lategaming

There’s a lot of talk of relationship maps.

I’ve been playing with the idea of an r-map for gaming for use as a player aid for a while. It really started to surface when playing superhero games in order to try and keep up with the number of NPCs and subplots that were going on. Later, in Ars Magica, it helped when we had troupe play in effect and every player had at least two characters. Otherwise I’d have gone insane. The thing about r-maps is that they depict the society around the character such as this r-map for NPCs in Amber. That said, I think an r-map showing only the public moods and behaviours would be entertaining.

Now…where was I. Yes.

In Qabal, an r-map was necessary for every player, because Qabal was all about troupe play. The first draft I did of this was circa 1996. I liked the imagery of it because the Tree of Life looked very much like a relationship map and I was quite pumped by that idea. Add to it a card-based mechanic inspired by Blackjack using Tarot cards and you had what I thought would be a lot of fun. Likewise in the game currently known as “Illusion”, a relationship map is necessary for the PLAYER to keep track of his multiple characters and his relationships to them. How he perceived them. Same mechanic, standard playing cards but less connection to the Tree. But still a beezer idea.

The difference being that a character sheet then appears more like a series of circles with interconnecting lines and the content of each “circle” is the entire character sheet for that individual. For NPCs, they would be much less detailed obviously and tend to be around the edges until adopted by a player (see, another cool mechanic).

A posting on RPGnet asks us to describe our homebrew systems. I ended up describing mine thusly.

• Maths-easy 2d6 comedy with either a manga/anime/mecha or zombie holocaust backdrop
• Qualitative success using 0-3d10 to create a crunchy yet narrative system which can be considered both rules-lite and “a gun game” with a backdrop of psychic powers and government conspiracies dating back to the start of the 20th Century.
• Card-based Blackjack-inspired mechanics with backdrop of both Stage Magic and Real Magic. Yes, that game. The one I’m infamous for not finishing…
• [EDIT: Rules light, coarse skilled d6 mechanic - happy now?]

It’s a fun thread, some inspiring stuff in there.

This isn’t a link blog, but these are very fun.

Zombie World News

“ZombieWorldNews.com is , as far as we can tell, a departure from other Zombie sites. Instead of the reader being a spectator, we hope to draw you in through a dynamic, ever changing scenario, that you can just read and enjoy, or jump right in and contribute to yourself. The main focus is on the world wide impact and reaction to a credible Zombie virus. How countries deal with it. Become insular, close borders, increase security, quell panic, fear and paranoia, even make arrangements for undead disposal. We also want to touch on some often overlooked aspects of a Zombie rising. Such as, how do you cope with shooting someone? For most people it would not be like a shooting gallery. It would be horrific. Is there remorse? These were people, friends, neighbors. What is the personal toll? The psychological effect.”

The Zombie Squad

“Q: What is Zombie Squad?
A: Zombie Squad is disaster preparation community.
We focus our efforts towards promoting the importance of emergency preparation awareness and working with local communities around the globe to teach them what is needed to survive whatever crisis may come along like natural disasters or man made disasters. Our mission is to make sure you are prepared for any crisis situation that might come along in your daily life which may include your home being invaded by the undead menace. Zombie Squad also supports other local and international disaster relief organizations/charities. Check out our events page for the latest charity event we have coming up.

Inanna Jones writes a bit about this sexism thing here on the IrishGaming livejournal:

So generalising remark: women look for more depth.

I disagree with Inannajones. I think both men and women look for depth. The depth is just in different seas.

There is a group of guys who look for cheesecake art. They like the hawt Drow femmes and they think that Larry Elmore is a god. They are in the minority and seldom are over 18.

So, what’s with “women look for more depth”?

I don’t know what InannaJones looks for precisely, she says:

I play RPGs fundamentally for the sake of a damn good story and being able to be personally, intimately part of that story. I love being a hero, love solving mysteries, love being part of a living, breathing, 3+ -dimensional fantasy world. In my experience, both sexes are allowed to do that equally well.

Okayyyy…..that’s what I like about gaming. I love the story, I love characterisation, I love putting on an accent, I like making twists and turns in a plot and I love it when my players react as their character rather than as a player. As a GM I have to play believeable male roles as well as believable female roles. I have to play hearty heroes as well as vile villains, of both sexes and of variable sexual preference.

She continues:
I have never found RPGs or the RPG culture to be particularly sexist.

On the same post, deannawol writes:

If anything, the cute, fluffy, romantic “for women” games would piss me off. But that’s just me.

It would piss me off too. And I’m not even a woman.

What pisses me off more is being called a jerk and an asshole by an ignorant bigot who knows nothing about the hobby and assumes that just because we’re debating whether there is sexism in the hobby, it must mean that there is sexism in the hobby and anyone who says otherwise is the white, heterosexual, male oppressor.

This is a conversation for the pub, or a convention panel. And if any women want to look at the games I have in development here and on the LateGaming private wiki and talk about whether I am making a game with inherent sexist bias then I’m interested to talk.

It seems I agree with InannaJones.

Apparently, I’m exercising the power and privilege of my gender by criticising the idea that we should actually de-cliché a cliché in order to make everyone feel secure about themselves. (Question: if a cliché is de-fanged, doesn’t it become meaningless?)

The author goes on to criticise my statistics because the sample size is not representative and I wasn’t scientific in my evidence gathering. Is the author actually going to refute the statistics or just the method of gathering? Is the author going to provide information that tabletop gaming is NOT dominated by the male gender? Because this post is to discredit mine and yet proves nothing of the sort. My statistics may be off, but not by an order of magnitude. Come on Andrea, rather than attacking the method, attack the result. I don’t need to count people at my local club in order to obtain the result that tabletop roleplaying is dominated by male gamers. If you want to prove me wrong, get some proof.

The author admits they “can’t speak for tabletop gaming” but then goes on to compare the situation to that of videogames.

Not the same thing. I’m not interested in the video game community so I’m not going to bother going to the links provided which will tell me how women are starting to become a larger percentage of the video game industry (which, by the way, is a way of admitting they don’t dominate it without actually saying that). It’s irrelevant anyway.

In a video game, a designer might fill the game with cheesecake art and then expect you to play through it. The gratuitous boob and crotch shots are something that are in your face all the time. You want to play the game, you vew the graphics. Part and parcel. This isn’t the case with a tabletop roleplaying game. In many games, you read the book once, then put it down and reply on your imagination to pull you through. Does the reading of the book pollute your imagination with cheesecake art so that you’re so pre-occupied with it that you cannot roll a dice, act your way through a scene or enjoy a social activity with some friends?

See, it’s not the same situation as a video game, this is tabletop roleplaying; an area the author admits they “can’t speak for”. She criticises that I compare this game to literary works. The game we’re talking about is a direct homage, a game set in the world of these literary works. That fact that the game is filled with clichés that are representative of the literary genre is relevant. If you change them, they stop being clichés.

Our author, Andrea Rubenstein goes on to say that I’m being non-inclusive. That I’m being a callous asshole. She furthers her ignorance of the subject by claiming that I’m a jerk telling a woman to basically shut up and realize that gaming is for the boys. She probably doesn’t know that I’ve created gender-inclusive games (at least by the standards of the piece). she doesn’t even know what being “inclusive” means in terms of tabletop roleplaying so quick is she to compare it to a competely different medium.

So why get involved in an argument when you don’t know anything about the industry?

To grab a headline. Duh.

Andrea doesn’t realise that tabletop roleplaying games are literary works. She doesn’t realise that reading through many games is the same as reading a short novel. They tell a story and provide a framework designed to inspire the imagination. This is completely different to her straw man about video games which are a passive form of entertainment (yes, videogames are interactive but only in the sense that certain actions allow the story to be told. You’re limited to what’s presented to you on the screen. You’re not required, or in many cases able to use your imagination. But ignorance of the medium of tabletop roleplaying is central to Andrea’s assertion that I’m a jerk and an asshole. Central to her argument is the assertion that tabletop roleplaying must be the same as video gaming.

Andrea Rubenstein is not stupid, nor is she a jerk, nor an asshole. She’s just ignorant.

If she and Mary are going to criticise roleplaying games for their content then they really should start criticising other literary works for their content. Let’s start with the works of Shakespeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming and J. K. Rowling. Each of them has almost a monopoly on male protagonists with women having secondary, weaker or evil roles.

Shakespeare at least had Viola.

The Bitter Guy calls this a really retarded response.

Fair enough. It probably is retarded to point at something that’s fucking stupid and say that’s fucking stupid especially when the stupid thing is something that is “pro feminisim”. Yes. Terrifyingly stupid. I do have to wonder however as I’ve brought this up with just about every woman I know (and yes, that extends beyond my mum, my sisters and my 4 year old daughter) and all of them agree that the criticism of the original material, that being the representation of genre clichés, is entirely appropriate. Some great responses were:

“I read late-gaming, and nearly vomited. Sorry, but the thought that there are people making games that allow females to enjoy their drama-mama, nico-teen angst makes me want to hurl. What? Do I get points for “Snappy Comeback”? For “Catch His Eye”? For “Best Entrance”?

No, I agree with your post. I don’t need to be pandered to in order to rp. “

Okay….that’s a long one….but there’s more, in another detailed breakdown of my post…

I’ve turned off registration for comments because it should be off. Bit of a mea culpa there.

I am enjoying the discussion on sexism in RPGs which has been continued on thedeadone.net and Mary’s blog.

I wrote: “Some game companies are currently trying to market cute and fluffly and romance and “social” games to women which is utterly patronising.”

Mary writes back: “I can answer this personally without examples. I see games as inherantly a social thing. Hanging out with a group of people is a social thing.

I’m not disagreeing here but I deliberately put “social” in inverted commas. Gaming is a social activity because it usually means hanging out with people who have a similar interest. This is not the same as a “social” game.

I don’t know if I’m communicating this well but I’m trying to illustrate the difference between “gaming as a social activity” and “a game which contrives social situations in game”. We all know the former and real men squirm at the thought of the latter. Ahem.

Do I need to examine the way I do things? I have no women in my gaming group. Does this mean I have been shooing them away with my inherent and aggressive male chauvenism?

I did a check with the women I know. Some gamers, some not. They don’t think I’m a male chauvenist. I did need to check.

I started a little storm in a teacup with my last post. Even got someone else linking to me. And some of the comments on that posting (e.g. “Enh, I went and read the Late Gaming post, and it’s so stupid, I couldn’t even work up the energy for a reply.”) just prove the point.

Now. Jeremiah has a good point that perhaps the point of female archetypes is to make it easier for females to visualise character possibilities. Okay, I can accept that. The problem being that his commenters immerse themselves in political correctness. For the guy who didn’t have the energy to reply because the post is so stupid, thanks for commenting. You could have just put a me too and provided just as much contribution.

Jeremiah writes:“And I have to say that some people just don’t get it. And at this point I am thinking it is on purpose.”

Yes, some of it is in purpose. The whole point of blogging for me is not a confessional - there’s not a lot of point in writing something if it’s not going to start a conversation. As Robert Scoble says It’s good for us to change our scenery and start conversations with people we wouldn’t otherwise talk with..

Would Sherlock Holmes have appealed to more women if Dr Watson had been a genre-and-era-busting female doctor? At that point it’s getting petty. It’s like a TV show committee sitting around a table and cynically asking whether they could appeal to the bi-lesbian-gay-black-asian community more if they included some token characters in their sit-com. Do you really want to be targetted like a demographic rather than an individual? Do you want to be excited because a game has an archetype that breaks the demographic of the genre or would you rather be excited because of the opportunities the game presents. It seems to me that games WITHOUT art might actually appeal to women more if cheesecake art is such a turn-off.

Some game companies are currently trying to market cute and fluffly and romance and “social” games to women which is utterly patronising. There are some games which are really interesting to me from the point of being an immersive roleplayer. Nicotine Girls for example, does not appeal to the side of me that wants to play a muscle bound mutant. But I’d love to find a gaming group that would play it. I may have that gaming group right now but I’m not sure. For one thing, they’re all blokes. For a second thing I’ve only started gaming with them recently and I don’t know how far I can push them. Introducing them to Troupe Play was a big leap….

One issue with game companies making games that seem to appeal to males more than females? These male gamers are buying games. That means the law of supply and demand will apply to the big companies. It’s a small enough hobby already and the percentage of women who will play has always been a small fraction. I’ve always promoted strong genre-busting female character roles for the female players in my group (some may remember Aemilia (Ars Magica), Petrina Miles (Ars Magica), and Christine (SLA Industries) from my games (all played by my lovely ex-wife). Therefore you can look to indie game companies where the developers are writing for the love of the game rather than the money. I will have to ask some of my female gamer friends about whether my own games have appealed to them with positive character possibilities. It’s a conversation I have to have with myself at some point I guess.

Mary’s blog about games that appeal to her leaves me a little confused. One one hand I can see there are some really cool images here. The image for Gurps: Reborn Rebirth looks cool indeed. That’s a positive gender model. The image just above it, with the schoolgirls with the swords doesn’t inspire me at all. It features more of the things in Japanese culture that we whitebread westerners find odd or disturbing. Okay, the things I find disturbing.

But then it’s not about whether I’m inspired obviously. Or what I find disturbing.

I didn’t write yesterday’s post as a whitebread western male. I wrote it as an indignant gamer and I had significant input from a female friend who agreed totally. No-one wants to be patronised.

On mer writes about rpgs we find an opine about how it’s such a shame that the pulp-rpg “Spirit of the Century” included archetypes such as:

Gadget Guy, Gentleman Criminal, Jungle Lord, Man of Mystery

and not

Gadget Girl, Lady Criminal, Jungle Queen, Woman of Mystery

Yes. It’s a bloody shame. So why don’t we create games where sexism and racism are reversed?

Okay, how about we compromise. Let’s look at my local gaming club and make some calculations. On Monday night we had about thirty people. And not more than 4 were women. So slightly more than 13%. Let’s build games to attract the 13% rather than the 86%!

That doesn’t make a lot of sense.

People have wracked their brains in how to attract more women into the hobby and I have to say that I am beginning to see it as futile. There was a huge influx of females (especially hawt gothy babes) when Vampire hit the streets. And now the bubble has popped? They’re gone. Or doing other stuff. there’s been some releases of anime/manga games which are more feminocentric (that’s got to be a new word…) but I look at them and consider them patronising. There are some that even promote love and romance but again, how subtle are they?

I just don’t think that gaming means the same to girls the same way that obsessive devotion to an obscure hobby holds attracton to women. What’s the percentage of female train-spotters? How about computer geeks (you know, the ones who don’t do it for money?). There’s a reason why males suffer more from mind-blindness than girls (Asperger Syndrome affects 3-4 times as many boys than girls). Asperger’s has been referred to as excessive maleness

I tend to look at the women in gaming with respect to sexism and racism in gaming media with soft focus. For years we’ve been subjected to pin-up style art of BOTH male and female protagonists wearing nothing but beach-wear for armour while fighting dragons, spiders and immense giants. We don’t hear many men complaining about the men. I just think it’s a tired, contrived trope.

Does it really spoil your enjoyment of the game if the archetypes are male? Do you find it jarring and upsetting if the pronouns in a game are exclusively male? Does it pain you to your very soul that Wells chose male characters for his books The Time Machine and War of the Worlds? Would Emma have been better if Jane Austen had named the character James and made a comedy of manners about the debut of a young squire? Why the hell wasn’t Moses a girl? Would Jesus have been a better saviour if he’d had mammary glands?

It’s a male dominated hobby with a target market of males, written by men most of whom have given up trying to attract women in the hobby because, frankly, they’re only interested if it’s anything but straight tabletop roleplaying. Add in a bit of haemo-eroticism, some corsets and black lipstick and we’re flooded with the buggers all happy to play happy families with the one or two male players who wash more than once a week. We’re meant to make women excited to play the game by throwing in some token archetypes (voiding the genre I might add) and making more references in the text to fictional female GMs?

What happened to making people excited to play the game because of a compelling background, a system that didn’t make me want to push d10s into the eyes of the GM and a player community that didn’t just really creep me out with the fact that ten years later, the people at your local club all the same, just older, fatter and still playing D&D.

Sure. Next game I write, I’ll add in 50% female archetypes. See how excited everyone gets.

[Yes, this has turned into a rant and I've made the title a good bit more inflammatory than I might have originally. I'd have commented directly on Mary's blog but...I'd have to register on wordpress.com for that and really I can't be bothered. I did have about 40% female archetypes in Qabal....but that was a long time ago]

There’s a bloke on StoryGames who’s advertising his new business: Will GM for money.

The price is $50.00 per month of weekly play, as of the 23rd of Febuary, the price is $10.00 per week payable in advance, which including includes snacks and drinks: a five session pass comes with a spiffy membership card with your characters mug on it in full color. We meet weekly on Friday, 4:00 to 6:00, at at Eudemonia on 2154 University (and Shattuck) in Berkeley, California

Are good GMs really that rare?

I’d not pay a red cent for this kind of crap. I don’t know about you but I expect a basic level of language for a GM and frankly, a GM who’s an egotistical prick is a major turn-off (And yes, I mean other people who are egotistical pricks. I’m fabulous!) This bloke…well…his command of his first language is not where it needs to be for a PAY-FOR game.

The odd thing is that during character generation on Monday night we had a brief discussion of exactly this subject. We did moot the idea that my players could bribe me. A quid ($2) for a random re-roll and two ($4) for a favourable result. And two again to cock up someone else’s roll. And there would be a bidding system that would go up in increments.

That beats the shit out of card based and stone/paper/scissors rubbish we’ve all been inventing over the last few years.