An extremely timely and focused list of books, games, movies, and miscellanea I enjoyed throughout 2023
I'm done with roleplaying deal alerts, but I'm still passionate about helping roleplayers find great games
Player needs aid badly.
SIRLIN IS BABA
There's an annual tradition with some old friends where we take a full day in May to play through the GMT game of war / religion / marriage / divorce / exploration / piracy / everything, Here I Stand.…
After years of operating swsheets.com, I finally found someone with the ability and enthusiasm to add new features.…
This past May, we bade farewell to our beloved dog Samwise, aka Sam. I have been putting off this post for, well, a very long time now.…
I've been reading THINKING FAST AND SLOW by Daniel Kahneman. There is a real risk this blog temporarily becomes flooded by small bits from this fascinating work.…
My mashup of Dungeon World and Fate Accelerated. It's a mixed success.
Recently I returned from the Best Four Days in Gaming, GenCon. In no particular order, here’s some microreviews of what I played.
Friends know that I endlessly talk about team values. They've made a huge difference in my career - I still have a framed copy of Obtiva's values next to my desk (complete with our Big Hairy Audacious Goal courtesy of Dave Hoover).…
Let's say you only have 5 minutes with one of your teammates to answer the question "How satisfied is this person with their job?” What do you ask and what do you look for?…
Many new managers define 1:1 meetings as something like "a regular opportunity for a manager and their direct report to check in." That's a fine starting point but it misses out…
Here’s a fun fact about my career: in almost a decade of working in Ruby, I’ve never been paid to write into a console.…
In a recent coaching session, a manager said of a teammate "Why can't they follow my example and act more like me?" It's a natural desire but an effective manager has to recognize…
Engineers crave explicit feedback and expectations, and yet it's often hard to provide these when coaching on ownership and leadership.…
Mark Kanemura is amazing for choreographing and performing this. Still cannot believe that Jenna was cut for this performance - democracy stinks sometimes.
Dead Authors Podcast Chapter 13 - Paul F. Tompkins as H.G. Wells, Matt Gourley and Jeremy Carter as the Brothers Grimm who are discussing their fairy tale, The All Fur.…
An interesting question came up on the SWRPG subreddit - what music do you use for a cantina beyond just the Star Wars classics?…
As I said when introducing my compact NPC character sheet, I hate clutter at the table. The FFG vehicle sheet is fantastic for my players’ ship as they want to track everything at a fair level of detail.…
The Edge of the Empire roleplaying game by Fantasy Flight Games, much like its oft-discussed dice, is a mix of success and failure.…
I’m happy to announce that SWSheets.com has officially left Beta. No terribly serious issues were found by the first round users.…
I’m proud to share something I’ve been working on for the past few months, swsheets.com. Right now this is in Beta mode.…
40K: Safe, Sane and Consensual, or The Arrogance of Unacknowledged Playstyles For gamers of any variety, this article is a great read.…
I run a Star Wars role playing group that meets every three weeks. Ten sessions in, I have a good grasp on how I react to this emotionally.…
I hate to clutter up my tabletop with more than I absolutely must. Making full, two-page character sheets for each NPC drove me mad as a new Edge of the Empire GM.…
Citizen: How do you know so much about crimes?! Parker: I… read… blogs? A great moment from Leverage where Parker is forced to pretend she’s not a master thief.…
We're doing a Netrunner draft at Braintree soon after the New Year. I wanted to send the new drafters a cheatsheet on their first draft.…
Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time this weekend to participate in this round of Ludum Dare so I’m sketching out what I would have attempted given the chance.…
I’ve claimed to have several spirit animals in the past, but in reality it’s definitely Tim Gunn.
Now that I have a basic prototype that adheres to the plan outlined in Part I-A, it's time to build a server to support this game.…
The nice thing about working with a bunch of friendly and clever folk at Braintree is that they are always willing to brainstorm on better ways of building software.…
In my previous post on my next game project "Clans" I outlined the kind of asynchronous turn-based strategy game I want to make.…
After a period of game-making hibernation, today I found the time to get back into shape. Previously I had teased about a strategy game called MUTANT OVERLORDS.…
The New York Times is reporting this morning that a settlement is close in the class-action lawsuit brought against Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe for their discriminatory and illegal no-hire, no-solicit agreements amongst one another.…
It pleases me immensely that GATTACA has aged like a fine wine.
This week ends in approximately 22 minutes and counting.
Michael Lewis' new book on high-frequency trading, FLASH BOYS, is stunning. While free markets are based on the relatively fair flow of information between players, FLASH BOYS shows how profitable it can be to obfuscate and restrain that information.…
via brucesterling
I've started work on another game, title officially TBD but let's call it MO for now. The goal is to build an asynchronous multiplayer turn-based strategy game that takes about 30-60 turns with about 3-5 "actions" per turn.…
My megacorporation is on the wrong side of a wealthy Criminal playing a nasty Account Siphon. Not only would would that steal nearly half my credits, but it would boost his level…
My goal was to finish Our Man Dragon in February, and I did so with 52 minutes to spare! Obviously it's still rough around the edges and isn't the most attractive thing, but I completed all the major features I planned.…
It's been awhile since I've provided an update on Our Man Dragon, so allow me to rectify that. It's not uncommon for software projects to spend just as much time going from…
Here's roughly where I start in determining how much I like a game: / This metric favors a few types of games quite strongly: * Light Tactical Games (Colossal Arena, Ticket to…
The Tumblr One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age is my new obsession. The Tumblr is a snapshot of archived Geocities pages in chronological order.…
"Worker Placement" in board gaming dates back to roughly the turn of the century, but recently there has been a second wave of games experimenting within the mechanic.…
Cover of the 1922 German edition of John Reed’s “10 Days That Shook The World”
This is an old story that you can find throughout the internet. I forget where I first heard it, but it has stuck with me.…
When I last submitted an Ludum Dare game, I gave myself an MS Paint trophy. I submitted another game, one I daresay is a bit better than the last, so here's my reward.…
A number of ideas come and go for these competition, but there can ultimately be only one. A few of the nearly-games * A lone fighter and a lone destroyer have to take out a massive fleet of resistance.…
Making progress, but now my enemy is time
Burn orks burn
13 hours of work come and gone, minus a game of Tobago and some insane CS humans-vs-bot action. The latest state of the game is playable.…
Hello friends! I'm going to be writing a few posts here about my Ludum Dare entry and process. For the unfamiliar, Ludum Dare is a 48-hour game making competition around a…
via voidmachine
Paul F. Tompkins as Werner Herzog on Comedy Bang! Bang! via tumblr Scott Aukerman: What's your favorite movie Werner?…
via dynamicafrica “Elegance Road” is a photo series by Belgian photographer Alexandre Van Enst that captures the non-conformist style and dandy attitudes of a Kinshasa-based fashion and lifestyle SAPE collective.…
via studiox-nyc
via jamesadomian (the dialogue for this really is worth a clickthrough)
via carlosbaila Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in.…
I am a sucker for roguelikes. Most roguelikes fall into a very standard template - the very name of the genre describes derivative works inspired by an old classic, "Rogue." New…
via afrikanspaceprogram
via warrenellis
via philnoto
via fosslien
Haven’t posted yet this Ludum Dare. Kept hoping to have some better progress to show, but with < 30 minutes before the deadline, it ain’t happening.…
After a couple of hours of thinking and drinking, I’ve finally hit upon an idea that I think is feasible and interesting for the Ludum Dare theme “Evolution.” I’m a mild ochlophobe, which means I have difficulty with large, densely populated crowds.…
I had a marvelously fun time at my first Ludum Dare. To say I fell short of my goal is the kind of breathtaking understatement not seen since the Bush era.…
Here’s a shot of me gloating over my victim! Woohoo! Not only did I resolve my aforementioned issues with the box models (primary problem is that Chipmunk always describes…
With my jumping bug put to rest, on to shooting things! With this, I got my first amusing bug (aside from that brief time I had people jumping off the screen) Shoot to the right, all is well.…
Tianmen Shan (Heaven’s Gate Mountain). Hunan Province, China. Someday, I will see this personally.
Rather than worry too much about making something a “game” under any definition, I spent most of today hacking around on whatever interested me.…
tl;dr - screenshot at end, code at github.com/citizenparker/the-two-of-us More like my first four hours, as I really enjoy sleep.…
This is pretty much the best thing I’ve ever drawn. Thanks, Drawception, for the inspiration.
I spent some quality time this weekend digging into a few presentations that I thought I'd share with you. Let's start with the Shibuya Rubyist Lunch lightning talk from RubyConf 2011.…
Just wanted to take a moment and capture some random thoughts about MadisonRuby. Thanks everyone who came to Dan's and my talk today at MadisonRuby.…
A hundred years ago, lighting lamps was a great way to earn a living. You'd carry around a giant pole and go from lamp to lamp lighting them up.…
People who practice various forms of agile software development often make distinctions between capital-A "Agile" as a set of defined practices and methodologies, and "agile" as a broader philosophy of how to approach software.…
We're in need of a venue for this meeting - if you know of a place in the Loop that could help, please contact me We're all familiar with words like "process" and "patterns" - in…
So I know this guy who knew about this one event months in advance, and yet didn't think to post a blog about it until roughly 24 hours before.…
I have a bit of an ~~insecurity~~ obsession with the quality of my code given how long I've been at this programming thing.…
Eyes glazed over yet? Don't do it! Stay with me! I was like you once, in a more innocent time we all knew as "one hour ago." I heard words like Dependency Injection (a technique…
In a loose worst-to-best order, here are some random thoughts about books on video games I've been reading recently.…
The August 2008 meeting of the Chicago Alt.Net group has been announced by fearless leader Sergio Pereira. It will be on August 13th, 2008 at 6:00 PM (or 6:30P if you don't want pizza, but c'mon, pizza!) in the Chicago ThoughtWorks office at 200 E.…
NPR API OMG If you've seen me in person even once, odds are you've seen my Chicago Public Radio hat. I'm just a bit of a fanboy.…
The first full version of FlySpy, "the world's premiere GameFly queue management tool" that can monitor and manage your GameFly account, has been released.…
Jeff Atwood has long maintained an “Essential Reading” list of books for developers. I've been chugging my way along it dutifully, and as I continue to do so, I remain stunned…
A genre-defining game like Diablo II is tough to follow, and the demands of gamers can't make that any easier.…
Once I was playing this RPG on my computer. The studio behind it had made a few other games about which I had extremely mixed opinions, but I loaded the game's four CDs up and played.…
When I was sitting in a darkened movie theatre contemplating gouging my eyes out, I would never have guessed that I'd fall in love.…
Played in a woefully-underused setting, 1992’s Castles II: Siege & Conquest supposes that a civil war breaks out in France in 1311, about a decade before the Hundred Years' War was due to start.…
I misspelled "your" today in a business email. I won't go into the messy details; it's too painful right now.…
Panda Express: "You may not leave full, but you won't leave hungry!" Six brave men faced the Panda today. Their heat-lamped delicacies claimed three victims.…
Day three of the One Month of Daily Writing pledge and I'm already feeling it. This has become my own personal Lost button.…
A recent journal entry: Had an interview here in November. Saw the Best Buy and the Crate & Barrel next to the landfill & incinerator.…
I had the same problem on my Xanga site. There's a great deal of pressure on that "first" article. (Apparently those first few articles don't count.…
Hi there, Scott from 2018 writing here. This is from my old Xanga account. I mostly post these because it makes me laugh at myself.…
In the past 24 hours, I have: * accepted a full-time job with Sonoma Partners * purchased the new season of 24 (complete with clip-on watch!) * worked on my Compilers project only…
Hi there, Scott from 2018 writing here. This is from my old Xanga account. I mostly post these because it makes me laugh at myself.…
First off, to live up to promises, the interview was so-so. I'll find out next week whether I get the offer. That out of the way, T-Rex has some interesting haikus as away messages, and a recent event causes me to create my own.…
Hi there, Scott from 2018 writing here. This is from my old Xanga account. I mostly post these because it makes me laugh at myself.…