As mentioned previously, my purpose here is not to say “5E can do all of what these other games do” – it can’t, that’s why I’ve got to steal these mechanics for a game I agreed to run. My hope, actually, is that other people might try out these mechanics in their game, and then maybe see that these other games, despite being different from what they’re used to, are actually a lot of fun.
Read MoreThis, I think, is what we call “talent” really is: if you are enthusiastic enough about something that practicing it becomes as regular as a heartbeat, then “practice” becomes invisible.
Read MoreRegardless of whether a student agrees with my worldview, I want them to be biased at the end of their research process. I want them to have strong opinions about a subject and to be skeptical of uninformed pronouncements about it. Think about it: if you’ve been researching a subject for eight or ten weeks, using academic resources and doing primary research – that is, research out in the field – on a subject, shouldn’t you have a strong, informed opinion?
Read MoreOkay, so our first night in California, Edgar’s sisters insisted on putting on Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, which is a uniquely bad film.
Read MoreA simplified version of this appears in Neal Stephenson’s book Anathem as an adage that the inhabitants of that fictitious world know as “Diax’s Rake”, which goes “Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true.” In business, a similar idea is put forward more generally, “past results are not indicative of future performance.” In our world, the postulate that you can’t get an is from an ought or vice versa is known by a different name: “Hume’s Guillotine.”
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