The Fell Gard Codices

Something to Think About

November 30th, 2012

A little while ago, I was thinking out loud on this blog about fantasies without rules; or without obvious rules. And about the distinction between fantasy and surrealism. It occurs to me that one way to phrase the distinction is in talking about the way different stories answer questions. One kind of fantasy answers questions […]

Häxan Through the Ages

November 29th, 2012

A little while ago I taught an intro college-level course to film and storytelling. That involved me reading a fair bit about film, and so developing a list of movies I wanted to watch. One that I never got around to at the time was a film called Häxan, a silent Swedish film about witchcraft. […]

The Aleatory Process: An Overview

November 28th, 2012

Here’s the set of posts I wrote about the aleatory process of creating Fell Gard — a description of how I use the dice, and some reflections on how it seems to be working.

The Aleatory Process VIII

November 27th, 2012

I thought I’d wrap up this series of posts with a few reflections on what the aleatory process is giving me. How’s it working out, now that I’ve written nearly 300 000 words and mapped out a couple hundred rooms of dungeon?

The Aleatory Process VII

November 26th, 2012

Last time out, I wrote about how some of the odd ways probability works tends to produce results from the dice that one would not intuitively expect. This time I want to write about what it feels like to be looking at those results.

Another Book Sale

November 25th, 2012

Today and yesterday the Friends of the Westmount Library held their twice-yearly used book sale. The sale raises money for the Library’s collection, and is generally a pretty interesting event — it’s been growing steadily over the last few years, selling more books and raising more money. I swung by today and yesterday. I didn’t […]

News of the Day

November 24th, 2012

C.S. Lewis makes it into Poets’ Corner, or will as of next year on this date. Here’s the news from the Belfast Telegraph (Lewis was from Northern Ireland) and a reflection on the strength of Lewis’ writing from the Telegraph. Here’s a bit of background on Poets’ Corner. I suppose I find it interesting because […]

The Aleatory Process VI

November 23rd, 2012

Having discussed my methods of dice-rolling and how they work with the Fell Gard story, I want to conclude with a few thoughts on what the whole thing feels like. To get there, it’s worth going through a note or two about probability.

At Amberleaf Fair at Black Gate

November 22nd, 2012

Just a note today to mention that I’ve got a new(ish) post at Black Gate on Phyllis Ann Karr’s At Amberleaf Fair. It’s a nice short novel from 1986. One of the reasons I wanted to write about it was to mention a theory I have that there are a lot of treasures to be […]

The Aleatory Process V

November 21st, 2012

Having written these past few days about how the dice shape the dungeon, I want to talk a bit today about how I cheat. I don’t cheat lightly. But it does sometimes happen that the dice seem to be telling me that a room overlaps space already occupied by another room. At that point, I’ll […]

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