Thom Lingard

Category: Articles

  • I was right, but I also admit I was wrong – Destiny’s Story, Post Grimoire

    In the early stages of running this website, I wrote an article discussing why I thought Destiny 1’s Grimoire system was a functional and innovative method for developing narrative. I stand by that article today, and everything I said within it, with one fundamental exception: the lore might not need to be presented to you […]

  • Watch ‘The Trial of The Chicago 7’

    It’s an incredible film. It represents so many things that we can all see as wrong now. It also makes me desperately angry that so little of it couldn’t happen again today. I’m not American, I’m English, but I wouldn’t put it past them if they really tried hard enough. The whole world is still […]

  • What DM-ing Taught Me About Writing

    Thanks to Benji for motivating me to write on here again. May it be the first of many for us both. I’ve spent the latter half of my lockdown experience designing and running a Dungeons and Dragons campaign for a group of old Sixth-Form friends, using Roll20.net and Discord to play entirely online. (for those […]

  • I’m done! … And that’s really weird.

    So, as of yesterday, I have completed and handed in the last piece of coursework required for my second year of University. That’s mad. It puts me out to sea with very little pressing to do in these … quiet times in everyone’s life. But it does also give me a lot of scope for […]

  • Hayley Williams’ ‘Dead Horse’

    I have strong feelings about this song. About a lot of songs, in fact, which I want to start documenting. I really, really love this song. There’s something that I’ve discussed with my partner a lot with regards to rhythm in music and it’s a topic that almost always comes up when discussing the best […]

  • Being bored.

    Does everyone experience being bored in the same way? I often find myself with loads to do, both deadlines and just hobbies/games/books that would pass the time, but feeling nonetheless bored out of my mind and unwilling to do anything for more than a half-hour at most. It’s a mindset that overcomes me, more than […]

  • Why Destiny’s ‘Grimoire’ being outside the game wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

    This is a talky one, and if you have never played Destiny you might get a little lost. The ‘Grimoire’ is a collection of background information that was presented to players through cards they collected in-game, but could only read on the Destiny website. Understandably, some people disliked this system, but I think it has […]

  • Bungie and Summer

    After watching a documentary a fan put together on the history of Bungie, the company that made the Halo and Destiny franchises among other title like Marathon and Myth, something struck me in their approach; they made the narrative central to their games, building gameplay around furthering that narrative. As you might expect, I am […]

  • DnD and other nerdy things

    Hi! It’s been a while hasn’t it. No, I’ve not really been doing huge amounts, not worthy of an almost month-long drought at least; I just, well, have been starting a lot of things without finishing them. As the title suggests, a recent and already incredibly fun thing I’ve been doing is writing a homebrew […]