Why fantasy

I think one of if not the main reasons the medieval era has such a big hold over western fantasy is that it’s a pre modern time . Fundamentally strange, alien, and perhaps unknowable 

Ttrpgs are for me about exploration, seeing somewhere new and interacting with it . Combat can be interesting if done well, as can improv-type social games, but encountering the bizarre where it’s at imo

The past is a foreign country, and one rich with detail. It’s easier maybe to create a convincing place that breathes out of the past than to imagine and project one from the present? I’m not sure. Fantasy does seem to be bigger than SF in the broad sense though

Maybe because the premodern past is wild but still easily legible 

But the modern era has lots of good stuff! There are plenty of weird realities in the present and and future. Guns. Propaganda. Spaceships. None of that in the mud grubbing Middle Ages 

Cybernetic etymology

In my latest oneshot which has had a goalpost of “within the year” for about half a year, I’ve been interested in combining nautical themes with cyberpunk themes

Primarily because the central conceit and perhaps the main organizing idea of the adventure is to make one or more puns along the lines of having a fantasy setting where players hack into a literal net made of ropes 

Cyberpunk is the best genre (hyperlink) but I’m not actually interested in running a sf adventure 

this primary reason recently received a secondary jolt of positive energy when I realized that cybernetics comes from the Greek word for steersman

Clearly I’m onto something 

A purpose of this blog

I want to write some things down mostly about osr. My friends are, I think, tired of my walls of text and writing here rather than a Google doc that is to say writing somewhere I might be read might improve, discipline, expose , provoke, or discourage The Writing all effects which sound good to me 

also it seems like all the osr writers I like have blogger blogs so