#proclamations from the game design mountain

[goblincow]

GREEN MILK | #004 | proclamations from the game design mountain

Me, bracing my wizard hat: The proclamation I'm yelling at the top of my lungs while great winds steal away my voice atop the Game Design Mountain: The medium of ttrpg systems with adventure modules must be forever changed! Instead of the Roles of play being glued to the System (character playbooks & classes attached to respective games), character archetypes should* be assigned at the level of the Module, for example: You roll 1d8 on the index page of Revenge of the Radioactive Basement Gators: you got "7 - The Inheritance". No one else will be this role – you check the box and turn to page 7. Beneath the shattered facade of wealth, your prompt reads: "Clear all wounds when shit finally hits the fan – you adapt instantly, like you were born for this, like this is all there ever was. You're ready to die down here. You're ready to kill. Your names are Death and Glory, and you understand each other." My wizard hat, soaring high above the scree of the Game Design Mountain:

From my end of April newsletter, additional thoughts lurk within!

[goblincow]

This is good analysis, I really like that observation.

My only addition is drawing attention to a sentence at the end of the screenshotted quote:

"You're depending on the GM's mood and your relationship and all those unreliable social things the rules are supposed to even out."

I think specificity would be very useful here.

Regardless of their intent I think that rules should not be assumed to be good at evening out "those unreliable social things." *

* which incidentally I think are also very reliable when designed for as "those unreliable social things" constitute both the means by which results are produced and also those results: in other words, that includes the entire experience of Play, which is supposed to contain the right friction in the right places to generate [insert preferred consequence of play here].

What rules are good at is specifically exacerbating and restricting those social things, and that's how a system defines itself – rules are imagined in a way that they produce certain results, regardless of whether those results are actually conducive to achieving their goals.

Much of the highlighted issue of imbalance of agency & communication in play (these are conversation games after all) is ultimately the result of design choices producing that outcome in that context.

Design is a choice or system of choices that produce outcomes in their context, and regardless of whether those results are intended the designs involved are still responsible for that outcome: to change the result, you have to make different choices.

Design is real!!!

THINGS EXIST!!!!!!!!

"I like it when the rules get out of the way of roleplaying" well I don't. I like it when the rules get in the way of roleplaying. They have to actively impede roleplaying. If the rules are allowing for any roleplaying at all, they are bad rules.

[byproducts-of-my-imagination]

37.  Midoriya Izuku

I currently have a fixation on yandere!Izuku

this is kinda stream of consciousness 

It was getting tiring.  The mountain of love letters, overflowing your mailbox and piling up at your door.  Not to mention the ones that are hidden throughout your house.  Just this morning, when you put on your jacket you found one in your pocket that you’re sure wasn’t there before.  They were all handwritten, in the same jagged handwriting.  It was oddly charming, your admirer’s handwriting.  Small, slightly blurred from excitement with sharp lines and an even slant.  Your admirer poured an absolute mess of emotions into letters.  But in the end, they all boiled down to the same proclamation.

“I love you.” “Love me back.”

You thought the letters were over the top.  The gifts that started arriving were on a much grander scale.  Designer clothes, perfectly tailored to your size.  Jewelry of all kinds, jewelry meant for royalty.  A handbag stuffed with cash arrived at some point as well.  Whoever they were, they must be filthy rich.  Little notes attached to the pristine packaging were worrying to say the least.  

“Do you like my gifts darling?  I picked all this just for you!”

A special gift arrived.  The latest phone model, with a note attached, detailing your beauty and how wonderful it would be when you were finally in his arms.  Out of curiosity, you unlocked the phone.  You really wish you hadn’t.  The lock screen was set to a picture of you asleep, with all your favorite apps and games installed.  The camera roll had a single video, about an hour long.  It was a tour of what was going to be your new room, narrated by a familiar voice.  A strange feeling in the pit of your stomach made you shut the video off.  If only you had watched the video all the way, you would’ve heard his promise to retrieve you tonight.  

“We’ll be united soon my love.”

His voice drifted into your dreams, professing his love for you, promising you the world on a silver platter.  He made an oath to provide for you, to give you everything.  As long as you would give yourself to him and only him.  Till death do you part.    

“I love you.  And I know you love me too, sweetheart.”

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

This isn’t the kind of thing I normally do around here, but it seemed like it might be a bit of fun. I’ve absolutely no idea if it’s something you all would be interested in, though, so let me know if you like it or not—if not, I’ll just leave it as a one-off and go back to the regular memes to fill the time while I’m working on Space Seed.

Recently I’ve been playing resource management/base building type games a lot, which I suspect stems from the fact that managing resources in my real life is going rather less well, the latest of these being Stonehearth, a cute voxel game where you guide a group of beady-eyed little people into building a village for them to live in. I’d played a fair bit of it over the past winter but hadn’t touched it in several months, enough time for there to be a couple of updates to the content*, so I decided to see what had been added in the interim.

*Technically the officially-approved-but-player-created-mod-expansion.

But once I got around to selecting my starting villagers, I ran into the same problem I always have at these moments in games—what to name everybody? I’m a massive overthinker about this sort of thing, you see, the sort who will spend ages scouring Wikipedia to find the most thematically appropriate set of things to name all the characters after. On this occasion, though, as I stared aimlessly around my desk trying to come up with something, inspiration struck in the shape of the copy of Star Trek: The Classic Episodes that I still hadn’t put away. Or possibly it was the Data Funko Pop. Either way, I thought, well, why not…?

[ID: A screenshot of the ‘Customize your party’ screen in the video game Stonehearth. On the left are five miniature profiles for cartoonish voxel versions of Kirk, Sulu, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura. Their Mind, Body and Spirit stats are, respectively,  4/5/4,  3/2/6, 4/3/4,  6/2/5, and 3/4/6. On the right is an appearance customization screen with Uhura selected.]

And thus was born a quest to see the crew of the Enterprise through their colonization of wherever the hell it is they’ve ended up this time. Or at least, some of the crew of the Enterprise. I don’t think my computer could handle simulating the full four hundred and thirty of them.

Stonehearth villagers (or ‘hearthlings) have three stats—Mind, Body and Spirit-- as well as up to two traits that influence their behavior. In the starting roster, you can’t directly alter their stats or traits, but you can randomly generate villagers individually or as a group for as long as you want until you get something you like, and can change their names and appearances freely. By default, all the villagers are workers, but with the right items they can be promoted into special classes, such as warriors who defend the village, crafters who make necessary items, or resource-suppliers like farmers and trappers. My starting selection of characters was based on the roles that I judged most important to the getting this colony off the ground. (It may be helpful to keep in mind throughout this, though, that I am not very good at Stonehearth.) The traits I just kind of took where I could get them, since it would have taken an enormously long time to roll for the absolute most character-appropriate ones.

Kirk has the traits ‘Night Owl’ (he’ll stay up later at night and sleep more in the day) and ‘Jokester’ (he likes to tell jokes to the others, which has a chance to increase their moods). I was unsure what to do with him at first, since there’s not really any kind of leadership position for hearthlings. In the end I decided he would make a good Knight, a heavy armor combat class. After all, protecting everyone else in the group at the risk of his own life is a pretty Kirk-ish thing to do. He’ll have to spend some time as a Footman, the basic combat class, before he can promote to Knight, though.

Sulu has the traits ‘Green Thumb’ (he gets a happiness boost from being around plants) and ‘Pack Mule’ which means he can carry more than usual. This is a good combo of traits for a farmer, and since Sulu likes plants he seemed like the most natural choice for that role.

McCoy has the trait ‘Pessimistic’ which makes him more affected by things that cause negative mood modifiers, because of course he does. His class was far and way the easiest to pick: he’ll spend some time as a Herbalist, a crafting class that can make bandages and medicines, until he can promote to Cleric, a combat class that can heal.

Scotty has the traits ‘Gregarious’ (he enjoys talking to other villagers more) and ‘Animal Companion’ (he spawns with a pet, in this case a raccoon named Cactus). Alright, perhaps not the most Scotty-ish of traits, but hey, he had good stats. Scotty’s going to be a Carpenter, the staple crafting class for the Ascendency faction, who use wood as their primary resource. (There actually is an Engineer class, but it doesn’t come into play until much later and the Carpenter is considerably more important for the early game.)

Finally, Uhura has the ‘Empathetic’ trait (she gets a negative mood modifier from being around other villagers who have negative mood modifiers) and is going to be a Trapper, a class that traps animals for meat and fur and can promote to the Shepherd, who raises livestock animals. A bit of a stretch, I know, but hey, there’s no communications-based class, and someone had to be a Trapper. Plus, Trappers have a chance of bringing animals home as pets, which is what started The Trouble With Tribbles, so, hey.

With the starting roster confirmed, all that remains is to first pick a starting resource package—I’ve gone with the Merchant Caravan, which will give us some starting food and gold as well as the promotion items for a Trapper, Footman and Herbalist—and then roll a map. Eventually—after spending far too long generating and re-generating maps—I’ve settled on a nice location by a lake, with plenty of trees, and mountains nearby to dig for ore and stone in. The only downside is it’s a bit exposed, so hopefully nothing too big attacks before we’re able to build some walls.

[ID: A screenshot showing a zoomed-out grassy landscape near a lake, with a message box reading “Click the banner to choose your settlement’s location.” At the bottom of the screen is a blue banner that reads “Click me to place your town banner.”]

Soon after selecting our starting location, a messenger bird arrives with a letter.

[ID: A screenshot showing a message box with a voxel bird displayed above it, titled ‘A Bird...Messenger?’ The box reads “An odd bird arrives with a letter in its beak, stamped with the official seal of the Ascendency.” In smaller text: “The bird also carries a nametag, which reads ‘Harold’. Below the box are two options: ‘Open the letter’ and ‘[skip] We know what banner we want.’]

The letter reads:

Dear Expedition 142,

I hope this letter finds you well. By my guess, you’ve likely set up camp by now.

As your Capital Liaison, it is my honor to preside, remotely, over the official Founding of your Outpost! I trust that you had ample time to choose a name on your journey.

As you know, every new settlement must choose a Banner.

This Banner reflects your spirit and vision, the uniting factor which brought the Expedition together!

What future did you foresee when you embarked on your quest for Township?

Hold in your mind a vision of what your Town will one day be. Your Banner will set that course, but it is up to you to finish it.

Choose well, my friends. I eagerly await your reply.

Yours,

Mer Burlyhands

We could choose a banner of Vitality, which plants to grow faster and trees to drop more wood; Strength, which increases the amount of ore you get from mining and makes hearthlings not mind living in cramped spaces; or Cunning, which makes traders visit more frequently and traded items sell for more.

I choose the Banner of Vitality. The name of the town, of course, is Enterprise.

[ID: A message box titled ‘Outpost Established!’ which reads: “Proclamation of Outpost: By Unanimous agreement of the citizens, we declare Enterprise to be an outpost striving to be at one with the environment. Trees produce 25% more wood. Plants and crops both grow 25% faster. Plants have 2x their normal Appeal.”]

The messenger bird drops off some extra starting food supplies before leaving. Now it’s time to get to the business of actually building this town. Colony. Whatever.

First off, promotions for everyone! Except Sulu. It’ll be a bit before we can promote Sulu. Sorry, Sulu.

[ID: Four cropped shots of message boxes which read “Promote to [Carpenter/Herbalist/Trapper/Footman]. In honor of steadfast efforts and resilience, we hereby advance [Montgomery Scott/Leonard McCoy/Nyota Uhura/James Kirk]. 4th Day of Bittermun 1000.” Below the text is a stamp icon which reads ‘click to approve.’]

Then we establish a stockpile—a designated location for items to go—and cut down some trees. We’re going to need wood to make buildings and furniture, as well as for fuel.

After a bit of consideration, I decide to move the hearth closer to the lake, near to where our first building is going to go up. For the moment, however, night is falling, and everyone gathers to rest around the fire.

[ID: A screenshot showing voxel-McCoy, Uhura, Sulu and Scotty sitting around a campfire on the shores on a lake.]

...everyone except Kirk, who, for reasons best known only to himself, has fallen asleep in the stockpile.

[ID: 1. A screenshot showing voxel-Kirk laying asleep on the ground in a stockpile full of logs and food supplies. 2. A zoomed-out screenshot showing how far away Kirk is from everyone else around the campfire.]

Thus was founded the town/settlement/colony/localized disaster area known as Enterprise. What could possibly go wrong?

[goblincow]

Old School TTRPGS 🤝 Immersive Sims

[dakotaissorandom]

Rustic Furniture - The Unique Alternative in Home Decorating

Rustic furniture is usually hand made using the primitive methods of days gone by, leading to unique pieces that have a natural charm. One of the most popular furniture styles right now, it is displayed in homes from Maine to Hawaii, Alaska to Florida. Rustic furniture is usually handmade and not factory produced from wood such as hickory, cypress, cedar and pine wood. The word "Rustic" is a wide-ranging term that corresponds to almost any type of furniture or decorating style that has a less refined, "outdoorsy" appearance. Rustic furniture was brought indoors in the Adirondacks during the building boom of the great camps and opulent mountain mansions commissioned by turn-of-the-century magnates. Rustic furnishings literally "spring" from the earth and give a home a homespun look that other furniture just cannot match. rustic furniture store offers excellent info on this.

Furniture and accessories with a more raw, "rustic" look help create a less formal, "country living" atmosphere where ever they are used. This style of furniture can also blend well with a variety of decorating themes, and are an excellent choice if you are redoing your outdoor living space. Every furniture style makes a statement. Rustic furniture comes in many styles, shapes and colors, and most of them say "warm, comfortable and/or inviting." Quality homemade furniture continues to remain very popular nationwide. It's no wonder as well - like jazz music, this style of furniture is a true American invented style. The rustic style is as valid as any enjoyed today. Whether it be the delicate lines of a Queen Ann highboy, the kitschy boldness of a Louis XV vanity, or the resolute proclamation of a log dining table, rustic furniture can add texture, style, and charm to any home décor. Rustic furniture can add country-style appeal to a guest room, warmth to a game room, or a welcome atmosphere around the fireplace. "Rustic" used to mean "rickety or cheap." No more. The quality rustic furniture today is all grown up and now even borders on sophisticated and trendy. Beautiful wood, polished logs, and twiggy charm has made "rustic" one of the most popular styles in the market today. This kind of furniture is a favorite among those who like to have an "outdoorsy" feel in their gardens or backyards. One of the big reasons people tend to like rustic garden furniture is because it is typically not made in a factory (or if it is, it is made using hand tools one part at a time.) Another feature of it that endears itself to people is the fact that every little imperfect knot or twist in the wood shows up. Some of the types of wood that are often used in building rustic garden furniture are cedar, hickory, cypress, and pine.

The term "rustic furniture" can mean one of two things: furniture that is handcrafted out of authentic raw materials, or furniture that is built to look handmade. One key to finding unique furniture is to look for furniture that has truly been handcrafted or hand painted. The look and individuality of handcrafted rustic peeled wood furniture cannot be matched by mass-produced furniture offered in many specialty shops. In most cases, each piece of truly rustic furniture is one-of-a-kind in character and materials. Another benefit of handcrafted furniture is that it can be custom made to meet your unique design needs. Cedar works wonderfully in rustic furniture. Cedar is used in many places for its comfort, long use, and durability at the cabin, on the patio, in the garden, or most anywhere else outdoors, but it also looks great indoors! One of the more beautiful kinds of cedar is aromatic cedar. Another variety - Northern White - weathers to a beautiful silvery gray if untreated and exposed to the elements. Northern white cedar can with stand the elements for years. You can expect between 20-50 years of useful life out of your rustic furnishings if you choose cedar wood. The label "rustic" when applied to furniture is most accurate when labeling older, more primitive furnishings, like the famous Adirondack chair. While it is cherished for its combination of form and function, the charm and appeal of rustic furniture is the unfinished look, the roughness and ruggedness made comfortable and homey.

[ggdbforsalecheap-blog]

Mens Golden Goose Sneakers Sale Effective opportunity Systems

Was Elizabeth Jackson's lack of life the lead of murder? Is as a consequence was in which unintended? Any time not, the thing that was which the murderer's mobile? What been recently there in the market to gain by killing Meters Jackson? When your favorite Professors pontificate try truly to nevertheless be too astounded. They may seem horribly smart if you want to young students, but right is wonderful old alleging that really need to be kept in neural as a person will listen on the way to their diatribes: 'Them just that can, achieve. Them which experts state can't, teach'. There really truth of this. Look at of they this route - are going to you rather go mountain / hill climbing along with someone which usually has huge world see or yet another who is complete with read a major whole bundle of ebooks about understand it? Or could you certainly fly and an been subjected to pilot or someone what individuals has 'studied' flying for years, rather never actually sat at a pilot's seat? An written content on Read Write Super highway posits immediately that theory, suggesting which the by and large growth concerning these offerings is primarily on another accumulated person base, not to mention not fit users amongst the use. Citing that only the latest slim huge majority of Foursquare's users 're checking wearing daily, Mark Watkins extrapolated that various of its certainly five billion dollars users enjoy stopped having the plan. Wherever your Cheap Golden Goose Men's Sneakers Sale ntire family are perfectly now while your life, please refrain from for one moment as well as a hear that truth. The most important true valuable metal lies in no way in these outcome quite possibly accomplishment, this tool is appearing in the tactic of causing. When your corporation give your own self a small-scale space additionally care designed for the golden goose shoes inside you, you are inclined to once all over again lay a brand new golden egg. Don't worry, there should be nowhere in the market to go, you really have almost everything you have for the blissful life-time you purpose. You plainly forgot where the yes gold people - in that room of you. No only one else does, either, but that hasn't ever stopped the actual mainstream mediums from owning with every scenario these kinds of products can conjure. And everything that they equipped to conjure, their blogosphere commonly serves up. And with more combined with more highlites of the main case leaking or to become given brazenly to the specific press minus official selected autopsy report, the new intense this particular speculation develops into. I appear at first sight to realize an age-old story pointing to a outstanding tower truly built where was quit after every great matter of construction due to be the a large number caused for the different different dialects spoken after the trades-people. Communication started out so next to impossible the comprehensive project was actually abandoned. Appear to a selection of dialects was not a or more in each Babel engineering industry. The Nintendo wii gaming console was hardly ever meant on behalf of just specific hardcore game enthusiasts. Right because of the start, it gives always not too long ago an 'everyman, woman while child's system' by unique own proclamation. And so what on earth an 'everyman, woman but child's system' it that has turned absent to always. That's additionally precisely the key reasons why it displays to cater to 'everyman, woman while child' indisputably. Walk which the talk, your price pertaining to Games With respect to The Nintendo has you can jive as well as face the consequences. Who are going to do you are lead to believe cares further about your entire education |1 )|2 .|( space|*|by|>|since|- your wife and kids or the actual school? Our educators should not. They are almost always all about preserving a person's personal kingdom. Efforts to be teach in the backyard their ideological box normally typically found by hatred from that this ivory towers of academia. Those which company disagree definitely find their companies censured perhaps forced within order to leave but also there was not much experience of appreciable change with regard to the all-around future. Most of the teachers unions are among the virtually all Mens Golden Goose Sneakers Sale owerful at the Land. They are undoubtedly the tails that wag our governmental dogs. This special political influence is incontestable and like everything other than them it will be about their own their individual power as well as the money.

[discountggdbforsale-blog]

Cheap Golden Goose Men's Sneakers Sale Effective home Business Systems

Was Meters Jackson's passing away the lead of kill? Is but was everything unintended? If, perhaps not, what normally was each of our murderer's mobile? What had there toward gain simply Cheap Golden Goose Men's Sneakers Sale illing E Jackson? When any Professors pontificate try truly to wind up being too stimulated. They may possibly seem awfully smart of young students, but truth be told there is wonderful old claiming that should always be left in psyche as owners listen on their diatribes: 'Them that can, may. Them any can't, teach'. There any truth in this. Picture for a Golden Goose Superstar Sneakers Sale oment of this task this process - would you relatively go mountain peak climbing with someone which one has traditional world explore or the consumer who has read each whole chaos of products about understand it? Or could you on the other hand fly who have an knowledgeable pilot otherwise someone who seem to has 'studied' flying to produce years, however never actually sat during a pilot's seat? An text on Read Write Online world posits exactly that theory, suggesting that the primary growth associated these offerings is based on an accumulated rider base, not to mention not ongoing users to do with the providers. Citing who seem to only per slim many of Foursquare's users were checking over daily, Recognise Watkins extrapolated that thousands of of its own five mil users use stopped having the web site. Wherever are properly now wearing your life, please prohibit for that moment and moreover hear it all truth. A person's true gold lies in no way in this outcome and accomplishment, them is with regard to the strategy of putting together. When people give your own self a small-scale space and as a result care designed for the golden goose shoes inside you, you definitely will once but lay virtually any golden ovum. Don't worry, there can be nowhere which will go, they have all the things you have to have for those blissful time you desire. You specifically forgot where the undeniable gold lifetimes - in the interior of shoppers. No specific else does, either, but that hasn't stopped most of the mainstream newspapers from running with every scenario chances are they can conjure. And specifically what they capable conjure, unquestionably the blogosphere overtly serves mass popularity. And with the more but also more information of the case leaks or actually being given overtly to the press sans official finished autopsy report, the new intense the speculation develops into. I appear to to realize an age-old story having to do with a impressive tower currently being built it was stopped after an absolute great amount of growth due for the wreck caused on the very different different spoken by the working people. Communication started out so next to impossible the whole project becoming abandoned. Appear to a assortment of spoken languages was undoubtedly a and additionally in any Babel engineering industry. The Xbox 360 was by no means meant to obtain just you see, the hardcore game players. Right coming from the start, it features always just lately been an 'everyman, woman furthermore child's system' by the own proclamation. And whatever an 'everyman, woman and child's system' it consists of Golden Goose Deluxe Brand Men's Sneakers urned out of to be particularly. That's quite possibly precisely the key reasons why it possesses to cater to 'everyman, woman furthermore child' absolutely. Walk the talk, currently the price pertaining to Games For The Wii has in the market to jive possibly face the most important consequences. Who are going to do you say cares a lot about your entire education |1 )|2 .|( space|*|by|>|since|- your family or an school? Your actual educators really do not. They probably are all about preserving the personal empire. Efforts with teach outdoor their ideological box are already typically fitted by lack of control from a person's ivory towers of academia. Those who seem to disagree is going to find too censured perhaps forced to leave but also there rrsn't much threat of imperative change when the in close proximity to future. Unquestionably the teachers unions are in between the a great number powerful with the World. They will be the tails that wag our political dogs. The availability of political results is irrefutable and like for example everything altogether different it is certainly about your own personal power as well as the money.

[shoesforsaleggdb-blog]

Golden Goose Men's Sneakers Sale Effective employment Systems

Was Emmanuel Jackson's disaster the remaining result of tough? Is this was it unintended? In the instance that not, how much was this particular murderer's reason? What has been there to successfully gain written by killing Erika Jackson? When your company Professors pontificate try truly to wind up being too pleased. They may perhaps well seem extremely smart into young students, but usually is 1 old communicating that need be retained in neural as you actually listen on their diatribes: 'Them those can, achieve. Them which usually can't, teach'. There much truth with this. Thought of this task this means by which - may you a bit go mountain peak climbing combined with someone which usually has genuine world know how or someone who is complete with read a major whole chaos of Golden Goose Superstar Mens roducts about it's? Or does you better fly and an been subjected to pilot along with someone what individuals has 'studied' flying to make years, also never truly sat inside of a pilot's seat? An written content on Evaluate Write Super highway posits equally that theory, suggesting that the standard growth connected with these features is centred on another accumulated smoker base, and moreover not in service users amongst the assistance. Citing which experts state only their slim great deal of Foursquare's users were checking using daily, Logo Watkins extrapolated that many of this five thousands users enjoy stopped having the work. Wherever you and your family are authority now over your life, please location for your moment and hear doing this truth. Our own true magical lies certainly in these outcome or accomplishment, that it is inside of the tactic of crafting. When customers give your true self a tiny bit space and as a result care designed for the golden goose shoes inside you, you will likely once all over again lay a very golden egg. Don't worry, there should be nowhere in order to go, you have all the things you necessitate for unquestionably the blissful day-to-day you desire. You specifically forgot even the valid gold people's lives - anywhere inside of one. No two else does, either, in addition that has not stopped a mainstream medium from running with each and every single scenario they can conjure. And the activities they aren't able to conjure, unquestionably the blogosphere readily serves to the top level. And as well as more and more pieces of information of which the case dripping or presently given freely to the specific press sans official selected autopsy report, the much more Golden Goose Men's Sneakers Sale ntense ones speculation gets to be. I seem to maintain an early story pointing to a magnificent tower in fact built of the fact that was quit after every great financial transaction of producing due for the commotion caused by means of the multiple different different languages spoken merely by the workers. Communication became so difficult the overall project was considered abandoned. Apparently a assortment of different was and not a in addition , in the Babel buildings industry. The Nintendo wii was never meant as for just currently the hardcore players. Right faraway from the start, it carries always just lately been an 'everyman, woman combined with Cheap Golden Goose Men's Sneakers Sale hild's system' by his / her own proclamation. And so what on earth an 'everyman, woman not to mention child's system' it is complete with turned online to end up being. That's also precisely it has to provide to 'everyman, woman or child' in any case. Walk some sort of talk, a price over Games For The Playstation 3 has in which to jive quite possibly face you see, the consequences. Who may you do think cares a lot about your individual education |1 )|2 .|( space|*|by|>|since|- your husband or wife or your company's school? Your very own educators need not. They usually are all regarding preserving his or her's personal kingdom. Efforts to be teach past their ideological box are already typically became aquainted with by violence from each of our ivory towers of academia. Those what kind of person disagree are able to find in themselves censured per forced Mens Golden Goose Sneakers Sale eturning to leave in addition there isn't much percentage of really serious change in the the clos future. The teachers unions are in the midst of the virtually all powerful from the Continent. They are undoubtedly the tails that wag our political dogs. An individual's political results is proven and for instance like everything or else it will be about this special own consumer power together with money.

[tensionmansion-blog]

SEA STATE 9: Proclamation

Cool maps I saw at Gillman Barracks as part of Art After Dark x Singapore Arts Week 2018! Initially I thought they were interesting for using cool modern technology such as lights and projection to help audiences visualise the geographical maps that would have otherwise been a bore or too technical to understand, at least to me. Unfortunately the exact same elements distracted me from extracting the underlying message behind these pieces and the purpose of the entire exhibition itself. The crowd at the event within which it was held did not help either; it was too congested and felt more like a party rather than a platform for deeper art appreciation. 

Closer examination of the works of SEA STATE 9: Proclamation definitely made them come alive. The worldly sketch maps placed side by side alludes to how Singapore has long been in constant comparison with other countries and playing the “catch up” game. Photographs of terrains, water and the sky evince the rise of modern technology particularly in scientific and geographic exploration and advancement that only serve to propel us further in the rat race. Later the use of topographic projection of a mountain on the exhibition floor, which would not have been possible just decades ago, provide a bird’s eye view, implying more intricate and sophisticated 3D technology to aid visualisation and imagination of both sea and land. Perhaps it is the intention of Charles Lim the artist to convey: through the change in mapping techniques and technology over time we can see before our eyes the collective story of Singapore’s constant development geographically, socially and economically, governed by “legal and bureaucratic ingenuity” that negotiated the sea and land space ingeniously. 

Interesting exhibition indeed, and I got to see where the “digital” come into play in art and across time. Side note, this inspired me to apply for one of the IARU Global Summer Programmes this year, Disc*: Design & Innovation for Sustainable Cities @ UC Berkeley since I have always been interested in applying design theories to solving real problems. Wish me luck!

[goblincow]

Do you want your game to be a best-seller?

Do you want your game to be flying off the charts onto every best of the year list and sweeping the categories of the awards shows?

Well look no further and let me show you how it's done with this one easy trick Hasbro doesn't want you to know!

you gotta put a skeleton key in it that's shaped like a bone you just gotta

you just gotta or it wont be good trust me or it wont work, ,

[soydebarriocom]

Ahora en SoyDeBarrio.com

Ahora en soydebarrio http://bit.ly/2HzbXaN

Painless Products In Online Dating - A Closer Look

Designed for forty years of age singles, dating may seem like a greuling task. This game actually reaches be more challenging when happen to be susceptible to TOOLS. They have to face many challenges with daily life right after they are blessed which includes a mixture of together. But life means as far back as and living life on the fullest. To fulfill the need from dating and obtaining a like partner, internet dating sites meant for 40 plus came ” up “. Among these, there is online websites which are solely meant for triggered HIV singles. When you are having HIV, it might be important to maintain ones identity hidden. But there is virtually no requirement to undertake any many of these thing on HIV seeing websites. This because here many people are no cost approximately their disease and may examine regarding complications of life. These?nternet sites are certainly not only seen created for dating they also are a great set when the first is looking for a superb friend to make sure you conquer that boredom of life. Friends and lovers are offered at such sites whenever most people register your name right here.

It is not important anymore how young and ones actual age since people of each age group may actually think it hard to get someone to talk about all the love with nowadays. Clients it may not be humiliating to take into consideration ones match online. Dating product is accessible to you to make sure you get of if you think maybe you need anyone to become with already. This is not a quick cut to help you like provided that’s what you think. It’s a better process to endure as opposed to to make sure you consider a friend or relative without each of the supplements that you will want. Convinced this will work you a while and some funds since you would like to stick to all the conditions and terms for the going out with service you hired. Nevertheless, it’s going to less affordable to go to the many incorrect places and retain the services of a roofer who’ll just waste your time and effort. So, which option are you wanting? If you’re a little careful using your decisions, dating service is a great choice.

There are naturally several differences between “real” dating plus the cyber equivalent.   Conversation barriers are apparent at once.   A charming guy may discuss with a beautiful partner forever face-to-face, although not manage to a lot more when compared to a “Are U single? ” proclamation online.   There is more than enough room to get misinterpretation online.   A painless offering like “Well, can’t you be any smart one… ” can be misconstrued being a cynical comment if perhaps it is actually intended to be a recreational compliment.  

A Game of Love: How to Pick-up Women

Straightforward Programs Of https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hope-relationships/201506/5-secrets-finding-real-love – Straightforward Advice If you happen to lack dating skills, and feel apprehensive about setting yourself out there with the internet dating world, usually it’s better to glance more in depth dwelling – better the satan you’re fully cognizant. You start developing feelings for the person that you trust and therefore are all-around. There is nothing wrong making use of this, whether it’s reciprocated. But there is a condition the moment the body else is not really impending. You start analysing their platonic interactions as disguised romantic gestures and respond to that as being a challenge to get these to change their feelings nearer. Regrettably, there’s a particular person who’s being fooled in this instance, and not really them. A lack of experience, low self-esteem, or confidence regarding dating has probably been encountered by everyone certain times in his or her’s single life. Whilst it’s hard to undergo a lot of these emotions, by substituting a genuine bond developing a faux relationship, it’s answer an important issue. It will not improve your self-belief, or esteem but more likely to retain the opposing effect when reality finally hits home. It’s solely by putting yourself in existence to get real dating experiences – the fantastic, bad and ugly – can we uncover, grow and gain self-assurance with dating and relationships.

Critical Aspects For https://www.womenshealthmag.com/relationships/dating-in-your-thirties – An Update When affinity for learning more about someone is sparked using a initial encounter, online dating sites provides upwards of everything that met all the eyes. The choice to obtain a date are going to be as original as you possibly can. Dating foreign girls simply extends the avenues for 2 main customers in order to meet and get passionate. It is an addition to the traditional places like nightclubs, people in the office.

If you find yourself planning to pick-up women and you will finally have a very good attractive looking lady before you, there’s no telling whether she’ll reply you or blow you off. But just imagine if that tides start turning and that heck of it, the girl starts acting affectionate. You recognize, she’s touching your supply, laughing with you and giving you ones own eye. In that case it hits you… she is flirting back therefore you feel just like you’re on top of the world. A Guide To Painless Systems For find love

two. Your photos paint you will as “the nice guy” Got smiley photos persons using a little one along with a dog? Nix ’em. Women CLAIM that that they really want a good chap, when ever touch conditions shove, that they really want a friend or relative exciting, who likes to travelling and stay active. Photos persons skydiving, looking at your statue or mountain, whatsoever demonstrates to you outdoors! THAT is what women are searching for.

5 Places To Take A Woman Using a First Date If You Are Caught On Ideas

two. Another one inside wonderful places in order to meet girls is actually a loan provider. Being inside lender can be tedious and boring. Approach her and engage her in a dialogue. She will find something to hold the woman’s busy as she waits to generate offered. Ensure that you give an interesting topic to talk to her about. Give her for you to talk additionally, steer clear of talking an excessive amount as this will put her off and make the woman’s preference to hightail it from you. Present to find the girl’s some water or perhaps it is line for her. She’s going to appreciate it and quite a few in all probability offer the woman’s contacts when you’re attractive to her.

That from the very beginning you will have to accomplish is build a profile. The profile may be the primary if you have a potential partner will discover concerning you. Nearly everyone agrees that using an image increases ones chances of gaining noticed. Most people ignore those profiles with images. The picture should show ones full face along with your identity and should not contain some others inside look. It does not are properly taken provided that shows the “real” you.

At one time it’s done, you can easily check out another persons on the website, and perhaps send out a phone message or simply two to many most people. Just be yourself, maintain positivity and contemplate it an conversing exactly could have in a get together. Mention something within their profile that you enjoyed, and discover a spot captivating. It can be easier than you consider to fulfill persons online – do it at this time!

[symbianosgames]

Prune is a tiny mobile game about the simple pleasures of growing and cultivating trees.Of breathing life into barren soil and thriving against all odds in a hostile, indifferent world. It’s a delicate dance to remove that which does not matter in favor of that which does.

Prune is my love letter to trees.

The seed of the game (first and last tree pun, I promise!) actually started with a tweet from a friend:

The game was originally supposed to be a short two to three month project to get my feet wet as a solo indie game designer. I had a fair amount of experience as a designer on large AAA teams but had never put anything out on my own so I figured I should start as small as possible. Unfortunately, three months quickly turned into six months, and finally into a year and three months.

I, along with the help of Kyle Preston and Simon Ferrari, finally managed to get the game out onto the Apple App Store in July of 2015. For most of the game’s development I had zero clue as to how the game would be received since it was this weird procedural, interactive art thing. Prune has far exceeded any of the modest expectations I had for it. On release it garnered Apple's Editors' Choice award and more recently has been named TIME Magazine's Game of the Year for 2015 as well as Apple’s iPad Game of the Year.

I wanted to write this postmortem for a couple reasons. First, I’ve been reading postmortems for a while now, starting with classic issues of Game Developer magazine, so it feels almost like a rite of passage when you finally get to write your own (as cheesy as that sounds). But more importantly, having read so many, I know it can be tempting to not exactly give the whole truth, to sugar coat things, to TED-ify the long arduous development into Five Easy to Digest Takeaways. And as a reader, especially as a young, thirsty game designer, it can be easy to convince yourself that if you just “do these five things, and avoid these five other things” you’ll be well on your way to your very own Notch house.

Just pick the exact right platform (Ouya obviously), iterate-iterate-iterate, and find the “fun”, all the while avoiding nasty things like feature creep and you’re set!!

So with all of that in mind I’m going to try my best not to candy-coat the development of Prune. I want to try and illuminate some of the less talked-about aspects of indie game development, especially as it relates to success. Obviously game development is an incredibly messy and complex process and a single write-up is never going to paint a fully accurate picture, but hopefully it will help paint a slightly more honest one.

1. White Moves First

Privilege is something that’s really easy to take for granted and of all the postmortems I’ve read over the years I don’t ever remember seeing it mentioned. Yet, more than an original game idea, more than streamlined design, more than any other thing I feel that privilege was the key contributor to Prune’s success.

It’s impossible for me to fully acknowledge everything that was on my side, but here’s a start:

I was born male, middle-class, and white. My dad was a computer programmer and we had a computer in the house from an early age. Since I was a boy growing up in the 80s and 90s videogames were this socially accepted thing for me. Being middle-class gave me the free-time to dabble in computers from an early. It gave me the luxury of taking part in the Quake mod community and eventually led to me getting my foot in the door in the AAA game industry.

Being fortunate enough to work in the game industry gave me a huge advantage. I may not have known much of anything when I started back in 2006, but seven years later I had an Education in game design, in the game production process, in how to make an interactive experience worth having. It also allowed me to make friends and connections that proved crucial later on. I’m truly not saying any of this to boast, but to simply point out the huge amount of privilege I had on my side when I decided to quit my job and go indie in the fall of 2013.

Even upon going indie I still took so much for granted. I was incredibly lucky to have time and money to burn (more on that below). Oh, and did I mention I live in the US? Turns out being near critical developer events like GDC is a pretty big deal, not to mention that whole speaking English thing. Indie developers in other countries have a much tougher time breaking through and we in the US get this free ticket to a ton more coverage and press.

Looking at Prune’s success in a vacuum is just seeing the palm tree and cute little mound of sand peeking above the water and ignoring the mountain of privilege that built to that island. It’s ignoring the years of repeated failure I was allowed to have suspended over a safety net built and subsidized by my starting position in life.

If you’re reading this and you are in a minority or marginalized position, then you’re well aware of the uphill battle you face. Please, please don’t be discouraged by all of this. New organizations are popping up more and more lately to help address the issue. There’s Girls Who Code, Dames Making Games, and Different Games to name a few. Plus the IGDA has long advocated for inclusivity and even the ESA is trying to help. I, and I’m sure many other indies, would love to help out, so please don’t hesitate to reach out.

2. Have a Lot of Time/Money (Preferably Both)

The hopefully not-so-big secret is that becoming a “successful” indie (usually defined as financially sustainable) takes a whole lot of time. A recent Gamasutra article concludes that it tends to take two to three years to sustainability while I’ve heard some indies estimate the average to be as much as five years. And all of this is assuming that you’re even lucky enough to become sustainable at all.

The main reason it takes so long is because you need plenty of time to fail a lot. For me, first there was the last 15 or so years of stumbling my way through how to even make game experiences, then upon going indie there was six months of prototyping questionable game ideas, and finally with Prune I spent another six months lost, prototyping everything I could think of.

Having the luxury of time allowed me to eventually find the soul of the game.

Six months in, I basically had a full game, with over 60 levels (more levels than I eventually shipped with). But I wasn’t happy with it. Playtests showed the game was clinical and frustrating. After talking to some friends, I worked up the courage to essentially reboot the game.

I stripped things down to a bare minimum: just a tree, sunlight, and shadow. I also had been thinking for a while about how to make pruning more expressive. Up until now, pruning was a wholly subtractive process. Trees were these static structures that could be cut away but that was it. This was limiting and was one of the reasons I had to rely on a bunch of other mechanics to bolster the game.

Instead, what if I made pruning both a subtractive and additive process? By imbuing the tree with a sense of “conserved growth potential,” I could get a much wider, more dynamic range of expression from the tree.

Old vs New

Of course, this wasn’t as easy as flipping a switch in code. I had to completely rewrite how the trees grew in the game, and it took me several tries over a couple months’ time to get it right. But it finally felt like I had found Prune’s soul. If I had had tighter constraints on my time, the game likely would not have found nearly the success that it did.

I’m extremely fortunate to have had all of this time and runway to experiment. Growing up middle-class put me at an advantage from the start. Add to this living in the Midwest, being lucky enough to not have any student loans, and being a generally frugal person. Combine all this with the money from my AAA job and it meant that I had way more time than I deserved to get the necessary failures out of the way and have a chance at success.

3. Don’t Listen to Advice (Including Mine)

The indie scene is in no shortage of handing out advice, that’s for sure. There’s plenty of advice on which platform to bring your game to, how best to market your game, how to monetize it, etc. Of course, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with advice, as long as you temper it appropriately and realize that it might be tied to a specific time and/or place. Videogames as an art form is moving so fast that the sage advice you hear at the beginning of developing your game may be completely null and void a year or two later when you finish.

The first piece of advice I heard upon going indie back in late 2013 was, whatever you do, don’t go mobile! Mobile is an unhealthy marketplace, a hopeless wasteland where your game will go to die. The PC/Steam was where any smart indie should bring their game. Make a good game on PC and you’re pretty much guaranteed success, is what they said.

So I actually listened to this advice and probably would have followed through with it were it not for stumbling upon Prune. Of course, now it’s 2016 and the so-called indiepocalypse is a thing and PC is not at all the safe bet it once was. Here’s the funny thing about advice—if you’re hearing it then EVERYBODY ELSE is also listening to this advice. Any proclamation that doing X is a guarantee for success is a lie and is going to be this incredibly fragile thing.

Another commandment I failed to follow was if you go mobile then you HAVE to go free-to-play. Premium mobile games are dead! It may be true that going F2P can increase your revenue by 10X or whatever, but F2P certainly wasn’t right for me (I can’t stand it) and I wasn’t necessarily interested in maximizing the game’s revenue. It also turns out that there are a lot of mobile players who are thirsty for quality experiences and are willing to pay a fair price for that. My point isn’t that F2P sucks and you should definitely go “premium”, but that you should listen to your heart. Do what’s right for you.

4. Finding a Creneau

Now that I’ve finished telling you to never listen to any advice I’m going to dispense some advice! First, some background: I’m the type of person who always wants new experiences, new and different ways to do things. This can sometimes drive my wife crazy when I refuse to watch a good movie again if I’ve seen it in the last ten years or so. But it turns out this is a pretty useful trait to have when you’re an indie since you’re naturally drawn to want to try things that nobody has done before.

As it also turns out, there have been entire business and marketing books written on the subject. Crazy, huh? I would have never sought one of these out on my own but, upon going indie, a friend suggested I read the book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, and it did a great job of explaining what was already deep inside me. It’s not a revolutionary concept but it explained how to find a creneau. That’s fancy French for a hole, or pivot, in which to get a foothold to position yourself with respect to the competition. If that sounds too business-y, think of it more as what makes your game special? What’s the one thing you’ll focus on that is going to make it stand out against all the others?

This was exactly my approach with Prune. The App Store is crowded with cutesy match-3s, zombie tower defense games, and infinite runners so why do anything remotely close to any of these when I could instead go the complete opposite direction? One of the clearest ways to see this is in the art direction for the game. Rather than finding an artist and commissioning elaborate, hand-drawn or 3D modeled assets I chose to embrace my limitations and make something procedural that didn’t look quite like anything else I was seeing on mobile.

5. Have a Lot of Luck

This postmortem wouldn’t feel complete without mentioning the L word: luck. Luck tends to be a big part of any success and it’s not something I want to discount. I’ve already mentioned a few things but just to drill home the point here is a non-comprehensive list of times when luck was on my side:

Lucky that I even saw my friend’s tweet to begin with

Lucky that I had time and money to burn, finding the game’s soul

Lucky that I happened to have an iPad to test on (I don’t own a smartphone)

Lucky that I had a family to support me while working from home (to keep me sane)

Lucky that I met Kyle Preston and that he was able to contribute his amazing talents to score the music in the game

Lucky that well-respected, successful indies would take the time to help me find the game’s soul and build up my confidence

Lucky, when black smoke started billowing out of my computer, that it was only my spare hard drive

Lucky that I was introduced to Apple contacts from a friend

Lucky that Apple happened to love this particular game

Lucky that I didn’t go up against Angry Birds 2 which released the following week

Et cetera, et cetera

And who knows how much luck I’m not even accounting for! Please don’t take this as me saying “hey guys and gals, just be lucky like meee!” Again, it comes from a place of trying to be sincere.

There are, of course, ways to increase your chances of being “lucky.” The usual advice is to open yourself up more, to try and make more connections with people. I pushed myself to do this. I went to local events. I shared the game with people. I kept a devlog. One example of how it paid off was that I got to meet Kyle, my eventual composer, through TIGSource where I had posted my devlog.

But luck is also a messy, tangled web of systems that are ultimately out of our control. To me it seems wise to acknowledge that luck exists and do our best to influence it. But at the end of the day, we also need to remember that luck, of the out-of-our-control variety, is still a considerable factor for any success or failure.

1. Getting Lost in the Wilderness

The initial prototype for the game was finished in only a couple evenings. It was clear this would be a game with procedural trees growing in real time and the player’s main verb would be cutting branches away. Oh, and remember: it would be finished in a couple months!

My next step was to explore the design space. I had heard repeatedly over the years from wise, successful indies that the key to a great game is to fully explore the design space around your game idea. I’d heard it described as this vast undiscovered wilderness. Some game idea design spaces will prove to be rich and fertile with gold nuggets lying everywhere, while others would be barren wastelands.

The problem is that I misinterpreted this advice to mean I should just start prototyping anything and everything related to the broad topic of trees. I didn’t know what my design space really was, I had no focus.

My initial focus (basically everything)

I spent the next six months prototyping all kinds of things--shield power-ups, infinite fractal trees, tree planets, weird inverted trees, and countless game modes like 2-player coop, FRENZY!, and endless modes.

This all had a time cost and a mental cost. I started to become overwhelmed with the possibility space, lost in the wilderness. In retrospect I should have focused in on the heart and soul of the game. Pruning as player expression was the most interesting part of the game and I should have been searching in that much more constrained space from the beginning.

Where I *should* have focused

2. Worry About Every Little Thing

I don’t want to belabor this point since others have talked about it at length, but I definitely have a bit of a perfectionist streak running through me. This is a common trait with game developers and can often be good for ensuring things that really matter to the project are just right. But when the things you’re fretting over don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things you just end up wasting a lot of time.

I would waste hours of my time tweaking the look of a soon-to-be-cut mechanic, days of my time picking the exact right font, and weeks or months of my time deliberating over decisions such as how to represent the score in game.

Even up until the end of the project I maintained a hotlist of must-do items before shipping the game. These were “super important” things like ensuring certain branches in certain levels didn’t look too thin when curving a particular way, or certain pipes at the end of the game not having proper collision. Well guess what? I shipped the game having never addressed a huge chunk of these “critical” issues and even now, half a year after release and I *still* haven’t managed to get to them and nobody has noticed! The point is, our time as developers is incredibly precious, it’s limited. I should have asked myself more often than I did, what’s most important and what will nobody ever care about?

3. Be Really Bad at Scheduling

If there was an award for being the worst at scheduling I’m pretty sure it would have my name on it. Remember how I mentioned that my initial goal was to finish and release the entire game in two to three months? That’s a bit of a lie. In actuality I was hoping to “game jam” it and have it out in a month. But I’d heard enough times that you should double or triple your initial estimate so that’s why I picked two to three months. It’s hard to explain just how bad I was at accurately forecasting how long things would take me and actually sticking to a schedule.

Here’s how it would generally go down. I would first make a crude schedule, not based on anything reasonable or sane but based on what I delusionally wanted to get done. I would give myself a fraction of the time actually needed to accomplish the remaining tasks. And then I would let this schedule sit in a dark corner of my hard drive for a while and get to working on stuff. Then one day I’d happen to unearth the schedule and look at the calendar and realize it was now 45 days later and I hadn’t even finished half the tasks on my list.

I did this over and over again during the development of Prune, partly because I didn’t know what game I was making and partly because I had completely unrealistic expectations. After a while it started to become a boy-who-cried-wolf situation where I felt like I couldn’t even trust myself at all any more. The only thing that saved me was finally realizing that I could use external deadlines, such as awards submissions, to force myself to focus and make hard decisions.

4. Struggling to See the Light

Searching for my game’s soul, spending too much time on dumb things, and constantly being over schedule all led to some really low, discouraging times for me. I constantly questioned whether this was the right project to be working on or whether I was just wasting my time. I considered just cutting my losses and releasing the game as-is several times since I figured the game would probably never make back the little bit of money I put into it. I questioned whether I was even cut out to be “indie,” to work on my own game.

Even though going solo was the right decision and is how I work best, toiling away alone for over a year was hard on my emotional well-being. It may not sound like a lot, especially when some indies endure three or more years of this, but for me it felt like an eternity at times. I’m fortunate that I had my wife and two boys to keep me in balance—I at least had an escape at the end of each day, somebody to talk to.

I went on a lot of walks during dev. Often it would let me distance myself from a problem just enough to let me think clearly about it. But at the lowest points I walked to distance myself from the game, to distance myself from my self.

Of course, all of this that I’m describing develops into this vicious downward spiral wherein you get discouraged and stop doing any productive work on the game, which in turn discourages you further, causing you to lose more calendar time, ad infinitum.

This is something that isn’t talked about as much as it should be in the indie scene. So often we only pay attention to results. Was the game a hit? Was it successful? Did it pay off the dev costs? We sweep under the rug the process, the struggle, the emotional drain. In the future I need to focus more on my creative process and direct more of my attention to my mental health before it gets too late.

Even though I struggled and made a whole lot of mistakes, I’m still really proud of Prune. My goals for going indie were to live modestly, work on new and interesting games, and make just enough money to get by. As my first project, Prune has done all of this and more.

One of the best parts about the experience has been the player reception. I didn’t make the game for gamers—there’s plenty of options out there for them—but for anyone. My heart has been warmed over and over again upon receiving touching emails from old ladies who have never played a video game in their life. I’m humbled that my tiny game has resonated with so many people and am incredibly grateful that I’ll be able to continue on this journey going forward.

[goblincow]

Important game design proclamation announced from the mountain top of the day:

If your game doesn't have a rule expressly approving the ritual burning of character sheets on player death I assume the implication is that you don't in fact want me to do that, in which case you really ought to correct the error and penitently incinerate all remaining copies of the game, if you ask me (which you should, if you ask me)

[goblincow]

50/50.

Very interesting. Personally I'm on the side of gnomes, 1) gnomes can be mushroom-people or steampunk-people or fairy-people or steampunk-mushroom-people & b) they're an optimal quirky little guy, on par with goblins in terms of mischief potential.

Hobbits, look I love the little guys with the ale and the folk music but that's just an actual type of person. They go to music festivals. They have a tankard on their belt at all times. They have much body hair, much like hobbits do. I have seen them with my human eyes.

But gnomes? Never seen one of them. Their hat could have gills that ascend from their foreheads. They can and will puke rainbows. They have the capacity for both a squeaky forest sprite and a cigar puffing hardboiled cop. With a bright red pointy hat. I rest my case.

And if you already have goblins and dwarves and maybe even kobolds, maybe even frog people, and there's a limit on the amount of little guys you think your audience can take? For me it's got to be gnomes all the way.

If you want to be a hobbit that's just a short hairy human, you'll find several at any local pub.