10 by 10 room

One useful aspect of Dogs in the Vineyard is the Town Creation system that comes with it, a procedural way of creating scenarios that are ripe with conflict for players to explore.

So today on an RPGNet Thread, someone suggests that they’ve run out of “wrongs to right”. Shreyas gives us a gripping situation, one that almost feels like he has his own Automatic Moral Crisis Procedure for Exalted in his head…

In Chaya there is a king Satadhanvan, who is a great lover of flowers. He has a legendary flying garden. He is a great king. Chaya is wealthy and beautiful.

In time, he has become jaded and curious; he dreams of finding the lost garden of the emperor Chhatraketu, who was said to brew a nectar of immortality for his seven queens. Chaya is inundated with flowers; unused buildings are converted into grottoes and arboreta for the king…

Read the rest: it gets better from there.

EDIT: Shocking update! Apparently this is derived from Vincent Baker’s monster creation rules from his upcoming game, Afraid, which shared a bloodline with Dogs in the VIneyard.

Chris points out some ugly racial stuff in video games/marketing, particularly related to Sony’s ad campaigns. On a related note, I usually like Kotaku but what’s up with it being a focus for apologia for racially questionable material? (See: LocoRoco, PSP ads.) I don’t mind the argument that these ads in particular may not necessarily be “racist” - such things should be open for debate - but I’m turned off at how quickly the threads jump to a conclusion that everyone in America is just being “too sensitive”. That’s problematic.

On the other hand, this comic from VGCats parodizes a questionable PSP add (“Squirrel Please”) and gives me hope that enough gamers recognize: this is bullshit.
Meanwhile, here’s an article of the “Realism Defense” relating to sexism in CRPGs. The part describing “backlash” reminds me of some of the discussions on Kotaku?