Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal had comic a while back about political speech. The idea was that, if you replace everything except nouns with nonsensical words, people will still be able to follow the speech. They concluded that if you can get the point from the nouns, the rest is a waste of space. Of course, it was a joke. But it still shows us something about language. However, this is not a feature of political speech, but language in general. It is often packed with information, and people are very good at deciphering meaning from fragments ...

This fall has been mostly about cognitive semiotics. It is very different to return to basic research on a field where I’m almost completely a newcomer. New terminology and new theory - a lot to take in for a mind so used to the familiar. Hopefully this semester will shake some of the entrenched views into new approaches. One of the classes has me writing about literary arts. I’m writing an paper about meaning effects in literary works, and how they could be translated to work on video games. If the paper comes out good, I’ll try to turn it into a proper research paper next spring. ...

I used to run a lot of Mage: the Ascension. Nobilis has almost perfectly taken its place, but for a nostalgia trip, there is no replacing the original. Having tried Mage: the Awakening I feel like they are not even remotely about the same issues. Awakening has a nicer rule system (with its own problems and issues), but that’s about all it has on the older game. I really liked the metaphysics it was based on, even if some of it was really ad hoc. ...

I’ve recently been playing Apocalypse World in our weekly playing session. It is a generally good game, at least if you prefer the style: violent, apocalyptic, sexy (certainly the first two, not necessarily the last one). It is also interesting when it comes to issues of gender. And it is definitely gender, not sex, that is in question. Let me elaborate by describing the character creation process: You choose a name for the character from a list of names provided. Most of them are simply absurd enough to be gender neutral - like objects from a time past, with purpose long forgotten. I’m also told Baker plays around a bit with this in his writing, playing around with gender assumptions. I chose the name last in creating a character, but opted for “Man”, adding “the” to it after consulting the other players. ...

I’ve had a play report on a Dungeons & Discourse game we played last year lying around on my computer for over an year now. I thought I might finally post it online. Unfortunately, it is in Finnish. More info after the cut. Luolia ja Diskursseja Dungeons & Discourse esiintyy nettisarjakuva Dresden Kodakissa. Siinä filosofian ja tieteen teorialla varustetut sankarit seikkailevat korkealentoisissa ympäristöissä, joissa lohikäärmeet korvataan p-zombeilla, solipsisteilla ja neoluddiiteilla. Tarina kuvaa roolipeliä, mutta ei perustu mihinkään todelliseen peliin. Ropecon 2010 tarjosi tilaisuuden kääntää tilanne toisin päin ja pelata roolipeliä luolien ja diskurssien maailmassa. Peliin käytettiin Donjonin systeemiä, jotta kaikki pelaajien villit ajatukset pääsisivät oikeuksiinsa: Donjonissa pelaajat saavat varsin paljon kerrontavaltaa. ...

Recently, a two-year long campaign ended. With 53 evenings spent playing, it is the longest game I’ve been involved in. We played Heimot, a Finnish science fiction game (it would be ‘Tribes’ in English, but that name is already taken). With a strong game master influence and a narrative focus it is a traditional game in many senses. Even the rules used in Heimot tend towards the old-school. They are also contradictory and unsatisfying in many cases, so we made some adjustments and hand-waving as we played. ...