EMI’s going to sell all their music online without DRM (original). It’ll be available through iTunes first; it’ll also cost 30 cents more for a track without DRM, but the quality will be twice as high. If you want to keep the old price, you’ll still be able to get DRM’d tracks for a buck. Albums will be DRM-free at the same old price. You’ll be able to convert your DRM’d tracks to non-DRM tracks for 30 cents per track. ...

This is not actual game text, which would want to be substantially more evocative. Inside the Egg is set in a dystopian future, in the style of V for Vendetta, Matrix, or when you get right down to it we’re all stealing from Brave New World. (Not the superhero game.) The central paradigm of the government is the Egg; at an unspecified time in the past, something awful happened, and only the pure security of the World Egg can keep us safe. ...

This is the Inside the Egg character sheet. When a campaign starts, it’s exactly this blank. No name, no stats, just an empty sheet. By the time a campaign ends, it’ll be nearly full.

Chris Lehrich is writing a series on designing fantasy cultures. Two chapters up so far, plus an introduction. Read and enjoy.

“I love it when a plan comes together.” Vincent has a new forum. While I wasn’t looking, he’s started thinking a lot about immersion. This is awesome stuff.

Required reading: Breakdown of RPG Players (original). There are a lot of theories about what people want out of gaming, and then there’s actual market research. I could rant about this more, but I already have (original). Preamble and rant done. Okay. It’s easy to reward Storytellers; you give them more narrative control. Primetime Adventures is a great example of this kind of mechanic; when someone does cool stuff, they get chips which can be cashed in for more control. Nice little positive feedback mechanism there. You narrate well, and in exchange you get more narrative control: you’re rewarded for doing well at something you like by getting more chances to do well. ...

You knew a career criminal by the name of Nolan. First name unknown; she never used it, not even with her close friends, which not all of you are. She used to work for the Outfit, running a club in Central City, but that was five or six years ago before she ran into trouble with one of their middle manager types. For the last while, she’s been an independent, doing jobs here and there. ...

I don’t really care about the Oscars anymore, thanks to Forrest Gump. However, I’m still capable of getting curious about the winners, and if Best Foreign Picture didn’t go to Pan’s Labyrinth, a small part of me wants to know why. In this case, The Lives of Others just happened to be a better movie. Not by a huge margin, but I have no complaints about the Academy’s decision in this case. It’s about two intertwining lives; that of Gerd Wiesler, a Stasi agent, and that of Georg Dreyman, a playwright. One watches the other; the other performs, unknowingly, for the one. The third actor in the drama, Christa-Maria Sieland, is a pivot point for everyone else in the movie. Her choices create the context in which the others… ...

Pan’s Labyrinth is not so much a children’s movie. It’s about children, but that’s not really the same thing. Easy mistake, since it’s called a fairy tale and that has certain cultural references for us, but think the original Grimm’s stories. Which were, admittedly, cautionary. I guess you could take your kid to Pan’s Labyrinth as a cautionary measure against him or her becoming a fascist military officer, but there may be better ways to accomplish that. ...

I am keeping a new blog for reviews, roleplaying thoughts, and anything that I can sloppily lump under the term “culture.” It’s here: Imaginary Vestibule (original).