Yudhishthira’s Dice

So the post for this week is just another link, to a redraft of How to Draw Superheroes. I find it awesome and funny.

There’s a new gaming forum up, not just for RPGs but gaming in general. It’s focus is a feminist-oriented community for women who love gaming and men who want to network with and learn from said women.

It is The IRIS Network and I wish it well. If all my talk about sexism and inclusion turns your crank, you should check this one out.

Recently in a thread on Knife Fight, I said:

As we move back and forth between games where you play a character, games where you tell a story through a character, games where you tell a story based around a character, and games where you tell a story, we’re going to have to work out more advanced methods of knowing not just where and when we can step in, but where and when we should. I think we’re still in the early stages of that, and there is a lot of work left to do there.

I think this is something worth considering at multiple stages of game.

If you are designing a game you need to let your audience know how to play it. We all know this, right? Okay, so if you are marketing a game that is about telling a story without focal characters to the existing market of RPG players who are used to playing a character, you need to have some specific guidance for them (system based as well as explanations) as to what that means. Some games already do this to greater and lesser degrees — for example, its hard to read Universalis and not know that a game of it is inherently going to be different than a traditional game of Vampire. The very way the game is set up, talks about character and focus, and shows examples of play all say “this is not about playing a character, it is about telling a story.”

If you are GMing a game with different assumptions than your group normally uses, you might want to talk to the other people about what to expect about the game play. I don’t mean long painful conversations, but a short “in this game you aren’t playing a character as much as you are telling a story through your character” talk is probably not out of order the first time you’re playing a new game or a new style of game. Forewarned is fore armed, after all.

I’ve actually had an AP experience on that note that was shockingly revealing to me. I have a friend that is an awesome RPer. He’s hardcore and deft in his portrayal of character, and has recently been making strides in thinking about story in RPGs with startling speed. But there were occasional bumps in the road. So one night we played My Life With Master, and I explained it as a story game about the fall of a master being dethroned by his servants, and oh by the way you play the servants. I didn’t even do this consciously, I was just thinking in those terms that night. But because I described it to this player as something other than “an RPG where you play a character” in a direct fashion, that night he came instantly and consistently to address of premise and worked harder at making the story work than making his character work. (The character still worked out awesomely well, btw.)

Now, to be honest, games on the far ends of the spectrum are probably the easiest to explain. If you are telling a story and don’t even have characters that you’re playing — or all share the same character (City of Birds?) — then it’s pretty easy to differentiate from an immersionist RPG in which the whole point is to be in one character and who cares about story. Its the games that do the lines in between, the ones that are in blurrier boundaries of telling a story through a character and telling a story based around a character, that you need to pay particularly sharp attention.

How is this game going to deal with it when the character is forced to do something the player of that character would not want to happen? If it is a physical action or failure? What if it is an emotional response, such as being forced by a dice roll to say that this character now loves someone that they hated five minutes ago in such a way that the player can’t even understand why it happened?

Its worth thinking about this kind of thing because for a lot of established players, play is something they do largely by instinct, precedent, and an many unexamined techniques and assumptions about “this is how you play an RPG.” (And no, I’m not talking about Forgites vs. non or any such thing. Everyone I’ve ever played with does this to some degree. I know I do it a lot.) So if you are doing something with a game that might require a different stance, it helps a lot in getting over the rough bumps if you set your game up to obviously follow a different stance. Let people know up front that they shouldn’t be trying to tell a story, or they shouldn’t be trying to control their characters emotions, or whatever specifics are needed to smooth the road for the kind of play you want your game to have.

And, of course, as a player in a game it behooves us to pay attention to what we are being told about the game and adjust our play as much as possible to fit with what is going on. Just because the game is asking something different of us doesn’t mean it is wrong, but it may mean that we need to change how we approach it. (Even if that change is not playing that game anymore.)

Of course, that requires that you know what kind of play you want your game to have, which is probably why its so damn hard.

The good Mr_orgue has started doing an analysis of the role of women on Dragon magazine covers. (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and the conclusion Part 7. Also, new now, The Editor of Dragon Magazine Responds.) I’m hoping for some good commentary over there, especially about methodology and things guys might miss that women might see.

This, btw, is a follow up to his similar look at women in interior artwork in Dragon magazine, which showed some interesting trends — especially around 2002, which was a good year for interior art.

So anyway, for everyone whose been into this discussion about cover art, feminism, and all the rest, have a look. Even better, leave some comments over there.

Also linked in the discussion on that page, real women do wear armor. Funny.

Bruce Baugh talks about his take on New Horizons.

Rereading the Simple Art of Murder, a piece that says very little I find useful about detective fiction but much I find useful about the criticism of detective fiction, I came upon this quote, which says quite a bit about roleplaying:

As for “literature of expression” and “literature of escape” — this is critics’ jargon, a use of abstract words as if they had absolute meanings. Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull minds. All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page: the quality of the the dream may be argued, but its release has become a functional necessity. All men must escape at times from the deadly rhythm of their private thoughts. It is part of the process of life among thinking beings. It is one of the things that distinguishes them from the three-toed sloth: he apparently — one can never be quite sure — is perfectly content hanging upside down on a branch, not even reading Walter Lippmann. I hold no particular brief for the the detctive story as the ideal escape. I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, of The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.

So far several folks have expressed some concerns about the New Horizons project that got announced yesterday. I thought I’d take a moment to address some of them from my point of view, and with a couple of quotes from Bruce Baugh, the author of the work.

1. I don’t think I’ll like this book. I want my pulp to be gonzo all the time.

Cool beans! Luckily Spirit of the Century is already set up to do that. If you don’t have interest in the other heroes angle, or are already doing it yourself, then you don’t need this book. You’re probably already rocking with Spirit, and can continue to do so.

2. So, Brand, why would you want to put this kind of stuff in your pulp game?

I love the fact that its going to be full of nifty game coolness, with new villains and new heroes and a renewed sense that the world is full of zany, wonderful, terrible stuff without having to always go gonzo. I mean, I think its fun that we often go back to the Gorilla Kahn aspect of pulps, but I sometimes think we miss out on the fact that lots of the old pulps were really into issues of history and the world in ways we often overlook now. I mean sure, they had lost Atlantis (though that wasn’t the pop culture term it is now until someone went out, researched, and started writing stories about it) — but they also had the Orient Express, and the Mexican Revolution, the Spanish Civil War and a lot of other things that when we cast our eyes out we totally overlook.

I mean, I know its odd to think of now, but there was a time when the Nazis were the ruling government of a country that the US was not at war with in which the pulps were using them as bad-guys anyway. Captain America (comics, not pulp I know, but close enough for hand grenades) punched Hitler in the mouth in March of 1941 — months before the States was at war with Germany. That took guts, because even if anti-German feelings were running high, it was using the image of the head of a foreign state and doing physical violence to him. Legal action could very realistically have ensued, and there was some backlash to it. Pulps didn’t always do just the safe thing, and very often the evil guys that the heroes fought were evil guys or allegories of evil guys, from the real world. Nowdays we think “nazi bash” as good clean fun with no political side, something that we can just all do without a second thought, but that wasn’t always the case. Pulps were not all apolitical, and many of them increased their sense of optimism and the potential of the future by having the guts to stand up and say things directly. And even when it wasn’t direct, pulps and comics were taking stands to make big two-fisted statements about justice. So why not put a little justice and reality back in our pulp?

Nor, in the case above, can I ignore that the writer and artist were Jewish, and so were many pulp writers. The old pulps were full of heroes and heroines of different types, from lesbian detectives to Jewish detectives to black detectives to… well, lots of detectives I guess. I think that having a supplement where we can get back at some of the politics of the pulps, some of the real stuff that they dealt with — even when they only dealt with it in a fun and fast way — can help round out the “Martians stole my death ray” experience into something fuller and richer and more like the vast variety of pulps in their prime.

3. What’s this about a woman not being able to hold patents, or Asian immigrants not being allowed to teach each other English? I know women have held patents in their own name since at least the mid-1800s, and several Asian-Americans set up schools for English language instruction.

While I have a bit to say about this on my own, I’m going to let Bruce answer this one:

The patent issue is actually a good one to illustrate a point: there were legal rights not everyone could exercise in practice. A lot of female inventors got turned down without recourse, and in-house notes make it clear that they were turned down for being women, because individual inspectors didn’t approve. I’ve got examples on my shelves over yonder *points helpfully*. The same is true for other examples in my post - what was legal would often clash with what was actually done, and what could in practice be enforced. In both cases, (problems arose from) matters of official caprice even where the clear text of the law said something otherwise. I’ll be providing examples for this stuff, and likely quoting William Burroughs on the three types of cops.

I should also add that some people in discriminated-against categories of various sorts - and not just celebrities - could and did get treated better than the law actually allowed for, thanks to just plain decent people in positions of authority. The tangle between law and practice should be a major theme in New Horizons, particularly since social aspects let one apply interesting leverage to various parts of the thicket.

4. So are you taking steps to make sure that the past doesn’t look worse than it actually was? I mean, it could get bad at times, but there was also a lot of good out there. Is that going to get addressed?

There have always been stand out cases — on every side. There have been more enlightened friendly, open people in history than we often recognize. The truth is that if the majority of people weren’t willing to accept change, didn’t embrace at least some aspects of it, things wouldn’t have changed as they did. There have been more men and women who triumphed over prejudice than can easily be cataloged. And we in no way want to deny either of these groups their just due and praise.

But even in stories of triumph there are obstacles. And for every good story a bad one. Booker T Washington often went out to dinner with the Steel Barons of the Universe, but Langston Hughes was once asked to go in the back door at a dinner in his honor. Women inventors did make amazing things, and Wollenstonecraft did publish, heck, I have an ancestor who was a female doctor before the American Civil War. But I also have ancestors who were beaten to death, hung, or chased out of a state in campaigns of organized terror, and there are many stories of women who were turned away at the door because they wore a skirt.

The past was full of the best and the worst, and no doubt about it. But the fact that there have always been renegades just means that there was always something to rebel against. So we want to make a book in which there is a chance to get into the real difficulties of the issue, and not just strawmen.

5. So, what else does this book have to say about issues of discrimination and historical perspective? Is it all going to be “they were wrong then and we are right now?” How do you handle such a hard topic and not get didactic.

For this one, again, I’m going to let Bruce answer:

I think that a lot of gamers never learned how to use history (and other scholarship) to best effect, and in part New Horizons should be a “show by example” book. I’ve never had so much opportunity to talk directly to players and GMs about the methodology along with the stats and all, and intend to make the most of it. Different people do different things and have wildly different experiences all against the same background, and deciding how you want to select the specific circumstances to use in play - the overall tone of the campaign, what works for this scene, and in between - can be (should be, I’d say) both challenging and fun.

I was just remarking to Fred, in fact, that I’d like to do something like this: take a particular moment where someone in one of the groups I’m covering has an interesting encountering with the powers that be, and show how very differently it can be described by observers and scholars all of whom are honest and have good will, but who are all bringing different perspectives to bear. “Anything goes” and “it can only be this one way” are both common errors in using history in entertainment, but fortunately, the middle ground is both available and very often more enjoyable once you see how to get there.

6. So Why Does Any of This Matter to Actual Gamers?

Well, for that I’m going to let a couple of actual gamers responses stand as the answer:
sabbatregent writes:

It’s been a long time since I posted on RPG.net. I hope that my comment doesn’t get lost in the deluge this supplement has created.

I’m Mexican. That means I can’t claim any race but a mixture of many. Also, I live in Mexico City. That is, I live in a city where some people still have to use the back entrances to a restaurant, and some people can’t walk on certain neighborhoods without getting arrested. Religious persecution, sexism, chauvinism, homophobia: you name it, we have it plenty. Sure, the Law don’t support any of this conducts, and a lot of them are considered criminal. Still, they’re very much a part of my society.

We’re even racists to ourselves. In many restaurants and bars, they would even unseat you to give your place to a foreigner. There’s a common fear of Asians, of African Americans, of indigenous people, of Argentinians. People of one State sometimes loath anyone from any other State.

Anyway, this is not a sympathy plea. It’s actually a pretty good place to live. I just wanted to give context to my point. I’ve been role playing for almost fifteen years. I’ve had many gaming groups over that period.

A lot of World of Darkness way back when. Despite that the fact that every single one of us were Mexican, most of our characters were either American or European.

A lot of D&D way back when. Despite the fact that most of the time there has been at least one woman on my groups, everyone’s character was male. Very sexist male characters, even when played by women.

I remember some White Wolf books that heavily referenced Mexico: Mexico City by Night, the Giovanni clanbook, Chaos Factor and Tales of Trails. It was really funny the way we get to be depicted in those books. The thing is, most of the players I knew never really pointed out that. We took the caricature of ourselves for granted. We never questioned the way Mexicans got represented in those books.

Actually, some GMs down here, when a Mexican character appears, make funny voices, the same way Spanish gets misrepresented/mispronounced in American TV.

In our last SotC game, even when everyone was free to choose any nationality (the Century Club being international and all) there were two English characters, two Americans, one Rumanian (my own), and one French.

What I’m trying to say here: there seems to be more to this book than only depicting ‘minorities’. This could be the source of stories that really have never been told before, simply because the medium (pulp) never really existed outside of some Occidental contexts. Also, it actually seems really important that the choices are offered: to play a gay character, for example, might be a lot of fun, but if the option isn’t readily available, you may not actually think of using it.

Hence, D&D parties comprised entirely of male characters. Hence, a bunch of Mexican roleplayers who can’t, for the lives of themselves, think of making a Mexican vampire. We do not conceive pulp in our cultural terms, hence we need to come up with concepts based on other cultures.

alexandria2000 writes:

Many people I look up to in history fought to change a world like that; I wouldn’t be here without them. And people today *still* follow in their footsteps.

It certainly won’t {bring my table down}. And I’m saying that as an African-American woman.

Pulp isn’t just about kicking evil in the junk - it’s about bravehearted men and women of every stripe finding adventure and making the world a better place, regardless if it’s stopping a gold-laden Klan train, or finding the hidden last library of Alexandria.

Most pulp doesn’t give a place for women, or people of color, or political dissidents, or LGBTs. They’re background, the people carrying the bags while the brave white men forge ahead, or the evil enemy. Worst case, they’re not mentioned at all.

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.’

The entire theme of pulp proves *it doesn’t have to be*.

7. Okay, so I’m down with all of that, but are you having anyone outside the circle do readings on this stuff? Like, having people in affected groups have a chance to look over the material?

Plans so far seem to include that. I know I’ve got my communism in my pocket, and that Bruce has said he’s looking for people from the discussions about gender and race to help him with various aspects. Fred’s talked about doing stuff like that too, and in general we’re looking to give people a chance to make their voices heard. But, considering the book isn’t even written yet, we’re not done with the plan on that.

Any extra worries or comments or whatever, can be left in the comments. There is a lot still to be decided about the book, and Bruce still has to write the thing, so there is also no hurry.

So, one of the projects I talked about coming out of the gender, race, and class discussions in the blog-o-sphere has gone public. It’s for Spirit of the Century by Evil Hat, will be written by Bruce Baugh, edited by my, myself, and I, and is called “New Horizons.”

Here is the promo blurb:

She is the strongest human being alive, her muscles super-charged by her own scientific processes. She’s fought dinosaurs barehanded and lived to tell the tale. But she can’t join any professional society for engineers, or even hold the patents for her inventions in her own name.

He is a supernaturally good poet. He can smell truth and lies from across the street. He’s saved the life of one president, two prime ministers, and a future pope. But if he goes out for a gourmet meal with friends, managers will insist he go in through the servants’ entrance.

Two men share a mystical union, pooling their health, knowledge, and magical essence. They bind demons and champion the falsely accused in courts on three continents. But if they ever once acknowledge the love they share along with their power, they’ll be disbarred and shunned by decent people everywhere.

The band of five fought in two wars for liberty, first against invading armies and then against tyrants at home. They free serfs, fight the architects of murder, and have twice stopped mad schemes of genocide. But they’re communists, and can’t even get visas to visit other heroes and scholars in the US.

Brother and sister are heirs to a millennia-old family tradition of serving justice and knowledge. Their ancestors commanded armies, delved into ancient tombs to lay ghosts—and worse things—to rest, taught the founders of new schools of philosophy and military strategy. But in the New World, he’s barely tolerated as a ditch digger—and she’ll be deported if she teaches English to other immigrants.

These are the other heroes, the ones who must fight for their dignity and liberty just as fiercely as they take on the challenges all pulp heroes face.

New Horizons is a new supplement for Spirit of the Century. Each chapter addresses a marginalized group from the pulps, kept outside by their sex, their race, their lifestyle, or their beliefs. In New Horizons you’ll find information about real-life heroic individuals and teams, the challenges they face and some of the solutions they find to the problems of dealing with 1920s society. You’ll also find heroes and villains ready for use, plot hooks, and ties to the mysteries around the Century Club. The life of heroes outside the mainstream may seem as strange as the secret language of Atlantis, but can be as exciting and powerful in play as a zeppelin armada.

New Horizons comes to you from veteran author and developer Bruce Baugh in collaboration with the minds behind Evil Hat Productions. We aim to show some of the real failings of the pulp era when it comes to fairness and justice in order to provide rich and vibrant new possibilities for adventure roleplaying in a bygone era. The real world is full of surprises—dense, weird, and just plain cool—and the bright light of Spirit’s optimistic pulp heroism can shine on some difficult realities just where they need it most.

New Horizons is about adding truth without sacrificing adventure — about bringing the real world together with the fantastic. Change your game. Change the world.