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)

“The easiest way to build a product that kicks ass is to start with someone else’s great idea (camcorders, for instance), and take stuff away.

— “Business Requirements are Bullshit” by Steve Yegge

““The DBacesslayer aka DBSlayer aka Släyer (as we like to call it when we’re feeling ironically heavy metal) is a lightweight database abstraction layer suitable.”

— DBSlayer description. (Open source software by the NYTimes.)

“The game will support four players in cooperative and competitive modes, and will include Zapper compatibility. It also supports feelings of guilt over the adversarial depiction of Native Americans, and rationalizations about such treatment being a staple of the Western genre.

— NintendoWiiFanboy on the new title, “Wild West Guns”

“If, while playing Geiger Counter, the characters come across a big red button that says “Don’t push, dangerous!” by all means, before the end of the game, make sure someone, preferably your own character, PUSHES THAT BUTTON!

— Push The Red Button

““O! a kiss / Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!”

— William Shakespeare, Tragedy of Coriolanus. Via The Exile Kiss, by George Alec Effinger

“Indeed, video recovered later would show Peckmann running around the confined but maze-like station, downing emergency sedatives like a madman….pausing in a corner momentarily, only to throw back vitamin pills and give chase to his invisible demons.

— Threadless T-Shirt, “The Madness of Mission Six”

“Magic-user/thieves, fighter/clerics, and even the rare but potentially awe-inspiring fighter/magic-user/thief walked the land, like chimeras wrought by strange rites involving Player’s Handbooks, an overactive imagination, and a DNA splicer.

— Mike Mearls on Multiclassing in D&D. via chris. (This refers to the status quo, but read the article to see the approach ahead for D&D4. I’m optimistic.)

“Tim O’Reilly just said in his web2 keynote that the next stage after Web 2 is Ambient Information. I feel all warm inside.
— Nabeel Hyatt