Tag Archives: philosophy

My Take on the Philosophy of Borderlands

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Recently, I stumbled upon a series of books called Pop Classics. The #8 on that series is called Ain’t No Place for a Hero: Borderlands. Since I enjoy the series very much and I do believe it has much to offer in terms of a message (whether intentional or not), I decided to order it. As of this writing, it has not arrived yet, but hopefully it will before I leave for holiday next week (not to worry: I will be moving from an area with no new covid-19 cases in quite some time to another area in a similar position). I plan to read the book and review it, but before I do that, I thought I would write down a few words on the subject, so that I can contrast my opinions with those of the author (Kaitlin Tremblay).

Spoilers.

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Designing Eldritch Sigils

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Last Sunday I published the beta version of rules for Eldritch Sigils. This is a game I have been working on for about five years. I have actually published earlier drafts over the years but this was the first time it actually has consistency and it is actually playable.

This has been a long process and one that is still in the works. But now that the rules are “out there” I thought it would be a good chance to talk about them. Since game design is quite an interesting topic I hope that sharing my process might produce new ideas or at least be curious.

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Lovecraft, Buddha, and Me: On the Relevance of H. P. Lovecraft’s Vision

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buddha2-l

(The source of the image. Those statues are all sold out.)

Lovecraftian horror is a staple of horror roleplaying, but it has its detractors as well. They don’t see anything frightening about Cthulhu and some also try to argue intellectually that no one else should either. I raise some questions about it, offer some answers — including one that says that questions are the answer — and venture into a territory I’ve not seen dealt with before: what happens to a Buddhist who meets a Lovecraftian monstrosity? Continue reading →

The difference between CoCian and BWian philosophies of skills

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Roleplaying games can represent stuff about real life that you don’t necessarily stop to think about. I’ll write about one here, the difference between how Call of Cthulhu and Burning Wheel handle skills, and what those differences say about human capabilities. And why it matters quite a lot to me, personally. Continue reading →

Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy Review

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This is a book from a series of books called Popular Culture and Philosophy. Although many of those books are based on very good properties, mostly they feel like novelties and are not very compelling to me with the exception of Monty Python and Philosophy, which I haven’t read, and this one. Shouldn’t have felt that compelled, but anyhow.

The subtitle of the book is “Raiding the Temple of Wisdom”. Apparently, there wasn’t much to loot there.

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