Dr. Emily Friedman

OK *now* I wish I went to GDC

While I'm at it, here's your weekend reminder for my upcoming kickstarter...

Violent Delights: a chess-based ttrpg about Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet

Aaron I of course hope we get to hang out again someday but really I’m just jonesing for more Jeannie, who is categorically The Coolest.

I facilitate it fairly often for class, so I find it very useful.

JUST DO IT

JUST DO IT

I’ve played — and facilitated for students — this game since it was published, but this is the first time for the rest of the Tasters.

We’ll also be trying out the Silent Falls Expansion soon.

Character sheets, and the small box for the game Alice is missing our spread out on a large round ottoman

It’s the start of break, a few folks are already out of town, & I was puzzling what to have the Game Tasters play tonight.

With minutes before folks arrived, it was clear:

It’s time for ALICE IS MISSING.
(Round One)

(This is *sometimes* where I come in. Sometimes.)

Lil bit.

I hear this a lot: the folks who understand are too close, and the folks that are removed enough AND trustworthy do not know why you are losing your mind.

Folks talk about the care one must take when you know someone’s public persona before meeting/working/socializing (or if you both/all have public faces)

There is far less written (outside of certain fanfic tropes) about what happens when you DON’T know someone’s public persona ahead of time.

Holding you and Rigby in the light.

I think about this a lot, as I write a 90K book.

Ten Thousand

I like to think of some of my later-in-life friends as insurance that I still have an unimaginable number of days in my future where I get to be the day’s lucky 10,000, but for chaos:

You ever have one of those moments where you realize you’ve only been friends with someone for less than a year?

No reason.

#18c

It’s always striking to me to consider ideas that have enough expressions in game form that I could (or have) build a whole class around them.

Regency? Sure.
Physical Book Weirdsies? Duh.
Ideas of Language? You bet.
Concepts of Divinity? Damn right.

Murderous Undergrads? WORRYINGLY SO.

For the next two weeks, I’ve got online pitch meetings open for @plusoneexp.bsky.social, focusing on Zine Club Adventure, Plus One XXXP, and First Time in Print.

For ZC Adventures, I’m looking for a mix of adventures, NSR systems, and short skirmishers/wargames.

doodle.com/bp/richardru...

There’s also a whole-ass essay about gender here — it’s not that “red-haired young-looking white lady” is considered *authoritative* in the space (who, WHO has ever given Becca Scott or any woman in board game coverage meaningful gravitas?) but leveraging a very different form of rhetorical appeal.

What fascinates (horrifies) me about *review* slop is that the folks that will buy this are precisely folks that many niche reviewers are trying desperately to reach: total newbies & casual gamers. Pair this with algo juicing & it might not have as reliable conversion compared to trusted humans but…

Amy Ray - "I Didn't Know a Damn Thing" (Recorded Live for World Cafe) YouTube video by World Cafe

This hit as I thought of Dr. Lafayette, the students I serve, & the good fury that sometimes sparks.

Bombs were blowing
Kids were dying
And all around me
I thought I was trying
But in the back of the school bus
I was reading my history
But it didn't say nothing
About the kid sitting next to me

Serious question: is there a reason that par-baked or frozen dough things wouldn’t hit the same?

It doesn’t escape me that these are named after a woman and a teenage girl. It does not escape me that medical misogyny continues to kill.

Definitely not picking on this specific person so BE NICE but I’ve seen enough replies like this that I have to remind people that non-fiction is a big category that includes books about atoms, books about cats, books about cool trips people took, and lots of other FUN things

My article on Queen Anne’s wardrobe has just been published OA.

I provide a qualitative & quantitative overview of her extensive wardrobe accounts (incl makers & suppliers) & show how fashion influenced her representation!

#18thc #17thc #earlymodern

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Who was smuggling in 18th century Britain? My refreshed database for prosecutions for smuggling in England and Wales c. 1721-1732 is live with over 4,000 entries. From naval officers to farmers, smuggling was big business. #twitterstorians #earlymod #history
www.davidchansmith.net/smugglingdat...

That’s a horrific idea, honestly.

Research and education are public goods that deserve to be free of the pressures of “sponsorship” — and to be clear, non-analog game studies is verymuch awash with corporate money, which has its own costs.

A great review of Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age!

I sometimes think about how I’ve never, in my whole career spent at a *research university* been encouraged to think that my work is worth time/effort of seeking private foundation funding, because of the quirks & preferences of those funders.

And now that’s the only funding left.