As I’ve discussed many times, one of the delights of my role as a school teacher is being permitted to offer a weekly roleplaying games club generally known as “the D&D Club” by the students because, you know, brand identity is a thing. It runs on Tuesdays after school for about 90 minutes, giving us […]
In my hobby room, there’s a strange stack of books that has built up over the past year or so. It’s a collection of recent purchases or arrivals from kickstarts and backed projects. It’s also an accumulation of the books that I keep nearest to my computer desk whereat I will play online. Across the […]
Y’all know that I love me some sexual science – so when sex doll company YourDoll reached out about a sponsored post, I knew immediately that I wanted to do a scientific deep-dive on sex dolls! Turns out there’s a surprising amount of scholarship on the subject – here are 3 interesting facts I discovered, […]
Monday, 1 Jun
Mon, 7pm & 7:45pm: Echoes in Rhythm. Experience a distinctive musical journey as keys and mridangam come together to reimagine cinematic and Western jazz music through the lens of Indian classical tradition. Audiences can look forward to a curated selection of Carnatic compositions, Indian film songs, and jazz-inspired pieces, each uniquely interpreted through rhythmic interplay…
I live way up in my head. This seems obvious to me but over the years I have become reasonably convinced that a significant proportion of other people do not experience the kind of busy-ness of mind that I do. They seem far more decisive and clear about what they are doing. It feels like […]
Wow – been a while, even after I promised myself I’d post something every week. Ah, well. Experimental mindset. You live and learn. This week has seen a significant shift away from the head of the table. I’ve stepped back from running Cyfaraun at school, taking a quiet spot on the sidelines, and almost simultaneously […]
I moved my music off SoundCloud. It lives here now: music.aurionblack.com
It's running on Funkwhale , a self-hosted, federated music platform, on my homelab server. It's not pretty. The
If you’ve been following the recent episodes of Roleplay Rescue, you’ll know I’ve been spending a lot of time testing my ‘Priors‘ and exploring the architecture needed to sustain a high-fidelity, long-form campaign. Traveller was my very first roleplaying game back in 1977, and the sheer gravity of the Official Traveller Universe (OTU)—particularly the Third Imperium—has always held […]
For a while, https://aurionblack.com was more placeholder than presence.
That’s changed.
The homepage is now what it was always supposed to be: a central index for my distributed corner of the internet.
Not a social media profile, not a blog, not a link tree...something closer
Of all the unanswered questions in human sexuality, perhaps the one that puzzles me most is “Where do kinks and fetishes come from?” There are so many different explanations out there – several of which are scientifically supported – that it’s hard to come up with a unifying theory on the subject. Maybe our horny […]
Why is it that, even when we have done the prep and know our Otherworld inside out, stepping into the shoes of the people who live there can sometimes feel like pulling teeth? We sit at the table, notes in hand, yet the moment we have to speak for the starport official or the local […]
So… I did a thing.
I spun up my own PeerTube instance.
I don’t fully know what I’m doing yet. That’s kind of ok.
At the moment, it’s basically a dumping
There’s perpetually a firestorm of discourse about porn – whether it’s good or bad, realistic or unrealistic, helpful inspiration or misguided misinformation. Personally I think porn can teach us a lot, but people often take the wrong lessons from it. So what can you actually learn from porn, and what can’t you? Here are my […]
I’ve got rope on the brain today. Maybe it’s because this world is noisier and more chaotic than ever, but I’m craving the peace and quiet of a good rope session, whether I’m the one being tied up or the one doing the tying. It’s a beautiful kinky art form with a rich history. Here’s […]
It’s really tempting to say that you’re just “using the resources you have” when you use a simple query here and there, but your brain is the best resource you’ll have for the rest of your life, and you should keep it sharp.
I am developing a somewhat unexpected love of the Cypher System for reasons that tend to push against my usual roleplaying game preferences. The ongoing experiment with Ariadne’s Thread, while very much a lumbering effort on my part, has proven very enjoyable and intriguing. The premise was to mash-up 1977 Traveller with the vibe of […]
One area of reflection has been the idea that I enjoy several variations of game play that are often lumped together into the category of “roleplaying games”. While many folk tend to assume that the term “roleplaying game” (RPG) is a firm one, the reality is nuanced. Being able to “attempt any action” is perhaps […]