Character arcs form the heart of the story. They give audiences a reason to cheer a character on and add emotional depth to the plot. But not all characters arcs are equal. A good arc doesn’t just take a pauper and make her queen; it … read more »
We humans have spent the last 200,000 years trying to figure out how to treat each other, and while we’re still confused on a few subjects, the basics are pretty solid. At least, they should be. Somehow our fictional characters can’t go two seconds without doing something horrible. Read more »
The Deep Forest is a reinterpretation of The Quiet Year, a mapmaking game about a small post-apocalyptic community’s struggle to survive in a harsh environment. But in this game, it’s a community of monsters, who have just driven invading humans off of their land. Read more »
Telling an egalitarian story means fighting back against a lifetime of cultural programming, not to mention systematic bias in production, publishing, and marketing. So even when we try to make our stories just, problems we haven’t noticed can sneak their way in. Graded on a … read more »
Prejudice is a part of human society, and some eras were just awful. However, we still want to tell stories in those time periods. The steampunk genre is based largely on Victorian England, a time when being female was enough for people to assume you … read more »
We tell the same stories to ourselves over and over. That’s okay; people are comforted by the same themes and drawn to the same conflicts. Unfortunately, we also can repeat tropes just because we never thought critically about them. And when we do that, we … read more »
A few months ago, I wrote an article about some of the more problematic elements inherent to roleplaying games.* There was a lot of philosophy in that post, which is all well and good, but what about practical solutions? Most of us would like our … read more »
Grace joins Oren, Mike, and Chris in discussing how artificial personalities are gendered. They mention computer voices in use today and the explanations given for their gender. They describe female and male robots and AI in science fiction, and how their depiction differs. Read more »
Roleplaying games take us on marvelous adventures. They provide hours and hours of entertainment with our friends. They let us become active parts of our favorite stories instead of passive observers. Unfortunately, they have a dark side as well. Several dark sides, in fact. We’ve … read more »
What could be more straightforward than Outlander, a novel published in 1991 about a character from 1945 going back in time to 1745? This historical fantasy romance blend is so popular, it’s been adapted into a TV series for Starz. Read more »
