Swimmingly Sunday

A couple things from the archives. One from last month, one from November of last year.

Last month's: Outside Inside Me

I am, and have been for as long as I can remember, an Outsider.

The term first started germinating in my mind when I read about Outside Art on Wikipedia. No, it's not art that people do on fences, in public places, or out-of-doors for virtue of those spaces being well ventilated. Outside Art of this type means the artist had no formal training and little input on their craft. Primarily the piece on Wikipedia refers to painters.

I first applied the term to myself in reference to how I design role playing games. Thanks to my mother,I've grown up with board games, card games, and puzzles, and added some influence from video games in more recent years on my own. Role playing games differ from these more mathematical types in a number of ways, one of the largest being the quantities and qualities of player input. When I learned about them in 2003, what set role playing games apart in my mind was the emphasis on stories told through the players.

That's the history, here's the Outsider part. When I had only played three or four different RPGs, at most six months into my involvement in the hobby, I was already designing my own. Not from the basis of other games, either. Of the first four (three of which are currently published), one used cards instead of dice, one was designed to be played inconspicuously in public, and one was about cookies. No other game that I knew about had any comparable qualities. (The fourth was also innovative, but in ways that are difficult to explain in lay terms). (Read more...)

It's not all about games. Later on I get into why I struggle with poetry, and why I don't get out much. ;)

On a related note, when I started poking my head around new places on the internet, notably around Marly's place, Robert asked a question on a defunct blog of mine: "What are art games?"

I plan to answer him (here) soon.

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From November, Composition from a Moving Vehicle: The "State Prizes and Signatures" Episode Or, Thoughts of 11-07-06

This is a longer piece because right now we're on the road and the batteries in
the DS are dead. It's too dark to take pictures (good ones, anyway), and I have/had a splinter in my finger that keeps me from knitting. It feels gone, so if I'm not driving when I finish typing or run out of laptop juice, I may go back to that.

As we drive, our standards for civilization change. I know it comes from a suburb-centric California viewpoint, but we need something to comment on as we drive.

In New Mexico, we did a long stint where there were no towns to speak of. When we ran into a place with a Home Depot, one of us said "Wow! a real town!".

Here in Texas, the standard is higher (lower?). There are a few Home Depots, but we knew we were in a "cali-style" suburb when there was an Office Depot.

For some reason, these big chain stores are comforts. The familiarity, the predicability are what stabilize us. In a HUGE Wal-Mart somewhere in Texas (I don't remember the town name) I knew exactly where in the store to look for the hand sanitizer I needed. While in that department, i met a lady looking for tweezers. She was looking near the hand soap. I said, "Look in the cosmetics department". Granted, I didn't know where cosmetics are in that store, but it was bound to be in the same general area as my home Wal-Marts, yes? (Read more...)

I have a number of similar bits of writing from our journey. Some of them were posted on my Livejournal, most were not.

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Also added 18 more fabric styles to the Fridget store.