I was going to have a thing to try and make that last vague post a little bit more coherent and specific, but I want to actually do that well, so it may take some time (not, scott of the cold place time hopefully, just, more time than I have been able to offer with deadlines from other bits of life). So in the meantime I'd like to point towards a couple of really important points that kicked off my obsession with odd bits of codification.

Firstly - Legend of the five rings. A game about cups of tea, insulting people through compliments and conflicting duties. This game is AMAZING when it comes to embedding information. You visit a guy at his house, and disarm. Fair enough. But which side do you put your sword on? And which way does the hilt face? To put in on the side of your sword arm is trusting, to put it with the hilt facing him is cocky. And then you got the arts of insulting people through gifts, and compliments. Which is kind of brilliant. In the art of the duel it gave rules for competitive quickfire art criticism. (That said, when I first played I had the good fortune of having a GM who was very much into the mythology, so every conversation was about religious, mythological figures to explain why an action should be taken. Which, actually, is something else the game is really good about trying to encourage you to do. As the main book points out, the Crane clan courtier doesn't say 'lets kill some lions'. He says something about Shinsei, the wonders of working in harmony, and how unfortunate it is that the sons of akodo sometimes need reminding of this).



"Both eyes blinking means trouble higher up. The eyes are the local authority."


Secondly - Fire Walk With Me. Or well, any David Lynch piece. But the briefing scene in this is AMAZING for an odd way to pass information. I have no real idea how you would make it work in games, but sometimes, you just have to admire a thing of beauty as just that.

 If you haven't seen this scene you have to watch it sometime. Its beautiful, and weird and silly in equal measure.


"Gordon said you were good. Tailored dress is our code for drugs. Did you notice what was pinned to it?"

"A Blue Rose?"

"Good... but I can't tell you about that"



One which came after I was obsessed but is still really good to look towards is of course Burn Notice. Particularly any part involving spy to spy networking (for that matter you can take pretty much any piece of media involving overly smartassey people talking to each other). Apparently friend requests aren't good enough, so you end up with dates and newspaper clippings and flowers. (Actually, flowers are a wonderful thing to look at. Also for information and messages, though our tendency these days is a bit rose-tinted in interpretation. Though some seem a bit more comprehensive. If painful to look at).


And... this book here here which I was introduced last year is amazing when it comes to thinking about things in terms of visuals. And well, even if you aren't wanting to do things with secrets and stuff you should probably look at this.