I’m not supposed to be buying books, but Cameron Kunzelman over at Game Studies Study Buddies podcast said that Gameworld Interfaces by Kristine Jørgensen is “one of the greatest books of game studies ever written”.

Sold!!! And then I paid some eye watering international shipping 🙁

An investigation into computer game interfaces, both naturalistic and symbolic, and the distinction between gameworlds and other kinds of fictional worlds.

Computer games usually take one of two approaches to presenting game information to players. A game might offer information naturalistically, as part of the game’s imaginary universe; or it might augment the world of the game with overlays, symbols, and menus. In this book, Kristine Jørgensen investigates both kinds of gameworld interfaces. She shows that although the naturalistic approach may appear more integral to the imaginary world of the game, both the invisible and visible interfaces effectively present information that players need in order to interact with the game and its rules. The symbolic, less naturalistic approach would seem to conflict with the idea of a coherent, autonomous fictional universe; but, Jørgensen argues, gameworlds are not governed by the pursuit of fictional coherence but by the logics of game mechanics. This is characteristic of gameworlds and distinguishes them from other traditional fictional worlds.

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The post Accessions | 290525 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

The paperback edition of J David Osborne’s cyberpunk epic Gods Fare No Better arrived last week.

Cyclone City is unraveling. A megacity built on ambition, now rotting from the inside—infested with warring cartels, techno-mystics, and assassins stitched together from spare parts.

Kentaro woke up without a past. No memories, no identity—just the faint hum of something monstrous buried inside him. The monks of the Dying World Clerics gave him shelter, a simple life of sweeping floors and weather control. But hunger and ambition claw their way back into his soul, dragging him out of exile—straight into a city that wants him dead.

Now, he’s hacking through cybernetic samurai, battling demonic creatures, and carving his way through assassins built from living myths. His katana whispers forgotten memories, his body pulses with a parasite made of stories, and the city’s fungal heart beats beneath the streets, watching, waiting.

As assassins and apostles clash, Kentaro finds himself tangled in a conspiracy that calls him deeper into the labyrinth of Cyclone City. And at its core, something monstrous stirs.

A mind-melting fusion of cyberpunk, animism, and body horror, Gods Fare No Better is a brutal, electrifying descent into a world where gods, demons, and mycelia fight for the future of a dying world.

Welcome to Neon Hell.

A few months ago JDO asked me to blurb an earlier draft of the book, which was an honour. Of course I said yes:

“Somewhere between BLAME! and Blade Runner is Gods Fare No Better. Hyperviolent cyberpunk animism at full throttle—myth, metal, and memory stitched together by Yarn. The novel drags you through kill contracts, clown massacres, and a boss fight with a giant baby—all while something ancient pulses beneath the streets. It’s mythpunk, it’s body horror, it’s cyberpunk cracked wide open and rewired with fungal dreams.” – Jay Springett,

You can buy Gods Fare No Better on Amazon or directly from David here.

This book is fully re-written and updated, folding in the first two parts that were previously published as stand alone novellas. Long time subscribers to my zine will remember that I made some fan art based on this book series back in 2023.

Can’t wait to read this edition!

The post Accessions | 070525 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I promised myself I would cut down on buying books this year. Lucky for me things, I backed on kickstarter ages ago are arriving.

Today after quite a bit of back and forth with the postman, the cards for Downcrawl 2E a game by designer Aaron A. Reed finally arrived! So its time to log this new game rulebook into the library.

Downcrawl is a tabletop roleplaying toolkit that lets players build and explore a weird, wondrous underworld together.

Evocative prompts help frame your stories of dangerous journeys through forgotten labyrinths, strange folk trading dangerous fungus, and subterranean cities so far from the surface that that sun has become mere legend.

Revised and expanded from the original edition (a DriveThruRPG Platinum seller), Downcrawl 2E features new rules for solo or collaborative play, and an optional deck of idea cards that makes sparking weird underworld adventures easier than ever.

The post Accessions | 230425 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Solarpunk: Short Stories from Many Futures (Beyond and Within)

First up is the most recent Solarpunk anthology, edited by Francesco Verso from Future.Fiction, release by Flame Tree Pubishing

In this near future anthology, Solarpunk explores the many ways individuals and resilient groups can fight gentrification, expropriation, abuse and loss of identity, starting within local communities, ultimately to embrace the whole world.

This beautiful hardback edition features printed endpapers, high-quality paper, and a striking foil cover. To my knowledge, it’s the first Solarpunk anthology in hardback—perfect for showing off on the shelf. Bonus: it includes stories by friends!

Solarpunk brings stories without borders, from across the world: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, the UK and USA. Authors are Jerri Jerreat, Ken Liu, Thomas Badlan, Ciro Faienza, Brenda Cooper, Renan Bernardo, Jennifer L. Rossman, Sarena Ulibarri, Gustavo Bondoni, Lucie Lukacovicova, Ingrid Garcia, Andrew Dana Hudson and D.K. Mok.

I am slowly trying to catch up / fill out my Solarpunk Library.

A Darkness Returns – Raymond E. Feist

I’ve just looked how deep I am into the Raymond E Feist books and this is book 34. I’ve been reading this series for most of my life. I still remember borrowing the first couple off the bass player in my band and reading them the summer before university as we drove around the UK on my first ever tour. I happened to be in Waterstones and grabbed a signed copy. I didn’t realise until I got to the till and properly looked at the cover.

KILL TEAM – Core Book Ed.3

The most exciting addition to the library. 3rd Edition of Kill Team!

I haven’t had a chance to play yet since regular gaming nights are on pause while a friend moves house. But from what I’ve read, I’m really pleasantly surprised with the rules. This edition is a major improvement over the last one, which felt like wading through a legal manual.

The language is much clearer, and specific mechanics—like cover rules—have been cleaned up significantly.

Interestingly, this edition lacks narrative campaign rules and feels more like the central component of a modular system. I suspect Games Workshop is taking inspiration from modern game design, adopting elements from MMOs or live service models. Despite maintaining the same fundamental ‘physics’ as the previous edition, it feels fresh and forward-looking.

The post Nov 24 | Accessions appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I love seeing peoples Accessions posts. Paul and Warren both do ’em regularly, so I thought I’d start doing them occasionally too.

Plus it’s a good excuse to pull out my (new to me) DSLR and nice lenses and learn to use it whilst practicing product photography. Huge white balance issues this time around, inconsistent framing so I couldn’t make a flip though gif – next time i’ll use my tripod.

Anyways. Here’s the recent accessions to thejaymo industries library.

The History of Information

One of the best things about having a good friend who’s quite senior at Dorling Kindersley, is that sometimes the postman will deliver nice things out the blue. So it was a real treat to receive The History of Information by Chris Haughton in the post recently.

I’ve actually been sitting on this for a while, but it came out yesterday.

I could snap every single page. This book is absolutely gorgeous. The design, illustration and layout of this book is to die for – Classic DK in style ‘but make it 2024’. I’m really in awe at how a singular vision comes together in this book.

I think if anyone is looking for a gift for someone in their lives 13yo and up this Christmas, this might be a good shout!

ShadowDark

My hardback copy of Shadowdark RPG arrived. I backed it late after the Kickstarter ended, but I wasn’t worried about not getting a copy – it raised $1.3 million!

ShadowDark is probably at the pinnacle of the current Old School Renaissance(OSR) in Role-play Gaming. Inspired by much earlier iterations of RPGs, ShadowDark takes the best of what made those sorts of games great and brings the mechanics into the modern eta. Whilst this rulebook is largely pages and pages of tables, the core rules and mechanics are elegant and seem straight forward at fist glance.

What Is Shadowdark RPG?

Shadowdark is what an old-school fantasy adventure game would look like after being redesigned with 50 years of innovation. 

Shadowdark RPG is fast, familiar, intuitive, and deadly. It’s built for sword-and-sorcery adventures where fell monsters slither in darkness and ancient gems glint upon forgotten thrones, waiting to be discovered.

In Shadowdark RPG, real time comes into play. A torch only holds back the looming darkness for one hour of actual game time! There isn’t a moment to spare when your only light source is guttering low…

Get ready for old-school gaming in a whole new light!

The book’s broken up with some great art which really suits the vibe of the game.

I Ching

It has reached the point in my life where it’s finally time to learn the I Ching. The time has come. I must admit got a little spooked by it in my early 20’s when a friend was super into it – and set it aside. I have occasionally thrown coins and had other people to do the calculations for me though.

Gordon just produced a mini course on it, as part of the current time magic course, so now is as good a time as any to learn!

I managed to get a good deal on the Pantheon Books editions on e-bay (mixed printings though) which I was quite happy about. The seller sent me a great little personal message wishing me luck with my studies.

Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method

I’ve had this on a watch list for a while and managed to get it for 3 quid + pp on e-bay. It’s ex-bibliotheca. Which is a great deal, especially as it’s still available new from Princeton at $32!

The post Sept 24 | Accessions appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I thought I’d throw some kind of blogparty to celebrate 300 weeknotes. But in the event after the fanfare of last week’s new blog theme, the passing of the number is duly noted and things continue at jaymo industries without fuss.

Accessions Jun.23

Taking my cue from PGR I usually do accessions over on my Tumblr . I thought… Why not mix things up?

My backers copy of A.A Reed’s 50 Years of Text Games arrived this week. Can’t wait to dive into it!

I got Royal Mail’s limited set of Warhammer’s 40th anniversary stamps in the post. Its a really nice little collectible set. Wonderful selection of art. But given his recent retirement it’s a shame that John Blanche’s work wasn’t featured.

I got this Introduction to role-playing by Steve Jackson. It’s an interesting book which I never encountered when I was young. The book uses the Fighting Fantasy book series’ lightweight rule system and combat resolution and hand holds a young person into creating their own narrative driven role play environments. Very cool!

My biggest observation is (I think) that culturally in 2023 everyone knows how to play a role-play game. It’s very rare to find any RPG rules (or narrative producing boardgames) of any kind these days that start from first principles like this book does. Even if people haven’t ever played one, most people are just ambiently aware of how they work and how they are played. Given that RPG’s are a cultural technology this is a significant ! I wonder if there’s any polling/social science data about this.

Permanently Moved

June 25, 2023

|

Library 📚 | Weeknotes 🗓️

Alright then. The next block of 10 begins – This is Season 9, Episode 1.

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2023/06/25/301-2321-over-the-line/

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Writing my New Centre lecture
• Writers bloc – meeting 2
• Was on a cool call about blockchain gaming with the co-founder of Zynga
• Permanently moved Season 9 began
• Discussion and notes for workshop in Berlin in July

Terminal Access

Tobias mentioned my Worlds a Walk-Though talk over at The Bounding Box.

Jay did a talk about ‘not fucking up’ the building of worlds which is part of his series of musings on worlds as a medium. I like his thinking on the so-called ‘metaverse’ and it’s laced through with a radical optimism and politics. Still, how do you not just make these things a distraction from climate collapse?

He makes a good point on worlds being a distraction from climate collapse. This is of course a conversation that I’ve had with myself many times. But my interest in worlds – both as a medium and as an idea – grew out of my deep engagement with climate change and Solarpunk. I’m not *just* interested in videogames worlds. The subcreation of worlds, and new worldviews presupposes that the same thing is possible in ‘The World’.

Kyle Kukshtel over on their game development and design blog k-hole wrote a great post recently on ‘Cultivating A Space For The Doing’ as a riff on my ‘The doing‘.

Studio visits are bad inputs. Social media validation is a bad input.

To quote the perpetually-inconvenient adn:

Game Quality is all that matters

The post was initially inspired by reading Justin’s recent piece about the workspace of artist Francis Bacon.

Dipping the Stacks

On Jane Austen and The Lovable Unlikability of Emma Woodhouse ‹ Literary Hub

That’s what Austen promised. A love story for imperfect, “unlikable” women who hold strong opinions and make mortifying mistakes. In short: women just like us.
No other novel encapsulates this better than Emma.

What watching my daughter play ‘The Legend of Zelda’ taught me

Her life, I fear, as it plunges deeper into the 21st century, will be filled with far more Challenger disasters than Zelda releases. And so I’ll tell her to remember this — the feeling of a world that feels lifted, not collapsed; conquerable, not corrupted; joyful, not terrifying. Remember this. And remember us, too, together. Playing.

Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm

Last May, the National Toxicology Program (NTP), a federal research agency, was set to release its eagerly awaited report into the cognitive and neurodevelopmental impacts on humans from fluoride exposure.

Ian Mackay and Gavin Owens – Wont 2 Cant: Part I – Printed Matter

A charming fitness guru megalomaniac takes over the Monastery in a small medieval town. Or is it present day? The new Leader takes our protagonist Harold under his wing, but Harold is having second thoughts – is the mega-capitalist, ‘optimized’ new Monastery doing more harm than good?

The enteric nervous system relays psychological stress to intestinal inflammation: Cell

Mental health profoundly impacts inflammatory responses in the body. This is particularly apparent in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD),

Reading

I’ve made no progress at all on Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication by Oren Jay Sofer. I’ve been playing a little Zelda here and there and going for long walks along the river without my phone.

Coupdekat – *FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY (EP)

Loud Ldn collective co-founder Coupdekat has dropped an EP! I’ve been eagerly awaiting it! I was trying to describe it to someone in their 40’s the other night and I ended up at: ‘If Kate Nash was a Hyperpop star and was really into Drum and Bass’.

My fav bit (as with all the LL collective work) is the production, this EP strikes a nice mix between synths and live instruments – which is very much post pandemic online/offline re-negotiation thats happening don’t you think?

As of the time of writing, STUNT GIRL the EP’s opening track only has 21 views. It’s a banger and I think will be a big single this summer for sure. Listen early!

Remember Kids:

The post A Number Duly Noted appeared first on thejaymo.net.