Ganakagok is, “a quasi-Inuit Silmarillion as seen from the inside looking out”. A bunch of folks had recommended it as a great game. It uses a sort of tarot-system to set up the situation, the characters, and play out the game. I picked up a copy yesterday, as I’ve been meaning to check it out for sometime.

Skimming through, my first big twitch was the images of the example cards, using Pacific Northwest NDN artwork… UM. And then stuff like character names: “The name should be primitive and icy, vaguely Inuit in sound and form.” WTF is “icy”? Then there’s “Shaman”, “Good Medicine” and “Bad Medicine” …

For a game that claims to be a look from the inside-out, it’s chock full of exotification.

This brings us back to the larger media issue- we’re forced to either only indulge in things where we’re invisible (“Look, we don’t show up, so no problematic imagery… uh, yay, I guess?”) or things where we show up distorted and stereotypes (“At least I get to have media with people who look vaguely like me… I’ll just imagine there’s scenes and spaces where we get to see them as normal”). Which pretty much sums up my love/hate relationship of L5R.

And beyond that, the bigger social issue of why us telling stories, about ourselves, is absolutely required in the face of cultural genocide.

I suppose that’s also why roleplaying as a hobby, is where it is.

Who gets to tell your story? Right?

Over the last few years, I’ve been less and less interested in the types of dialogue produced by forums and the blogosphere.

The problem isn’t just the need for filtering, there’s also the major issue of attention posting, status games, and the simple but also real issues of signal to noise, produced in part by numbers of people and by the need to constantly educate folks to get up to a minimum standard.

At the same time, having a group discussion to bounce ideas off of is useful. So I’m toying with a different setup for online discussion that maybe some folks will find useful.

1. Small group (12 members, 6 men max, 6 women max)

Enough people for multiple ideas, and enough people assuming that not everyone will participate or care about any given topic. This is based on seeing most functional forum threads, or blog posts discussions, usually revolve around 4-8 people.

2. Private, but quotable w/permission

The discussion is private to the group, though anyone can talk about their own thoughts publicly, or quote others with permission.

Keeping it out of the public eye cuts out a lot of the attention posting, plus it also allows people to start doing a lot of the exploratory/unfinished thoughts stuff that tends to get pushed aside on the public spaces.

3. Limited Duration, forced mixing

If you form this kind of group, it needs to have a deadline, an endpoint. My suggestion is something like 3-6 months. After which, the group breaks and if you choose to form a new group, at least half the people must be new people. (And, it might make sense to form multiple groups, if you have specific topics).

The deadline does two things- one, it pushes folks to try to make the most out of the time people have committed to being available- if I have access to 5 really smart folks who really know the topic, and there’s a good gestalt, I better use it! Second, it stops the other major problem that shows up a lot- the formation of identity around spaces- “We’re Forgies” “We’re Storygamers” (or, equally problematic, “They’re Forgies”, “They’re Storygamers”).

The point of the group is the function of what it produces, not just having a new set of buddies (and if you are buddies, you don’t need to be in an online group just to maintain that friendship…)

At the end of the duration, it makes sense to have a followup on how things shook out, and what, if any valuable ideas folks got from it.

The Avatar series bible has been leaked.

The question that hella folks been asking since the series ended, is, “What happens now with the airbenders? Will there be no more?”

The series bible points out three really interesting things. First, benders can be born to normal people. Second, that not everyone lived at the Air Temples- so the air nation wasn’t just monks. Third, that they were generally nomadic.

Just because someone hasn’t seen a Sky Bison in 100 years doesn’t mean the nomads all got killed- there’s pretty good odds a bunch of folks would have fled or simply not been present for the Fire Nation attacks and taken to going in hiding.

Which means you could easily have secret pockets of Airbenders, or, perhaps a lot of people who have the ability but none of the training, and are just waiting to learn their hidden talent.

Interesting stuff!

There’s been this interesting debate going on about whether every scene in a game should have a conflict.

It occurred to me today, while prepping for play, that the two camps really mean two different things when they have this discussion.

The thing that I’ve been doing is writing down a list of all the NPCs, and a sentence or two about what they want to do about the current situation or how they feel.

Some of these are probably going to lead to dice roll conflicts, some of these are either foreshadowing for probably conflicts later on, and some are fallout and consequences from previous conflicts. For me, this is all conflict – the groundwork for, the decision/action point, and the results of.

“All scenes should have a conflict”, is not an injunction that everything has to be “Make an UBER decision. Make another UBER decision. Make ANOTHER UBER decision”… What it means is that scenes need to provide context and meaning that leads towards or from those decisions, and makes them possible. Context must be built for these things to have meaning.

It doesn’t help that the word “conflict” is used interchangeably for both immediate mechanical conflicts AND the larger narrative term.

I got a chance to have a good conversation with several folks down at World Fantasy Con today, and though I didn’t see it, we were talking about the Steampunk panel, where Nisi Shawl pointed out that Steampunk is often a reaction against us getting into genre writing.

There’s some serious truth in this.

Sci-fi asked, “How does technology shape society?”, Cyberpunk asked, “How does technology enforce/break status quo?”, whereas Steampunk asks, “Is Colonialism excusable and/or a necessary evil?”

All of the above can try to dodge their questions by retreating into tropes and cliches, only Steampunk ends up answering the question even in evasion- retreating to a colonial culture and painting it as a golden age is not different than many history books or current news today. Expecting the fruits of colonialism whether through “Manifest Destiny” or “Just Because” is effectively the same answer.

Do we get to be people in these stories? Do we get to be more than a source or obstacle to resources? Are we co-creators of the world that is, or just people waiting to be discovered and enlightened from our benighted ways? The retreat into colonial culture either becomes an criticism or an excuse in the way it answers those questions- is “a product of the times” a horrifying concept to realize what it says about the culture or is it an excuse to normalize it?

Of course, the fact that the question is even where’s it at says a lot about how backwards the discussion is. Whereas Nisi pointed to it being a reaction to us in genre fiction, I say it’s more part of the larger trend in N. Americas and Europe- about pining for “the good old days” and backlash against changing demographics and immigration.

The fact that some of us subvert the trend and call it out is nothing new, and I expect will be the clash for as long as Steampunk exists as a genre.

I don’t do a lot of donation pleading – I figure if you’re reading what I’m writing, you’re probably the kind of person who’s doing what you can, as you can, with the organizations and communities you’re involved with.

I would like to ask you to consider dropping $5 or $10 to verb.noire@gmail.com via Paypal as Verb Noire is in danger of losing the entire print run of it’s first book.

The reason I’m supporting this, like I support the APIA Spoken Word Summit, is that this is a venue giving people space to find their own voices.

If you’ve ever been through some shit, you know sometimes, your own voice is all you got to keep you going through the night. It’s really easy to accept what everyone else is saying, because they have a place for you, a role for you, and that place is failure, and that place is hell. It takes a lot of strength, suffering, and luck to find your way out.

You don’t know how much it means when you see other people doing it.

Or how much it means when other people show you that you can do it for yourself.

So, if anything I’ve ever written, has inspired you, please consider helping out.

Thanks.

I was talking to my buddy Les last week about Fable 2, which he’s been playing a lot of. I tried Fable 1, but didn’t like the fact that for a game all about customization and choices: a) the moral spectrum was simplistic and b) you could only play “teh white guy”. (and interestingly enough, the same people who talk about fidelity in a setting seem to never bring up what a disappointment with the representations of the heroes in Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, or God of War…) And it sounds like Dragon Age lets you have brown-ish characters but still not black…

At least the comic has badass plant controlling witch women, which are always a favorite trope of mine.

Along the lines of Willow’s “Conversations I want to have”…

For some time now, I’ve been thinking the biggest issue for roleplaying comes down to functional play culture and social contract. I see three steps to building that.

Base Expectation: Civilized Behavior

Yeah, I’m re-appropriating “civilized”. A culture, or subculture that casually rolls with hate isn’t civilized. The fact that this even needs to be listed is both sad and a damning point of itself. (ETA: This interview with Ashok Banker seems timely and parallels the situation exactly.)

On the real tip – creating this is actually the hardest and requires the most control of space and filtering processes to keep people from disrupting the space.

Low Pressure Environment and Experimentation

Encourage people to play a lot of different games with a lot of different people. This really lets people see the variety of options, and find something they like. It also reduces the fragility of the overall network and gives everyone more options for putting together groups or joining pre-existing ones. Not to mention avoiding a lot of the social dysfunction of high pressure/high commitment groups.

Encourage New Groups

Encourage folks to go and build their own networks. This makes sense both whether they’re in line with the above or not. If they’re with it, it expands the hobby and sets up an alternate set of play networks. If they’re against it, they’re totally cool to go do things the way they want to- plus it also draws away people who weren’t really interested in the same social structure anyway.

Highlights from the Blood & Ink game I’ve been running. I realize that part of what makes roleplaying hard to share is that write ups after the fact, a) only make context rules-wise if you’re familiar with the rules, or b) require that you do heavy editing just to format the fiction of play to share with others.

“Everyone has ghosts”

The child held his head at an odd angle. “I can’t see anyone.” Hape couldn’t remember where he had been, and though he heard the sound of the priestess and his friend, Toroa, his sight was dim, somehow.

Years ago, Hape and Toroa played together in the woods, and Hape fell down a ravine, slamming his head against a rock, never to rise again. Toroa had come at dusk to Lady Hina, begging the priestess to help him put his friend to rest, for the secret he had carried, of his cowardice, all these years.

Toroa and Lady Hina sat in the protective circle, while the ghost-child declared it’s Price, it’s demand for rest. “I can’t find my head. A stone head must be made. Toroa must bear it for a year and a day. So I can rest.”

A heavy burden, but much lighter than the soul of a child, crying in the woods.

“What is offered, what is asked…”

“You call me too early. I gave spring rains, and no floods this summer. Ngaio, you know this is too much!” The river god’s form shifted and twisted, the lanky old man-thing, agitated like water under hard wind.

The Elder Priestess did not falter. “Evil sits at our borders. Let no evil spirit cross.”

“You ask much every time we speak. Well, then, give me a soul that is due to me. Give me a body who will bear my mark to the last of their days. And, no evil spirits shall cross the water. …nor will anything else.”

A younger disciple almost started to say something before one of the elders pulled him back, head shaking. The deal was to be done, the Price paid, irregardless.

Lady Moana stepped forward. The River God placed his hand on her head, and the color ran from her hair down, down, like water pouring off her body. And all that was left was rapid-foam-white locks.

“…what is given, and what is taken”

Nunuku and Moana carefully picked their way amongst the brush and small houses that made up the waterfront of the river. Many night time encounters had given them that sort of comfort of knowing each other’s footsteps and coordinating secret movements- this nearly abandoned area was simple enough to scout along- just across the river the Hapuku campfires burned. The troops were ready. Eager.

A strange man had some soldiers carry a box to the river front. He had it opened and a person-thing shambled forth, listening to commands as the man pointed across the river. It slid and stepped into the water.

Far away, the river rumbled an ominous laugh.

Angry snatching fists poured down the flooding deluge, grabbing any who stood within stone’s throw of the water. Horses, mules, men.

Even from behind the brush, Moana and Nunuku ran for their lives. Nunuku screamed as the water clutched his legs, and Moana’s grip held his arm for but a second before he was snatched down river as the river laughed again.

The water cascaded forth, worse than any of the summer floods any could remember. This was magic, this was anger, this was the god reminding everyone he was free and they, who came to sip at his edges every day, they were at his mercy.

One group of people want to understand how roleplaying works. They read a lot of different theories and play a lot of different games.

Another group likes to use theory to take sides- to convince others to join their side or demand others convince them to take a particular side or another.

Though the words sound similar, these groups are doing mutually exclusive activities.

The first group just needs the information and can decide for themselves what and how theory is useful or not for them. The second group requires that any topic be constantly spoken about in order for it to hold water- if no one is talking about it then it’s not important.