So I went and got myself a Wacom tablet. It's hella fun, still getting the hang of it though. I got it so that I can finally get back to work on a web comic thing project I started a few years back, but I need practice!

So I'm taking requests for character sketches. If you want, send me a PM with character description and I'll get to work!

is returning!

http://www.goblinscomic.org/

as i've previously announced, I will soon be beginning post graduate studies. as I am currently announcing, those studies will be in the field of Art Therapy and Counseling. Although through these vacuous forums i've presented mostly written works, a few of you may know that I have had a lifelong pursuit and devoted interest in the visual arts. Art and the creative process for me has always been my therapy, a form of meditation, even a cathartic experience. Art and Gaming are similar in that they fall under the category of immersive experience. We all are familiar with that feeling of deep immersion, late at night, sleep deprived, when the plot is so thick it's tangible, and for a moment, you become so engaged in the activity you are performing that you lose your sense of self. Now, for the serious student of psychology, this is known as disassociation, and for the more serious student of psychology, it is known that this is truly a breakdown of the ego identification. Ego dissolution is necessary for psychological healing to begin.

So, as a community of alleged gamers, what are your thoughts on the practical value of Gaming as a therapeutic tool? First of all, let's clarify the definition of Gaming to include role playing games of the table top and influenced variety over, let's say, Grand Theft Auto (although that game has it's fair share of catharsis). But we are all here, I like to believe, because we value the immersive and dissociative qualities of plot/character based role play over the spectacular sensory gratification of other more popular games. The type of Role Play that I experienced with this game, for example, was creative, spontaneous, immersive, and at times definitely dissociative.

As an artist, one becomes well attuned and sensitive to hidden content, that is, the motivators behind concrete action that originate beyond consciousness. It is one of the goals of an Art Therapist to uncover the hidden content behind the surface content of the created artifact. The art media becomes a safe field in which to explore latent, repressed, or displaced anxieties, to safely communicate them and thus fully integrate them into the framework of the self. It is said that to speak the name of a spirit is to gain mastery over it. Therefore, the therapist is there to guide and encourage this expressive mode in order to foster healing and self development.

In Role Play, the game world too becomes a safe field, an abstraction, or an obtuse approach towards potential identities latent within ourselves. By playing out these characters and their spontaneous interactions with others, their responses toward situational crises, we safely test out these roles for ourselves in a mostly innocuous and consequent free environment. So, translated into the realm of therapy, Role Play Gaming can be utilized as a way to safely navigate unconscious motivators, to dispel latent anxieties which lead to neuroses, and to foster self realization and encourage the individuation process.

thoughts? comments? personal experiences?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-p-hoffa/its-time-to-end-the-secre_b_4421089.html

Anyone know much about this?

I kinda stumbled across a reference to it while checking out some kickstarter projects, and had to look it up.
A cursory google search later and I found this: http://golly.sourceforge.net/

I've been playing around with it and studying the lexicon the past couple of days, and it's super cool!

to quote the about section from Golly:
The Game of Life is a simple example of a set of rules more broadly known as a "cellular automaton", or CA for short. CAs were first studied in the mid-1950s by Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann but became much more widely known in 1970 when Conway's Life was described by Martin Gardner in his Scientific American column.
Life is played on an arbitrary-sized grid of square cells. Each cell has two states: "dead" or "alive". The state of every cell changes from one "generation" to the next according to the states of its 8 nearest neighbors: a dead cell becomes alive (a "birth") if it has exactly 3 live neighbors; a live cell dies out if it has less than 2 or more than 3 live neighbors. The "game" of Life simply involves starting off with a pattern of live cells and seeing what happens.
Even though the rules for Life are completely deterministic, it is impossible to predict whether an arbitrary starting pattern will die out, or start oscillating, or expand forever. Life and other CAs provide a powerful demonstration of how a very simple system can generate extremely complicated results.

is tomorrow!

what are yer plans?

me? i'm taking a pick, an axe, and a knife and running off into the forest. gonna find me a mountain and make it my home.

swinging a pick and lugging around ore should increase strength yeah?

crafting and designing should boost the intellect.

tie physical stats to physical skills and mental stats to mental skills so that skill progression boosts your stats.