Fractal gaming

I imagine quite a few of us have a played a game within a game, where the characters themselves are playing, gambling say. But how often is this a game of the very same type - meaning an RPG inside an RPG, or a wargame inside a wargame?

This kind of 'fractal gaming' shouldn't be too hard to do with a rules-light RPG, with its freedom to improvise and rewrite rules on the fly, but it could be tougher with the narrower focus of a wargame, where we're given less scope for non-destructive interaction between individuals. Hold the thought.

Could we and the dice be seen as gods to the characters in our games? Collectively, we are the creators of the fictional world, and to the inhabitants we're potentially omnipotent, as omniescent as the game needs, and possibly even omnipresent: after all, the events exist only in the players' minds; things only happen if we go there. Hold that thought too.

Appendix OSR (1)

I caught up with the latest articles at Orion's Arm today. There's one on attention economics and another on money in post-scarcity economies.

We're not post-scarcity on Earth yet - all of us at any rate - but the tabletop gaming community as represented online, when online at least, does to some degree resemble that kind of association.

So what do we do with all the potential we have?

Even if we don't get a wider discussion going just yet, it can't hurt to build up a useful reading list...

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Sizing up dimensions

Short post, big subject.

First of all, thanks to everyone who's contributed so far to yesterday's list of portals. It's an ongoing project so keep those suggestions coming. That list is the spark for this.

And here it is then, that big subject. What exactly is a dimension?

In the fictional sense I mean. I used the term in the introduction to the list and a reply to Jebediah, but I gave no serious thought to what I meant. We know what a dimension is in the everyday sense, and by extension in physics, but that's not really what we mean when it comes to cinema, comics, literature and gaming. It's the tip of the iceberg.

They live among us (3) - The enabling force

Carrying on the occasional series. Part one here. Part two here. Or use the series label.

I was planning to keep the series relatively short and jump straight to the late 1970s and Alien, but then I realised what I'd be missing. Not least what I'd consider one of the mainstream alien lifeforms least considered in the mainstream. Which fiction?

Listen.

It's 2001: A Space Odyssey of course. I'll say now it will be the film only. For discussing influence, it seems best. Despite close collaboration between author and director, more minds ultimately shaped movie than book, and this series is about the mood of the time, mass experience. I will include spoilers, if the idea can be said to apply to this film.