ben

since the future of bandcamp is in flux, I thought I'd shout out what I've been listening to lately!

P.SUS - Late Bloomer

Every now and then I check back up on P.SUS and see that there's a new album that I haven't seen, and it's always such a nice little gift. I used to listen to his stuff regularly - After Hours has been a comfort listen of mine for nearly ten years now. I was really into plunderphonics! That will come back around in a moment.

Aivi & Surasshu - Meanwhile

Another long-time follow of mine, since even before Steven Universe, somehow. I kind of don't know what else to say about them - something about their music just feels so perfectly distilled, crystal clear, but without coming across as stilted or rigid.

dazegxd & gum.mp3 - Girls Love Jungle

Somehow, my journey into music listening left me ill-prepared to consider "genre" - it's probably a sign that I simply don't have a talented ear. Anyway, that's just to say that I couldn't tell you whether or not I love Jungle, as a cohesive thing, or that I would be able to tell you if a certain song was Jungle or not. Certainly there are two approaches here that I would be inclined to think are distinct enough as to be pushing into different genres themselves (and I think I do have a preference for one over the other, although I like both).

Allison Fleischer - A Day in the City

This is an absolute delight to listen to! And not to wax philosophical about it, but I think it's emblematic of one of the things that draws me to plunderphonic stuff - recognizing a sound or a clip in a new context is so joyful, particularly in this album, that I think when done right goes beyond the "Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the screen" reaction. It's not just the recognition of a callback, it's the discovery of a thing in a new context, and how that context changes the original and creates something new. I discovered it thanks to Hy's post (which is full of other wonderful albums I've been digging through!)

Redeyes - Unfinished Theory EP

Cheating a little bit here since I discovered this a while ago, but I've been going back to it for this whole month when I want to listen to something just for the pleasure of listening.

reading and rereading and listening to podcasts that I've been meaning to get to for years - Here's something from Against Proceduralism (Miguel Sicart, 2011)

Game designers are supposed to create play, that is, a particular behavior in players. Proceduralists believe that those behaviors can be predicted, even contained, by the rules, and therefore the meaning of the game, and of play, evolves from the way the game has been created and not how it is played; not to mention when and where it is played, and by whom.

The proceduralists are predominantly talking about video games, but I think I see this attitude a lot wrt to TTRPG design as well. This attitude towards game design is one I'd like to avoid.

hey everyone! if you've been following along on my account, I'm a huge fan of @friends-table's latest season – working with them on this design was such a BLAST. please check out the link above to purchase your own shirt today!

I'm back! And here to talk about Wild Cards again! Underdogs win, 3 to 7!

Four games in, I'm ready to conclude with reasonable confidence: Wild Cards is fun!! The game does something really, really cool, that is relatively rare in other card games I've played. There definitely is a way that the game rewards a kind of "skill", reading the game situation, choosing which cards to play and which to discard and when, how to spend your resources, etc. But, once or twice every inning comes a moment when you're all out of tricks - both teams are out of vibes, your specials have triggered, all that's left is the dice. It's so tense! But also (and this is part of the rarity), it has never felt "bad" to get there. Sure, maybe I could have saved some vibe tokens, or perhaps in retrospect the other special in my hand would have been more impactful - but usually, the feeling is one of dread but also hope. Maybe this time, the dice will be in my favor. Maybe this time, we can hit a single. Or maybe I played it right - and even though we're both stuck with no vibes, their pitcher's been hit by a bad peanut, I loaded up my stats with some good weather and good luck, and all that's left to do is swing for the fences. The rest of the post is me talking about specific changes to the deck, and specific moments that came out of those changes in this game - read on if you're interested!