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watching

Watching Josie and the Pussycats

I'm not entirely sure why I'm doing this, but man, this is a treasure! I'm liveblogging, so this might be disjointed... The movie first shows you an absolute inanely hyped boy band that has to die when they figure out some nefarious plan from

playing

Mail Order Apocalypse - Design Diaries

I can't quite believe it, but it's been one and a half years since I started writing my own RPG, Mail Order Apocalypse. On the upside, it is mostly done by now.  What is left is a lot of editing and layout, both things that will

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hacking Into the Odd

Life is full of coincidences: As I am reworking Mail Order Apocalypse into an Into the Odd hack, Norbert is tinkering with the same rules too: He is adding active parry to the game. The rules he adds are pretty straightforward, but while I wouldn't go as far

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Playing Mail Order Apocalypse

Yesterday evening, I spontaneously joined the monthly RPG night at our friendly local game store Otherland. Without any real preparation I offered to run a game of Mail Order Apocalypse and actually got 5 players.

random

Small-scale pods as moderation advantage

Yesterday, I had a lengthy discussion with a proponent of big centralised social media platforms. Not because they have a particular love for big companies, but because moderation is actually one of these issues that are hard to do right. The numbers I could find say that about 20% of

thinking

Online Interaction types - what is there, what do I look for?

While going through the Spreadsheet I created as a tool after writing the last blogpost here, I realized that what was completely obvious to me, isn't necessarily to others. Mostly because the whole argument about the details was mostly in my head. So, let's write it

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Indie in Bielefeld

I'm sitting at home, having just returned from the regular gaming meetup in Bielefeld. While I did pack but not play Dusk City Outlaws, I did get to play two other games: The Skeletons by Jason Morningstar and Thorny Games' Dialect. Both games are very much focused

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Playing at an open table

Harald runs his bi-weekly game in a slightly unusual fashion. It is an open table where he runs for whoever shows up. That in itself isn't that unusual and the West Marshes style of running a campaign is based on a similar foundation. The difference is that he

thinking

That incel nonsense...

At some point I will write a lengthy explanation why prohibiting private cars in inner cities will become an inevitability. All the green folks will rejoice over all the newfound clean air and all and will conveniently ignore that it was the dreaded fear of terror that finally brought this

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Horror in Bielefeld

I spent the last weekend at a semi-regular gaming meetup. The beauty of this thing is that while it does host more than a few dozen people, but all of them are invited known persons. Friends and family one could say. Blechpirat and me usually use this gathering to playtest

thinking

Crowdfunding and me...

For a bit over 5 years, I'm more or less regularly participating in Crowdfunding campaigns. Most of the stuff is geeky technology or gaming things, but there were also art, music or fashion projects. Kickstarter alone counts 89 successfully backed projects. Of those, these actually failed to deliver

thinking

Bob and the Internet

This is the story of Bob: Bob is active in her chosen field, which exposes her to some wider audience. As Bob does things that people value, she has a podium on which to speak and she uses it to some effect. Alas, Bob has a problem. For some reason,

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Terrifying German Culture Hour - Country AND Western

To understand the following, you have to keep in mind that basically all germans for several generations have grown up with the stories of the brave and noble apache chief Winnetou, and his friend Old Shatterhand. The german author Karl May penned those, claiming they were the novelized diaries of

watching

Terrifying German Culture Hour: Think of the Children!

If you ever looked at one of these Buzzfeed lists like "10 dark original endings of Disney princesses" or similar things, you certainly know that european, and especially german fairy tales are dark. Gloomy, doomy, dark. You might know of old-school things like the Struwwelpeter: An educational book

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Terrifying German Culture Hour: Dinner for One

If you've ever spent new years eve in germany, you probably have encountered this: Dinner for One This sketch, performed by two british variety actors (and tumblers) is a german ritual for generations by now - despite the fact that it is indeed performed in english, without any

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Terrifying German Culture Hour: Hip Hop

Disclaimer: Those who know this genre, please forgive me for simplifying things A LOT, and probably getting even more wrong and for certain omitting key players. This is not my music, nor my scene, and I have no clue what I'm writing about. For quite a while, HipHop

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Terrifying German Culture Hour - Ad Breaks!

While I was doing research for Terrifying German Culture Hour, something occurred to me: German TV, especially in the 70ies and 80ies had way less advertising than comparable shows in the US. That sounds like a trivial "so what?" insight, but it is actually huge: For starters, they

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Terrifying German Culture Hour - The other Punk Edition

Even germans often mistake the phenomena known as "New German Wave" for just an assortment of weird stuff. In reality, this cambrian explosion of new styles and bands paved the way for a variety of genres in Germany. Most bands went away quietly afterwards, some got (in)famous,

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Terrifying German Culture Hour - Shows!

TV Shows, what a grande theme. The thing you have to realize at this point, is that when germans hear "show", they don't think of Law and Order or Baywatch - those are Serials in our lingo. A show is a grandiose affair, usually reserved for

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Terrifying German Culture Hou- wat?

There've been a few "this was terrifying, why?!" comments in the side channels to the last blogpost. Let me explain a bit, why Terrifying German Culture Hour exists: I'm a nerd. And so is the girlfriend. Being nerds, our interests are often... eclectic. And

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Terrifying German Culture Hour - The Punk Edition

When one lives together with ones girlfriend who has been socialized in the US, and only caught the occasional glimpse of german TV, there is great fun to be had. At least for me, the girlfriend just kinda suffers through it. We call it "Terrifying German Culture Hour"

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We played Tales from the Loop

This weekend, I invited a few friends to playtest Tales from the Loop with me. I already had a first exposure to the game during the annual new years gaming bash at Spielefeld, but that was with the Alpha version, and as a player. This time I was the referee,

testing

I am on Mastodon now

Those who know me, are aware that I am some sort of Hipster. As such, I of course have to be ahead of all the latest trends and topics de jour. In social media, that means that I of course need to have a Mastodon handle. In case you haven&

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Why I don't identify as sysadmin anymore

I used to be a sysadmin. And I like to think that I was pretty good at my job. These days, my work is much more managerial with a strong emphasis on communication. The command line and I only meet occasionally, and I have to get help whenever I do

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Gangs & Bullshit

One of the nicest and also to me most intriguing RPG publishers I know these days is Paolo Greco with his Lost Pages. His stuff is whimsy, well made and often bafflingly strange. Where Lamentations of the Flame Princess stuff is heavy-metal gore weird, the Cthonic Codex for example is.