Gaming and Hyperphantasia

Sunday's gaming session was GURPS Middle Earth; our GM has been running games around the Lake Town region using a European dark ages millieu, specifically the Baltic-Germanic regions. The scenarios have been taken from Harn, which actually has some of its own fascinating tie-ins with Middle-Earth - and which does quite well in portraying magic as an elaboration of reality rather than a replacement, not quite as subtle as magical realism, but along the same trajectory. Afterwards we had a brief meeting of the RPG Review Cooperative committee; not too much to report to be honest. With the exception of the library, which really has been quite a success with a couple of generous donations, the Coop had fallen into doing 'more of the same' in recent weeks, something which really must be amended if we're going to keep up some momentum. The absence of a couple of committee members on work-related activities hasn't helped.

Spent today off work, with a throat cold - didn't want to infect my workmates. Took it easy and have mostly recovered, so I should be fit for tomorrow. The most interesting event of the day was receiving correspondence from Exeter University's neuroscience research group concerning Aphantasia - I'm on the other end of the scale. When asked about a particular mundane subject my mental imagery is often more vivid than reality. It certainly explains my tastes in art (surrealism), writing and movies (magical realism) etc. On a philosophical level, I find that it is yet another nail in the coffin of those who argue that consciousness can be reduced to individual brains.