Year: 2014

No dice?

May 27, 2014May 27, 2014 Brody 4 Comments

Writing about my past tendencies to slaughter the occasional character back in the day and thinking about my desire to take OtherSpace truly back to basics got me wondering: maybe we should just abandon the premise of a stats/skills system. Eliminate dice. No rolls. Just see where the narrative rolls and let the players and…

Greeking out in Durham

May 27, 2014 Brody No Comments

This column appeared in The Herald-Sun in May 2014: I haven’t started spritzing everything with Windex. Yet. But I’m thinking about it. It’s been a wild year since I took the unprecedented (in my life) step of getting baptized, joining the Greek Orthodox Church so that I could marry into a (very) Greek family. Genetically,…

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Journalism, Non-Fiction, Sample Columns

The Art of Consequence No. 1: Killing time on OtherSpace

May 25, 2014May 25, 2014 Brody No Comments

“Where some see coincidence, I see consequence. Where others see chance, I see cost.” – The Merovingian in “Matrix Revolutions” I’m a serial killer. In the past 16 years, I’ve amassed a body count that would make Dexter Morgan feel like an amateur. Usually, I did it because the dice told me I should. Sometimes…

MUSHes, Online Storytelling, OtherSpace

Remembering a man who wouldn’t quit

May 19, 2014May 19, 2014 Brody No Comments

This column appeared in The Herald-Sun in May 2014: Michael Butts met his future wife in 2003 in the bookstore at Durham Technical Community College. She needed a cassette recorder for a class in anatomy and physiology. She couldn’t find one. The burly man – a formal football player at N.C. Central University who worked…

Journalism, Non-Fiction, Sample Columns