Jonathan Tweet explains how, unlike highly narratively structured games such as The Call of Cthulhu, the free-form, character-focused Everway includes a matrix that allows for the creation of coherent characters and productively constrains the otherwise open-ended game-play.
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by Jonathan Tweet.
Everway is a free-form tabletop fantasy RPG in which players take the roles of heroic figures that travel among countless parallel worlds. Action resolution uses cards drawn from a Tarotlike deck rather than dice. Character stats determine the likely outcome of an action, and the card draw provides a conceptual result that the gamemaster interprets creatively to determine the actual result.
The quote was rewritten directly from the essay.
Keith Herber discusses how in his "Haunted House" scenario for Call of Cthulhu, characters are driven insane by their attempt to unravel the game's mysteries. Herber's explanation distinguishes his work from many other role-playing games in which the goal is to develop characters and acquire power and/or wealth. In contrast, characters in Herber's scenario are rewarded with mental instability.
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by Keith Herber.
The original Call of Cthulhu "Haunted House" scenario that appeared in the book Trail of Tsathoggua was written in 1983, when Call of Cthulhu was still a relatively new game and role-playing was still in its early stages. Seeing the light of day in 1981, Call of Cthulhu was unique to RPGs in that it didn't rely on experience points, treasure, or other tangible rewards to induce players to participate. CoC investigators would not find hordes of gold or powerful weapons, nor would they gain fame or respect for their daring exploits. Quite the opposite, in fact. Investigators usually finish adventures in worse shape than they began, with less money, less sanity, and possibly a lowered social standing. Like cats, investigators are driven by curiosity, not by material gain.
The quote was rewritten directly from the essay.
Cyborgs in the Mist is an enquiry which takes the form of a movie, a soundinstallation, photo prints, and a book. The film presents the LOPH research laband its utopian proposals to struggle against the planned obsolescence ofhumankind. Taking into account the development of robotics and artificial formsof intelligence, the LOPH research lab experiments with ways to help humansadapt to their new environment, and to put them in a position to fight against their planned obsolescence. How can we anticipate this shift in the logic of evolution?How can we adapt to this change with a minimum of violence? Academic teams,science-fiction writers, and new forms of artificial intelligence work together toanticipate the most disastrous scenarios.
(source: description from the schedule)
How can we anticipate this shift in the logic of evolution?How can we adapt to this change with a minimum of violence? Academic teams,science-fiction writers, and new forms of artificial intelligence work together toanticipate the most disastrous scenarios.
Diana Lobb tackles the legacy of positivism and the politics of chaotics.
Geoffrey Winthrop-Young gets inside De Landa’s total history.
‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,‘To talk of many things:Of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax -Of cabbages - and kings -And why the sea is boiling hot -And whether pigs have wings.’Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking-Glass
Total history comes in waves. During the first decades of the twentieth century a number of prominent studies appeared that were written either by amateur historians such as Oswald Spengler or professionals like Arnold Toynbee and that mobilized a wide range of alternative disciplines in order to provide a new comprehensive view of history on a global scale. An ambitious commitment ‘to talk of many things’ - that is, to extend the domain of historiography far beyond its traditional boundaries - was linked to the elaboration of all-inclusive algorithms designed to account for the basic dynamics of history, be it the morphologically programmed blooming and withering of autonomous cultures in Spengler’s Decline of the West or the challenge-response scheme of Toynbee’s Study of History. Several reasons conspired to slow down the production of further such grand narratives following the Second World War, not the least of which was the increased institutionalization of historiography, but it appears that we are now caught up in a second wave of total histories. Once again, they are written by historians and non-historians alike, and once again the extension of the disciplinary boundaries is linked to a liberal import of ideas and methods from hitherto unrelated or ‘irrelevant’ fields.
.......what happened in Europe could have happened elsewhere, so there is no innate reason why Western Europe came to dominate the world the way it did. The potential problem is that despite this more open and relaxed view of global history Europe retains its privileged position. Once upon a time historians reduced history to an algorithm that regulated a predictable rise from barbarism to high culture with Europe as the supreme example against which all others had to be measured;