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.
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...
24 May, 2016
Essential Human Experience
I'm going to go out on a limb and make the assertion that legions of social ills would cease to be were human beings to largely go outside of themselves more. Not as one wise person put it, to think less of themselves, but rather to think of themselves less.
This is no doubt a monumentally difficult challenge in today's world, doubly so in the modern west. We live in a culture that demands at every level that we consume. It makes many fewer demands that we produce. With operant conditioning in every electronic form we are invited to consume content like corn pellets, producing selfies, and getting rewarded with likes. Like Skinner's pigeons or Pavlov's dogs.
There are a whole lot of problems to think about and write about, but I'm going to assert that there is a short list of things that are essential to a full and sane and fulfilled human life. The list is simple, but hard to accomplish. Here it is:
1) experience birth
2) grow up with your mother and father and siblings
3) graduate into adulthood - (often marked by graduating school but this has more to do with learning the basic skills needed to contribute as an adult)
4) get your first job on your own
5) get married to a person with whom you can produce a family
6) participate in the childbirth experience and practice parenting
7) let your children go
8) let your job go
9) let go of your fear of death
10) master each step and move on to the next, and do not fail to keep taking steps
I am convinced that these are all essential, and that to skip any of them is to rob ourselves of something profound and priceless, and because we do not live in a vacuum, to likewise rob others by what we fail to do.
I am convinced that each of these steps requires us to sacrifice something deeply important to us in order to take up something bigger and outside of ourselves, and the emptying of self produces giving to others as a natural consequence. The more we can empty ourselves of selfishness, the more we can hold of something greater, and the more we can give to others, so again, even if we don't take away from others per se, every bit of selfishness we hold on to is that much more that we deprive others of, which is tantamount to the same thing.
Ten seems a paradox, but I would argue that mastery of each step is a process, not a binary possession, and therefore while continuing to hone the former you can still begin the later.
I am quite convinced that many of the things that we do instead of one or another of these are nothing more than clever counterfeits, undoubtedly supported by a tapestry of sophistries to justify. Nonetheless, whether it is refusing to grow up and take up adult responsibilities, or refusing to sacrifice self to another in the full commitment of marriage, choosing a dog instead of children, or failing to let go of children and letting them live their own lives... all of these are failures to have the courage to burn your ships on the shore and go forward into a bigger, if unknown country. But that is what is demanded to grow up fully as a human being.
There may be more (undoubtedly there is) than this, but I think that is it in a nutshell... I will have to think on this and write more as I do.
This is no doubt a monumentally difficult challenge in today's world, doubly so in the modern west. We live in a culture that demands at every level that we consume. It makes many fewer demands that we produce. With operant conditioning in every electronic form we are invited to consume content like corn pellets, producing selfies, and getting rewarded with likes. Like Skinner's pigeons or Pavlov's dogs.
There are a whole lot of problems to think about and write about, but I'm going to assert that there is a short list of things that are essential to a full and sane and fulfilled human life. The list is simple, but hard to accomplish. Here it is:
1) experience birth
2) grow up with your mother and father and siblings
3) graduate into adulthood - (often marked by graduating school but this has more to do with learning the basic skills needed to contribute as an adult)
4) get your first job on your own
5) get married to a person with whom you can produce a family
6) participate in the childbirth experience and practice parenting
7) let your children go
8) let your job go
9) let go of your fear of death
10) master each step and move on to the next, and do not fail to keep taking steps
I am convinced that these are all essential, and that to skip any of them is to rob ourselves of something profound and priceless, and because we do not live in a vacuum, to likewise rob others by what we fail to do.
I am convinced that each of these steps requires us to sacrifice something deeply important to us in order to take up something bigger and outside of ourselves, and the emptying of self produces giving to others as a natural consequence. The more we can empty ourselves of selfishness, the more we can hold of something greater, and the more we can give to others, so again, even if we don't take away from others per se, every bit of selfishness we hold on to is that much more that we deprive others of, which is tantamount to the same thing.
Ten seems a paradox, but I would argue that mastery of each step is a process, not a binary possession, and therefore while continuing to hone the former you can still begin the later.
I am quite convinced that many of the things that we do instead of one or another of these are nothing more than clever counterfeits, undoubtedly supported by a tapestry of sophistries to justify. Nonetheless, whether it is refusing to grow up and take up adult responsibilities, or refusing to sacrifice self to another in the full commitment of marriage, choosing a dog instead of children, or failing to let go of children and letting them live their own lives... all of these are failures to have the courage to burn your ships on the shore and go forward into a bigger, if unknown country. But that is what is demanded to grow up fully as a human being.
There may be more (undoubtedly there is) than this, but I think that is it in a nutshell... I will have to think on this and write more as I do.
Where My Worldview Peeks Out Of My Game-As-Art Thinking
I got an email the other day with an update link to the pdf for a game world for Fate that I have, as it seems in final edit they missed something. The message with the link made great apologies for the insensitivity of using hurtful language that goes against the social justice ethic of the publisher. The reason for the revision? In the description of one adversary (a specter), it notes that if attacked, it will defend lamely, as in ineffectually. The apology makes it clear that the publisher and writer does not endorse "ableism", therefore requiring a revision.
I declined to get the previous two Fate Worlds, one of which set off a firestorm on G+ over the observation by one poster that: 1) the setting is about crews in stuffy, cramped deep sea submarines with all manner of exposed pipes, conduits, and controls, and 2) one of the pre-gens is a character in a wheelchair. There is evidently no effort to reconcile how a wheelchair bound character maneuvers in the environment described, or deals with the raised hatches through compartments. The poster began a conversation stating that it broke willing suspension of disbelief, and was initially addressed by another poster who as an engineer gave some plausible reasons to accept the conditions. The firestorm quickly degenerated into a virtual lynching of the original poster for being an oppressive white male able-bodied jerk and he was banned for 30 days to suffer his guilt which led to an excessively vile post bloated with vitriolic invective against everyone else which led to the whole thread being removed.
Go, go social justice...
As I write about games as art and game design, I have always the burner to my left the awareness of "social justice" as a priority with most of the game designers in the indie sphere that interests me most. And yet, I find that I respectfully disagree with them. The fact is, that as a Christian, I too have a particular worldview that informs how I think people should be treated and what is in good or bad taste. Very often, the actions I take are the same as those of the social justice warriors of a more leftist slant. My problem is, that I think while their actions may sometimes be right, their underlying motives are based on a false worldview. They were in the instance above, willing to viciously destroy a real person online for not holding a politically correct view of white male ableist guilt because he questioned an entirely fictitious character in a situation that was certainly not described believably. They claimed that they wanted to be as inclusive as possible to everyone, but assumed guilt from the original poster without addressing his idea (beyond the engineer who initially tried). The neo-liberal worldview of intersectional political victim claiming, is something that I cannot endorse.So as I read games and design notes and designer blogs, I am constantly thinking about how to write and design games artistically, in a way that as Aristotle would describes it, represents "not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance".
Of course, sometimes a game is just a way to relax and have fun, but I do like the notion of a game being able to transcend just that, becoming in the play, an experience as well, like a novel or good movie. In thinking about ways I might explore ideas and thought experiments I am informed by my worldview. This is not to say that I am inclined to make games that are religious per se, or require them to be squeaky clean. I do want them to be true though. Life is messy, and people are messy, foolish, selfish and sinful, and in spite of that, there are moments in which people shine and are heroic. This is part of the reason that Fate as a system is so appealing to me - it makes the failures and flaws as important as the rest to the fiction. I am interested in that quality, and I simply can't find that sort of honesty in social justice political correctness that seeks to demolish the world and whitewash the pieces.
It is perhaps because I hold the Christian worldview dear that I am not disturbed to dip into Lovecraft's mythos for games and stories. His weird fiction shows his own worldview, and while I think he is dead wrong about that, that worldview does present a consistency that promotes madness for those who follow it far enough. And that mad world is indeed one that shows something terrible and destructive, and shows those who dare to try to hold it back for another day as in The Dunwich Horror. To face and fight against that seems very true to the right way to address the problem of inimical entities who assume morality is irrelevant and are bent on destruction. My worldview grounds the action in the notion that ultimate goodness is ultimately rational, and that it is appropriate to fight monsters, and disregard the nihilists who idolize them too far. After all, if interacting with and discovering the occult reality of these immensely powerful malignant alien entities drives one mad, and the mad men tell us that the world is ultimately futile and meaningless and insane, how can we trust them? Are not the thoughts of mad men and their understanding of reality suspect?
But what of things less mind-destroying and closer to home? What of social justice? I believe that what is good and right is what a Jewish carpenter said was good and right. I don't believe that people's feelings determine what is good and right. I don't believe that writing to make sure that nobody feels unrepresented in a story makes a story good. I don't believe that including a word that might make someone feel bad and "trigger" them makes a story bad. I think that a story must be taken as a whole to determine it's worth. As for a submarine with a wheelchair bound character - I would not include that without some discussion on why the wheelchair is not more of a liability than the crew can bear, and I think the engineer in the aforementioned discussion presented some thoughts that the writer of the Fate world did not. I think that hand wringing over the use of the word lame because it might somehow offend someone with a walking disability is childish and promotes a pathological and divisive mindset more than it solves one. I think that respecting human persons does not require respecting all their ideas, shortcomings, or feelings, nor is it oppression to disagree. I do think that I can appreciate and learn from designers with whom I disagree. I wonder if some of them would offer the same courtesy?
I declined to get the previous two Fate Worlds, one of which set off a firestorm on G+ over the observation by one poster that: 1) the setting is about crews in stuffy, cramped deep sea submarines with all manner of exposed pipes, conduits, and controls, and 2) one of the pre-gens is a character in a wheelchair. There is evidently no effort to reconcile how a wheelchair bound character maneuvers in the environment described, or deals with the raised hatches through compartments. The poster began a conversation stating that it broke willing suspension of disbelief, and was initially addressed by another poster who as an engineer gave some plausible reasons to accept the conditions. The firestorm quickly degenerated into a virtual lynching of the original poster for being an oppressive white male able-bodied jerk and he was banned for 30 days to suffer his guilt which led to an excessively vile post bloated with vitriolic invective against everyone else which led to the whole thread being removed.
Go, go social justice...
As I write about games as art and game design, I have always the burner to my left the awareness of "social justice" as a priority with most of the game designers in the indie sphere that interests me most. And yet, I find that I respectfully disagree with them. The fact is, that as a Christian, I too have a particular worldview that informs how I think people should be treated and what is in good or bad taste. Very often, the actions I take are the same as those of the social justice warriors of a more leftist slant. My problem is, that I think while their actions may sometimes be right, their underlying motives are based on a false worldview. They were in the instance above, willing to viciously destroy a real person online for not holding a politically correct view of white male ableist guilt because he questioned an entirely fictitious character in a situation that was certainly not described believably. They claimed that they wanted to be as inclusive as possible to everyone, but assumed guilt from the original poster without addressing his idea (beyond the engineer who initially tried). The neo-liberal worldview of intersectional political victim claiming, is something that I cannot endorse.So as I read games and design notes and designer blogs, I am constantly thinking about how to write and design games artistically, in a way that as Aristotle would describes it, represents "not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance".
Of course, sometimes a game is just a way to relax and have fun, but I do like the notion of a game being able to transcend just that, becoming in the play, an experience as well, like a novel or good movie. In thinking about ways I might explore ideas and thought experiments I am informed by my worldview. This is not to say that I am inclined to make games that are religious per se, or require them to be squeaky clean. I do want them to be true though. Life is messy, and people are messy, foolish, selfish and sinful, and in spite of that, there are moments in which people shine and are heroic. This is part of the reason that Fate as a system is so appealing to me - it makes the failures and flaws as important as the rest to the fiction. I am interested in that quality, and I simply can't find that sort of honesty in social justice political correctness that seeks to demolish the world and whitewash the pieces.
It is perhaps because I hold the Christian worldview dear that I am not disturbed to dip into Lovecraft's mythos for games and stories. His weird fiction shows his own worldview, and while I think he is dead wrong about that, that worldview does present a consistency that promotes madness for those who follow it far enough. And that mad world is indeed one that shows something terrible and destructive, and shows those who dare to try to hold it back for another day as in The Dunwich Horror. To face and fight against that seems very true to the right way to address the problem of inimical entities who assume morality is irrelevant and are bent on destruction. My worldview grounds the action in the notion that ultimate goodness is ultimately rational, and that it is appropriate to fight monsters, and disregard the nihilists who idolize them too far. After all, if interacting with and discovering the occult reality of these immensely powerful malignant alien entities drives one mad, and the mad men tell us that the world is ultimately futile and meaningless and insane, how can we trust them? Are not the thoughts of mad men and their understanding of reality suspect?
But what of things less mind-destroying and closer to home? What of social justice? I believe that what is good and right is what a Jewish carpenter said was good and right. I don't believe that people's feelings determine what is good and right. I don't believe that writing to make sure that nobody feels unrepresented in a story makes a story good. I don't believe that including a word that might make someone feel bad and "trigger" them makes a story bad. I think that a story must be taken as a whole to determine it's worth. As for a submarine with a wheelchair bound character - I would not include that without some discussion on why the wheelchair is not more of a liability than the crew can bear, and I think the engineer in the aforementioned discussion presented some thoughts that the writer of the Fate world did not. I think that hand wringing over the use of the word lame because it might somehow offend someone with a walking disability is childish and promotes a pathological and divisive mindset more than it solves one. I think that respecting human persons does not require respecting all their ideas, shortcomings, or feelings, nor is it oppression to disagree. I do think that I can appreciate and learn from designers with whom I disagree. I wonder if some of them would offer the same courtesy?
20 May, 2016
Handy Lists of Emotions and Virtues
06 May, 2016
Pollyanna Gets Medieval
I have a mini game that came to me a little while back that I figured I would go ahead and write up finally.
The 200 Word RPG challenge was a good spur to writing it seems... wish I'd submitted this one.
* * *
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... 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...
*
Each round, one player will take a turn playing Pollyanna, while the rest play the goblins.
Everyone will determine together what Pollyanna's goal is, and then play begins with the happiest player as Pollyanna and proceeds clockwise. EDIT: The player to the first Pollyanna's right will declare the major problem for Pollyanna, e.g. "rescue the other orphans from the burning house".
Pollyanna will begin by declaring a simple, concrete action in pursuit of the goal. There are as many steps to achieve the goal as players, and these should be noted in simple, concise terms. EDIT: For example, in a four player game, Pollyanna might declare the steps to be: 1) get into the house, 2) get up the stairs, 3) make a rope of bed sheets to climb down, 4) get everyone out the window. These are the goals that must be met in order to win.
The goblin to Pollyanna's left will then lay down a token and declare a simple, concrete obstacle EDIT: to Pollyanna's goal. At the time that the goblin declares the obstacle, the goblin to his left EDIT: another player (but only one more) may also add a token and declare one way in which things get worse. Pollyanna gets the token(s) if she can declare how that thing actually works in her favor.
EDIT: Pollyanna gets to keep all the tokens for which she can declare a benefit. She can spend any tokens she has to declare a new detail to overcome or cancel a challenge on a one for one basis.
EDIT: Pollyanna gets to keep all the tokens for which she can declare a benefit. She can spend any tokens she has to declare a new detail to overcome or cancel a challenge on a one for one basis.
After Pollyanna overcomes that obstacle the role of Pollyanna proceeds to the next player.
EDIT: The previous Pollyanna player passes all remaining Pollyanna tokens to the next Pollyanna player, and takes one new token for themselves after passing the role on. They may now act as a goblin.
EDIT: The previous Pollyanna player passes all remaining Pollyanna tokens to the next Pollyanna player, and takes one new token for themselves after passing the role on. They may now act as a goblin.
At any time, Pollyanna may spend a single token to declare a new detail not previously introduced which either helps her or hinders the goblins. The last player to be Pollyanna may spend all remaining tokens to get medieval on the goblins, and finish the story with why everything worked out better than she could have possibly imagined.
* * *
OK, this is somewhere closer to 350 words, but without the flavor text at the top, it is close to 200. But that is the game. Short, quick, pickup RPG.
05 May, 2016
Problems with Liberal Politics in Game Design
In the indie game design space, as well as outward from that, there is a great deal of discussion about the importance of "diversity" in gaming and game design. I agree, so long as diversity means diverse, which by definition ignores such notions as pathologies of privilege from white / male / heterosexual / able / western / Christians, and actually is agnostic of who a game design comes from. The idea counts... not the identity of the designer. Furthermore, if a game forum claims to stand against "discrimination" while shaming people for not checking their privilege in discussions, is problematic; when discrimination is based on identity while celebrating every kind of "transgressive" idea the discrimination is both actually being practiced (sometimes very aggressively) and not applied to the right thing (the thinking). Again, it is ideas that should matter in games, not the identity of the designer.
Case in point... there is a game that is in my top shelf list of indie games called The Quiet Year. The idea is that a society in the ruins of some previous society, has a year - four seasons - to confront their situation, face the challenges, and see what they can build before a bad thing happens at the end of the year (when the game ends). This is, I think a clever and universal concept piece, both timeless and applicable to potentially any human society. Furthermore, the game is elegantly simple in the mechanics, played essentially with nothing more than a deck of cards and a shared map that continues to be elaborated on collectively as play proceeds. The cards represent different kinds of events based on suit and number, and the map provides an artifact of play.
There is a followup called The Deep Forest. This one is not so well made, and the further I read, the less I liked it. It takes the same basic framework, but makes the characters all monsters who are rebuilding a tolerant society and the bad thing that is coming, is humans. The further it goes, the sillier it gets with sentimental goblins, victimized ogres, and monsters that are anything but as they prepare for the diabolic threat of humans! This is all fine and good, if subverting the trope is done for laughs as it plays with the collision of the unexpected and the unacceptable. Only, it turns out that the author, who wrote the original The Quiet Year, is now not who he says he is as he is now a she, and as explained in "her" essay at the end of The Deep Forest is his metaphor for the plight of the "Other" who is unfairly demonized by the wicked privilege and oppression of the establishment. The game is meant to be taken seriously, not humorously, and as a social activist piece it seems.
But wait! you say... what about, for example, virtually all of White Wolf's games, which put you in the skin of the monster? Why do those get a pass? Why take those seriously?
Those games (I can't speak about the latest editions), DO address the idea of being a monster, and DO address being an outsider and a sort of other... but at the end of the day, the vampires are only as monstrous as their lack of humanity, the werewolves only as monstrous as their lack of control over the beast. Humanity is not the problem... it is the cure, or at least the stabilizing treatment for the problem which is embracing the monster too far. There is in whatever imperfect fashion, the notion that there is some transcendent right and wrong that has little to do with how the monster feels about who they are. Accelerate culture through two generations of post-modern liberal education and we find designers making games that celebrate the monster because of their feelings of victimization and revile humanity in general as the wicked oppressor because they don't feel the same.
The value of monsters in stories is to show what is... well, monstrous. The mythic function of the monster is to put a shape and a skin on the things that are (and should be) harmful, fearful, loathsome, and reprehensible to humanity. It is not about how the monster feels - that is a different kind of story. Beauty and the Beast, and Bearskin are not primarily monster stories, but rather perception stories. Postmodern political thinking has made legions unable to distinguish the difference.
Now I don't argue that games can, as an art form, provide a way to play with serious ideas at a remove that allows them to be dealt with as ideas rather than unpleasant experiences. I think that the designer of The Quiet Year is in general a good designer - I have a couple of his games in my top shelf file (The Quiet Year and Perfect). Others, not so much (Monster Hearts and The Deep Forest). I dig his designer mission statement HERE. But bad politics based on bad philosophy is likely to corrupt good game design. This is a problem with so many of the small games out in indie space, the primary goal of which is to be a communication vehicle for social justice activism. The only game that I think pulls off the feat of making a smart conversation piece for more liberal political thought is one that is at least as much classical liberalism (unwittingly I suspect) as neo-liberalism. That one is Dog Eat Dog, which is about the consequences of colonialism. Now I don't agree with the fullness of designer Liam Burke's conclusions in the essay afterward, but I think the game is both elegantly designed and has an interesting high concept.
I think the biggest problem in the indie game space is not, as so often asserted, the lack of diversity or the problem of privilege, but rather that so many of the designers are consumed with intersectional political theory which assumes that unquestioningly assumes that:
1) a matrix of oppression is institutionalized in society (especially western societies)
2) the oppression is roughly defined by the dichotomies of who is privileged and who is oppressed in any given interaction
3) only the oppressed class possesses the wisdom, character, and experience to understand the
problem
4) the privileged class is inherently incapable of understanding and thus commenting on, questioning, or critiquing the theory as that would either display ignorance or oppressive behavior
5) the nature of the oppression is to shame, demean, deprive, bully, and silence the oppressed class
6) being oppressed justifies and excuses the exact same behaviors if they are committed against the privileged class
So, Power = Privilege = Oppression = Bad
and, Oppressed = Bad = Enlightened = Justified
and thus, Oppressed = Justified in taking Power to overturn the Privileged = Good
But somehow the naked greed and envy and pride in collecting more and more victim cred to justify using power to oppress is not hypocrisy?... Haven't we seen this in France in 1789, and Russia in 1917, and Germany in 1933, and China in 1958, and on and on?... only the labels change.
(Ooops... no questions allowed here... this is a safe space from microaggressions!)
That this comes out of marxist political theory, and has been shaped by the Orwellian distopian strategies of double-speak, lies and propaganda is not surprising. It feels just like it could have been elucidated by the conspirators on Animal Farm. I'm not really of the belief that many of the bright young designers in the indie game space mean to do harm - quite the opposite. I just think they don't really get the problems of the worldview that they are endorsing, and when it comes out in their designs, it really stinks. The fact that the bloodbath is merely verbal in the social media commons does not prevent it from being repellant.
Wouldn't it be better, if indie game designers were more concerned with interesting ideas than with the phantom privilege in gaming? Like Downfall, by Caroline Hobbs. She is a great game designer, and Downfall is a really cool idea game, malleable to many many kinds of stories. I don't know what her political views are marxist, or anti-marxist, or anarchist or otherwise. But she is a cool game maker. Do I care that Caroline is in the "oppressed" class? Nope, not a whit, because I am concerned with the fact that she has a great idea. If I knew her personally and was seeking hypothetically to date her, then it would matter a lot that she was a woman. But as a thinking human who designs games, she is much cooler as far as I'm concerned.
Maybe there is a good game hack in all this... an inversion of Dog Eat Dog maybe?...
Case in point... there is a game that is in my top shelf list of indie games called The Quiet Year. The idea is that a society in the ruins of some previous society, has a year - four seasons - to confront their situation, face the challenges, and see what they can build before a bad thing happens at the end of the year (when the game ends). This is, I think a clever and universal concept piece, both timeless and applicable to potentially any human society. Furthermore, the game is elegantly simple in the mechanics, played essentially with nothing more than a deck of cards and a shared map that continues to be elaborated on collectively as play proceeds. The cards represent different kinds of events based on suit and number, and the map provides an artifact of play.
There is a followup called The Deep Forest. This one is not so well made, and the further I read, the less I liked it. It takes the same basic framework, but makes the characters all monsters who are rebuilding a tolerant society and the bad thing that is coming, is humans. The further it goes, the sillier it gets with sentimental goblins, victimized ogres, and monsters that are anything but as they prepare for the diabolic threat of humans! This is all fine and good, if subverting the trope is done for laughs as it plays with the collision of the unexpected and the unacceptable. Only, it turns out that the author, who wrote the original The Quiet Year, is now not who he says he is as he is now a she, and as explained in "her" essay at the end of The Deep Forest is his metaphor for the plight of the "Other" who is unfairly demonized by the wicked privilege and oppression of the establishment. The game is meant to be taken seriously, not humorously, and as a social activist piece it seems.
But wait! you say... what about, for example, virtually all of White Wolf's games, which put you in the skin of the monster? Why do those get a pass? Why take those seriously?
Those games (I can't speak about the latest editions), DO address the idea of being a monster, and DO address being an outsider and a sort of other... but at the end of the day, the vampires are only as monstrous as their lack of humanity, the werewolves only as monstrous as their lack of control over the beast. Humanity is not the problem... it is the cure, or at least the stabilizing treatment for the problem which is embracing the monster too far. There is in whatever imperfect fashion, the notion that there is some transcendent right and wrong that has little to do with how the monster feels about who they are. Accelerate culture through two generations of post-modern liberal education and we find designers making games that celebrate the monster because of their feelings of victimization and revile humanity in general as the wicked oppressor because they don't feel the same.
The value of monsters in stories is to show what is... well, monstrous. The mythic function of the monster is to put a shape and a skin on the things that are (and should be) harmful, fearful, loathsome, and reprehensible to humanity. It is not about how the monster feels - that is a different kind of story. Beauty and the Beast, and Bearskin are not primarily monster stories, but rather perception stories. Postmodern political thinking has made legions unable to distinguish the difference.
Now I don't argue that games can, as an art form, provide a way to play with serious ideas at a remove that allows them to be dealt with as ideas rather than unpleasant experiences. I think that the designer of The Quiet Year is in general a good designer - I have a couple of his games in my top shelf file (The Quiet Year and Perfect). Others, not so much (Monster Hearts and The Deep Forest). I dig his designer mission statement HERE. But bad politics based on bad philosophy is likely to corrupt good game design. This is a problem with so many of the small games out in indie space, the primary goal of which is to be a communication vehicle for social justice activism. The only game that I think pulls off the feat of making a smart conversation piece for more liberal political thought is one that is at least as much classical liberalism (unwittingly I suspect) as neo-liberalism. That one is Dog Eat Dog, which is about the consequences of colonialism. Now I don't agree with the fullness of designer Liam Burke's conclusions in the essay afterward, but I think the game is both elegantly designed and has an interesting high concept.
I think the biggest problem in the indie game space is not, as so often asserted, the lack of diversity or the problem of privilege, but rather that so many of the designers are consumed with intersectional political theory which assumes that unquestioningly assumes that:
1) a matrix of oppression is institutionalized in society (especially western societies)
2) the oppression is roughly defined by the dichotomies of who is privileged and who is oppressed in any given interaction
3) only the oppressed class possesses the wisdom, character, and experience to understand the
problem
4) the privileged class is inherently incapable of understanding and thus commenting on, questioning, or critiquing the theory as that would either display ignorance or oppressive behavior
5) the nature of the oppression is to shame, demean, deprive, bully, and silence the oppressed class
6) being oppressed justifies and excuses the exact same behaviors if they are committed against the privileged class
So, Power = Privilege = Oppression = Bad
and, Oppressed = Bad = Enlightened = Justified
and thus, Oppressed = Justified in taking Power to overturn the Privileged = Good
But somehow the naked greed and envy and pride in collecting more and more victim cred to justify using power to oppress is not hypocrisy?... Haven't we seen this in France in 1789, and Russia in 1917, and Germany in 1933, and China in 1958, and on and on?... only the labels change.
(Ooops... no questions allowed here... this is a safe space from microaggressions!)
That this comes out of marxist political theory, and has been shaped by the Orwellian distopian strategies of double-speak, lies and propaganda is not surprising. It feels just like it could have been elucidated by the conspirators on Animal Farm. I'm not really of the belief that many of the bright young designers in the indie game space mean to do harm - quite the opposite. I just think they don't really get the problems of the worldview that they are endorsing, and when it comes out in their designs, it really stinks. The fact that the bloodbath is merely verbal in the social media commons does not prevent it from being repellant.
Wouldn't it be better, if indie game designers were more concerned with interesting ideas than with the phantom privilege in gaming? Like Downfall, by Caroline Hobbs. She is a great game designer, and Downfall is a really cool idea game, malleable to many many kinds of stories. I don't know what her political views are marxist, or anti-marxist, or anarchist or otherwise. But she is a cool game maker. Do I care that Caroline is in the "oppressed" class? Nope, not a whit, because I am concerned with the fact that she has a great idea. If I knew her personally and was seeking hypothetically to date her, then it would matter a lot that she was a woman. But as a thinking human who designs games, she is much cooler as far as I'm concerned.
Maybe there is a good game hack in all this... an inversion of Dog Eat Dog maybe?...
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