I re-shuffled my podcast playlist, which put three interesting #Clarkesworld stories back on top:
I vaguely recognised the stories when I heard them, but found it worth listening to them again.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I don't know why I randomly started looking for a vaguely remembered blog about LARP theory in the middle of the night, but by good chance I ran into this article about LARP and ecological activism which felt with not sleeping over
https://nordiclarp.org/2024/07/11/seeds-of-hope-how-to-intertwine-larp-and-ecological-activism/
and I think Kaski: Tuhka in particular sounds fascinating, maybe also for the #Solarpunk crowd like @alxd and @tomasino? I should find out more about it and the campaign it belongs to, but I expect it will be difficult without knowing Finnish.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Finally another one of @SolarpunkPrompts on my pay list: “The Archivists” — it reminds me of some excellent exhibitions I saw in Zurich's anthropological museum, for example on indigenous bee knowledge, but of course @tomasino goes much further! And it was one of the inspiring things about working in a linguistics-adjacent field while I was is academia.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Years ago, I saw some pictures from a comic of crab-like scientists exploring a world. They lived in a mobile water-filled home but would venture out into the land around them, and they used somewhat biological appliances with one tube transporting nutrients in and one tube getting the wastes out. Does someone know what I'm talking about? Is it a full story I can read somewhere?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
@alxd I just listened to the @solarpunkcast Podcast about Solarpunk Futures https://thefuture.wtf/ by #Solarpunk Surf Club. I haven't seen you mention that one, but it sounds very relevant. Have you played it? What was your impression?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
The “Tower” by @SolarpunkPrompts touches more on my needs for reality than on #solarpunk fiction. Documentary filmer Kirsten Dirksen is the only film maker I somewhat follow, and she has filmed a bunch of interesting dwellings—but the ones I find most interesting are the local urban communities, like Kailash in Portland or Culdesac in Tempe. At some point, I'll have to move once again, and I'm frequently musing about how to find or make a place like that.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Even for interesting and coherent investigation and negotiation (which are topics of the campaigns) the #FullyAutomated GM needs to be “incredibly skilled”. That's before getting to the classical #Solarpunk topics of communities, differing views, social and technological infrastructure, ecology, and transformation. That is despite a multitude of games exploring one or more of these topics in their mechanics in detail. I find this quite disappointing and will not delve further. 8/8
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
The #FullyAutomated rules make up about 75 pages in the book. Despite the campaign's investigation focus, there is nothing on investigation in the ToC, neither on the player nor on the GM side. Stuff is about 20 pages, the combat and health rules are another 20. Add a general outline for Skidooing (diving into someone's mind) and some generic rules for research in downtime, and that's pretty much the mechanics after character creation. The GM section contains only advice, no rules. 7/8
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
[#]FullyAutomated's campaigns (https://drive.google.com/file/d/18SV2sVrwsbT480cAtAQ4G59Ckbyz7c6-/view) talk about various flavors of violence (fight/feud/assassination/abducting) and otherwise focusses on different styles of investigations, from data heists to searching for cures. They have a classical mission structure, with briefings and debriefings and a rather linear structure in between. 6/8
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
The game looks extremely traditional so far, and that's really not interesting to me. At this point I would give up on a game and not delve deeper – and I haven't even looked at the actual rules yet. But for #FullyAutomated, I'll go a bit further. There is a starter campaign, so I can at least look at the kind of stories it wants to tell; and I can at least skim through the rule book to see whether any interesting things jump out at me that I might want to consider for playing #Solarpunk. 5/8
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
The character sheet has three pages. The first page indicates a very traditional game with stats and skills, a combat focus, and fluff (though a lot of it) cramped into the remaining space. The second page is pretty redundant with the first one and looks like it has no mechanical effects. The third one is full of combat options with formal terms that strongly assume a hex grid and HP, the interesting thing is that the relevant gear seems to be restricted to 6 double slots. #FullyAutomated 4/8
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
“Knowing that a fight is possible […] makes the risk of violence more present from the metagame perspective of players.” I don't think I have seen a game where rules are there to not be used, and I have my doubts it can work here. In particular with combat taking up about 1/3 of the 3-page character sheet. Are there effective rules also for other domains where “it doesn’t work. It’s completely subjective. It takes an incredibly skilled GM to make it interesting or coherent.”? #FullyAutomated 3/8
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Starting on the front page of https://fullyautomatedrpg.com/ I notice that the starting point of the system is a Cyberpunk homebrew, that it is “similar to the d20 systems most people are familiar with” and that the system highlights combat, I miss the big points of the @SolarpunkPrompts: Community as protagonist; Infratructure is sexy; No simple solutions; Human-Environmental Context. But the combat page pre-empts the question, so I'll head there next. 2/8
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
When there's a new RPG on the block claiming to do #Solarpunk, I'm obviously interested. Recently, @FullyAutomatedRPG made its way to me via @fiction so I'm giving it a look. What does it want to do? It wants to be a kind of D&D for Solarpunk – a big kitchen sink game that becomes a cornerstone for the genre. That's… Hm, I like my RPGs written with a lightning focus on telling specific stories, so I feel like I'll be biased against #FullyAutomated, but let's see. 1/8
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
@SolarpunkPrompts I have thought about putting together a website to coordinate with friends (and potential friends) to visit each other and hack together. Working title “make with me”. Couchsurfing meets Hackerspace, if you will. But like all the other projects, this one is stuck between being a quite specific idea and a non-functional first vague prototype.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Today I get to the “Hackerspace” of @SolarpunkPrompts and it reminds me (well guessed, @tomasino) that I really need to figure out how to do some hacking. This really is a very contemporary prompt. I have hacker friends and hacky projects, but locally only a repair café, which is a different focus and not a persistent space, just once a month.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
The Canteen is my next one of @SolarpunkPrompts. The episode has two parts: First @tomasino talks about an isolated outpost in a #solarpunk setting in general: Science/climate fiction potential, different outlooks, local culture etc. The second part focuses on the mess hall nature: It shows the people not in their work at the outpost but off duty. (Apart from the cooks, maybe — but the people who work while others don't often make for a good counterpoint.) What do they do then?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
@alxd On the note of games:
Did you ever encounter any computer games which you would consider #solarpunk? I remember a discussion here long time ago about (the lack of) solarpunk citybuilders (or citytransformers, more like) – have you noticed anything coming about?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I am finally getting to another one of the @SolarpunkPrompts in my playlist: The Community Center. At first, a community center turned into a place of pilgrimage sounds strange to me. But actually: Crossing the monastic and maybe more holistic tropes of pilgrimage with the very mundane-feeling, maybe even bureaucratic, background of massive skill retraining might very well give a very #Solarpunk story.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
In addition to some #clarkesworld stories, I heard the first episode proper of @tomasino's @SolarpunkPrompts podcast. While I am not a a writer myself, I enjoyed it. In particular the mention of “Dialect: a game about language and how it dies” – which I have played and enjoyed a few times – makes me look forward to hearing more such asides beyond @alxd's original list (https://alxd.org/22-solarpunk-communities-and-story-hooks.html)
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
=> This profile without reblog | Go to Anaphory@wandering.shop account This content has been proxied by September (ba2dc).Proxy Information
text/gemini