Scampir

Be the Choster you wanna read

  • He/Him + They/Them

One Canuck built the #ttrpg tag and the #mecha tag. And that was me.

Cohost Cultural Institution: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots
Priv: @Scampriv


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I think everything is just pattern and deviation. My first real game design mentor once told me "The first step in game design is creating the rules; the rest of game design is finding ways to break those rules." The rule is that Mario is a man the size of a 1x1 box and dies if he touches an enemy; he can only attack by jumping1. Touch them Mushroom, and now he's a 2x1 box and can take a hit without ending his run. Grab the Fire Flower and he gains a distanced attack. Etc.

I guess that's just communication23, though-- and at the end of the day, that's what art, games, language, music-- that's what that all is, a set of patterns and then breaks in the pattern for focus or surprise. Shakespeare will submerge you in iambic pentameter for a whole play, only to splash water on your face with a line like "Now is the winter of our discontent". Beethoven's 5th takes a pattern4-- itself a pattern5 with a surprise ending6-- and repeats it with constant variation, the pleasure of the music being the ways in which your mind simultaneously anticipates what is coming and is surprised by its evolutions. They make the barrels red so you know they're the ones that explode; all the other barrels are grey.7

Anyway, pattern and deviation. I think that's one of Ralph McQuarrie's best qualities as a visual storyteller, and why his paintings define worlds so well. Look at the painting above. What are the patterns? Feel how your mind can extrapolate the city in all directions with just the limited set of information provided8. What are the deviations? Look at how the vertical figures9 leap out from against the horizontal domes. Look at how the setting suns punctuate the evening sky like drumbeats. All the figures exist together in harmony with one another, except for the stormtrooper, the one body that covers and obscures in the scene. We know a lot about how the Empire's presence is felt on this planet just from the way that one trooper disrupts the scene.

I think maybe that's why Star Wars needs the Force, too-- this strange abberation from the normal mechanics of life. A touch of the mystical goes a long way to enriching the mundane. I think the problems come with the Force becomes the pattern itself-- it loses its ability to shock and surprise. I love a story with a Jedi in it; I tire at stories about the Jedi.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this one; I'm in a ruminative mood this morning. I got into a rhythm and just kept writing, I suppose. So, only one thing to do; disrupt it. Later!


  1. As Mary Renault wrote, "The law is that the Mario must die."

  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNJ4aBoRipg

  3. Listening to the song, it's wild that there's combat sounds mixed in here, right? I feel like that's a rarity in opening sequences. Then and again, sound mixing being the invisible art that it is, maybe its just something I haven't tried noticing. Once you consciously register the sound effects in the Game of Thrones opening, it's hard to ignore them.

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  7. I've gone on at length about how good C-3PO's red arm is, right? A great design decision.

  8. That's really the Star Wars play, too, isn't it? You get a whole galaxy of creatures from one cantina; a whole Rebellion from one hangar; a whole Empire from a space station; a whole past from a single line about "the clone wars". Its a recursive universe we inhabit

  9. Shout out to the face mask that one dude has, btw. I feel like a lot of early Star Wars concepts have that goggle/rebreather thing going, and we really need to bring it back. Its a great look.


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