Long-form analysis on tabletop RPGs, video games, sports, politics, and culture
The 25-Foot Arc: A Geometric Solution to NBA Monotony The NBA 5-out Offense Problem The NBA’s current 5-out equilibrium maximizes offensive efficiency but has gutted tactical variance. League-average pace has hit a 30-year high at roughly 102 possessions per 48 minutes, but about 85% of possessions still resolve in the halfcourt through nearly identical geometric … Read more
The Five GMing Philosophies Every Game Master Should Understand Most tabletop RPG rulebooks focus on teaching you the mechanics: they explain how combat works, how armor class is calculated, how to resolve a skill check and how many feet a spell reaches. Very few of them show you how to actually run a game. When … Read more
The Best Licensed PS2 Games See also the Best PS2 Games of All Time and Best Underappreciated PS2 Games What is a licensed video game? Something that’s licensed means it uses an intellectual property (IP) owned by someone else. For example Middle-Earth Enterprises owns the exclusive rights to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. … Read more
The Golden Age of TV? Darker is Not Deeper: The Hidden Toll of TV’s “Mature” Storytelling I recently came across a Wikipedia article that says we’ve just experienced an extraordinary moment in modern broadcasting. In its entry on the “Golden Age of Television (2000s–2023),” the era is described as: “…having such a number of high-quality … Read more
George Washington’s Presidency and Legacy Read Part One This is part two of my series on George Washington. To understand the American founding, we have to stop looking at George Washington as two completely different people. We tend to split him into a double portrait: on one side the marble saint of democratic liberty and … Read more