Category: Commentary

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law

I’m in a bad mood today and Crowley suits my mood. What are you meant to do when you’ve tried to sort out issues in your own life and someone interprets a “self-enhancing” action as “them-destroying”? Th reason? Because you didn’t come to them for assistance, because you might want to stand on your own two feet, they interpret it as rejection. People, on the whole are stupid. Crowds moreso.

It reminds me of the utter stupidity of adults who lay a whup-ass on their kids and when the kids say “What have I done?” the adult invariably replies “Oh, don’t play stupid with me!”

I was the recipient of more than one can of whup-ass ignorance during my early years. I came away with the welts of a leather belt and in some cases never knew what I did wrong. Partially for this reason I support the idea that “spanking” is something reserved for consenting adults in the privacy of their bedroom and not something applied to children in punishment for them being naughty.

If another adult was “bad”, would you strike them? No, of course not. What about a short adult? Still no? Okay, why is it okay for an adult to strike a child? Exactly, it’s not okay.

• Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law

Possibly the most famous Crowley quote, and later co-opted by the Wiccan cult.

Crowley was a nutter, this much we know, but he did come out with some fabulous quotes which I guess he borrowed and stole along the way.

• Love is the law, love under will.

I interpret this as Agapē. Love which is not sexual or filial. I interpret it as a non-discriminating general affection for everyone. The feeling of enjoying helping others without reward (a lot more apparent in these days of the Internet), of contributing to society (e.g. the Free software movements), of not complaining of hardships because you know others have it worse.

• I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

A surprising quote here and I agree with it. I abhor the idea of a cult of personality (though I have it fully esconced in the notes in Qabal). Everyone must make their own stand in this world and we cannot always depend on others to be there for us. To a degree, this also tells us to not keep all of our eggs in one basket. Trusting only one person will lead you to ruin.

• The customer is usually wrong; but statistics indicate that it doesn’t pay to tell him so.

Not to be limited to monetary transactions but in any transaction: of ideas, of love and affection, of goods, of time. Any time there is a transfer and receipt, there is opportunity for the recipient to be disappointed. That said – sometimes it’s best to disappoint rather than further a sham.

• The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one’s neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.

Pick a topic that polarises. God or Allah. Mac or PC. Apple TV versus XBox. iPod versus Zune. Green, White and Orange versus the Red, White and Blue. D20 versus everyone else. I enjoy intellectual conflict for the pure exercise of my mind. I enjoy debate and the sharp edge of a sarcastic wit. I may shout and scream In CAPITALS during a debate but I’d still buy the next round if we were down the pub. Debate and disagreement do not equal hate. Or at least they should not.

• As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.

It’s not just men though my experience is heavily biased towards believing that men can be both the best and worst of people. Sadly the latter more often.

Six Role-playing Annoyances

Here are some annoying habits that players can exhibit in your game. There are some suggestions as to how to deal with these problems, either by encouragement (as another player) or enforcement (as a GM).

  • Playing yourself, but with armour

Problem: the character has the exact same personality as the player, which means that every character that players plays has the same personality. The result is usually very forgettable characters a bland roleplaying experience for everyone else. Unfortunately, this type of player is often a roll-player also (see below). Even the two-word-personality is better than this.

Solution: The GM think about the character as a character, instead of a series of statistics. Write down the major motivations of that character and play them. Even two-dimensional role-playing is better than none.

  • Dick Ramhard, and other stupid character names

Problem: you try to play a serious game and someone comes up with a stupid name for their character. This leaves everyone either snickering or sighing every time the character introduces themselves.

Solution: keep your name appropriate to the game setting. GMs should veto stupid names anyway, so this could well be the result of poor refereeing or player-bullying.

  • Objection! Rules lawyering!

Problem: the flow of the game is constantly broken as the player points out the rules and loopholes that have been used or missed in every situation. This is common in players who are more used to GMing, and in those who prefer less narrative style games.

Solution: this is a tough one. Remind the player that the GM is the final arbiter in all things (stick). Reward the player for good role-play, ideally through creating good story,regardless of the rules (carrot). One way is to give a conditional award – e.g. Everyone gets 3 character points for last week’s session. One (or more) of Bob’s are conditional on him not pointing rules infractions in this week’s session.

  • Kobolds can’t kill us metagamers

Problem: the player knows the system/background really well, and knows what every creature or denizen is capable of doing. Often this results in the character taking unrealistic chances based on knowledge he/she wouldn’t have. Sometimes it’s saying something like “there can’t really be a huge dragon in that cave as we’re all puny characters and the GM wouldn’t do that to us”.

Solution: give standard foes a non-standard name and/or appearance. Give them abilities that they could have but aren’t in the published material. Kill stupid characters who go into the dragon’s cave – it’s harsh, but fair (make sure and give plenty of warning that this is a dangerous thing to do!). Don’t tell the players what they are up against – describe to the characters what they experience.

  • Solo adventuring for five (GM Hogging)

Problem: One player insists on taking up a large percentage of the GM’s time. Sometimes this is because of rules-lawyering (above), other times it’s just because they (the GM and the player) don’t realise what they are doing.

Solution: Whether you’re a GM or a player, the simplest solution is to engage the other players in roleplaying. As a player, you should also try to engage the GM-hog, which will free up the GM and get the game moving again. If you can’t engage him/her, at least the RP with your other team-mates will provide for an interesting session. As a GM, you need to get better at managing your time equally (as much as possible) between players – creating circumstances for inter-player RP is one of the most effective time management techniques.

  • Roll-playing, or role-playing?

Problem: a player insists on making a roll for everything (“It’s a … pleasure to meet you!”), which not only slows down the game, but many times doesn’t make any sense. This can often be frustratingly combined with rules-lawyering and playing oneself and at it’s worst can lead to min/maxing in order to ensure the best rolls.

Solution: as a GM, I’ve taken away a player’s dice and even his character sheet to prevent roll-playing. As a player, I’ve tried to lead by example – I keep my character sheet upside down as a rule, and roll only when the GM tells me to.

Got any more annoyances? I know there are lots I didn’t cover (like Munchkin, Hack and Slash, etc.) mostly because I felt like they were well-established (they have Wikipedia entries!).

Edit: apologies for the typo – I got roll and role mixed up at a key point. D’oh!

Top 5 reasons why D&D sucks

5. Roll-playing Game

While not as bad as some systems (*cough* World of Darkness) in terms of the amount of dice you roll at one time, there are a lot of rolls for resolving single tasks. There are so many extra rules for things (most of which require rolls) that the emphasis is on the rules and dice rather than the roleplaying. You also need multiples of every type of dice – while most roleplayers have these it’s still a bit of a pain. One roll per action – surely that’s enough for any system? Oh, and don’t forget your synergy bonus!

4. Alignment

While I realise that alignment is just supposed to be a guideline, the rulebooks seem to contradict that. You can’t play a Paladin unless you’re Lawful Good at all times. How do you make a Paladin interesting then, while still remaining a Paladin? They’re all going to be shining paragons of justice and virtue. Playing clerics requires adherence to certain alignments, and the same for some other classes. While it might not be constricting for some, to me it’s like someone pigeonholing me simply because of my ethnic background or my accent.

3. Levels

Now that I’m a 3rd Level Rogue, I’m more likely to survive being stabbed that I was last week, when I was a 2nd Level Rogue. Having arbitrary levels which state what abilities you have or can have is so … 1980s. Please, I thought we left that all behind when we left high school. OK, you can use the optional rules (more rules!) around training, to make this a bit more realistic, but still. It bugs me that I can’t be (for example) a Wizard who only knows a Magic Missile spell but can cast 5 of them instead of the 3 dictated by his level. It feels like exactly what it is – a completely arbitrary way of rating characters so you can pit them against random monster enounters (hmmm .. I should have put random encounters on the list too).

2. Two Book Minimum

You want to play Dungeons and Dragons? Then you have to buy at least two books – the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Oh, you wanted a background? One more book (e.g. Player’s Guide to Faerun). Oh, you needed monsters for the background. That’s another (e.g. Monster Manual). Brand new at MSRP that’s $122.80. Even getting them second hand it’s over $50. One list of “essential” D&D books on Amazon has 40 entries totalling $834.75 (that includes Amazon’s discounts).

“But Wizards spawned the whole d20 movement, when they ‘open sourced’ the system!” Oh, really? Great – lots more games based around the same shit system.

1. Rabid Players

So, after spending vast quantities of money on all these expensive and extensive rule books, it seems that the average D&D player doesn’t want to be told that the game is pile of poo. Instead, they defend any slight vociferously, even when blatantly in the wrong (or when they miss the point entirely). And this symptom seems to spread into the other popular D20 games (ever notice how often Mutants and Masterminds players say “System X is no good, you can do all that and more in M&M”?).

Out of Character

A couple of days ago I wrote about and got some very interesting comments about how this is relevant to games.

On the Story Games forum they talk about Improv Theatre and how drama and story is made up of those things which are unusual or out of character as long as there is context and justification.

Meserach writes: “The story in which the otherwise devoted nun kills a baby for no reason at all other than the shock value? Sucks. The story in which the otherwise devoted nun kills a baby, but surrouding material gives us some insight into why? That could be a good story.”

Mark W writes: “In my experience, some people have this notion of character that really doesn’t extend much beyond the “pick two keywords and play them out no matter what” style.”

Like, say, “Lawful Evil” or “CareGiver/Curmudgeon” (because I might as well piss off the D&D folk as well as the White Wolf folk in order to get the most hate mail).

In the WatchTower game there are things happening in the background that I want the players to start moving forward. We’ve just started the creation of the B-Team, named so because they’re the second wave of heroes for WT-NY. After this, the players will make more characters (in a few weeks time), but this time playing the part of the conspirators behind the scenes. It’ll be an interesting roleplaying challenge for some and also an opportunity to add justfication to the actions which have gone before. That will mean giving away some of the plot, but the plot has to be player driven.

I remember back more than a decade to an Ars Magica game I ran in Dragonslayers. At one point we had 11 players and half of them had two characters. And one in particular, played by John D, was given an artifact that when activated would give him the power of a Tenth of Hell. The activation was an old curse which, in order to enact, he had to gather the right hands of thirteen friends. The character did this, betraying thirteen comrades and escaping suspicion due to John’s silver tongue and then decided not to enact the curse after all. Too risky apparently. These were the actions of an ostensibly good but perhaps selfish or power hungry character. His character’s arrogance was that his comrades (grogs, companions, other wizards) were beneath his contempt and he used them. When it came to the ultimate justification of the character, his courage failed. This was a bigger, badder thing than he. And he feared to raise up what he could not put down. It made his evil actions which were out of character all the more tragic when it was made apparent that his primary trait was cowardice. I loved it. It actually made the story. I do feel a bit sorry for the one armed bowman previously known as “the best archer in all of Christendom”. Them’s the breaks.

Heroic imaginations

This is probably more suitable for infurious because it’s riffing off Guy Kawasaki.

Nurturing a heroic imagination takes five actions:

  • Maintain constant vigilance for situations that require heroic action.
  • Learn not to fear conflict because you took a stand.
  • Imagine alternative future scenarios beyond the present moment.
  • Resist the urge to rationalize and justify inaction.
  • Trust that people will appreciate heroic (and frequently unpopular) actions.

Heroism: Not just for people who have a spandex fetish

Look out of genre for ideas.

This thread on TheRPGSite looks for some ideas about how to populate a story based on the theme “Traveller: it came from jumpspace!. Some of the ideas are very good while some of them are little more than a re-telling of Alien.

Look outside of the genre. Watch some movies which are not typically sci-fi. I’m sitting watching The Great Escape as I write this. It’s filled with great scenes. What about Hidalgo? What about The Chronicles of Narnia? Misjump creates breach and characters are forced into a world where time moves differently. And where there are strange alien creatures. And a war.

I could even make a plot out of this.

So, some examples from the horror genre.

Watch “HP Lovecraft’s From Beyond”.
With the jump drive as “the machine”. The jump drive malfunctions and everyone feels ill, on edge, skin sensitive to touch. If you have psychics on board they start to broadcast their nightmares. The creatures which exist in jump space are finally able to catch up with this static ship which is trapped half in and half out of jump space. These creatures can be seen as ghosts and are able to flow through the solid walls of the ship. Close to the drive however they are not only visible but solid and attack. Anyone who spends too much time in the presence of the jump drive starts to be affected…and THEY become the monster prowling the ship…

Watch Carpenters’ Prince of Darkness.
Jump drive fails and people start dying – one kills himself by drinking sealant fluid, another kills herselfby bathing in a technobabble energy vortex. There isn’t anything evil here but the flailing jump drive has attracted the attention of something unspeakably alien which is sending it’s base desires. It can drink sealant fluid, it bathes in energy vortices. We pick up on it’s base desires and emulate them. It possesses a couple of NPC crewmembers and uses their minds and eyes to explore the ship, taking time to dismantle equipment and people just to see how they work. Eventually it will become bored and move on or perhaps it will take a liking to this brave new universe and try to cross with the help of it’s possessed souls.

Watch 28 Days Later
Take the example given about low berths being used to transport animals. Think how dangerous an angry chimp or even the ships mascot could be. Give the mascot psychic powers and heightened intelligence and watch it save those who were nice to it and murder those who were nasty to it. Watch how it takes some people and reduces them from being thinking feeling individuals and lobotomises them into becoming animals fueled only by hunger and fear….

Action is character

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Action is character.”

A few years ago a friend of mine came up with the theory that we often play our polar opposites in games. The players under scrutiny here were myself and himself and our characters were a honourable charismatic paladin and a sneaky cutthroat backstabbing rogue. I disagreed at the time but missed out on the bit where he was calling me a sneaky backstabbing rat in real life. I’ve never been clever with that sort of thing.

Aidan remarked the other night that he believes more accurately that we play characters we would like to be. This kinda still leaves me as a sneaky rat but at least this time I wish I was a paladin.

On the other hand, listening to F. Scott Fitzgerald, we define our character by our actions. This is kinda obvious but it’s good of old F. to help us with making it into an interesting soundbite.

r-Maps (and being ahead of the curve)

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).

More on sexism and racism in games.

More on New Horizons the game that is going to put racism and sexism into every pulp game. I’m going to have to buy it because …

Alexandria2000 writes: Or if they ARE mentioned, it’s in a stereotypical way that makes my teeth ache. So hell yeah, gimme a chance to inject a little reality in the pulp. Stop ignoring the people I want to play because ‘reality and history were boring and sad.’

Surely you mean to add a little fantasy and unreality into the pulps.

That said – there were stories which were indeed sympathetic. The standard pulp hero is ideed a white man, but he often relied upon other racial and sexual achetypes to get things done and more often than not, treated them as equals even if society did not. I’m beginning to see this supplement being an opportunity to put reality in and I’m really thinking that’s the last thing we want to do. Reality is and was bigoted and ugly.

You have a choice. You either make race irrelevant so someone can play a female asian hero who leads the charge against the darkness (and thus rewrite the genre and change history) or you include reality and run the same character and spend half your time smacking landlords and officials about for their lack of modern sensibilities.

Said like that it seems like a petty revenge plot.

sometimes you have to wear your work clothes to the doctor

SXSW covers “Confessions of Superhero” which shows the strange and seedy world of superhero lookalikes…

We see Joe McQueen demolished by the heat inside his colossal Hulk costume — on a record 106-degree day, it’s a brutal 130 degrees inside the emerald-tinged mass of foam … Superman chugs milk right from the jug; Wonder Woman roots in her glove box through the open window of her car as valet parking guys check out her ass; Batman takes a smoke break.

Here’s the link at SXSW’s site and a review at WIRED DOT COM.

Lastly, here’s the web site of the film. Wonder Woman is kinda hot!

Systems

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.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Literally.

It’s always been a frustration to me that I can’t draw.

Jared and I have debated this a few times during my forays to Paris. Nightfall had the advantage of having DavA, Chippy and Stuart. Lucky bastards.

I need artists for WotW, I need an artist to help me with the imagery for Viride and I think we could do with a concept genius for Status: Refugee. The vision thing is easy but translating that vision into the brain of another who has not been there for the inception is very difficult.

My friend Paul, a graphic designer and branding specialist of some note, suggests I:

start hanging out in the art college.. without looking too pervy..lol

Hm, that’s not going to work.

He also says:

is it better to write around images or should images come from story?.. better to team up with a artist and work together.

That’s the problem. I don’t know many artists. And without hanging out at the Art College with a bag of sweeties, I’m not likely to find any. There’s certainly none in TTN that I can see.

Back to the scribing board for me, I guess.

Insulting the conservatives

Morfedel writes:
“I think its because my conservatives watch Fox news because they (and I) feel that many other news media are liberally slanted. And of course, when you do that as a retreat from “other news sources,” then your news source you do watch is attacked, it comes off as an attack against you as well.”

Only if you’re a dickhead.

Am I being harsh? Everyone else in the world knows that FOX is pro-Bush, pro-War and pro-Conservative (for those of us outside the US, a US Conservative is a extremely right wing individual. Even the liberal left in the US makes the Tories in the UK look like turnip-eating socialists).

It is bizarre that FOX provides The Simpsons.

But to take someone saying “Fox is crap” as insinuating that means “You are crap” shows some deep seated insecurities. It would be different if the individual had said:

Anyone who watches FOX is a weak minded fool with nothing but a pucker on his lips for The American Presidential Rear End

Unborn Ghosts

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

— Richard Dawkins, excerpt from Chapter I, “The Anaesthetic of Familiarity,” of Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998)

Zombie Links

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.

Captain America and other patriots

From onegoodmove we have Stephen Colbert on the tragic death of Captain America

One of my friends, Gav, mentioned the Civil War storyline. Cap represents the forces of liberty and Iron man is a defense contractor. I can’t help but think that there’s a writer in Marvel’s hallowed halls who’s sick of the current government situation in the US. But that’s dangerously close to satire and reality so let’s change the subject.

I’ve always liked “patriot” characters. I’ve never managed to make an Irish one though, I’ve always ended up with British super-patriot heroes. Some of them (Yeoman, Lionheart, RUCman) have become staples of my superhero backgrounds. A lot of this is because I was always an avid reader of Captain Britain.

Some of these characters I have a lot of empathy for.

Yeoman, the hundred and forty year old WW1 hero who shows no sign of failing health and yet who is possessed of the most desperate ennui. But he’s a knight of the way and his shoulders are broad and he still has a long way to go.

Lionheart, the modern clone of Yeoman, full of Thatcherite reason and lately New Labour sincerity. Violent and aggressive, just like the general populace.

RUCman, short-lived in terms of the campaign but oft remembered. This superhuman attaché to the RUC has left the shackles of the government since the change of the organisations name to the PSNI. PSNIman doesn’t have the same ring….

Local Boy living the dream…

BBC News Northern Ireland writes:

A man accused of a stealing underwear from a shop in a knifepoint raid believed he was a female elf at the time, Belfast Crown Court has heard. He told defence counsel Anthony Cinnamond that within his small social circle he had been participating in a game known as Shadowrun. The game was set in the future and the assumed characters were criminals, he said. He told the court his character was a shaman, or magical elf, who carried a small Japanese sword as a weapon.

That’s really quite embarrassing. (Thanks to Graham for the heads up and no, I don’t know this guy). Here’s more coverage of the same event