Cocaine Owlbear: Glittery Giggletoes and the Dwarf Munchers

Last night we played a quick one-shot of Cocaine Owlbear, because Megan was out of town so D&D was on hold. After we get to the insanity, some thoughts on the game. 

BUT FIRST.

In the land...wherever, four woodland creatures have killed a courier carrying magical cocaine. The reason they killed him are a little blurry, but the important thing is that they're all now sapient and able to communication, perhaps a bit crazed and jittery, and do not want to lose their newfound intelligence. That means MORE COKE IS NEEDED.

Our crew is:

Rex, the Owlbear. A huge, hungry, aggressive owlbear - but also the lightfingered technician of the group! 

Mr. Apples, the Deer. A stag with a rusty flail tangled up in his antlers. He is...not adjusting well to intelligence, and has taken to just licking anything he comes across just to see what it's like. He is the fastest of the group, their speed demon!

Bubbles, the Skunk. Bubbles is a skunk and OMG HE IS SO VERY EXCITED. He is clever and good at finding stuff, and is the scout of the group.

Glittery Giggletoes, the Unicorn. Glittery is the mastermind of this crack crew of coke-fiends. She is a black unicorn, and is always shedding just a bit of glittery. She's also wearing the long coat that the animals took off the courier.

The courier was carrying a map, which indicates that he was going to take the path through the woods (the words "STAY ON THE PATH" are written on it, but he kinda didn't, which is what got him killed). The four creatures go through his belongings, including magic scrolls. Glittery realizes that his map also contains a complicated, precise plan for stealing more enchanted cocaine - there's a tower indicated on it, with the notation "BITCHY WIZARD?", a village, some big...rectangles? Also "DWARVEN GUARDS" and some short stick figures. Maybe it's "GOURDS," Glittery's not sure. 

The creatures go through the woods until the end of the path, and see that it ends just before the village. Bubbles sneaks out into the village to scout around, and discovers that the village butts up against those big rectangles, which are actually huge standing stones. Getting to them, and thus to the tower beyond, would require either going through the village or going north through the woods and then crossing a big open vulnerable plain.

They decide that Bubbles will sneak through the village to the edge of the patrolled area and then set off a big ol' stink bomb, distracting the guards (or gourds) long enough for the other three to quickly cross the plain and then take 'em out. Mr. Apples, Glittery, and Rex wait in the woods and Bubbles creates his smelly distraction (picture a big ugly green mushroom cloud), and then they rush!

(Well, Mr. Apples zooms across, Rex galumphs quickly, and Glittery just teleports.)

They engage the dwarves, already choking on skunk-smell! Rex tears into them, Glittery impales one on his magnificent horn, and Mr. Apples whips his horns back and forth, whips his horns back and forth, thus whacking them with the flail. This hurdle cleared, the creatures arrive at the bottom of the tower.

The door is locked, but Rex easily picks the lock with his deft talons. Glittery opens the door, and a magical projection of a wizard appears. He's fancy and has a fabulous robe, pointy ears, and a circlet. He tells the creatures that they are not welcome. Mr. Apples tries to lick him, but it's very difficult to lick an illusory projection, which just confuses the stag. But the projection lifts up its staff and a blast of magic throws them all back!

Glittery tries to teleport past the projection, but vanishes entirely. Now without their mastermind, the others consider their options. Mr. Apples casts a spell that he stole from the courier, creating a bit bramble ladder going all the way up the tower, and they start to climb (which is easy enough for Rex and Bubbles, and doesn't make a lot of sense for Mr. Apples, but don't think about it too hard).

Glittery, meantime, appears in someplace that's completely dark. She focuses for a moment and sparkles a bit more to create some light. She discovers that she's in a stone room with no windows or doors, and there's an elf chained to the wall!

The elf resembles the projection that the creatures saw out there, except he's filthy and has clearly been down here a long time. He tells Glittery that he was imprisoned by "them", and that "they" tricked a courier to bringing more enchanted cocaine, but then "they" are going to kill him and take it! He says that he could probably get them out of here if she frees his hands, and Glittery agrees, smashing the chains with her horns. She puts the elf on her back and, with his help, teleports out!

The other creatures emerge through a window on that vine ladder into a high room in the tower, and it's like a belfry (but with no bells). There are owls huddled in the rafters, watching the creatures carefully. One of the owls flutters down, and with bloodshot eyes, demands the coke. 

At this moment, Glittery appears! The elf falls off her back and yells "THEM!" And then crawls over and starts wiping the guano off a spellbook. The owls take flight, and the creatures spring into action!

Rex hurls the small bag of coke he has out of the window, which has the desired effect of luring the owls out to fly around in it. Mr. Apples casts another spell and summons a dude all in neon lights swinging nunchucks, and Bubbles stands by the window and sprays out into the coke cloud. The owls fly in, and the nunchuck-dude whacks them away as they choke on the skunk-spray.

The wizard manages to get the book away from Mr. Apples (who was trying to lick it), and casts a spell, reasserting control of the tower. Bubbles finds a hatch in the floor and Rex opens it, and it drops them both into a pile of cocaine! The owls now dead, smelly, or banished, the creatures turn their attention to the wizard.

The wizard isn't dumb enough to want to fight these folks, and besides, he has something they want! He offers them a job - they patrol his grounds (since they killed his dwarven gourds. Or guards), he'll keep them supply with coke. And apples. And...whatever other tasty foodstuffs they might like. 

The woodland creatures agree, and everyone celebrates! SNOOOOOORT!

(OK, now some thoughts on the game itself.)

The "book" is 20 pages (included the covers). 13 of those are character sheets (because each of the 12 animals you can play get their own, and then there's a blank, too), 5 are game setup charts, and one (1) is game rules. Now, this game is based on Honey Heist, which is one page in toto, but I feel like one extra page would have been really useful so the game could explain how it's meant to look. Like, clearly the tension is supposed to come from the back-and-forth between the stats, but it's not well-explained under what conditions that happens, and the text says that you roll 2 dice and take the lower when you "use your abilities as a woodland creature." What I think they meant was when you use your special ability, and I think that because in Honey Heist it explicitly says that you get that bonus when you do something related to your role in the heist or your bear-species power (polar bears swim, f'rex). Likewise, the text has multiple (and not exactly matching, though not explicitly conflicting) versions of how you move points around. 

I knew all this before I ran the game, but I figured that at the table we could make it work, and we did, it was a lot of fun. But honestly, it's amazing how much more clearly Honey Heist puts across the same ideas, and how much more the mechanics actually put across the tone and flow of the game. 

There's a temptation in humor games to just write wacky shit, but the truth of the matter is that writing an RPG is equal parts awesome creativity and boring figuring-things-out, and they both need to work. A good game designer can make it work even for a game about a very silly, very specific situation. A middling game designer often either tries to overthink it (leading to huge, sprawling books with millions of subsystems) or thinks that the mechanics of the game are somehow less important or less artistic, which leads to games that sound cool but don't actually work at the table, especially long-term, because the boring bits didn't "inspire" them. 

Anyway, I don't write game reviews anymore, but that was all in my brain so now it's here instead. SNOOOORT.

What Not to Do

Man, this fucking week. Month. Year.

OK, I'm not going to get into all of the ways that 2016 has sucked, because I have shit to do today. What I do want to talk about, a little, is this little shitshow.

That image is taken from the press release wherein Modiphius announced the writers for their new Star Trek game. I know a bunch of the guys up there, and that's a pretty impressive group of talent. You know what's not there? Any women. At all.

(Now, I'm pointing out that specific fact because I don't know all of the guys in that list, and I'm sure that some of them are LGBTQA+ and some of them might be POC; I literally don't know. So I'm sticking the what I do know, for now.)

That is, frankly, unacceptable. But I understand how it happened.

Why White Dudes Hire White Dudes

It happened because whoever was in charge of making that decision was a guy, and he went with the people he knew. He went with names he recognized, and while I'm sure he talked to some women, he didn't talk to enough. He didn't make hiring diversely a priority, and I'm here to tell ya, if it's not a priority you won't do it.

I've been in the position of hiring writers for RPG products, a bunch - dozens of projects going back to 2001 (when I had my first development gig after getting hired at White Wolf). It's hard when you have only X slots to fill, and you know X people who would be good for the gig, and all of them happen to be white dudes. That means that you know you're hiring qualified, talented people - people with whom you have a history - and that'll make the product solid, right? So hiring someone different means bumping someone you know will be good, on, what, some kind of quota?

There's a very big tendency in this hobby to knee-jerk rebel against authority, to say "You're Not the Boss of Me" to anyone trying to moderate the conversation (evidence: spend any amount of time on a heavily moderated message board or forum, especially if bannings and suspensions are public. Yes, like RPG.Net. No, I'm not interested in fighting about this). Any suggestion that hiring practices are in any way suspect gets met a lot of resistance, often using words like "quota," "merit," and "SJW." And all of that is bullshit.

No, you don't hire on a quota. You hire with an eye toward diversity. No, you don't hire someone whose writing is weak just because they're not a cishetwhitedude, but you might hire someone less experienced because of their diverse background. Ultimately it's a good choice.

Why I Hire Diversely 

Here are my reasons for hiring people not like me:

1) They're not like me. I'm a middle-class cis white man from Ohio. I was raised not rich, but certainly comfortable. I've made a lot of attempts to broaden my horizons as I've gotten older, but I'm limited by time, money, and health (social media helps!). I need diverse voices on my books because they say things I can't say because I don't know to say them.

2) The books benefit. Games written entirely by dudes like me wind up derivative and safe. Games with a diverse group of writers wind up interesting and unexpected. I can avoid being derivative and safe, but it's a conscious effort - much less work, really, to hire people who can bring change and variety easily.

3) It's fair. You can talk about "hiring on merit" all you want, but that's not how our brains work. We look for people like us and trust them more, and moreover, we avoid people we perceive as a threat (this is just an article I found on a quick Google search, but there's a lot more). Hiring diversely is a way to break down our own internal biases, and that's good for us as people, and it's good for the hobby.

How Did Modiphius Handle This

Badly. For one thing, they've kinda hung their freelancers out to dry. The guys on that list didn't make hiring decisions, and they're not accountable for the decisions Modiphius made. Instead of issuing a statement saying "we're aware of the problem, please direct questions and comments here" (where "here" is an email address or comment form so as to give people a place to direct feedback, rather than slather it over Facebook), one of their head dudes is hopping around on people's FB feeds, posting the same bunch of excuses. Basically, it cooks down to "we did talk to women, but they didn't get back to us, so we had to hire all dudes." 

Politely put, I don't believe that for a hot second. 

The press release includes this little coda at the end:

That's nice, guys, that you're looking for "diverse writers" but that's not enough. You need to approach people. You need to track down the people you want to work with. You need to make your team diverse, not whisper into the Internet "we want diverse people!" and then expect them to come to you. You're talking about populations that sci-fi, fantasy, RPGs, and gaming in general have marginalized, abused, and run out of the hobby for years. You want 'em, you need to find them. 

And hey, I get it. I've seen developers track down diverse voices and hire them, just to have them flake out on projects, and it would very easy to say "Hey, I hired a WOC on this project, she bailed or disappeared, if they don't want the jobs why should I bust my back hiring them?" 

My response to that is, I've had so many white dudes flake on projects. Just so many. And I've had women do it. It happens on every book. It's not a problem with any particular demo; if it's common in RPGs, it's because writers aren't paid enough to make the writing a priority and therefore when health, real life, or other things conflict, the little writing gig that you're being paid 4 cents a word for but asked to do playtesting, game design, writing, and world-building on is the thing that has to go. Sorry, little bonus rant for you. 

Anyway, the point is that yes, you need to make the effort. You need to build your team. You need to think about the voices you want to amplify.

There's more to this, but it's already getting long, so I think I'll post this and see what happens. 

Game as Art: Participation

I ran Monsterhearts yesterday, and as I was drifting off to sleep, I was thinking about why I love the game so much. I mean, sure, "messy lives of teenage monsters" is a cool hook, and the writing is tight, and it's probably the best implementation I've seen so far of the *World system (though Bluebeard's Bride gives it a run for its money). But on top of all of that, it feels like art.

We talk about whether RPGs (or video games, but that's a discussion I'm not really qualified to have because my interest in and exposure to video games is a pretty narrow slice) are art, but it tends to be hard to come up with a good definition of "art" as it relates to RPGs. When I think of RPGs as art, then, I realized, as I thought about Monsterhearts, that to me a game that's art is challenging.

I would argue that most RPGs actually attempt not to be challenging. What's one of the common sales pitches I hear when I'm walking the dealer's room at GenCon or Origins and talking to folks about their games? "The system gets out of the way." Well, that's cool and all, but that's not really what I want if I'm looking for art. I'm looking for something that makes me engage with the game. Games that prioritize breadth - your GURPS, your d20, even (I hate to say it, because I love the system) Fate, don't challenge so much as shoot for inclusivity.

Now, that's funny, of course, because a lot of those games have labyrinthine rules rabbit holes, such that only someone who is willing to engage and put in the time to learn the rules actually gets the full experience of the game. I talk about this with regards to NWoD a lot; it's a good system (2nd edition especially), but it gets better if you learn it and use it. Hell, that's true of Chill, too - there are a lot of fun things the game does, but you have to know how they work.

That's not the kind of challenge I'm talking about, though. That's mechanical challenge; it'll be harder if you're pressed for time or if reading comprehension (or math, in some cases) isn't your thing, but it's not art. It's not an aesthetic challenge, it's not challenging attitudes or viewpoints. It's more like a puzzle.

No, when I'm thinking about challenge, I'm thinking Monsterhearts. I'm thinking Bluebeard's Bride, or Misspent Youth. Hell, without meaning to toot my own horn, Promethean works precisely because it's assumptions and challenges are so different than the rest of the World of Darkness - you're on a journey with a specific ending, and that ending is that you leave the WoD behind and become "normal." That's 180 degrees from every other WoD game, and consequently a lot of folks label it "unplayable." It's not, though (as two long-running chronicles will attest), it just requires different engagement than other games in the same world.

A challenging game should do more than make you try and remember what kind of dice to roll and what numbers that generates. It should make clear the relationship between system and narrative. Bringing that back to Monsterhearts, I have a player in my group who is highly system-impaired. Like, actively hates "systems". But even he is aware of what it means when I tell him to bubble in "cold" at the beginning of a session; he's gonna mark experience when he rolls on cold, but he's more likely to fail. That means if he plays to his character's strengths, he'll succeed more often, but he won't get as much out of it in the long run. Character development is therefore tied directly in to what that character does within the fiction of the game, which is a hell of a lot more artistic and elegant than "you killed 80 goblins? OK, at 4 XP each, that's...".

As I was talking about this with Michelle, she pointed out that A Tragedy in Five Acts might not be art so much as it encourages players to make art. Players don't tend to remember the system (which is a pretty simple bidding mechanic, really), but they remember the play they created. That's actually something I was trying to do with my contribution to Game Chef this year, Unstuck, and those it's very much in the preliminary stage, I'd like to flesh it out at some point. That does leave me wondering where curse the darkness falls, but since it's mine, I don't think I'm qualified to judge.

One more thought: I've played with a lot of first-time RPG players over the years, and the notion that "you create, control, and speak for a character within this world" is a pretty radical one for some of them. I think it's therefore important to remember that art, even as I'm considering it here, is a pretty subjective measure; what's challenging and new for one person might be familiar or even banal to me. In that kind of case, I think it's important for those of us with more experience to a) remember that there's always someone out there doing edgier shit than we are and b) remember that no one likes snooty, scoffy people who crap on other folks' fun.

Anyway: Tell me more challenging/artistic games! Offhand, my (incomplete) list:

• Monsterhearts (duh)
• Misspent Youth
• Bluebeard's Bride
• Ganakagok
• Geasa 
• Spark (although this might fall into the same category as Tragedy; a game that helps you make art as opposed to being art)
• Dread
• With Great Power...
• Dog Eat Dog
• Magicians (maybe, I haven't played it)
• Poison'd (yeah, I know it's problematic as shit in places, but it's definitely challenging)
• Dogs in the Vineyard

Abiding by the Standards of the Community

OK. So, I don't think this sounds crazy, but I'm no one in particular.

You have the right to create whatever kinds of games you'd like. Want to make games with racist, sexist, or homophobic content? You can. Want to sell them? You can. Obviously you need to check local laws, because I don't know if all other countries have quite the same love of free speech that we have here in the USA (some restrictions do apply, even here), but whatever. You can sell it.

You can even create a game that champions a hate group. You can create a game that "takes the piss" out of people responding to serial harassment, slut-shaming, and ongoing misogyny. You can take the side of the people who have lined up with actual factual Nazis. That's a thing you can do. No one can tell you that you can't do it.

But if you make use of a marketplace that someone else owns, the folks that own this marketplace can tell you to fuck off with that. And it's nothing to do with "complaint bombing," and it sure as shit isn't because they're afraid of your raw, edgy, truth-saying. It's that you did something offensive, and they don't want to be part of it. Or, maybe, it's because the other folks who use the marketplace said, "uh, if that's what you're selling next to me on this virtual shelf, I'll fuck off and take my chances elsewhere." Those are things that can happen. Those are things people have the right to do.

(Context: James Desborough put a GamerGate inspired card game on DriveThruRPG today. People, including me, complained to DTRPG. It was taken down in minutes. Now you have context.)

So, there's that. And I don't think any of that is especially controversial. I mean, if you're a GG supporter, then maybe, but beyond that, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that someone who runs a marketplace gets to dictate what's sold there, yeah? So I want to hit two other points.

Today, when the complaints started flying, people got pretty strident. I was among them. I said, to DriveThru's Twitter feed, that I thought it was disgusting, and I stand by that. But some other folks posted Matt McElroy's personal info on Twitter, and said some really horrible things about him and his company.

Folks, that's fucking unacceptable. That's the kind of short-sighted, ignorant, vicious tactic I'd expect from people whining about "ethics in journalism" while they're trading naked pictures, illegally obtained, of the object of their misplaced ire. Don't do that shit. Express your anger, but do it smartly. FTR, selling something on DTRPG is as easy as uploading and hitting a button, once you've got an established relationship with One Book Shelf. Should there be a vetting process?  I don't know, there are considerations there. But just because someone sells something on DTRPG doesn't mean that One Book Shelf specifically endorses or supports it, and I think the salient point about DT's response is how quickly they took the game down. They owe no one any apologies, but there are some Twitter users out there that do.

Second point: I am a DTRPG seller (you can buy our stuff here!). It therefore behooves me to release products that aren't so offensive as to cause widespread complaints. That doesn't mean I can't take risks, and it doesn't mean I can't release products that have, dare I say it, an edge. It does mean that I'm entering into a relationship with DTRPG that either of us can revoke, and if that happens, I need to be prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.

I am prepared to accept those consequences, but I doubt very much that I'll have to deal with my products being removed, because I strive to make games that include more than they exclude, that celebrate diversity and define their audience by what they do and what they encourage, not on who they make unwelcome and what they can skewer.

I won't say that method is the best. It probably isn't the most profitable. But it does allow me to sleep comfortably at night, and to be proud of my work.

Game Design: Savage Worlds/curse the darkness mashup

So, as you may or may not know, we're doing a companion book for curse the darkness. As part of that, I'm doing a Savage World version of the game. And that, of course, requires I examine the rules a bit.

Scenario Creation

I think we keep scenario creation the same, with the five questions and everything. I kinda want to make the "what just happened?" question into a "what is the crisis", because it'll encourage a more in medias res feel to things, which is appropriate for Savage Worlds.

Character creation:

1. Attributes (no change, everything at d4 and then 5 points to play with)
2. Skills (no change, I'll just make sure they're all listed on the sheet so there's no book-flipping)
3. Hindrances. Now, here's a change. Players familiar with the rules can use the standard Savage Worlds hindrances, if they want. But Hindrances generally fall into three categories: Psychological (compulsions, obsessions, prohibitions on behavior); Physical (-2 on a given kind of physical action or under a given circumstance); Aptitude (-2 to all uses of a given Skill, and you have to have at least a d4 in the Skill). 
4. Edges. Again, if you know them, use the ones in the book. People get two Edges. Hindrances don't give you anything else (speeding up chargen, here). Opener is an Edge. I'm thinking of breaking Edges down along the same lines as Hindrances - Aptitude and Physical is easy enough, but Psychological doesn't easily map. I think dropping the Novice/Seasoned/Veteran thing is probably wise, since characters aren't going to live that long. 
5. No Arcane Backgrounds other than Opener. 
6. Derived traits. As usual, but here at the end, where they belong.

Rules Changes

• Bennies allow you to reroll a roll, as usual. They also allow you to escalate a removal challenge or roll to try and remove a Between Card. 
• No soak. 
• Every time someone Opens or violates the rules (basically anything that would make you give the GM a Between Point in the original system), put a card in the Between Track. When that track hits 5 cards, He notices and a Removal Challenge begins. A given combat can also become a Removal Challenge if the number of cards his the target number during the combat. 
• Players can spend a bennie to roll Spirit, difficulty +1 for each card past 1. 
• Dead is dead, make a new character. 

Removal Challenge vs. Combat

So, combat is combat. You're fighting people or animals, use normal rules. A Removal Challenge is when you're fighting Them. Any combat in the Between is a Removal Challenge. Any combat can become a Removal Challenge if the Between Track hits 5 cards. 

In a Removal Challenge, you take your actions as usual, and determine whether that action lights a candle or curses the darkness. But after every action, you roll d6 + Wild die vs. a d6 + Wild die from the GM. GM wins, you're dead. You win, you live, and you gain a section of Wick (if your action lit a candle). You gain Wick as usual. If you hit the requisite Wick for the story, you can make the essential choice to light a candle. You cannot spend a benny to reroll a live or die roll, but you can spend a benny to escalate, take a new action, and try again. If you succeed after escalation, you get an additional point of Wick (cumulative), but the GM gains a die type for every time you try it.

You can choose to die in place of another character as long as you're not already dead. 

Memory

Memory conversations start at a d4 + Wild and go up one die type for every pertinent fact (that would generate a Memory Point). When the conversation ends, everyone rolls that die. You get either 1 Wick + 1 benny/raise or 1 benny + 1 benny/raise.