Character Creation: Dream Askew

Like View Askew, I guess? Not really.

The Game: Dream Askew
The Publisher: Buried Without Ceremony
Degree of Familiarity: I've actually played this! Just once, at Origins 10 years ago
Books Required: Just the one

Dream Askew is a "Belonging Without Belonging" game, meaning it's diceless and GMless, and meant to tell stories about a marginalized community. The community is as much in the spotlight as individual characters and with the right group it's a lot of fun. I remember really enjoying it when I played it (reading that above-linked write-up is painful, of course, because it's part of my life that is over and mentions a lot of people that I miss, as well as few that I absolutely do not).

Anyway, Dream Askew and Dream Apart are included in the same book, so I think I'll do Askew today and Apart tomorrow. They're both pretty quick, chargen-wise, since they're both built on Apocalypse World. 

Askew is a post-apocalypse game, kinda, but it focuses on the "apocalypse" happening in stages and unevenly, which is a notion that I really enjoy. It's also very queer-focused and brings up some of the same re-envisioning of gender as a concept that you see in games like Sleepaway. 

First thing I do is pick a playbook, of course. Most of the setting will go undefined, since that's a full-group thing and this is just me, but I think the overall vibe is firm enough that I can make a character. I played the Iris when I played this at Origins 2014. Today I will pick the Tiger.

Rar

And the rest is picking stuff off the lists from the playbook, which is pretty easy.

Name: One of the ones listed is "Blues," and I like that. Maybe my Tiger is playing sad songs on a harmonica sometimes? That might be a bit more wistful than I want. Actually, let's say that when the Tiger showed up, they were wearing dress blues - a police uniform. Were they a cop? Let's keep going.

Look: Tough face, tattooed arms. I'm picturing sleeve tattoos that have faded and mottled and been damaged by injuries so much that it's really hard to tell what - if anything - any of it ever meant. 

Gender: Gargoyle. Blues is the patient, almost grotesque, guardian and protector. The sort of thing that people look at and think is a monster, but really they're there as a preventative, a protection against even worse things.

Wardrobe styles: I'm meant to pick two of these, so I'll pick leather and militant wear (the latter being the dress blues that they're known for). The uniform isn't kept up well, though, it's pretty tattered and it doesn't quite fit. 

Gang trappings: Again, picking two. We'll go with chains & rusty pipes and riot gear. Blues is not a healer. They don't swoop down from the dark to stitch you up or make you feel better. They do it to hit the things that want to hurt you, repeatedly. 

Gang's flaw: The enclave isn't entirely on board with our vision. We're not about restoration, we're about protection and, failing that, retribution. The enclave worries about the violence, and like, yeah, that's a fair worry. But the truth of the matter is that if someone is causing hurt, you can try and "fix" them, sure, but are we qualified to do that? Is anyone anymore? And if you know someone is causing hurt and you waste time trying to fix them, doesn't that make you at least a little culpable if they hurt someone else? 

Key relationships: I'll pick my hungry-for-blood sibling and my poz support crew. Blues has been HIV positive since they were a young teen. Meds still exist, but are running low, and they're not taking them anymore. If the support crew finds out, they'll probably be pissed, but Blues figures other folks need it more. As for their sibling, if I were playing Blues this is the kind of thing I'd want another player to consider picking up, but as it's just me I'll say Blues' sister Libra is also part of the gang, and she doesn't warn, caution, or even speak most of the time. She just jumps right to the chains. Blues is all about preventative violence, but Libra is taking it to some bad places.

And that's it, because the last bit is questions to ask other players and I ain't got none of those. I think Blues would be a fun character to play. Maybe played by a younger Charles Bronson.

Origins!

A little behind, here, but that's because I lost time working on work stuff to Origins, which puts me behind on blogging about cons, like Origins.

Circle of life, I guess.

I did not take a lot of pictures at Origins this year, which was silly of me, but I will show you the ones I did take, and also recount my experiences.

I spent much of Origins 2014 at the Indie Game Developer Network booth. The IGDN, if you don't know, is exactly that - a collection of folks doing games from various angles (a lot of us are writers and designers, and we're making a push to get more of the art/layout/graphics folks in). One of the big perks of the organization is that we can buy into a booth for Origins and GenCon and get the benefits without the huge cost, so here we are.

Seriously, this booth would be catnip for me if I didn't already own all these games.

So I (and +Michelle Lyons-McFarland and +Tracy Barnett and +Mark Diaz Truman and some other folks) worked the booth all weekend, ran demos, sold games, it was a good time.

I also wound up running some games. Now, last year, I ran games through Indie Games on Demand, which was fine, but I felt wibbly about not knowing which game I was going to run until I got there. This year, I signed up to run World of Darkness: Innocents and was surprised when the game filled (it was Wednesday night), but it turned out that they were friends who kind of ambushed me, which was fun. I ran curse the darkness using the Apocalypse World hack that Olivia Hill wrote for Infinite Shadows (on sale now here and at the IGDN booth at GenCon!), and that was pretty cool - lots of in-character conflict. I had one scheduled use the Fate Accelerated hack that +Rob Wieland wrote for the same book, but that didn't get players, which is weird because Fate games generally fill.

(I also ran a pickup space opera game using Fate Accelerated for +Branden Webb, +Rachel Steiner and +Shane Allen, and that was fun, but I didn't take pictures because I'm dumb. However, Rachel played a drunk alien, Shane played a mustachio'd boxer and Branden played a prince-in-hiding, and there was combat against Tzimisce-like aliens, so that's cool.)

Anyway, I was also scheduled to run A Tragedy in Five Acts, but that didn't fill and it's not the kind of game you can run with one player. So instead, I went over to Indie Games on Demand and borrowed a couple of generics, and wound up playing Dream Askew.

Dream Askew is a post-apocalyptic game using (appropriately) the Apocalypse World engine. Unlike AW, it's GMless, and it deliberately takes the genre in the direction talking about marginalization, gender, sexuality, and the queer experience. With the right group, it's awesome. We had the right group. (Dream Askew is a game from +Avery Mcdaldno, the genius who also gave us Monsterhearts, and you should support the Patreon for the game.)

Anyway, we had our queer enclave in the ruins of Seattle. I played the Iris (psychic and kind of fucked up), a blind trans man named Brace, who experienced the psychic maelstrom as an inferno, and acted as a kind of angel of death for members of our enclave who were wounded beyond our ability to fix them. It was pretty badass.

See the chips? It's GMless, so unlike other AW games, you make your moves on your own. Weak move (which tends to hurt or at least complicate things for you), take a chip. Strong movie (you get to be badass and the focus of attention), spend a chip. It was a lot of fun.

Normally I'd give a GM grade, but since there wasn't one - or rather, we were all GMing! - I give us an A.

Oh, and there were some shifty characters wandering around that day.

Wanna know how I got these goggles?

Sunday, I ran my traditional game of Clay-o-Rama. This year they put me in the kids' room, which was awesome. Since it was explicitly labeled as a Kids Track game, I didn't have to worry about adults coming in and fucking it up (I mean, some adults played, but they were parents of other players).

The building phase. 

Look at the horrible monster! The Claydonian, I mean, not the kid; he's delightful. 

Tentacles: Always a solid strategy. 

But making a flat monster is also viable. 

Combat and carnage!

As usual, all the adults died off (but one did survive into the last four). As usual, a little girl won. I don't think her Claydonian is pictured, though.

So following the Clay-o-Rama battle, I headed back into the dealer's room to work the booth a bit more and do some shopping with Michelle. Another successful Origins completed!

My haul.