A lot is happening over at the Amar wiki. With plenty of new ideas from players and with solid play testing, some fundamental concepts have come to the fore.

Having developed role-playing game systems for more than 35 years, I thought I had covered most bases. But then came my 16 year old son Jonatan and beat me hands down. He has devised a rather neat new way of thinking about magic in a fantasy role-playing game. Take a look at Incantation Magic and let us know what you think.

Then there is the ever evolving combat systems. One of the most challenging tasks I face as a Games Master is to realistically handle larger combats. With all motion during a battle, it is important to capture the dynamics of all the commotion. Who moves where and who gets to hit who and at what penalties, etc. As it is impossible to fully capture all details, a game system must resort to sensible abstractions that balance drama, realism and game flow.

With the new experimental combat system, I believe we are a step closer to a good game balance. Again, take a look and give your thoughts - either as a comment to this blog post or directly via mail (g@isene.com).

Link to this post: https://isene.org/2019/08/Amar-experiments.html

Here’s a neat little thing I just discovered: Gource - a software version control visualization tool

And I used it to create a visualization of the development of this site (isene.org) since I launched it as my new home last summer, using Jekyll as my platform:

Just some summer geekery :-)

Link to this post: https://isene.org/2019/08/isene-org.html

A screencast presenting some of the most sexy features of the HyperList VIM plugin.

If you don’t know the text editor VIM, you should.

If you don’t know what HyperList is, read this OnePageBook.

My very first screencast introduces the HyperList plugin for the VIM text editor. It is one of the most feature packed plugins of the thousands of VIM plugins out there. In the screencast, I cover some cool features that may inspire you to start using this plugin for your favorite text editor.

Link to this post: https://isene.org/2019/08/HyperListVIM.html

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” (Mark Twain)

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” (Marcus Aurelius)

It’s a hard hitting provocative OnePageBook. We nkow it will not go down as popular with some people. But that may just be all the more reason to publish this and let people chew on its one, simple point.

As usual, you will find it in the OnePageBooks section - including the option to buy them as e-books on Amazon..

Link to this post: https://isene.org/2019/07/Die.html

You manage to get out of bed in the morning. You manage to get your clothes on, fix breakfast for the whole family, drive and drop kids off at school. You manage to get to job before 9. But then… you get managed until 4pm. Then at 4 you manage to drive home, stop by the store, make food, drop one kid off at soccer practice and the other at the tennis court. You manage play with your kids and manage to get your body to sleep before midnight.

You manage to do lots of stuff all around the clock. Except between 9 to 4. Then you don’t manage. You need managing.

When you introduce management in a company, you limit employee responsibility. You say that this one girl is responsible for all these decisions and actions and results - and by that you limit every one else’s responsibility to not decide, do or deliver that. And then you have management complaining that employees take to little responsibility and should “step it up”. Management, by it’s very nature is the limiting of responsibility. It is conditioning people to become less responsible. Heck, any organizational structure inherently limits responsibility, creativity, initiative, action, results. It limits free will.

Free will should remain free.

One way is to limit organizational structures to the barest minimum possible. Another is to remove the concept of employer and employee by getting everyone equally involved as owners.

While free will should remain free and we should let life be life - dead objects are structures and they should be structured to help life be creative, to decide, act and deliver great results.

This distinction dawned on me when Øivind asked me how come I am against the structuring of people while at the same time I am super structured when it comes to things and information… such as with HyperList.

Structures should serve life and help it be creative, not limit its free will.

Link to this post: https://isene.org/2019/07/Management.html

While I have previously covered the ability to like anything, I have now taken this to a new level: Enjoy everything.

It was a tough climb to 1238 meters above the sea level. Not having slept much the days before or eaten enough to embark on this adventure, it was tougher than two years ago when I first got to the top of Tromsdalstinden.

The views from the top is stunning. Silent, tranquil, magnificent.

It’s a rough and steep path down with plenty of opportunities to hurt yourself. Having gotten through all that, it wasn’t before I got on the bike down in the valley and toward the end of that little bike ride that I managed to fumble. In 30-40 km/h in a turn on the gravel road I went straight to the ground. It’s moments like that when I appreciate all the mental training routines. Time slowed down and I got to think about how to land this body as best as I could. I fell flat on my side, hitting the ground with my hip, shoulder and ribs - two of them noticeably snapping in the process. I was pretty proud of that fall as my head never touched the ground.

This I could like. Even the pain I could like. But could I Enjoy it? Yeah, fairly well. Yesterday the hip, shoulder, neck and ribs hurt like hell. But practice makes perfect and I managed to enjoy that pain. I mean, I could have moaned and bitched about it, but as long as it is there and I can’t do too much about it, I might as well enjoy it. It’s good practice.

So, on my quest for enjoying the heck out of life, I am learning to enjoy every small bit of it.

Enjoy!

Link to this post: https://isene.org/2019/07/Enjoy.html

I’ve had the pleasure working more closely with a truly great guy the past few weeks - Øivind Haugland. He’s an excellent sounding board and he gets me thinking. Like what the exact value of what I do really is. And it boils down to this: Making Everything Simpler.

Like HyperList for structuring information in a simpler way. Or the OnePageBooks. Or my explorations of Free Will. These are all efforts to simplify.

Whenever I do projects, coach people, write, make art or music, I try to simplify the process and the results.

While I do a lot of different stuff, the task became how to make it simpler to access it all. And over a coffee at Starbucks chatting with Øivind, the idea of a simple landing page came up…

isene.com

Link to this post: https://isene.org/2019/07/Isene-com.html

The album “A Tribute to Purpose” is now available on Spotify. It includes new remixes of music I have released recently. Having had a resurge in my artistic purposes lately, I created this as a general tribute to purpose - whatever that may mean for you.

Check it out:

My first album (published in 2016):

Link to this post: https://isene.org/2019/06/Purpose.html