About Me

Up to date as of 2022-24-07

I've been writing this blog since I think Summer 2018, although many of the early posts on this blog were originally Reddit posts, where I went by u/quantum_metaphysics (deactivated). I wrote some article pre-2020 at High Level Games Blog, and more recently I've become a contributor on the collaborative blog Iconoclastic Flow which you should all go check out.

I also published the game Maximum Recursion Depth, or Sometimes the Only Way to Win is to Stop Playing: The Karmapunk RPG, which I have written about extensively on this blog.

It is available pdf only:

drivethrurpg

itch.io

And print+pdf or pdf:

Exalted Funeral

I am currently working on a second game in the series, MRD2, which may or may not get a proper publication but is still fully playable as of now.

I am mainly interested in Weird Worldbuilding but I've also written about game design, random generators and other coding-related tools, interviewed other bloggers, and all sorts of other things.

I have a master's degree in cognitive neuroscience, where my research focused on understanding the networks of brain activity associated with language comprehension. I was in a PhD program, but had a "crisis of faith" so to speak, and left after my masters to pursue a career in machine learning engineering. Prior to this very STEM-y career, I have a bachelor's degree in psychology, and I've always been interesting in humanities fields like philosophy, sociology, history, and anthropology, and more recently I've been (very slowly) developing an appreciation for poetry. While in some ways I'm perhaps a "Jack of all trades, master of...", I genuinely believe that this breadth of interests, and my ability to draw inferences from the interactions between some of these seemingly disparate fields, is in part what drives my creativity and worldview.

If you stumbled upon my blog and liked what you saw but don't know where to go from there, the All-Time Popular Posts or Top Post of the Week sidebars may be the best places to start. If you're not seeing them in mobile mode, try switching to desktop mode to see those.

I also try to keep my Labels up to date (see sidebar), but I have a million of them, so I'll outline a few of them here for reference:

Weird & Wonderful Tables: These are posts of random roll-style tables, usually with specific themes.

Micro-Settings: These are posts about settings if they're one-offs or I haven't written much about them and they're meant to be fairly self-contained. In some cases, a setting starts as a micro-setting and then becomes something bigger and I forget to relabel it.

Appreciation/Interview: These are posts about other bloggers or creators, including "fan-content", interviews, and "not-reviews" (the latter two have their own labels).

Game Design: A catch-all for any posts with novel game mechanics or novel systems. I've produced game mechanics primarily for OSR-style games and Tunnels & Trolls (TNT label).

Coding: These are posts that implement some kind of coding, such as javascript-based automatic generators, like press the button and it produces a thing. Ironically, I've done much less with this ever since I started working as a software engineer.

Phantasmos, Aquarian Dawn, Maximum Recursion Depth, MRD2: Are my main settings (tbh mostly MRD 1 and 2 at this point).

Phantasmos is a very weird, gonzo, science fantasy setting, that very deliberately tries to reject any traditional fantasy elements while trying to fill a somewhat similar niche.

 

Aquarian Dawn is more so my direct take on "Traditional" Fantasy (which is itself a label), and nominally a "spiritual sequel" to LotR, although it's also inspired by The Witcher, and occidental fantasy such as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. The central theme is: After the age of Humanity, what comes next?

Maximum Recursion Depth takes place in the "real" world, but where a version of the Buddhist concepts of Karma, the Celestial Bureaucracy, and reincarnation are tangible quantities in the world. Players are Recursers, people capable of reincarnating into themselves rather than a new person, and so can infiltrate the Numberless Courts of Hell to rescue Poltergeists from the corrupt or incompetent bureaucracy's punishments. It deals with some fairly heavy themes around societal problems and personal growth, and I would say it is somewhat comparable in tone and themes to works such as Doom Patrol, The Good Place, Persona 5, and Bojack Horseman. While it is philosophically rooted in my interpretation of Buddhist concepts, the fantastical elements are generally idiosyncratic and not directly based on Buddhist Mythology.

MRD2 is part of the same world as MRD1, but maybe more so "near-future". Aliens known as The Cyblessed have given Corporations the Wyrm Shamir Symbionts, which they use to bind chosen employees through a Nazarite Contract. These Nazarites gain special powers, including the ability to summon mecha known as Golem, and traverse the cosmic ocean Tehom, a metaphysical space outside the universe. On Earth, out in the Space Settlements, or across the Vessels of Tehom, Nazarites do what they can to survive in a broken system, and maybe even try to fix it. MRD2 incorporates elements of Jewish philosophy and mythology into the world of MRD, and is in some ways my commentary on Jewish Identity as a Jewish American.

I hope this is helpful to anyone interested in my creative endeavors. I always appreciate comments, constructive criticism, questions, suggestions, etc.