doyce testerman

Posts under ‘Crosspost’

Avatar: my thoughts, my opinions, my recommendation

… and my background: with the exception of Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, I’ve seen all of James Cameron’s movies at least three times. Yeah, even Titanic (though the third time was against my will). Understand that simple fact about me first: I’m pretty much the guy’s target audience. Kate and I went to see [...]

Big Problems, Little Solutions: E-book Publishing Ideas Stolen from Gamers

Yesterday’s post generated a lot of interest. And emotion, yes, but mostly interest. If I can be allowed to revisit that post for a second, I’d like to sum the whole thing up like so: Ignore questions of infrastructure and the costs of ebook file development; those things are tangential to the current issue. What [...]

Pulling a dick move, and other things that make stories (and games) better.

Somewhere*, sometime**, D was talking about writing things and said something like: The only scene in a story with no conflict in it should be the epilogue at the end of the story. I know that isn’t it exactly, but that’s the gist of it; when you’re telling a story, scenes should have conflicts in [...]

Writing for (make believe) television: The Game!

I’ve been a bit periscope-down for the last week or so, but I thought I’d pop in for just a moment before my students show up and muse on a game I’m starting up this evening. I don’t normally talk about my gaming on this blog (saving that for Random Average), but in this case, [...]

Story Games: How to Play Them and Why

Mike Sugarbaker explains how we can take back entertainment from the networks and film industry by creating our own stories through story games.

Summed up

The tagline on this website is there for a reason.  For a very very long time previous, it said something about Falling Down, and while that Something is still true, it’s not entirely relevant as an introduction (and warning) about what goes on with this site. For those who know me (and who inexplicably choose [...]

Wizards of the Coast takes a… novel approach to dealing with PDF piracy

And by “novel”, I mean to say “utterly stupid and short-sighted.” Earlier this evening RPGNow, Paizo, and DriveThruRPG pulled all of their Wizards of the Coast PDF products (where both new and much much much older products were available) at WotC’s request.  The ability to purchase them ended at noon – the ability to download [...]

The New Frontier of Indie Publishing has already been Mapped Out (on a Battlemat)

Before I get into this, I need to lay out a couple concepts that I’m referencing here. Concept One: The Long Tail “The Long Tail” describes the “niche” strategy of businesses like Amazon.com or Netflix which can be expressed – in my own words – as “sell many different products, in relatively small quantity, per [...]