HERE is one (of many) lengthy rants about social justice problems in gaming. Intersectional politics rearing it's ugly head? Check. White shame? Check. Male guilt? Check. Heterosexism fault? Check.
I looked at her blog upon recommendation by a game designer and developer for whom I happen to think quite positively. Now I know that he is a believer in SJ, and one of his missions in the gaming community is to promote SJ. He is also a cool game designer and project developer. I can (and do) differ with him on the former and appreciate him on the later. I can like him as a designer and still think he is just flat wrong filtering his worldview through intersectionalism which I think is philosophically garbage.
But nonetheless, I looked at this blog and I see that she has lots of issues for which she blames white, heterosexual males. She had an abusive boyfriend... she had an abusive father... she had drug addiction problems... she has emotional problems. I don't fault her for the first two, can understand though not excuse the third, and also understand the last to be a genuine human condition that we all wrestle with, some more than others, and have myself suffered from, studied, and learned how to deal with when it occurs. Somehow, though, because the individuals who were abusive to her were white, male, and heterosexual, white male heterosexuals are as a group bear the blame for her problems...
...hmm...
So because I was bullied by bigger kids when I was little, or had conniving white girls make an elaborate entrapment scenario to get me into a seduction by a gay white boy in high school, or had my teeth punched out when I was mugged by a black male a few years later then... all taller, heavier, and stronger people, white, black, strait, gay, males and females on the planet are guilty of causing my problems in life? Or wait, do the girls get a pass for being white because they are girls? Does "girl" carry more or less weight than "white"? Does "boy" carry more or less weight than "gay"? Or did he get two points off for being "white" and "boy" and only one point up for being "gay" leaving him at a net -1 in intersectional value? Did "black" and "male" cancel each other out for a zero sum, but me as the recipient being "white" and "male" for a net -1 justify his assault, making him the real victim of the mugging? Or do some values have a higher intersectional score? Does "gay" get +2, whereas "female" gets only +1 because it is "cisgender"? Does "black" get +2 and brown only get +1? Bobby Jindal is darker than Barack Obama and has two parents who are Indian, while Obama is half black and half white... who knows how that one works out.
...WOW!... I'm going to be pretty lonely on this planet trying to figure out who I should write off on my grievance list...
The sad thing is, I am not sure that I could offer what I actually think is a more critical analysis of the problem, because, "mansplaining". It does not matter the content of my ideas, only the color of my skin and my sex. Is it even possible for her to understand that her problem is not white, heterosexual males, but rather individual human beings who are sinful? Has it ever occurred to her that she herself is sinful, and has done violence to herself by her own choices? Would it blow her mind if I said that ALL OF US... every breathing human on the planet... is guilty of a whole lot? Just maybe... the answer is not blaming people for their sex or skin color but rather blaming the quality of their ideas, the content of their character, and the fruit of their actions?
She is right to note that when she as a woman has been bullied at game conventions explicitly for being a woman, it is everyone's obligation to not let it pass. But it is also every bit as right to call her a bully when she blames "white" "male" "heterosexuals" for her problems.
UPDATE:
HERE and HERE are examples of why I think the game designer of the introduction is a cool guy, and while I'm sure it would take a great deal of conversation to persuade him of it, he lays out a case for respecting human persons regardless... being civil to persons with whom you disagree is pretty much color blind and gender neutral and predicated more on their humanness than their intersectional quotient. So once again, I defy any adherence to intersectionalism and stand on my Christian values about intrinsic value of persons while being very critical about adjudicating the value of ideas and behaviors.
The further discussion on his G+ page is over 150 entries long, and includes many hard core intersectional activists. There are complaints that someone on the comment chain that provoked the whole discussion are making people have panic attacks just reading them.
This is exactly the kind of rotten fruit that comes from intersectionalism. People with legitimate anxiety problems, or who do not start with them but are taught that the world is out to get them and that they are victims under serious assault whenever someone disagrees with them, are being continuously coddled and not taught how to deal with the problem, but rather how to exacerbate their anxieties by continuing to practice an intersectional worldview.
A little secret about the internet... words are cheap. Another one... without face to face contact, people get in the habit of magnifying their bad attitudes and behaviors (like people who give in to road rage). Everyone has a megaphone and many people use it. Yet another one... saying something does not make it so, even if it is a death threat from who knows where! (see the first secret). The biggest secret of all about the internet... YOU control your own access to it, and you can decide how to respond. If you have anxiety attacks from social media posts, your biggest problem is not the social media post, or the poster, or the social media... I can sympathize with the anxiety but I cannot excuse it continuing when you don't look for help. Real help - not some intersectional coffee klatch in a "safe space" echo chamber. I recommend something far older and more practical, like coffee with grandma, where you listen when she tells you that "sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you"... unless you choose to be hurt.
31 July, 2016
26 July, 2016
Uncertain Fortune Up Front Mechanics
From a game mechanic standpoint, one of my ongoing conundrums, is how to keep pacing that feels seamless in the narrative, and yet has the tension that comes from various uncertainty mechanics. The "game" part of an rpg introduces something particular that does not exist in strict storytelling (even pure storytelling games with no randomizers), and that particular something is part of the fun. Just as sometimes you want the particular savor of a book over a movie, or a movie over a book, or a play over either, you likewise want an rpg over any of those. Each has just a slightly different flavor that nonetheless matters.
But one of the problems I have with too many mechanics, is that they are terrible for keeping a good pace. This is why I nearly abhor combat mechanics of the type that make up games like Pathfinder for instance. While I think PF is a very well designed game, especially if you like tactical crunch, it just is not fun to me to have a two minute (in-game time) combat take two hours of play time. I want that two hours for more story. Combat mechanics happen to be one of the most common types of mechanic with the level of granularity that eats up time, whereas so many other mechanics are broad-brushed into a single task roll with a pass/fail outcome. Some systems may add the granularity of a non-binary pass/fail outcome and have some variation in how much of a pass or how much of a failure to make it more interesting. Fate adds success at a cost, and furthermore, allows virtually any obstacle to be handled with contest mechanics in which a series of successes compose the overall action.
One more reason I like Fate.
I like the idea that you can turn a combat into a contest to accumulate 'x' number of successes to win, but you can also do the same with a hostage negotiation, and the same again with a stealth break in. So the only problem for my taste, is the actual time in play to roll and wait on the dice. I am considering the idea of having all players roll at once, and then just put one die out at a time while describing action. As I see it, the benefit, is that you still have the savor of randomness and the uncertainty of not knowing how many is in the GM's pool, but at the same time, being able to flow with the narrative more smoothly.
I suppose this is a fortune up front mechanic, but maybe it is a sub-species that might be called uncertain fortune up front.
Just mulling...
But one of the problems I have with too many mechanics, is that they are terrible for keeping a good pace. This is why I nearly abhor combat mechanics of the type that make up games like Pathfinder for instance. While I think PF is a very well designed game, especially if you like tactical crunch, it just is not fun to me to have a two minute (in-game time) combat take two hours of play time. I want that two hours for more story. Combat mechanics happen to be one of the most common types of mechanic with the level of granularity that eats up time, whereas so many other mechanics are broad-brushed into a single task roll with a pass/fail outcome. Some systems may add the granularity of a non-binary pass/fail outcome and have some variation in how much of a pass or how much of a failure to make it more interesting. Fate adds success at a cost, and furthermore, allows virtually any obstacle to be handled with contest mechanics in which a series of successes compose the overall action.
One more reason I like Fate.
I like the idea that you can turn a combat into a contest to accumulate 'x' number of successes to win, but you can also do the same with a hostage negotiation, and the same again with a stealth break in. So the only problem for my taste, is the actual time in play to roll and wait on the dice. I am considering the idea of having all players roll at once, and then just put one die out at a time while describing action. As I see it, the benefit, is that you still have the savor of randomness and the uncertainty of not knowing how many is in the GM's pool, but at the same time, being able to flow with the narrative more smoothly.
I suppose this is a fortune up front mechanic, but maybe it is a sub-species that might be called uncertain fortune up front.
Just mulling...
21 July, 2016
Approaches In Fate, And Some Ideas On Drifts
I was looking back at articles about other ways to use approaches in Fate.
HERE Fred Hicks offers - Detect, Fight, Know, Move, Sneak, Talk
HERE Fred talks about several other facets of the approaches question. Default approaches are adjectives that describe how and can be used as adverbs to take an action - Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky. Alternatively, what can be done can be dealt with through approaches like the old Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma; or who through professions like Hitter, Hacker, Thief, Grifter, Mastermind. Or why as with Duty, Love, Glory, Power, Truth, Justice, or Anger, Joy, Disgust, Sadness, Fear.
Cortex Plus does two column stats based on pairs of questions, e.g. "who am I on the team/what are my strength", or "what are my values/what do I care about".
HERE is a discussion that poses the proposition of determining approaches by using the rubric of "good, fast, cheap - pick two".
Here Rob Donough discusses his two column FAE approach. Examples include approach+crime (Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky + Hitter, Hacker, Thief, Grifter, Mastermind); or style+passion (Force, Wits, Resolve, Grace+Loyalty, Love, Hospitality, Honor); or action+necessity (Mind, Money, Muscle, Moxie+Quality, Speed, Efficiency). Vincent Baker also does something similar in his separate game In A Wicked Age, with his set of: Covertly, Directly, For Myself, For Others, With Love, and With Violence.
These are interesting articles, because I have thought several times since I first read Fate Accelerated and the description of approaches suggested that if you can do what and how, you should also be able to do when, why, where, and who. Of course, this would depend on the game, and they would have to be chosen as the best way to thematically reinforce the setting. So I read these links, and it got me thinking enough to give it a stab... here are several drifts dealing with other ways of refocusing what a particular Fate game is about.
* * *
WHAT
These are pretty much the default for games since skills were introduced as a thing. Heck, even old D&D had proficiencies in weapons or thief skills for instance. This one bears less discussion, wanting only the refinement of what skills fit a setting and how broad. GURPS goes with very narrow skills, Fate with very broad; for every one skill in Fate Core, you could with little effort pull out 5-10 of that skill set from an exhaustive GURPS skill list.
HOW
As dealt with in FAE, many different actions can be taken with any given approach. You can fight or persuade both either Forcefully, or Sneakily. Again, ground covered by Fate. This seems to lend itself very well to hyper competent characters in very iconic settings. Star Wars and supers settings are good choices. You never wonder if any given character can fly a star-ship or engage in a shoot out, only the details of how they do so. With supers, it is assumed that they live hightened reality lives and if they need to fight, drive in a high speed chase, or hack the villain's lackey's computer, there is no real question that they can, though individuals might differ in how.
These then, are new ground (at least for me... undoubtedly someone else, somewhere has already written these into a game).
WHEN
It seems that this would obviously only be just the thing where time is a major thematic element. For example, off the top of my head, a time travel game might use when approaches, or Tenses. A verb tense is about action... that is doing things. For a drift that plays with time, Tense could be a way of doing things that works like the Resources skill in that, it has a stress track of it's own and reduces by one for every successful use until refreshed. They could include Past, Future, Manifold, Synchronous, Timeless (+3/+2/+1/+1/+0). This could easily be included with a two column Fate approach as well which allows up to four professions (+3/+2/+1/+0), though it might be more fun just to have a stunt progression that gives bonuses which assume that the time traveller has all the time they need to have become expert in many professions and can invoke stunts to justify expertise as needed.
WHERE
This one is I think the toughest nut to crack. However, here is my thinking... the critical question, is what kind of stories make where you are matter to the story? Journey stories? If so, then perhaps the Positions might be: At Home, On The Road, In Camp, At Market
WHY
This seems to lend itself to motivations or ideals. Truth, Justice, Duty, Love, Glory, Power; these have already been noted from Cortex Plus games. Here is a drift of a similar kind that includes these Motivations: Righteousness, Courage, Benevolence, Respect, Sincerity, Honor, Loyalty, Discipline (+3/+2/+2/+2/+1/+1/+1/+0). An alternative set might be: Loyalty,
WHO
Myself, Friends, Loves, Foes, Strangers two-columned with Love, Hate, Fear, Sadness, Anger
---
Need to think more on these...
HERE Fred Hicks offers - Detect, Fight, Know, Move, Sneak, Talk
HERE Fred talks about several other facets of the approaches question. Default approaches are adjectives that describe how and can be used as adverbs to take an action - Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky. Alternatively, what can be done can be dealt with through approaches like the old Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma; or who through professions like Hitter, Hacker, Thief, Grifter, Mastermind. Or why as with Duty, Love, Glory, Power, Truth, Justice, or Anger, Joy, Disgust, Sadness, Fear.
Cortex Plus does two column stats based on pairs of questions, e.g. "who am I on the team/what are my strength", or "what are my values/what do I care about".
HERE is a discussion that poses the proposition of determining approaches by using the rubric of "good, fast, cheap - pick two".
Here Rob Donough discusses his two column FAE approach. Examples include approach+crime (Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky + Hitter, Hacker, Thief, Grifter, Mastermind); or style+passion (Force, Wits, Resolve, Grace+Loyalty, Love, Hospitality, Honor); or action+necessity (Mind, Money, Muscle, Moxie+Quality, Speed, Efficiency). Vincent Baker also does something similar in his separate game In A Wicked Age, with his set of: Covertly, Directly, For Myself, For Others, With Love, and With Violence.
These are interesting articles, because I have thought several times since I first read Fate Accelerated and the description of approaches suggested that if you can do what and how, you should also be able to do when, why, where, and who. Of course, this would depend on the game, and they would have to be chosen as the best way to thematically reinforce the setting. So I read these links, and it got me thinking enough to give it a stab... here are several drifts dealing with other ways of refocusing what a particular Fate game is about.
* * *
WHAT
These are pretty much the default for games since skills were introduced as a thing. Heck, even old D&D had proficiencies in weapons or thief skills for instance. This one bears less discussion, wanting only the refinement of what skills fit a setting and how broad. GURPS goes with very narrow skills, Fate with very broad; for every one skill in Fate Core, you could with little effort pull out 5-10 of that skill set from an exhaustive GURPS skill list.
HOW
As dealt with in FAE, many different actions can be taken with any given approach. You can fight or persuade both either Forcefully, or Sneakily. Again, ground covered by Fate. This seems to lend itself very well to hyper competent characters in very iconic settings. Star Wars and supers settings are good choices. You never wonder if any given character can fly a star-ship or engage in a shoot out, only the details of how they do so. With supers, it is assumed that they live hightened reality lives and if they need to fight, drive in a high speed chase, or hack the villain's lackey's computer, there is no real question that they can, though individuals might differ in how.
These then, are new ground (at least for me... undoubtedly someone else, somewhere has already written these into a game).
It seems that this would obviously only be just the thing where time is a major thematic element. For example, off the top of my head, a time travel game might use when approaches, or Tenses. A verb tense is about action... that is doing things. For a drift that plays with time, Tense could be a way of doing things that works like the Resources skill in that, it has a stress track of it's own and reduces by one for every successful use until refreshed. They could include Past, Future, Manifold, Synchronous, Timeless (+3/+2/+1/+1/+0). This could easily be included with a two column Fate approach as well which allows up to four professions (+3/+2/+1/+0), though it might be more fun just to have a stunt progression that gives bonuses which assume that the time traveller has all the time they need to have become expert in many professions and can invoke stunts to justify expertise as needed.
WHERE
This one is I think the toughest nut to crack. However, here is my thinking... the critical question, is what kind of stories make where you are matter to the story? Journey stories? If so, then perhaps the Positions might be: At Home, On The Road, In Camp, At Market
WHY
This seems to lend itself to motivations or ideals. Truth, Justice, Duty, Love, Glory, Power; these have already been noted from Cortex Plus games. Here is a drift of a similar kind that includes these Motivations: Righteousness, Courage, Benevolence, Respect, Sincerity, Honor, Loyalty, Discipline (+3/+2/+2/+2/+1/+1/+1/+0). An alternative set might be: Loyalty,
WHO
Myself, Friends, Loves, Foes, Strangers two-columned with Love, Hate, Fear, Sadness, Anger
---
Need to think more on these...
04 July, 2016
Truth Is Awesome When You Get To Make Up Your Own!
I was reading a game review tucked in with some other game discussions and found more serpents under the rocks. In discussing a character who in the game is a Bluebeard style serial killer, the allegations of patriarchal pathology reared their ugly head.
Now the game itself is of no interest to me, and I could care less about the reviewer's interest in the game. What I am interested in is the problematic politics that informs reviewers and players interests in games, and undoubtedly feeds designers. This little gem from liberal Berkeley professor Judith Butler came out of this gamer's reflections:
"any assignment of sex or gender is irreducibly a kind of violence, an oppressive act. As she writes in Bodies That Matter:
…'sex' is an ideal construct which is forcibly materialized through time. It is not a simple fact or static condition of a body, but a process whereby regulatory norms materialize 'sex' and achieve materialization through a forcible reiteration of norms. (Butler 1-2)"
Reading her bio, she is informed by such luminaries as sexy Sigmund Freud (oddly enough), and Derrida of the meaningless words. In essence, her most notable contribution from modern feminism to academia and the world, is that gender is something that is culturally learned through practice and has absolutely no natural connection to sex. Taking her notion to it's logical conclusion, one would have to wonder how all those cave men so long ago who presumably at some point had no codified "culture" to speak of, could possibly have learned that somehow male and female were complimentary sexually, and that maybe, just maybe, there was not only a correlation between the sexual behavior of male and female, bu that by nature, they did certain things and behaved certain ways not because of a "gendered" cultural construct but because they were naturally one thing and not another... for that matter, why do animals of all kinds somehow behave as if sex and sexual behavior are naturally linked? I wonder how many of Butler's academic peers ever lived on a farm...
but then the elitist snobbery of academia tends to have a pretty blinkered view of such earthy folk, but I digress.
So what we are taught by Butler, is that rather than teach our children that there are some things that are natural and beneficial behaviors due to the natural composition of our bodies, we should instead leave them with no guidance whatsoever. Now she is specifically referring to sexual behavior and understanding, but why should we separate that exclusively? How is it not oppressive violence for liberal ideologues to force compliance with their regulatory norms on others? Furthermore, if some of our behavior as a species actually does come out of what we naturally are, then is it not only violence to truth and reason to deny that there are behaviors that should be normatively encouraged, but violence of a kind that is oppressive to the species in general? It really is a matter of showing whether there is better reason to think that nature provides clues as to how we ought to behave or if we are somehow entirely transcendent of nature. That question is problematic for either the materialist or for the neo-gnostic, but not at all so for the substance dualist. I'm not sure exactly where Butler resides, but seeing that she is a fan of Derrida, I can bet comfortably that she is in the irrational camp of blithe relativism. And yet sadly, the camp that thinks that it can make up truth at convenience is the camp with no truth in it but by coincidence.
I fear that while she and her followers make accusations of the guilt of violence, they themselves are guilty of abusive neglect, encouraging a society to refrain from guiding children to understand what is natural and wholesome through normative behaviors. Just as we ought to encourage normative behaviors with what we eat by training our natural appetites to the right kind of foods, in the right amounts, at the right times, is it not rational to encourage normative sexual behavior based on the recognition that the appetite for sex is rooted also in nature? I would also question whether Butler and her disciples are not also the violent and oppressive party considering the aggressive action to force cultural regulation on society. Her brand of thinking is exactly the kind of thinking that has metastasized into all intersectional political social justice movements, for the benefit of a few and the hinderance of many.
I have a problem with promoting this kind of thinking in serious life, and I certainly have a problem with this kind of bullying in the games I play.
Now the game itself is of no interest to me, and I could care less about the reviewer's interest in the game. What I am interested in is the problematic politics that informs reviewers and players interests in games, and undoubtedly feeds designers. This little gem from liberal Berkeley professor Judith Butler came out of this gamer's reflections:
"any assignment of sex or gender is irreducibly a kind of violence, an oppressive act. As she writes in Bodies That Matter:
…'sex' is an ideal construct which is forcibly materialized through time. It is not a simple fact or static condition of a body, but a process whereby regulatory norms materialize 'sex' and achieve materialization through a forcible reiteration of norms. (Butler 1-2)"
Reading her bio, she is informed by such luminaries as sexy Sigmund Freud (oddly enough), and Derrida of the meaningless words. In essence, her most notable contribution from modern feminism to academia and the world, is that gender is something that is culturally learned through practice and has absolutely no natural connection to sex. Taking her notion to it's logical conclusion, one would have to wonder how all those cave men so long ago who presumably at some point had no codified "culture" to speak of, could possibly have learned that somehow male and female were complimentary sexually, and that maybe, just maybe, there was not only a correlation between the sexual behavior of male and female, bu that by nature, they did certain things and behaved certain ways not because of a "gendered" cultural construct but because they were naturally one thing and not another... for that matter, why do animals of all kinds somehow behave as if sex and sexual behavior are naturally linked? I wonder how many of Butler's academic peers ever lived on a farm...
but then the elitist snobbery of academia tends to have a pretty blinkered view of such earthy folk, but I digress.
So what we are taught by Butler, is that rather than teach our children that there are some things that are natural and beneficial behaviors due to the natural composition of our bodies, we should instead leave them with no guidance whatsoever. Now she is specifically referring to sexual behavior and understanding, but why should we separate that exclusively? How is it not oppressive violence for liberal ideologues to force compliance with their regulatory norms on others? Furthermore, if some of our behavior as a species actually does come out of what we naturally are, then is it not only violence to truth and reason to deny that there are behaviors that should be normatively encouraged, but violence of a kind that is oppressive to the species in general? It really is a matter of showing whether there is better reason to think that nature provides clues as to how we ought to behave or if we are somehow entirely transcendent of nature. That question is problematic for either the materialist or for the neo-gnostic, but not at all so for the substance dualist. I'm not sure exactly where Butler resides, but seeing that she is a fan of Derrida, I can bet comfortably that she is in the irrational camp of blithe relativism. And yet sadly, the camp that thinks that it can make up truth at convenience is the camp with no truth in it but by coincidence.
I fear that while she and her followers make accusations of the guilt of violence, they themselves are guilty of abusive neglect, encouraging a society to refrain from guiding children to understand what is natural and wholesome through normative behaviors. Just as we ought to encourage normative behaviors with what we eat by training our natural appetites to the right kind of foods, in the right amounts, at the right times, is it not rational to encourage normative sexual behavior based on the recognition that the appetite for sex is rooted also in nature? I would also question whether Butler and her disciples are not also the violent and oppressive party considering the aggressive action to force cultural regulation on society. Her brand of thinking is exactly the kind of thinking that has metastasized into all intersectional political social justice movements, for the benefit of a few and the hinderance of many.
I have a problem with promoting this kind of thinking in serious life, and I certainly have a problem with this kind of bullying in the games I play.
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