10 by 10 room

Women gain prominence in video game world - Yahoo! News

Amber Dalton and twin sister Amy Brady created the PMS Clan in 2002. Boasting international membership of nearly 500 women and girls, PMS — which stands for Pandora’s Mighty Soldiers — is a competitive group that plays Xbox, PlayStation2 and PC games. Its members range in age from 9 to 58, Dalton said, but most are adults.

No one should be surprised at the presence of gaming women, but it’s good to see mainstream news slowly move past the stereotype of gaming hobbies being an all-male shindig.

Also, it makes me happy to see the clan above including both the younger and more mature gamers.

ADDENDUM: I reread the article, and some parts of it do come off a bit condescending, and there’s also the co-opting of actual women power into “girl power!!11″-rebranded sexuality… But this is from a mainstream news source after all, and they’ll get it right eventually.

ADDENDUM 2: OH BURN!!!  Via BoingBoing, found this scathing satire about how (not) to write a “Women in Gaming” article. I’m so feeling the burn. Gotta post a non-vapid link next time.

From RPGNet: a discussion of themes in the new version of Mage: the Awakening. There was discussion of the “matrixyness” of the old version of Mage versus the new, and then this interesting observation:

I wouldn’t say that either of the Mage games are inspired by Matrix. Rather, I think that both nMage and Matrix are inspired by Gnosticism.

Consider this:

The (Fallen) world is a lie, a prison built by the Exarchs/machines to keep the Sleepers/human race unaware of what’s really going on. Only a few Awakened/people who have been unplugged know the truth, and they have ways and means to influence the Fallen World/Matrix. These people are fighting a war against their jailkeepers, the Seers of the Throne/Agents.

The system of the Lie/the Matrix itself is the enemy. It’s keeping the Sleepers/humans blind and stupid. Everyone we haven’t awakened/unplugged is potentially an enemy, because the other side has ways to control them (Profane Urim/Agent morphing).
The goal is to awaken/free as many people as possible. One day, when we’ve found the Final Key/the One, we will all be able to transcend our prison.

This shouldn’t be really very surprising, since there is a stat called “Gnosis” after all.

I should also mention that John Kirk, who had written up the “RPG Design Patterns” document, is designing Gnostigmata (1 2 3 4 5), an RPG pitting Gnostic-fu against Catholic-fu.

From YouTube, a clip from a possibly epic movie, “District B13″, where the backstory is: Paris, 2010. An isolation wall surrounds the ghetto cities. Without effective law enforcement, within these walls, gang rule is absolute.

In other words, rogue renegade cop walks into a casino and kills everyone with a dynamic mixture of gun-fu, martial arts, parkour and a pretty shirt.
In many ways, this is like a free ad for Wushu!

gobi honors the recent Enron convictions:

Enron D&D House Rules
1. Assume critical hits based on projected future dice rolls.
2. Never actually roll any dice.

Add your own!!

Via kniedzw [and youtube]: freakin’ stone golem LARPers. So hardcore.