Another “three things make a post” post.

Levi Kornelson has a great public post on Google+ about how to get better gaming. A lot of this is common-sense advice (share your toys and treat people nice) but it’s always worth reading and considering it again.

Gamera Spinning asks what tabletop games can learn from consoles and computer RPGs. I consider what I can learn from tabletop and apply to PBEM/PBP/PBJ all the time, so it’s an interesting question to me even though I don’t have an answer. I agree with the comment in the linked post that computer and console games can track a lot of data easily; the type of games that can probably absorb the most from CRPGs are resource-intensive or rule-intensive.

My Google+ buddy Skwid linked this post about American tropes in storytelling. The author’s primarily talking about Hollywood blockbuster tropes, but it made me think about some of my experiences roleplaying over the internet with folks from outside the US and the kinds of interesting things they brought to the (metaphorical) table. Sometimes I’ve felt like I’ve missed signals with players and GMs because we weren’t working from similar tropes; that it was cultural differences in tropes themselves hadn’t occurred to me.