359 research outputs found
The Mobrup catchment working plan - A resource inventory and strategies
The Mobrup LCDC has persevered for three years with its efforts to produce a catchment plan. They readily acknowledge that their work is just beginning as they now wrestle with this working plan to form something which will have application on each individual\u27s enterprise to ensure a sustainable future for this catchment.This report is a collation of their ideas, an inventory of works done in the catchment and the best advice which research and local knowledge can provide
Creature, Monster, Nameless, Created: Frankenstein transformed in role playing games
This paper explores the transmission of Frankensteinâs Creature - or Monster - into tabletop and computer gaming. It briefly covers the 'Flesh Golem' archetype and Frankenstein-esque figures as encounters in Dungeons and Dragons - superficial imitations, influenced more by cinematic adaptations than the novel, and emphasising the âMonsterâ reading of Frankensteinâs creation. Then, it moves on to more developed versions in which the player or players adopt a persona akin to the Creature as avatar and central character: the Nameless One from Planescape: Torment and the player characters of Promethean: the Created.
These games are transformative works, influenced by and addressed to Frankenstein. While they do not directly adapt Shelley's novel, their narrative and mechanics evoke a corresponding âfeelâ. They locate the playerâs âreaderlyâ perspective within a created entity who is in search of identity, purpose, and sense of the world, and confronted with an evolving moral education, which is developed further by iterative gameplay process similar to repeated readings of a challenging text. By creating complicity in the role of the Creature, Planescape and Promethean engage players in the process of growth, development and discovery which Shelleyâs original character undergoes
Vanishing: A Novel
My thesis is a novel titled Vanishing. It is a work of speculative fiction set in Western Australia. The setting is contemporary, although in a departure from history, the state of Western Australia has seceded from Australia and exists as an independent nation. The government has evolved into a liberal model of tolerance and invited the maligned races of folklore to immigrate. To the worldâs astonishment, the Snitches emerge from the wilderness and settle in their new homeland. Their unique mind-reading powers are pressed into service as the government strives to eradicate offensive speech and offensive thought. The novelâs protagonist is Hunter Jones, an average guy with an irreverent attitude towards the governmentâs social engineering agenda. His ordinary life is rocked when twin brother Sean is abducted after a night out with their parents. Hunterâs search for his missing brother is stymied by the loss of anything to do with Seanâpersonal effects go missing and memories are erased. The unbreakable bond shared by twins means that Hunter is the only person who remembers Sean ever existed
The evolving Gothic of White Wolf's Vampire games
This chapter looks at the evolving Gothic of the Vampire role playing games created by Mark Rein-Hagen et al. It offers a brief explanation of role-playing games for the uninitiated, defining their textuality in Bakhtinian terms â as chronotopes. It will lay out the relationship that role playing enjoys with the Gothic, drawing on Spoonerâs postmodern âludogothicâ, and Kryzwynskaâs sense of genre as defined by coordinates. It will then summarise of Vampireâs complex design history, and offer a swift tour through Vampireâs various editions, charting how the gameâs Gothic has evolved and, eventually, come to transcend itself over nearly thirty years.
Jon Garrad, The evolving Gothic of White Wolf's Vampire games, published in The Palgrave Handbook of the Contemporary Gothic edited by Clive Bloom, 2020, Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan
La renta de los habices "de los Mezquinos" de las Alpujarras y valle de LecrĂn. Algunos datos sobre su administraciĂłn a mediados del siglo XVI
El origen de los habices es ya bastante conocido de los arabistas para que sea preciso entrar aquĂ en detalles. Solamente conviene constatar que, al tiempo de la Reconquista de Granada y de muchos años atrĂĄs, las rentas de ciertos bienes raĂces en este Reino (casas, tiendas, molinos, hornos, huertas, etc.) conocidos bajo el nombre genĂ©rico de "habices", estaban consagrados por los moros granadinos al mantenimiento de sus mezquitas y otras instituciones religiosas y a la redenciĂłn de cautivos caĂdos en poder de los cristianos
Fluff Ain't Rules: absence, presence and haunting in RPG design
Fluff means fiction, framing and flavour; itâs the material around a gameâs actual rules, that illustrates and indicates but has no substantive impact on how the game is played.
Rules are crunch. They are - particularly if youâre a serious player or a traditional ludologist - the important bit.
âIf your game doesnât blend the two, it says one of two things: either youâre not efficiently using your words, or your game isnât really about what it says itâs about.â
â Olivia Hill
âFluffâ is often an absent presence within game design. Itâs clearly important to the aesthetic experience of playing the game, and the context - narrative or otherwise - that provides play with impetus, but it too often exists at some point of discretion from the actual rules that reify the gameâs intended or desired themes, affective experience and outcome.
This paper offers a hauntological perspective on RPG rules - how the developers' claims about a gameâs fictive and cultural context are frequently a spectre, missed and yearned after but not fully secured by the (relatively) concrete reality of its rules. What is not reified by a gameâs rules does not exist within the game - and what is reified by a gameâs rules is often not what the game claims itself to be
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