I think the weirdest thing about designing RPGs is that there’s just all these ideas I had no idea I needed and then suddenly… they’re in a game. And it’s amazing.

So, what does ADnD1 have that ACKSII don’t? I gots research to do!.

RT @matthewdmarsden: Chihuahuas are pointless dogs, and should be recatagorized as another animal. Maybe a large rat.

The thing I am enjoying initially is that it’s easier to track what’s going on in the world. For instance they’re in a fast period for Mothers’ Day, on the 15th.

I’m just gonna take a current year calendar and adapt it. I got mine own BSd astrology system and holy days.

Creating my 1:1 calendar for my setting!.

Slowly, slowly, oh SO slowly, I am coming to face with a realization: . Truth is cycle, rhythm, and number. Facts and spot-quotes only have value if they pull you into cycle, rhythm, and number. Christianity’s cycle, rhythm, number is allowing -1 to be transmuted to +1.

I am trying, yet again, to read The Gulag Archipelago. This time I am going to take it a lot more slowly, read it with other stuff to clear my head.

Fourth time is the charm

It’s really hard to say why I am doing this. But somehow I know the Whorl Method needs to be. No idea what will come of it. But here we are.

True to Wolfe, the two games are chiral images. From one to anothe. A cycle with a back door, making a spiral. So I Google “spiral thesaurus”… and you’ll never guess what I found, @ReReadingWolfe . Another word for spiral is whorl. I know what to call the chiral twins.

Last night a lot of stuff clicked. I began Crescendo as a way to keep doing Gene Wolfe style stories. With Crescendo in editing and the dust settling… I realized something was missing. Wolfe’s Briah cycle needing the inbetweens, and now Marrow is getting made. 1/2.

Marrow’s core is the same.

The center of Crescendo is narration. Player tells the Lore Weaver (GM) what he is doing. The LW tells him the consequences, going as harsh as he likes. If the player disagrees with the LW, he picks up dice and Defies. Win or lose, the story then changes unexpectedly.

The game this account is named after, Crescendo, is an RPG that plays out stories like The Briah Cycle, The Wizard Knight, and the Soldier Trilogy. The RPG I am designing in response to @McGowanJohnN ‘s”The Living World”, Marrow, is for the BETWEEN Crescendoes.

Earthsea Cycle is one of those works where someone’s obvious later biases forces a horseshoe effect: Le Guin tries so hard to put her feminist leanings in that she manages to say deeply true thins. There’s a reason why she and Wolfe were friends.

God Emperor Dune was an exercise in extreme empathy: Leto is the most objectively human monster I have ever encountered. I am not over it. Still.

Close runners up (for me) include the Dune and Earthsea Cycles.

RT @RumpDM: If you don’t like Tom Bombadil, you don’t like Tolkien.

A genuinely great book