Zervas stood before an audience of around 80 people who settled into an expanse of cozy armchairs and fuzzy poufs. Keeper, he said, was working on the toughest cases in modern dating: Jewish woman seeks non-Jewish man who will convert for her; man with rare eye condition seeks woman with same; guy who invented his own political party seeks girl with similar views.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Aug 28

Not only are people's smartphones being used to mine their data about what they spend and where and why; people are also joyfully bragging about the money they blow to their feeds, to any and all who happen across them. People see what the divide really is there, at Disney parks and elsewhere.

One of the economic puzzles of the last five years has been the persistence of serious consumer negativity at a time when nearly everyone has a job, median household incomes are historically high, and we are spending more than we did before the pandemic. Yet all but the most affluent are seemingly not happy with the economy or their own place in it.

We all judge our well-being against something, typically our past and our peers. Through either of those lenses, the Disney parks — and many similar institutions of American culture — may offer a piece of the puzzle. Compared with the past, a Disney trip is more expensive, to be sure — but perhaps more important, it feels much more expensive, because at every turn one is being invited to “level up” and spend more. Thanks to social media, we can now see the experiences that divide us.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Apr 10

On one hand, Sears' mail-order affects racism: the shopkeep cannot act as a barrier to "the good life" of living in your home as good as life can get. On the other, the government shrinking means you have to organize as consumers to hold companies to account, a Yelp review theory of social change.

In return for consumer abundance, many middle-class Americans would take business and political leaders’ word for it when they said that the government was expensive and wasteful and that the social safety net needed to be kept lean to discourage laziness and freeloading. In return, their taxes would be low and, if they worked hard, the power of consumerism would provide the opportunity to buy whatever they wanted or needed—no bureaucrat would choose how to spend their money for them.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Mar 20

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Feb 21

Unsurprised that a study has found that Live Action Role Playing is most common among american states within Washington!

This very scientific, totally-not-nerdy study by Online Solitaire found that Washington leads the nation in searches for cosplay, fanfiction, Rubik’s cubes, astronomy, and LARPing (live-action role-playing).

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 28

Anchor a thought- any thought- to a natural physical cycle- the sun, or the moon. Process that thought as the event comes and as the event goes. See how it flows through you and see your mind as its own process. Practice choosing your mood- even the negative ones: see attached.

Take current mood, recognize it, ascend up to all emotiona and pick a different one, go back down.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 26

Fantastic article about the theories of play and co-creation. I'd like to pull out this quote to note this is why I find it best for staff to ride the middle line between competence and humility:

John Bertelsen was the first playworker at Emdrup. He wrote:

'I cannot, and indeed will not, teach the children anything … I consider it most important that the leader should not appear too clever, but that he remain at the same experimental stage as the children. In this way the initiative is left, to a great extent, with the children themselves and it is thus far easier to avoid serious intrusion into their fantasy world.’

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 25

Its a rad space! I just haven't had time to make it happen as much. Flights do be expensive.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 23

Un-gatekeeping here: if you want to play a game with you and up to three dozen of your friends and don't mind playing in the afternoons, Seattle's Queen Anne public library's bottom meeting room is free and has minimal cross-walk problems.

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 23

Korok sack boy + Zelda pot ceramic. Originally a desk pen-holder but then upgraded to Korok hiding place (ya ha ha, found me, etc)

LARP Storyteller@larp-storyteller· Jan 23

Fox & Forest Duet is a Co-op Trick Taking game that challenges you to learn not so much how to "read" your partner, as it is about learning how best to be "read".