On roleplaying
I was struck by a couple of threads about roleplaying which different blogs pointed me to: there's a productive thread on "what makes a good GM" on the D&D Online fora, and a discussion about structuralism in roleplaying design.

The first one is lots of D&D players saying, rather gratifyingly, that as well as getting the crunch right (balance, knowing the rules), it's just as important to create an ongoing story using the player characters. It's easy to say that; I know from discussions on mud-dev that if MMORPG designers could set everyone up with their own set of background NPCs who keep producing quests (eg by getting kidnapped) without being repetitive and create an interesting emergent narrative, they would do. (Thanks to Jen at Crystaltips for pointing this one out).

Then there's the entry in Ken Hite's blog, which (after looking up structuralism on Wikipedia) I think I understand. Eyebeam thinks that there are two different kinds of roleplaying games - playing through a scenario as a tactical wargame (scenario adventure gaming) and creating a story with a moderator/games-master (MND), that these are more important than the by-now established threefold game/narrative/simluation division. Meanwhile, in his blog, Chris invokes philosopher Levi-Strauss to examine roleplaying games as improvised systems with reflect an underlying structure. (Quid videt Levi-Strauss and Structuralism at Wikipedia), and thinks that rules might help you construct a narrative or a fun game, but they're not much use at all with simulationism. Then he talks about the good play as structure, and rules as concept, and loses me (surely those should be the other way around). It's a fascinating intersection of different people thinking seriously about what makes a good game, and what actually falls under the umbrella of RPG - the let-a-thousand-flowers bloom of The Forge, and the more experienced eye of Ken Hite. I'm sure that if I could actually follow it it would be fantastic.