THIS is a really cool podcast.
I have been listening to the World War I series, and he is both a thorough and engaging host. The material is both dense, and each show tops 3 HOURS, so I have only begun part II after listening and re-listening to part I three times over the past couple weeks.
I have done a lot of reading and studying about WWII in the last couple years, so I am looking forward to getting a better grasp of the details of WWI. WWII is a gigantic subject, and I first got really hooked on it watching Band of Brothers, and listening to the audio book of The War multiple times driving between Augusta and Montgomery. I have had arguments about the generation that fought and came out of that era, and whether they really deserve the appellation "The Greatest Generation" or not... I am still persuaded they do. I think that while that generation may not have been led by as concentrated a pool of talent, genius, and moral thought as the Revolutionary War generation, WW II was still perhaps THE most devastating war in the history of the world. The generation that fought it was still composed of people who were grouchy, selfish, isolationist, racist, and whatever else you want to call them, that crucible was unlike any other in scope and heat. The rough ore that went in came out refined in a remarkable way.
Perhaps I will change my mind after studying WW I. Perhaps not.
I am also reading (very slowly, I confess) A Distant Mirror, being the accounting of the calamity of Europe in the 14th century. This was a horrible, horrible quagmire of civilization through the serial wars, insurrections, plagues, and schisms religious and secular that colored that period in red. Even this period, I think was not as pivotal in history as WW II. But again, fascinating read.
Anyway, good stuff history. Like a gluttonous feast for the imagination!
30 August, 2016
24 August, 2016
Infuriating Perfectionism...
Infuriating as it is, as much as I am aware of it, it is still perhaps my biggest creative hurdle...
Perfectionism is paralysis. I go through ever longer lengths of not writing, even though this blog project was started as an attempt to have a creative play-space. But what happens, is I find myself ever more wanting to wait till I know exactly what I want to say, and am satisfied with it.
And so I don't write anything.
It makes one want to scream... or weep... or sigh and forget...
Perfection is in production. That is something I know, but still have such a hard time trusting in. I know not why.
But at least here is something and not nothing for at least today.
Perfectionism is paralysis. I go through ever longer lengths of not writing, even though this blog project was started as an attempt to have a creative play-space. But what happens, is I find myself ever more wanting to wait till I know exactly what I want to say, and am satisfied with it.
And so I don't write anything.
It makes one want to scream... or weep... or sigh and forget...
Perfection is in production. That is something I know, but still have such a hard time trusting in. I know not why.
But at least here is something and not nothing for at least today.
12 August, 2016
What Value Fantasy?...
Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.
--J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories
04 August, 2016
Pollyanna And The Goblins (revised)
Once upon a time, there was a pleasant young girl named Pollyanna. She found herself in an orphanage one Christmas, and she was the last one to get a gift out of the charity barrel. Though she was hoping for a beautiful doll like the one she'd seen in the shop window, all she actually found was a pair of crutches. She was at first sad, because what did she need crutches for? But then she remembered what her wonderful Dad had taught her long ago... always find something good about every situation you are in. Then she cheered up, because the crutches reminded her how glad she was that she didn't need them.
And then the goblins came to burn down the orphanage...
* * * * * * * * *
This is a game in which players take turns as goblins putting Pollyanna into a jamb... until Pollyanna gets out. But being a sweet and positive child, she does not fight goblins with bloody violence... she fights back with optimism!
SETUP
Each player will have as many tokens as there are players. A stack of index cards will be shared by all.
The most disgruntled player will be the goblin chief the first round, and the player to their left will begin as Pollyanna.
Each player will take one turn playing Pollyanna while the other players play the goblins that turn. After each time that a player acts as Pollyanna, the role of Pollyanna passes to that player's left. After everyone has had one turn each as Pollyanna, the game will conclude. There is a little more to the structure, but this is the basic structure of the game.
The players, beginning with the first round Pollyanna, will ("Hope" at http://redreevgeorge.deviantart.com/)
frame the story, determining the stakes, the locations that
Pollyanna must traverse to deal with the goblins, and the first
hazard the goblins inflict upon Pollyanna and the orphanage.
FRAMING THE STORY
Pollyanna will begin by describing the scene, answering each of these questions briefly but colorfully:
1) What time is it? The time of year, and the hour included.
2) Where in the orphanage is Pollyanna? Write this on an index card with the time.
3) What is Pollyanna doing?
THE STAKES
Next, the player who begins as the chief goblin will begin listing the stakes - those things which Pollyanna must defend, or recover. The goblins will each list one stake, each of which Pollyanna may make a single modification to if she likes. The goblins will answer the following questions when naming the stakes:
1) What is at stake? This can be another orphan, a birthday cake, or any other concrete thing.
2) Where is that located in the orphanage? Write the location on an index card, with the stake noted beneath. The things at stake should be things that Pollyanna will really care about enough to go after.
3) How do you get there from where Pollyanna is? This path should include no more than three elements. For example, "down the hall, up the stairs to the attic, and in the wardrobe on the left". Briefly note this on the card, and place the card adjacent to Pollyanna's card in relation more or less to her location.
GOBLIN TROUBLE
The chief goblin will now describe the way in which goblin mischief begins. He can name one particular fact that will cause Pollyanna trouble, and will put a token on a location working from the point farthest from her. The troublesome fact can be anything that the devious goblin chooses relating to the location, or something that the Goblin has chosen to bring to the mayhem. For example, suppose the Goblin places a token on a location noted to be "The Kitchen". He may with his token declare that he is putting a dead coyote in the stove. The fact introduced by the token is the dead coyote, and it is in a kitchen so of course there is a stove which requires no token to declare.
AND WORSE GOBLIN TROUBLE
The next goblin to act continues in kind to declare mischief with a token, either making the previous trouble worse, or moving inward to a new location, placing a token on that card, and declaring a new fact. For example, the second goblin may place a second token in The Kitchen, declaring "...with your birthday cake..." which is a fact that aggravates the first fact. Alternatively, he may choose to place a token on the next card called, let's say, "The Dining Room", and declare that he has lit all the candles in the room.
After placing a token, the goblin notes the fact briefly on the card (e.g. "dead coyote").
Troubles should can be pretty much anything the goblin chooses from the merely annoying such as defacing the founder's portrait, to the dangerously malicious like knocking over the lit candles onto the table cloth. Narrative and creative freedom are encouraged. The only stipulation, is that whatever trouble the goblins create, they cannot harm either Pollyanna, or any of the stakes in an immediate, direct, or permanent fashion. Anything else goes.
Pollyanna may act as well at this time, if she chooses. If at any point while the goblins are making mischief, Pollyanna decides that she does not like the fact laid down by a goblin, she can give one of her own tokens to the offending goblin, and modify the troublesome fact with a "...yes, but..." statement. She cannot nullify the fact entirely, but she can add a condition to it. For example, if the goblin in the Dining Room knocked over all the lit candles onto the tablecloth, Pollyanna might put a token in and say "...yes, but the table cloth is still wet from spilling all the sun tea on it at lunch". The wax will surely ruin the table cloth, but it won't be catching fire.
GOBLINS AND STAKES
Goblins may choose to make mischief in a way that potentially threatens the stake, as long as they recall that they may not harm the stakes in an immediate, direct, or permanent fashion. If for instance, Pollyanna's birthday cake is in the oven, the dead coyote cannot be used to smash the cake directly, nor may they eat it (though licking the frosting with their nasty tongues is just fine), and the rotting coyote carcass inside with it will not immediately ruin the cake, but Pollyanna must certainly act fast or it soon will spoil the cake.
POLLYANNA'S TURN
After each goblin has had a chance to make mischief, Pollyanna gets her turn. With an indomitable optimism, Pollyanna now has the opportunity to observe and declare ways that any mischief the goblins make is actually helpful to her, and harmful to them.
She gets to make one optimistic declaration for every goblin in play on her turn. This declaration directly addresses any particular trouble of her choice. She may declare one optimistic fact for each goblin for free (that is, she does not have to give a token to that goblin). The new fact is noted on the card below the previous one. For example, she will begin by saying something like, "well even though the goblins put the dead coyote in the oven with my birthday cake, at least my cake was on the top rack". This is helpful to her, though not particularly harmful to the goblin cause.
However, just like the goblins, Pollyanna can add facts to facts that she has already declared. Unlike her initial declarations though, she must give a token to the goblin who made the mischief before she can add a second declaration to the first. For example, if she noted that her birthday cake was on the top rack, and then decided to add "...and I'm really lucky that the smell of warm chocolate cake is irresistible". Then she gives the goblin who put the dead coyote in the oven a token.
When Pollyanna makes a declaration that is both helpful to her, and bad for the goblins, she may take that trouble token. If Pollyanna had declared "...the luckiest part is that now, the goblins are fighting among themselves over who gets to eat the cake..." she will have made a declaration helpful to her ("top rack" because it keeps her cake safe), and harmful to the goblins ("fighting among themselves over cake"). She gets to take the trouble token for her own use, and then mark a line through cake on the card, which now makes it safe from further mischief.
AFTER EVERYONE HAS HAD A TURN
All tokens not in play on cards are now passed to the left, and the player to Pollyanna's left becomes the new Pollyanna. Play proceeds from the last point as described.
GETTING RID OF THE GOBLINS
On the last round, when the last player to play Pollyanna takes her turn, any tokens in hand can be used to add facts that may conclusively defeat goblins, by spending one token at a time per fact. The facts must all build on already established facts to be valid. For example, Pollyanna has previously declared that the goblins are fighting over the cake in the kitchen, so she might now spend a token to declare "...and I sure am glad that all that fighting made the littlest goblin decide to go home!" which effectively removes the goblin from play.
The only way the goblin may counter this at this point, is if he still has a token in hand, and decides to use it to make a "...yes, but..." declaration. For example, the littlest goblin player may have decided to go home, but spending that token could declare "...yes, I've decided this fighting makes me want to go home, but only after the chief goblin goes first...", or "yes, I've decided to go home in a huff, but not until I've gobbled the cake...".
WINNING
Pollyanna wins under the following conditions:
1) All of her stakes have been lined out of play
2) None of the goblins have any tokens left, and none are in play on cards (all are in Pollyanna's hand)
The goblins win under the following conditions:
1) Pollyanna fails to preserve any of her stakes before all tokens are in play
2) Pollyanna has no tokens in hand, and she has failed to protect all of her stakes
* * * * * * * * *
This is a game in which players take turns as goblins putting Pollyanna into a jamb... until Pollyanna gets out. But being a sweet and positive child, she does not fight goblins with bloody violence... she fights back with optimism!
SETUP
Each player will have as many tokens as there are players. A stack of index cards will be shared by all.
The most disgruntled player will be the goblin chief the first round, and the player to their left will begin as Pollyanna.
Each player will take one turn playing Pollyanna while the other players play the goblins that turn. After each time that a player acts as Pollyanna, the role of Pollyanna passes to that player's left. After everyone has had one turn each as Pollyanna, the game will conclude. There is a little more to the structure, but this is the basic structure of the game.
The players, beginning with the first round Pollyanna, will ("Hope" at http://redreevgeorge.deviantart.com/)
frame the story, determining the stakes, the locations that
Pollyanna must traverse to deal with the goblins, and the first
hazard the goblins inflict upon Pollyanna and the orphanage.
FRAMING THE STORY
Pollyanna will begin by describing the scene, answering each of these questions briefly but colorfully:
1) What time is it? The time of year, and the hour included.
2) Where in the orphanage is Pollyanna? Write this on an index card with the time.
3) What is Pollyanna doing?
THE STAKES
Next, the player who begins as the chief goblin will begin listing the stakes - those things which Pollyanna must defend, or recover. The goblins will each list one stake, each of which Pollyanna may make a single modification to if she likes. The goblins will answer the following questions when naming the stakes:
1) What is at stake? This can be another orphan, a birthday cake, or any other concrete thing.
2) Where is that located in the orphanage? Write the location on an index card, with the stake noted beneath. The things at stake should be things that Pollyanna will really care about enough to go after.
3) How do you get there from where Pollyanna is? This path should include no more than three elements. For example, "down the hall, up the stairs to the attic, and in the wardrobe on the left". Briefly note this on the card, and place the card adjacent to Pollyanna's card in relation more or less to her location.
GOBLIN TROUBLE
The chief goblin will now describe the way in which goblin mischief begins. He can name one particular fact that will cause Pollyanna trouble, and will put a token on a location working from the point farthest from her. The troublesome fact can be anything that the devious goblin chooses relating to the location, or something that the Goblin has chosen to bring to the mayhem. For example, suppose the Goblin places a token on a location noted to be "The Kitchen". He may with his token declare that he is putting a dead coyote in the stove. The fact introduced by the token is the dead coyote, and it is in a kitchen so of course there is a stove which requires no token to declare.
AND WORSE GOBLIN TROUBLE
The next goblin to act continues in kind to declare mischief with a token, either making the previous trouble worse, or moving inward to a new location, placing a token on that card, and declaring a new fact. For example, the second goblin may place a second token in The Kitchen, declaring "...with your birthday cake..." which is a fact that aggravates the first fact. Alternatively, he may choose to place a token on the next card called, let's say, "The Dining Room", and declare that he has lit all the candles in the room.
After placing a token, the goblin notes the fact briefly on the card (e.g. "dead coyote").
Troubles should can be pretty much anything the goblin chooses from the merely annoying such as defacing the founder's portrait, to the dangerously malicious like knocking over the lit candles onto the table cloth. Narrative and creative freedom are encouraged. The only stipulation, is that whatever trouble the goblins create, they cannot harm either Pollyanna, or any of the stakes in an immediate, direct, or permanent fashion. Anything else goes.
Pollyanna may act as well at this time, if she chooses. If at any point while the goblins are making mischief, Pollyanna decides that she does not like the fact laid down by a goblin, she can give one of her own tokens to the offending goblin, and modify the troublesome fact with a "...yes, but..." statement. She cannot nullify the fact entirely, but she can add a condition to it. For example, if the goblin in the Dining Room knocked over all the lit candles onto the tablecloth, Pollyanna might put a token in and say "...yes, but the table cloth is still wet from spilling all the sun tea on it at lunch". The wax will surely ruin the table cloth, but it won't be catching fire.
GOBLINS AND STAKES
Goblins may choose to make mischief in a way that potentially threatens the stake, as long as they recall that they may not harm the stakes in an immediate, direct, or permanent fashion. If for instance, Pollyanna's birthday cake is in the oven, the dead coyote cannot be used to smash the cake directly, nor may they eat it (though licking the frosting with their nasty tongues is just fine), and the rotting coyote carcass inside with it will not immediately ruin the cake, but Pollyanna must certainly act fast or it soon will spoil the cake.
POLLYANNA'S TURN
After each goblin has had a chance to make mischief, Pollyanna gets her turn. With an indomitable optimism, Pollyanna now has the opportunity to observe and declare ways that any mischief the goblins make is actually helpful to her, and harmful to them.
She gets to make one optimistic declaration for every goblin in play on her turn. This declaration directly addresses any particular trouble of her choice. She may declare one optimistic fact for each goblin for free (that is, she does not have to give a token to that goblin). The new fact is noted on the card below the previous one. For example, she will begin by saying something like, "well even though the goblins put the dead coyote in the oven with my birthday cake, at least my cake was on the top rack". This is helpful to her, though not particularly harmful to the goblin cause.
However, just like the goblins, Pollyanna can add facts to facts that she has already declared. Unlike her initial declarations though, she must give a token to the goblin who made the mischief before she can add a second declaration to the first. For example, if she noted that her birthday cake was on the top rack, and then decided to add "...and I'm really lucky that the smell of warm chocolate cake is irresistible". Then she gives the goblin who put the dead coyote in the oven a token.
When Pollyanna makes a declaration that is both helpful to her, and bad for the goblins, she may take that trouble token. If Pollyanna had declared "...the luckiest part is that now, the goblins are fighting among themselves over who gets to eat the cake..." she will have made a declaration helpful to her ("top rack" because it keeps her cake safe), and harmful to the goblins ("fighting among themselves over cake"). She gets to take the trouble token for her own use, and then mark a line through cake on the card, which now makes it safe from further mischief.
AFTER EVERYONE HAS HAD A TURN
All tokens not in play on cards are now passed to the left, and the player to Pollyanna's left becomes the new Pollyanna. Play proceeds from the last point as described.
GETTING RID OF THE GOBLINS
On the last round, when the last player to play Pollyanna takes her turn, any tokens in hand can be used to add facts that may conclusively defeat goblins, by spending one token at a time per fact. The facts must all build on already established facts to be valid. For example, Pollyanna has previously declared that the goblins are fighting over the cake in the kitchen, so she might now spend a token to declare "...and I sure am glad that all that fighting made the littlest goblin decide to go home!" which effectively removes the goblin from play.
The only way the goblin may counter this at this point, is if he still has a token in hand, and decides to use it to make a "...yes, but..." declaration. For example, the littlest goblin player may have decided to go home, but spending that token could declare "...yes, I've decided this fighting makes me want to go home, but only after the chief goblin goes first...", or "yes, I've decided to go home in a huff, but not until I've gobbled the cake...".
WINNING
Pollyanna wins under the following conditions:
1) All of her stakes have been lined out of play
2) None of the goblins have any tokens left, and none are in play on cards (all are in Pollyanna's hand)
The goblins win under the following conditions:
1) Pollyanna fails to preserve any of her stakes before all tokens are in play
2) Pollyanna has no tokens in hand, and she has failed to protect all of her stakes
03 August, 2016
Divination Gamification
There are a huge number of kinds of historic divination methods, some very codified (like Kabalism) and others just astonishingly silly (like divination by belly button, or divination by buttocks).
Anyway, dice and cards were of course long ago used as divination tools, and now are two of the most common randomizers in gaming. But it occurred to me that casinos use roulette wheels which are a variation on spinners, in conjunction with a carefully laid out table. While the wheel itself is random, betting on particular combinations of color and number make it also a strategic game.
But I was looking at a long list of divination methods in which a number of objects is dropped and the patterns formed used to make the augury. So it got me thinking about a way to gamify that. It seems to me that the way the game is skinned is the really interesting part, as otherwise the way the handful falls is entirely subjective, random, and not particularly interesting. So the board needs to be something conducive to a story. As such, it seems that it should be a map of some kind that allows the creation of relative relationships in either space, time, or condition. For example, it could be the map of a country at war, or intersecting time clocks, or interpersonal relationships of favors, debts, or obligations.
The board determined, the next part is the randomizer, the "divination" or the "fortune" in which dropped stones or dice are cast on the board and their position relative to each other and relative to their space on the board determines the capacity and character of action available. The cast could be a fortune up front, fortune in the middle, or even fortune at the end mechanic, and it would be interesting to experiment with all three.
I have a vague picture in mind of a board with a host of intersecting rings with nodes, and circles around the rings that represent action, looking something like asymetric crop circles.
Will have to think more on this.
Anyway, dice and cards were of course long ago used as divination tools, and now are two of the most common randomizers in gaming. But it occurred to me that casinos use roulette wheels which are a variation on spinners, in conjunction with a carefully laid out table. While the wheel itself is random, betting on particular combinations of color and number make it also a strategic game.
But I was looking at a long list of divination methods in which a number of objects is dropped and the patterns formed used to make the augury. So it got me thinking about a way to gamify that. It seems to me that the way the game is skinned is the really interesting part, as otherwise the way the handful falls is entirely subjective, random, and not particularly interesting. So the board needs to be something conducive to a story. As such, it seems that it should be a map of some kind that allows the creation of relative relationships in either space, time, or condition. For example, it could be the map of a country at war, or intersecting time clocks, or interpersonal relationships of favors, debts, or obligations.
The board determined, the next part is the randomizer, the "divination" or the "fortune" in which dropped stones or dice are cast on the board and their position relative to each other and relative to their space on the board determines the capacity and character of action available. The cast could be a fortune up front, fortune in the middle, or even fortune at the end mechanic, and it would be interesting to experiment with all three.
I have a vague picture in mind of a board with a host of intersecting rings with nodes, and circles around the rings that represent action, looking something like asymetric crop circles.
Will have to think more on this.
31 July, 2016
*sigh*... More Problems With SJW In Gaming...
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.
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.
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.
27 June, 2016
Continuous Rumination On Mechanics In Horror Games
I have been thinking for a number of years about this particular nut, and while the granddaddy of rpg horror, Call of Cthulhu has the GM facing Sanity mechanic, I have been trying to think of something that is more player facing. The problem with horror in rpgs is that traditionally, rpgs have a winning condition of player characters overcoming the opposition in some fashion, which implies power as a needed resource to win. But powerlessness is much more the grist for the horror story genre, so you have to somehow, make powerlessness the currency in a horror game.
Here is the latest refinement in my thinking on this: characters have horror condition boxes (or points, or whatever) that relate to different horror reactions - "queasy", "shaking", "paralyzed", "screaming", "cowering", etc. These all describe an action that the player chooses as a response to some horriffic circumstance. It is key that the player choose it so that they get the buy in for their character. But what do they, the player, get out of this?
This is not very different at all from the conditions as presented in Fate System Toolkit so far. However, the difference, is that the player chooses and for every level of response (and it's equal level of inconvenience) they degrade the action budget of the GM for the opposition. In other words, the GM has a monster, and that monster has a danger rating that equals the total bonus budget that the monster gets for the encounter to rip the characters faces off and slurp out their juicy brains. But if the characters are queasy, shaking, and hide, they get to reduce that budget (which may also pull them back from confronting the nasty thing in the first place).
The other half of the nut, is then how to keep the PCs from turtling so far that they don't confront the threat and let it win... but that is for a bit more thought...
Here is the latest refinement in my thinking on this: characters have horror condition boxes (or points, or whatever) that relate to different horror reactions - "queasy", "shaking", "paralyzed", "screaming", "cowering", etc. These all describe an action that the player chooses as a response to some horriffic circumstance. It is key that the player choose it so that they get the buy in for their character. But what do they, the player, get out of this?
This is not very different at all from the conditions as presented in Fate System Toolkit so far. However, the difference, is that the player chooses and for every level of response (and it's equal level of inconvenience) they degrade the action budget of the GM for the opposition. In other words, the GM has a monster, and that monster has a danger rating that equals the total bonus budget that the monster gets for the encounter to rip the characters faces off and slurp out their juicy brains. But if the characters are queasy, shaking, and hide, they get to reduce that budget (which may also pull them back from confronting the nasty thing in the first place).
The other half of the nut, is then how to keep the PCs from turtling so far that they don't confront the threat and let it win... but that is for a bit more thought...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)