10 by 10 room

“Let me talk about some basic principles I have latched onto that lead to success with [D&D 4th edition]. The first is a simple truth: Learn from Video Games.

Video games have been creating interesting encounters for much longer than we have. For the most part role-playing games have really sucked at this for a long time.

— Advice from Keith S on D&D4

“So Calexico is the greatest band in the world that you don’t listen to – you plebian fool – and I’ve always loved their border stylings and combination of rockingness, sadness, and dreaminess… I remembered that on the way over I had been bopping to my very favorite Calexico song: “The Crystal Frontier”.

That’s when something from that song, my experiences in Tucson, The Wire and Changeling: The Lost crossed over and made a spark – I was going to run a game where the player characters were polleros – immigrant smugglers who brought human cargo over the border. Dodging the police, avoiding entanglements in drug gangs, and their adventures in the creepiness of ghost towns, empty deserts, angry ghosts, and desperation.

— JDCorley’s thread on StoryGames (click through for more music links)

Of course, I keep returning to space opera as a backdrop for a lot of my internal aesthetics, fiction, internal mythology.

gottaknockalittleharder.ytmnd.com (Cowboy Bebop, “Goodnight Julia”.)

it makes sense now. In space, you can be alone.