Recent Posts

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91
Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Tusky on March 19, 2024, 08:10:48 AM »
Fried
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Announcements! The Town Crier! / Re: Exilian is 16!
« Last post by Tusky on March 19, 2024, 08:08:55 AM »
Happy birthday!!!

Here's to many more  :D
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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: UK Politics 2024
« Last post by Jubal on March 18, 2024, 11:53:03 PM »
Looking at recent polls and my assumptions for the election outcome are shifting towards Labour from where they were.

The thing is, that's shifting towards Labour in a situation where I already thought Labour was going to win by quite a large amount. I kinda now think they might win by an absolutely staggering amount. The Conservatives are not really recovering with polling averaging to below 25% and Labour in the low to mid forties - and some polling is even worse. Blair's landslide in 1997 was won on a 12.5 percent lead: Starmer is seriously looking at winning by twenty points, as a sort of average likelihood - that could shrink, but it could get even larger.

What does that mean for everyone else? Well, the Conservatives are very much not on track to get more than about 150 seats, and some predictions have them hitting their worst results ever. What that would need depends on how you count: under 156 (their 1906 total) is the fair number, which drops to 131 if you don't count the Liberal Unionists in their 1906 total and drops to 106 if you count pre-Conservative Tories in the 1754 election, but given parties in the modern sense weren't really a thing then that would be rather silly. In any case, a recent large seat-estimation poll had them on eighty seats, which it's safe to say is worse than any of those.

The Liberal Democrats might do surprisingly well, through no fault of their own. I've generally been sceptical of this case: I think that the lack of a national campaign message will hurt the party, and that Labour will leapfrog them in a lot of seats with this sort of polling lead. That said, the Conservatives are doing so incredibly badly that the Lib Dems can hold still or even drop back a bit in some of their 2019 second places and still pick up a surprising number of seats.

The SNP look like they'll hold on to a good chunk of their current seats, but take a few losses to Labour - things are looking less bad for them than they might have feared last year. Reform are a bit of a wild-card but would have to do better off the back of a major Tory implosion to be seriously threatening picking up seats.
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General Gaming - The Arcade / Re: Fallen London
« Last post by Jubal on March 18, 2024, 11:21:12 PM »
I have subsequently done the end of the railway and, as of today, the end of Evolution.

The Railway is quite a good part of the game, albeit one which suffers a little from FL's late game grind tendencies. The Tracklayers' City section at the end is an interestingly weird but very Fallen London way to end the story, and the mysterious... antagonist I think is the wrong term, perhaps just "obstacle", is a genuinely fascinating enigma. You pick up a lot of new locations with their own side-stories along the way, each of which is very different and some of which open up a lot of new opportunities elsewhere. That's all great, but it can sometimes be tricky to keep track of, especially with FL's huge proliferation of item types and, at times, lack of clarity in how to find and use them. I do think it's a good part of the game, anyhow, but it's a slow and very large thing to explore and whilst it has some overarching plot elements, they're a little sparse except a few big moments later in the sequence. I'm looking forward to seeing what Tracklayers' City content evolves in future, though the TLC does seem like it's a bit of a wish-fulfillment of "Fallen London is big and horrible, what if you could just build Nice Socialism Town according to your personal ideological preferences?" But that said, I'm not going to turn down that chance if offered it.

Meanwhile Evolution is a really nice story and one of my favourite of the big late-game content sections, in part because it's a pretty clear and effective narrative and in part because it isn't too grind-y. It might have been worse if I'd completed it earlier, as I think you may be meant to do, but there are few really big resource grinds involved which means the story continues at a good pace. There are also some of the best narrative moments I've hit in Fallen London in there: the game manages to make the dive (and I won't say more about it than that) very atmospheric, and some of the confrontations are genuinely well done with an effectively thoughtful adventure-horror that fascinates and appalls rather than just sickens. The end could maybe have done with a little more oomph, but it was well written and felt earned and the new location available at the end is really interesting.

I don't think I've got much big plot stuff to do now, but I have got a lot to explore which feels a nice state to be in for a patch of reduced occasional poking at Fallen London. I'd like to do more in the Khanate, I've still got some bits to do to tie up loose ends in Evolution, and I've got bits at the later railway stations to tootle along with.
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Once again, we're looking for a number of additional volunteers to join the Exilian team! Our small core team, currently comprising four members (Chair/Exec, Treasurer, Voting Members Officer, and Site Adjudicator) is urgently in need of additional support to keep Exilian running.

We're advertising for four committee-level posts as of now: Tech, Membership Development, Social Media, and Content Editing. The holders of these roles aren't necessarily expected to cover every part of the brief, but they will be taking overall responsibility for these areas of Exilian's activity as part of our admin committee. We have formal titles for each role: except for the Tech officer who is designated as the Technikos, a choice of "despot" or "heteriarch" may be made by the successful applicant for this set of roles. Exilian is a democratically run organisation and in-post committee members will need to be ratified by the voting members and annually thereafter.

All of the available roles will come with the best support we can give: we're happy to train people in their roles and do not expect people to come in with prior experience. We have a strong ethos of supporting our volunteer officers and ensuring help is at hand: for all roles, there will be volunteers around with experience in the role who can help with any problems or queries. If you have any questions about any of the posts and what they entail, please leave a comment below.

The roles are as follows, with the information on how to apply in the post below.




Technical Officer

Key roles
The Technikos has responsibility for the front-end site and the technical aspects of keeping Exilian running - server issues, hosting, the site's programming and software, and so on are all within their remit.

Important powers/functions
- Control over the technical aspects of the forum and website
- Responsibility for look & layout
- Responsibility for the integrated functionality of site applications and content
- Along with the Basileus, responsibility for contact with site hosts

Regular tasks
- Website tech updates and edits
- Helping other staff and mod teams use the site
- Adding updates and mods to the forum to increase user utility
- Ensuring backups are up to date and available

Social Media Officer

Key roles
The Social Media officer will help promote Exilian and our members' creative projects across our social media accounts (Currently Facebook, Twitter, and Mastodon, but this may change and the Officer will have a lot of leeway to help our strategy evolve).

Important powers/functions
- Managing & building up Exilian's social media accounts
- Recruiting new members for the site
- Promoting Exilian's content
- Feeding back to the rest of staff on public perception of our activities

Regular tasks
- Schedule regular social media posts
- Engage & chat with interested parties on social media
- Find optimal audiences for specific pieces of content
- Directly message and invite creators to the website

Content Editor

Key roles
The Content Editor will be responsible for two significant areas: the Exilian Articles section, and the monthly newsletter Updates from the Forge. This is a wide role that involves commissioning and editing/formatting articles, as well as keeping an eye on news from across Exilian's activities.

Important powers/functions
- Editorial control of Exilian's main front-end "voice" via our newsletters
- Commissioning & engaging with article writers
- Representing the needs of the content section in staff meetings

Regular tasks
- Editing & helping write "Updates from the Forge", our monthly newsletter, and getting it released on schedule
- Finding news items from across Exilian's activities that can go into the newsletter
- Finding volunteers to write regular articles for the articles section, and deciding on bursary applications
- Editing and formatting the articles and posting them on time

Membership Development Officer/Forum Admin

Key roles
The Membership Development officer is a more classical "forum admin" role. The holder of this post will be there to engage with and support creative project managers across the site.

Important powers/functions
- Works with Exilian's creators and users to support their use of our website and other systems
- Wide-ranging remit to improve forum structures & functionality to help users
- Feeds back to other staff on how regular members & creative team leads are finding the website
- Responsible for keeping & updating our email list and getting monthly emails out to members

Regular tasks
- Greet new members, discuss projects with game developers and writers and be willing to engage with their work
- Get project developers settled into the site, creating new subforums for them where necessary
- Let developers and new members know about Exilian's democratic features/system and help enable them to take part
- Running creative competitions and/or game jams for the site
- Putting a brief email out once a month with links to our recent newsletter and announcements of other important upcoming events or similar
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Announcements! The Town Crier! / Exilian is 16!
« Last post by Jubal on March 18, 2024, 07:16:54 PM »

We have been a community of creative geekery for sixteen years as of today! Yes, that's right, Exilian is now legally old enough to drink in some jurisdictions! We're not planning to test this by pouring gin into the servers, though we are hoping to do some upgrades soon...

As with every year, the most important thing to say on Exilian Day is thank you. Whether you're just reading along, lurking on the forum, occasionally posting, or a core member of the community, it's your interest, excitement, creativity and geekery that makes Exilian what it is and makes it worth doing. We hope that you find everything we continue to do - articles, events, meetups and more - worthwhile, and that you'll be along for the ride as we bring you another packed schedule of thought-provoking, interesting and fun things for the next year and bring fascinatingly quirky and creative people from around the world together to take part.

Here's to us and to another year of Exilian!
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Exilian Articles / Re: How to think about history in your games
« Last post by Jubal on March 18, 2024, 03:20:12 PM »
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on cultural appropriation in game design - would you say the same rules apply? I'm no expert on the Total War series but I know the Three Kingdoms game - set in 3rd and 4th century China - was seen by some as an attempt to woo Chinese gamers. Did Creative Assembly, which is based in the UK and Australia, have the right to make this game? I don't know if they hired experts from China itself, but is this compulsory these days?
I think that's a topic slightly for another article, but broadly my view is that we think about cultural appropriation too much in terms of appropriation, as if this was about ownership systems, and not enough about harm. The problem of making a game about, say, Chinese history as westerner is not so much that China has sole ownership of that history, it's more that if you do it without thinking about it you're likely to repeat common lazy & bad tropes about China. I think there's also an argument that it's wrong when the economic & cultural benefits of using cultural tropes disproportionately go to people outside that culture, when the people inside a culture don't have the chance to do that. But again, that's really a question of creative platforms, opportunities and resources not a question of initial ownership, which is a thing that just doesn't apply well to cultural symbolism because cultures are inherently fuzzy, messy, things.

So re how that applies to games: I think if you're depicting cultures from other parts of the world it's important to understand them well and write them sensitively, and there are several routes to that depending on your available resources. I absolutely wouldn't be as hardline as "if you're in the west you can't make a game set in India or China" - research is important, sensitivity in writing matters, I'd say that if a company can afford historical & cultural consultancy on a culture they're depicting then that's a very good thing to have, and I'd like to see more support for independent developers worldwide to maximise the diversity of stories we're getting. These things will always be complex though - for example, an ethnically Chinese Singaporean or a Uyghur or a dissident from Hong Kong might have views on China and its culture and history that are not generally popular in China, but they absolutely should be able to tell those stories (see also, recent issues around the Hugo Awards). I think what we need to dismiss is bad dominant perspectives, which may correlate with particular groups and types of writer but that's symptomatic more than causal. A focus on telling people they shouldn't write certain things rather than telling them that they should seek support and write those things better, and highlighting people from a wide range of cultures who already are making those ideas work well creatively, tends to be unproductive in my view. The idea that we can turn cultures into these little perfectly sealed bubbles that can only be handled by their true heirs just doesn't make contact with reality very well.

I guess another way to put all that is that "did X have the right to do Y" isn't a question that interests me a lot: this isn't an area where rights and legalistic frameworks apply well, and I'd rather spend more time on "How could this have been built better (more kindly, sensitively, creatively, justly)? Knowing that, what can we build that actually is better, and who do we need to include to make that happen?"

Another thing for game designers is keeping the mechanics consistent with the setting. I played one board game where the castles had a negative defensive value - they only served to make the attackers stronger! It lost me at that point.
Yeah, that would seem to defeat the point, both literally and figuratively. Why was that decision even made ludically? Why call it a castle at that point?
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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Jubal on March 18, 2024, 02:23:38 PM »
mushroom
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Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
« Last post by Glaurung on March 18, 2024, 02:22:43 PM »
plumber
100
A recent toot-fic from me:

Quote
"It's a remarkable thing, your grace, but the researchers do seem to have created something that allows it. Travelling through time, I mean."

"We hadn't thought it possible. They've actually built a proof of concept?"

"Yes, a hyper-toroidal space folding in three other dimensions: it moves everything within through time at a consistent rate."

"Ha! And what does one even call such a device?"

"I think... I think they call it a 'universe', your grace."
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