I got emailed this question recently, and figure others might want to know my answer!

My personal favorite of all time is Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: https://crawl.develz.org. It's in very active development, a focus on removing tedium and getting to the meat of interesting decisions. It's also remarkably accessible despite its depth. I prefer to play Webtiles, but console and offline are also options.

Many of the other games I like also focus on that non-simulation, tedium-removing, tactics-first approach:
Brogue: https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/
Dungeonmans: https://store.steampowered.com/app/288120/
Crypt of the NecroDancer: https://store.steampowered.com/app/247080/

I will admit that deep simulation and "The DevTeam Thinks of Everything" has its charm, and is the source of many of my fond memories and much of roguelike culture:
Nethack: https://www.nethack.org/
Ancient Domains of Mystery: https://www.adom.de/home/index.html

I'm excited to see the weird world being created in games, too. While I'm less technically competent in these, they're still exciting to me:
HyperRogue: https://www.roguetemple.com/z/hyper/
Caves of Qud: https://store.steampowered.com/app/333640/
868-HACK: https://store.steampowered.com/app/274700/

When I'm not at a computer, I have a few games on my Android phone as well:
Shattered Pixel Dungeon
Hoplite
Sproggiwood
Cardinal Quest 2
(I find the mobile ports of DCSS and Nethack lacking, though I look forward to their eventual improvement.)

Sooner or later I'll blog some thoughts about the research into my talk at Roguelike Celebration.

(Here's the talk itself.)

Until then, some things I referenced:

ADOM Angelfire site on 'Metalman'
Nethack 3.3.0 release notes
Hoplite never-hit, atheist
Jon Bois defines a catch
Kruggsmash plays Dwarf Fortress: A Fort on the Sea

This is something I've been contemplating for a while, and talk a lot about when people ask me in person about polyamory. It applies to more than that, though.

What does it really mean to be in a relationship with someone?

The trite answer is "it means something different for every person". But what does that mean?

I think choosing to be in a relationship - romantic, sexual, business, familial, otherwise - with someone means there's activities that you want with that person but not necessarily others. The activities are generally things that are kind of risky: they take trust and energy to do ethically. I'll call these activities "vulnerabilities" - they make you vulnerable by doing.

Many things can be vulnerabilities - sexual activity is an obvious one, but so is emotional closeness, sharing secrets, partaking in family-driven activity (like visiting for holidays), using affectionate nicknames or declaring role ("are you my girlfriend or just my girl friend?") giving and receiving extravagant gifts, traveling together, giving and receiving money/financial assistance, eating together, working on large creative projects together... Basically, if you need to be careful about who you do that with for some reason, it's probably a "vulnerability."

Any of the activities of the five love languages is a vulnerability. The relationship escalator is really a list of vulnerabilities society expects couples to do exclusively, and a sanctioned order to do them in. But there's others, too, and others that people don't necessarily examine because they don't "feel like relationships".

For any given vulnerability, the question then becomes: who are you okay with doing that with?

No one? One person? A handful of people? Or is it the kind of thing that's vulnerable for others but not necessarily for you, so it's a lot of people?

Let's call this your number for the vulnerability.

If your answer is at least one, what kinds of people would you do that with?

Only men? Only women? Only nonbinary people?
For kink, only tops? Only bottoms?
For partnered dance, only leads and you want to always follow? Or vice versa?
For performing music, what kinds of instrumentalists or vocalists are you searching to collaborate with? (Someone looking to start a rock band wants very different things from someone looking to join a barbershop quartet!)
I'm sure you can think of other dichotomies that matter here.

For any of those, "a mix of these" is also an possibility. (A pet theory about this with regards to gender/sexuality will follow.) For some activities and gender, this might be considered "your sexuality". To generalize it, let's call it your typing.

Defining your limits

So an exercise this leads to is:

Name a vulnerability. Get as specific as you can - "calling them sweetie", "touch in these areas", "making sure I don't watch The Good Place without them", "bring them to my parents' Thanksgiving dinner", "share a house/apartment with them".
For each of the possible number categories, think of an example person/lifestyle that would look like. So what would doing that with no one look like? With one person? With a few people? With a lot of people?
Compare these theoretical lifestyles with the one you would feel most comfortable with. So based on these possibilities, what do you think your number is?
If relevant to you, define a typing, and determine yours.

I think doing this activity for lots of vulnerabilities, your own and those of people you care about, can reveal a lot about your personal limits and spur lots of useful discussion.

Worked examples

Vulnerability: Sexual activity
- No one: Asexuality.
- One person: Classical monogamy.
- A few people: Polyfidelity, "I'm seeing a few people".
- A lot of people: Big swinging/kink parties, deep participation in hookup culture.
My personal number: Somewhere between "a few" and "a lot". I like having the option for expansive, casual sexual fun, but generally stick to a few known and trusted people, and I like it that way.
Type: gender. I like the idea of sexual activity with lots of possible genders, though I know others are more selective about it.
Type: age. I generally hold to the xkcd theory of not-being-a-creep in terms of age range.

Vulnerability: Living with others
- No one: Living alone.
- One person: Classical monogamy, or just having one roommate.
- A few people: Polyfidelity, a handful of roomates, or a small nuclear family.
- A lot of people:Big shared households, living with extended family, dorm living.
My personal number: None! I love living alone and getting to make decisions about where and how I live without compromise!

The pet theory of the semi-straight dude

There's a stereotype out there that exists, of men who self-label as straight but search for casual, often anonymous or semi-anonymous homoerotic experiences. Of course, some of this is fueled by internal or external homophobia, but also: I think for some of these men, they would define their number/type for "romantic vulnerability" as "one or a few, only women" and their number/type for "sexual activity" as "a few or a lot, both men and women".

Since one version of the relationship escalator model assumes romantic vulnerability is higher on the escalator, and thus "more important", than sexual activity - and assumes that it's a prerequisite for legal vulnerability (cohabitation and legal marriage) - these particular dudes view that as more important than their sexual openness when defining sexuality.

Is that activity still homophobic in some way? Maybe. (Probably?) But is that a reasonable set of limits to have? ...Quite possibly!

Here's my list of calendars and how I use them in Google Calendar. ( Read more... )

I make fairly extensive use of the Notifications feature, things like remembering to leave home early for morning meetings.

///

Every other week I stare at my calendar and compile it into a day-by-day schedule, that I then send to each of my partners through their preferred text messaging service, like so:

Sun MMM DD: nothing planned
Mon MMM DD: this event
Tue MMM DD: that event
Wed MMM DD: nothing planned, might do laundry
Thu MMM DD: foo event, with you
Fri MMM DD: bar event, with Other Partner
.
.
.

I generally don't include work in this unless something unusual is happening.

On my personal to do list is a way to build/initialize this list less manually. I'm experimenting a bit with IFTTT but haven't had much luck yet.

In the meanwhile, I created a Google Sheet called "stuff that will happen". ( Details on that spreadsheet's format )

( Read more... )

I take a strange pleasure in systems-thinking with domestic tasks, since I have to do all my domestic stuff myself. Here's some thoughts/tips I'm putting down now so I have them in one place - to show others the scale of my persnicketyness, but also in case anyone else finds something useful in how I do it.

My "laundry basket" is actually my granny cart. Incidentally, I actually don't push the granny cart to the laundromat, mostly because getting it down the stairs is obnoxious.
Instead, inside the cart, I keep three open bags: one open mesh, one black rip-stop nylon with a drawstring, and one blue rip-stop nylon with a drawstring and a long carrying handle. The mesh and black nylon were from a local dollar store, and the blue one is from Rite-Aid.
Anything that should technically be handwashed (mostly underwire bras) and socks go in the open mesh bag. Anything I'm sending out for dry clean (including button-down shirts) go in the black bag. Everything else goes in the blue bag. I sort at time of taking the clothes off (or, to be honest, at time of taking the clothes off the floor, which is not necessarily as soon as they come off) and don't bother sorting by color, since my stuff is pretty colorfast and I wash/dry everything on the coldest settings I can get away with anyway.
I also have a small clutch - originally a gift with purchase Clinique makeup bag, from like 20 years ago - with three tiny mason jars in it. The mason jars are from Win Restaurant Supply, because I love them, but Michael's has pretty similar ones. One is filled with white vinegar, the second is filled with powder laundry detergent (currently Tide with Febreeze, but I'm honestly not picky), the third is filled with quarters. The bag generally lives on the shelf next to the granny cart. Whenever I dump change out of my wallet, the quarters go in the mason jar, separate from the non-quarter change (which goes into a vase in the living room, but that's not relevant to this discussion.)
Laundry nights, when I'm doing my own laundry, are generally Tuesdays, since I often have social obligations Mondays and/or Thursdays (Bi Request, Poly Cocktails, professional happy hours tend to be on these days for some reason as well), yoga and date night is Wednesday, therapy is Friday, and trying to go to a small coin op laundromat on the weekend is miserable. There is a separate process for right before vacation, which I'll also discuss. If I'm only bothering with clothes, I can go about 2-3 weeks between laundry processes. If I'm also washing sheets - which I really should do weekly, because allergies and eczema, but is hard, because autism - I have to cut it down to a faster interval, close to weekly, because that's what fits in the blue bag and thus in the cheaper washing machine. (Also, I have to carry it all up and down stairs, and a full blue bag is just about right for what I can handle in one trip.)
When it's laundry night, I toss the mesh bag into the blue bag, grab the clutch along with my keys and phone, and walk the half block to the laundromat, bag slung across my shoulders/back. I load everything, including the closed mesh bag, into the laundry machine, feed it quarters, detergent, and vinegar (in place of fabric softener), and set it on cold wash/cold rinse. I set a timer on my phone to half an hour, and walk back to my apartment, now-empty mesh bag hanging off my belt or around my neck, holding the clutch.
Now I grab the other bag with the dry cleaning, sling *it* over my shoulder, and walk back to the laundromat with it, still holding the clutch. I drop off the dry cleaning, put the payment slip in the clutch. I wait around until the timer is up, then switch everything to the dryer, putting in 6 quarters = 48 minutes, on low. I set another timer for about 45 minutes, and walk out.
At this point, I can go back to the apartment (in which case I'll drop off the clutch and the black bag, and maybe have dinner), or maybe do a quick shopping run. Rite Aid's across the street from the laundromat, as is Staples and a small grocery store; a ten minute ish walk down is a better grocery store, the pizzeria (if I don't have leftovers at home somehow), and two dollar stores. Whatever I do, I use the timer to make sure I'm back at the laundromat or almost there by the time it goes off, with the blue bag.
I grab one of the baskets the laundromat provides, drop the blue bag into it, then unload the dryer into that basket. I put on whatever album on Spotify I've been digging or a good podcast, shove the phone into a pocket of my pants or shirt, and pick out a free table for "folding", tucking the basket semi-under the table at my side.
The tables at my laundromat have an upper shelf, where I put down anything else I came in with, including my jacket if I'm wearing one. Piece by piece, I grab stuff to process. The mesh bag means I haven't lost socks, but they all get taken out from the mesh bag, while the underwire bras remain. I roll anything that doesn't count as underwear, and fold socks and underwear. Finished bottoms go to the left of the table, finished tops go to the right, finished underwear/socks goes to the top shelf. Sports bras go into the mesh bag with the now-dry underwire bras as I find them. If I've brought sheets, they're folded, then get placed under the stack of rolled bottoms (or, if possible, on another table if no one else is using it.) When I've only got the bag left in the basket, I'm done.
The bag gets loaded - sheets, then bottoms, then tops, then underwear, then socks, then the mesh bra bag. I grab whatever I took with me, put on the jacket if I've got it, then take the filled bag back to the apartment, and then the unloading: socks, underwear, and bras each have a basket in my closet, pants/skirts (mostly for work, though also my denim) get put on hangars with clips, the rolled t-shirts and casual shorts go in a drawer under my bed, yoga pants and long john style layers go into a different under-bed drawer, sheets go on the upper closet shelf. The empty blue bag and mesh bag go back into the granny cart for another cycle. If it hasn't already, the clutch goes back to the bookshelf, and the dry clean slip gets put on my fridge.
My vacation process has me drop off the blue bag (without the mesh delicates) to the laundromat for wash and fold right before I leave, along with the black dry clean bag. I pick these up a day or two after I come back. (Nothing more luxurious than not having to worry about laundry right before you go on vacation, and it's a nice extra indulgence!)

The set of the people a person is dating is often called their polycule. An alternate term is constellation, which I happen to prefer.

I recently realized there's a subset of people who are not constantly in the constellation. They don't get daily or even weekly texts, I can go months or years before seeing them in person. We live quite separate lives. (In all of my cases, none of these people live in the same state as me, but given the pace of life in New York, I could see having technically-local people fit this as well.)

The thing is, my feelings about these people is not merely friendship, or even merely "friends with benefits". (Though all people in this subset definitely get the "benefits" in my implementation, that may not be true for others.) I feel a similar surge of pride and joy when they are doing well as I do my more constant partners; I feel a similar sense of worry and concern when they are struggling. I feel intense compersion[0] when I see pictures on my social media feeds of these people with their own constellations, and often ask how their own romantic lives are going without me. I'll blather endlessly about their creative projects to my friends.

And those handful of times when the distance becomes an arm's distance or less? They spark into something passionate and wonderful, as romantic as anything else I feel. They're deeply validating of my self-identification as polyamorous - that this intense emotional state can and should be cultivated in my life, along with the things I build elsewhere. And I feel it, even with the knowledge that the time spent together will be brief, that our lives are going in separate trajectories.

Given the constellation metaphor, I've started calling this particular set of people "my comets". Honoring my relationship with my comets, making time for them when I can, is a thing I ask my local partners to do. They are a part of the larger constellation of my relationships, friendships and romantic relationships and otherwise, and their presence, however distant, is important to me.

//

[0]Compersion, of course, being anti-jealousy; the happiness and joy of knowing your partner's needs are being fulfilled by someone else. Another poly glossary post will be spent on this concept, on how some twist this interestingly for kink, and so on.

So the last time I posed here, I said maybe I'd make IRDC NYC happen but wasn't sure.

Long story short: I made it happen, it was exhausting but worthwhile, I learned so much about the value of delegation.

( Short story long: here's how I make an IRDC happen. )

As of right now, I am not streaming roguelikes or creating Let's Plays until further notice.

I will still be listening to conversations in the community on Twitter and Reddit (and hey, maybe I'll start lurking at RogueTemple again...) If I am invited to contribute to Roguelike Radio or LikeLikeLite to comment on games that interest me, perhaps I will accept, but it will not be a given.

I'm still curious about making IRDC NYC a thing that happens, though, and am always up for talking about games I love and giving recommendations.

I've been burnt out on "sharing the roguelike experience" in these ways for a long time, longer than I'd like to admit. And there's a lot I want to do with my life that's not in front of my personal computers anymore. I still love these games deeply, and love the community that's been made, and want to have conversations about them...I just want to do it on my own time and my own terms, without pressure internal or external.

Thanks for understanding. Now, it's time to go exploring.

<3 Kawa

So this past weekend, I was at the International Roguelike Developer Conference, also known as one of the most amazing experiences of my life so far.

( Read more... )

Note: I am a mathematician, not an art historian - in fact, I distinctly avoided the humanities and discussing things less than logically in my formal education as soon as I had a choice in the matter* - so I'm sure I'm getting some of the terms wrong and that this post is less than coherent. I think it'd be fascinating to codify this stuff in video format for Youtube (or at least in audio format for Roguelike Radio) but I'm not really sure how.

***

So I watch a lot of PBS Idea Channel on Youtube (and I recommend you do too), as it's filled with wonderful thoughts on the future of expression, on how we think about and predict what's ahead of us, our continually evolving and morphing cultures, and the role of technology in shaping our lives. There was an episode in January about video games as artistic expression as a response to the Museum of Modern Art displaying games within their design wing. It's not one of the best episodes, but I'm linking it anyway just so you can see it. He talks about Heavy Rain's permadeath and Dwarf Fortress' ASCII and permanence of interactive experiences in general, and it's all pretty fascinating.

Of course, linking those things immediately brought me to roguelikes, because I'm me and that's what I think about. Roguelikes are a "genre", yes (and destroying the concept of genre is interesting in and of itself - the same channel talks about this in terms of music, but it's equally true of video games, and I'll get back to this later), but I'm also going to propose that the roguelike is a form of video games, much like how haiku or sonnets are forms of poetry.

Traditionally, haiku create images of nature or time in tiny, bite-sized pieces, extremely regimented in their appearance and structure. (The same channel actually compares haiku and Tweets as well.) This has changed over time - people have torn away at the tradition of the structure, people have expressed different things, and so on, but the general concept is the same: you can say a lot, emotionally, in an extremely tiny space, and it can be artistically relevant and meaningful. What exactly is said and how it is said is up to the haiku writer to decide, and if they decide that fewer than 17 on are necessary, or that perhaps one can emote without a kigo then so be it.

I propose that roguelikes do something like this: there is a core message that the act of making a roguelike states, and messing with this message and bending it to one's will is the exact reason roguelikes are interesting as a set of videogames just like haiku are interesting as a set of poems.

I also propose that the roguelike message is this: the world is a random place and you only get one chance, so you will always need to think given what it has dealt you, and you will often need to run away.**

Some games mess with the "one chance": from turning permadeath off entirely in Dungeons of Dredmor to earned lives in Tales of Maj'Eyal. Some games also posit that you get limited time to think, like Spelunky. Some games discourage running away (sometimes I feel Faster than Light is like that, but I may just be terrible at playing it.) Some games encourage fully exploring to get the rewards and arm yourself for the next battle, like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup's autoexplore. Angband claims you can never go back to where you've once been, with its regenerating levels. Vicious Orcs messes with the discreteness of "level" itself. You are driven by hunger and greed in many, a relic of the original Rogue; you are tasked to even temporarily halt the insanity of the world in Ancient Domains of Mystery, or just your own insanity in Infra Arcana.

And of course: at what point have you broken away from the form/genre, and when is it no longer roguelike? (When is a haiku no longer a haiku, and why do we care?) Is it when you are no longer confined to the dungeon? (ADoM and UnReal World would disagree.) Is it when you are no longer confined to rectangular movement? (Not according to HyperRogue and Rogue Rage.) Is it when death is not permanent? (Dredmor and ToME would disagree.) Is it when you reward the hero instead of the rogue? (Some easier builds in Sword of the Stars: The Pit and DCSS would disagree.) Is it when you move too fast to think? (Spelunky would disagree, and if you play it without pausing so would FTL.) Is it when the hero is no longer solitary? (Steam Marines would disagree, and arguably so would FTL - and so would every summoner/necromancer build in NetHack and DCSS and ADoM and ToME.)

Do other genres work this way? Can one read first-person shooters and fighting games as commentary about war and violence, romantic visual novels on the beauty and futility of romance, sandboxes as commentary about post-scarcity economies? (Okay, that last one is stolen from Idea Channel too***.)

Are there things other roguelikes are "saying", overtly or not?

***

* I did actually go to a very prestigious humanities/liberal-arts focused private school from puberty through the end of high school. And while I did terribly at it, a lot of it HAS rubbed off whether I like it or not.
** For more on how roguelikes are about running away, check out Darren Grey's concept of "The Hero Trap". And you know, Darren Grey's games, which are more overt in their artistic messages than what I'm talking about but still worth a mention.
*** Did I mention that I watched a LOT of Idea Channel today? Like, half of the channel's content? It made for good listening while doing pushups, what can I say.

Here's a repository of licenses for all of the games I feature on my Youtube channel allowing me to monetize the videos of the games.

Minecraft: http://minecraft.net/brand
Faster Than Light: http://www.ftlgame.com/?p=388
Dungeons of Dredmor: http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/youtube-monetization.5578

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is under GPL General Public License version 2. The copy of the license sent with the game is available upon request.

Red Rogue is under GPL version 3, as seen here in its source code.

I have permission in my e-mail to use Frozen Lights.

PS: researching these things, my crush on Nicholas Vining continues to grow. halp.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/09/bearded-sikh-woman-teaches-reddit-a-lesson.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIVIegSt81k&feature=g-u-u

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kawatan

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Kawa's Thoughts

Recent Entries

Favorite roguelikes

Links for my Roguelike Celebration 2019 talk, "Yet Another Conduct Conversation"

Polyamory (ish): A framework of organized vulnerabilities

What does it really mean to be in a relationship with someone?

Defining your limits

Worked examples

The pet theory of the semi-straight dude

Roguelike contributions to date

A solo-poly organization scheme for Google Calendar/Sheets

Most Kawa of Days 30 recipe repository

Domesticity: laundry thoughts

Poly glossary: Comets

Yet Another (?!) Roguelike Convention

inventory -> headgear -> remove. hat rack -> place object -> hat.

International Roguelike Developer Conference 2015 Atlanta: a jumble of wonderful thoughts

Roguelike as creative expression/art: death, randomness, and avoiding the "hero trap"

Why yes, I have permission

hexaflexalove and what a woman should be

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