Kickass Review of Shock

Sweet review linked from Joshua's own blog. Gotta read it, if for no other reason, for the description of how the various characters' stories played out.

I gotta play this game. But as the reviewer points out, and as has been pointed out many times, the game text has big holes that need filling. Not Ron Edwards "Dude, read the text or Sorcerer again, it's all there, you just can't see it" kind of holes, but actual glaring "wait, there's no rule for this" holes.

Luckily another edition is impending which will fix this. I want that one.

The reviewer himself didn't suffer from this problem, he explains, because he was taught the game by existing players who knew how it went.

Overall the review is an excellent example of the presentation of a heavily narrativist indie game in such a way that an average mainstream gamer will understand exactly what it's all about.

So I Married an RPG Designer

Egads! Accused murderer and Linux filesystem guru Hans Reiser used to be an RPG designer!

Says Wired --

I'm here because his defense lawyer thinks I will understand Reiser. The accused is a 43-year-old geek — he lives in his own world of computer code, videogames, and science fiction books. He spent his early twenties developing a role-playing game to compete with Dungeons & Dragons while writing a novel about aliens invading Earth. By age 30, he'd decided that his talents would be better applied to recrafting overlooked aspects of the Linux operating system.

I'm consumed with a desire to know more about that game.