Jason (jcreed) wrote,
Jason
jcreed

Read through the rules of an rpg-like game named microscope, which feels delightfully like a multiplayer storytelling version of nested. (though I don't think one actually influenced the other)

It impinges very interestingly on the conceptual frontiers of a whole bunch of other things I've encountered already... historical time being structured as a unfoldingly, potential-infinity-ish, intuitionistic-feeling dense linear order kind of thing is really compelling. I keep returning to some comments terry tao made in
https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/254a-notes-0-a-review-of-probability-theory/
about the distinction between probability theory as the study of measure spaces (which in a sense indisputably it is) and on the other hand as the study of random variables (which is a much better description of how it's actually practiced). Or, really, to say it more fully, the study of concepts (of which random variables are an example) that are invariant up to extension of probability event spaces.

...And one very interesting consequence of this "dense linear order" feeling, and the atemporal/synoptic/tralfamadorian view of time, is that the rules can encourage you to kill off even important characters without hesitation, because "dead" doesn't at all mean "out of play".

The prominent normative coloration of periods, events, scenes, as "good" or "bad". I'm reminded of the "fortunately/unfortunately" game and that halloween episode of the simpsons where homer buys the cursed krusty doll that comes with a free frogurt but the frogurt is also cursed, etc.

The encouragement to include even things strictly before or after some event as scenes hierarchically below that event reminds me of the completely ordinary musical practice of using anticipatory notes that lie before the measure that a phrase is "really" in.
Tags: games
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    Guy from Seattle team we've been working with showed up today at work; no matter how much I'm generally comfortable working with remote teams (and I…

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