200-Word RPG Challenge Finalists

Finalists have been selected in the 200-word RPG Challenge! I and my fellow judges worked through over 220 entries to weed out 33 of them. Reading and voting continues this week, and winners will be announced on or around the 18th.

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The Difference between Narrative and Story - now in PDF format

My three-part blog/essay on The Difference between Narrative and Story is now available in PDF format. Much easier to read. Here it is.

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The Difference between Narrative and Story
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DayTrippers Core Rules Update

Version 1.3 of the DayTrippers Core Rules is now available in PDF. This version includes new rules for collaborative "GM-Lite" play, as well as new information on SlipShips, Technology and Companies in the world of DayTrippers. Designed for full compatibility with the soon-to-be-released DayTrippers GameMaster Guide, this update is a vital one for all DT players.

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DayTrippers Core Rules at RPGnow
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Google Strongarms Mobile-Friendliness

It was bound to happen. Since mobile devices have been outselling desktops for two or three years now, it was only a matter of time before the search engines began penalizing websites that possess no mobile-friendly display method. And the first out of the gate, of course, is Google.

Starting Tuesday, Google's SE ranks will begin to favor mobile-friendly sites over non-mobile-friendly sites. If you don't have a responsive grid or alternate CSS handlers in place for smaller devices, you're gonna start dropping rank. Better get moving.

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Remote Media Queries via Widen DAM

Last week I wrote a joint for the WorldFish Center which uses the REST protocol to interface with the WorldFish media repository at Widen.com. My responses are mixed, but hopeful.

The Widen API is just a bunch of remote functions for managing, querying and organizing media assets in many different ways. It can be seen as a transitional technology between what we web pros call "Web 2.0" (distributed services) and "Web 3.0" (semantic web).

The folks at WorldFish have a huge media repository including thousands of well-organized images from around the world, including metadata, and they wanted to give users searchable access to this repository via their website. But there's a complication: WorldFish is part of the nonprofit CGIAR consortium, and that entity has many other websites, all of which want searchable access to different subsets of these media collections.

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Oracle: The Stone-Drawing Bag

The Stone-Drawing Bag
Starting Counts: Black stones White stones
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The Difference between Narrative and Story - Pt 3

It has been pointed out that writers and sociologists have different definitions of the word "narrative". But the differences are not as great as we might think, and in the last installment of this series I promised to square that circle. Here we go.

From the writerly camp we get several definitions for the word "narrative" (leaving aside those which simply use it as a synonym for the word "story"):

  1. A Narrative (common noun) is an arcless, themeless retelling or reporting of events.
  2. Narrative (abstract noun) is a direction or theme which guides or gives purpose to retold events.
  3. The Narrative (common noun) is the form taken by the events of a character undergoing change.

From the sociological camp we have the definition in which a Narrative (common noun) is an open-ended network of stories or statements that a group of people tell themselves about themselves, about their history, about their values, or about their place in the grand scheme.

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Happy Birthday Drupal

Today the Drupal project reached the grand old age of fourteen. This is a great milestone for the community and the project, and in celebration, the Drupal association has released the results of their 2014 Community Survey. Among the insights:

80% of Drupal Users who responded say they have plans to adopt Drupal 8, and another 8% say they are planning to evaluate the new release.

Upgrading is an inevitability, because "the drop never stops" - i.e. there's no backward-compatibility in the Drupal universe. But personally, I've always waited about a year before recommending major upgrades for my Drupal-based clients.

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