Why I Try Not To Laugh at People

Short form? I want everyone to be warm, safe, well-fed, and happy.

That's why, despite any snark that I throw around online (and I do, I admit; it's hard not to some days), really, I want people to be OK.

Now, me wanting you to be OK doesn't absolve anyone from not being abusive or hurtful. It doesn't mean I won't tell you to check your privilege (and if that phrase makes you immediately roll your eyes and start grousing about "SJWs," well, you probably need to check your privilege). It doesn't mean I won't make fun of you or be sarcastic at you.

But you know what? I will never doxx you. I will never encourage other people to hunt you down and say hurtful things. I will never stalk you, and I will never, ever, knowingly lie about you. I might be wrong about something, and if I am (and if it's brought to my attention in a factual and respectful way, obviously), I'll retract it and make steps to correct it.

'Cause you know what? I was an angry young man for a long, long time. I was pissed off at women and...well, pretty much everyone. I didn't like people, and I didn't care who knew it. I was confused and scared and not a little depressed, and that makes for a really shitty cocktail. Add into the mix that I was privileged as all fuck (I grew up male, white, and well-off; I'm a bisexual atheist, so the points at which I lose my privilege are only as visible as I make them) and you've got the recipe that, had things gone a different way, I might have been out there today championing some very unsavory hashtags. And I'd probably be just as vociferous as anyone, and I'd have plenty of reassurance that I was right. And like a lot of folks, I feed on that kind of feedback.

So, despite accusations to the contrary, I don't live in an echo chamber. I pay attention to what I hear and where I hear it. I consider sources. So if you see me saying something and you think I've been taken in by "the other side," may spare 30 seconds and think that maybe, just maybe, I might know what the hell I'm talking about.

Or not, who the hell knows. Maybe I've been thoroughly corrupted by the "SJW" movement. Tell you what: Here's my ethical framework. I'll let you be the judge:

1) People have the right to say what they want...but no one owes you a platform on which to say it.

2) People have the right to sell what they want...but no one owes them customers or a storefront.

3) People have the right to believe what they want...but no one owes those beliefs anything other than acknowledgement.

4) People have the right to exist without being attacked or threatened or silenced...but pointing out problems with someone's statements isn't silencing. Disagreeing isn't, by itself, attacking.

We could get into finer points, of course. I think it's reasonable to ask for greater representation in games, for example. I'm not interested in supporting games, video or otherwise, that make no attempt to include and accept women, POC, trans, queer, etc. people. Do those folks have a "right" to be represented? Let's say it this way: They have as much right to be represented as anyone else. Do game devs have a responsibility to strive for that kind of equal representation? I don't know about responsibility, but I certainly have a right to make their decisions affect my buying habits. And that's not silencing or censorship. I owe any given game company exactly nothing.

I also believe that people can grow up. They can change. They can learn empathy. I did it. My methods might not work for everyone; for me it took having kids, getting a job that required some humility and some service, and losing people in my life that I truly loved. It require perspective, and you can't exactly bottle that. So maybe the folks who are up in arms now about "ethics in games journalism" - the ones who really believe that that's actually a thing, that the harassment and the threats, like, didn't happen or something, that believe that their favorite video games are actually under some kind of threat, maybe what they need is a little time and a little exposure to the biomass and a little perspective.

I'll say this: I wade into threads and Twitter fests and hastags and I read, not because I'm expecting to agree with what I find, but because I want to understand. What I find makes me sad, sometimes, but that's life, and I have plenty of reasons to be happy. I type and delete a lot more comments than I post, but I fuck it up sometimes and say things that are mean or sarcastic. But I do try and learn. And I hope that folks on the other "side" do the same thing - go looking for other perspectives not with the intent of making themselves angry or finding a place to lash out, but just to learn.

The world is an interesting place. It has awesome people in it. But you lose so much if you go looking for people to hate, and you gain so much if you remember that even the people who hurt you have some humanity.

Now, that's easy for me to say. I'm not being hounded out of my home or threatened with murder or rape, and don't think for a minute that I don't recognize that. I am privileged that I can be so calm about things. That's really all I mean when I say to check one's privilege - acknowledge it. See how it might inform your position. And move on.

It's late, and I'm done rambling. Next post will probably be a character or a movie or something more typical of this blog. But maybe not...maybe I'm gonna start using it for this kind of thing.

Movie #282: An Ideal Husband

An Ideal Husband is a comedy based on the play of the same name by Oscar Wilde, and starring Rupert Everett, Jeremy Northam, Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, and Minnie Driver.

Lord Arthur Goring (Everett) is a self-described idlest man in England. His friend Sir Robert Chiltern (Northam) is, by contrast, a dedicated and earnest public servant, and his wife Gertrude (Blanchett) adores and idolizes him. But then the sinister Mrs. Chevely (Moore) blows into town, the former lover of Goring and schoolmate of Gertrude (neither of whom trust her much).

She immediately blackmails Chiltern into supporting a canal concern in which she's heavily invested, threatening to expose the shady deal by which he made his fortune. She ups the ante by revealing the truth to his wife. Meanwhile, Goring does his best to help out, and finally succeeds, with the help of Chiltern's sister, Mabel (Driver).

In the meanwhile, of course, there are lots of missed connections, misunderstandings, and sexual innuendo. It's a Wilde play, and Goring is pretty clearly Wilde's self-insert. He gets some of the best lines, but no one goes hungry for good dialog. The cast also has great chemistry; you completely buy Northam and Blanchett as a couple that worships each other, and Driver and Everett as a couple that thinks they're just snarky friends, but actually suit each other nicely. Julianne Moore turns in a nicely paced performance; she goes from manipulative to vulnerable to still evil without any jarring shifts.

Overall, it's a fun, light, and very watchable movie.

My Grade: B+
Rewatch value: Medium-high, especially if Michelle's around

Next up: The Incredibles

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.

Character Creation: Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Ed

I made the decision a while back to make multiple characters if I have multiple editions of a game. That cuts both ways; it does mean that I get to do a couple of versions of the World of Darkness, but it also means I'm not quite done with D&D. C'est la vie.

So today, I want to do a character and I have the beginnings of a concept, so here we are.

The Game: Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition
The Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
Degree of Familiarity: Quite a bit; I'm running it at present, and I did a bit of consulting about the new version of the game (but didn't write for it...yet).
Books Required: Just the core, which is presently called Blood and Smoke, but is going to get rereleased with the proper title soon. I may grab some of my 1st ed books as necessary.

 
So, here's the thing about Requiem. It's a lot of fun, but the changes between it and Vampire: The Masquerade are, in a lot of places, too subtle. Plus, it suffers from something that a lot of the NWoD lines do; the powers are sort of boring. Maybe not boring if you were coming to Vampire as your first horror game, but they don't really break any ground; they're largely the same powers as from Masquerade, with some cleaned-up mechanics. There are some exceptions; I humbly think that the Coils of the Dragon are pretty cool (I'm biased, I wrote them), and I like the Nightmare Discipline and Theban Sorcery.

In Blood and Smoke, the writing team (which included Olivia Hill, Stew Wilson, Filamena Young, and Dave Brookshaw) changed this up a bit. The Disciplines don't work the way they have since the 90s. The assumptions of the game have changed a bit. And that's good. I'm finding, as I'm running it, that I'm having to look stuff up, because it doesn't work the way it did for the last 20 years, and a lot of things just come standard for vampires these days. Not to mention that the game puts focus on vampires' relating to people, which was something that the previous versions of the game always talked about but never put into mechanics. Overall, I think it's an improvement.

I have a concept, too!

I really love this song ("Take Me to Church," by Hozier). I think it's sexy as hell. And since I've started listening to Hozier, this song has really screamed Requiem to me (other things that do that: Fright Night (the remake), Only Lovers Left Alive). I want to make a character who is utterly and completely bound to another vampire. The focus of his affection would probably be an NPC, but I'm not choosy.

Anyway!

Step One: Character Concept. I picture this guy being relatively young, probably mid-30s, when he was Embraced. Let's make it hard on myself - he was married, had two kids, a job which I'll think about later, and was pretty much happy. Then he went out to a bar with some friends, and met her. She bewitched him (Majesty), but that was just the beginning. She must have felt something for him, too, because she showed him magic. She showed him eternal life and the sweet, red, sticky, agony of vampirism. And he's never looked back.

The scary thing about him is that he should still be conflicted. He should still remember his mortal life. He doesn't. Rather, he does, vaguely, but he doesn't much care. He loves and worships his sire with a zealous devotion, and would cheerfully laid down his unlife for her.

I should name her, huh? Let's call her Satine.

So, his concept is "Avid Worshipper." At this stage I also need three Aspirations, two short-term and one long-term. Hmm. Well, my long-term goal is "Prove my love to Satine." One short-term can be "Become injured protecting Satine." And another can be "Bring Satine a special vessel" (that is, some mortal that she'll be especially happy to feed on).

I kind of like that he's hyper-focused on Satine and pleasing her. It would make him super easy to manipulate.

OK, now Step Two: Attributes. Usual split, 5/4/3. I think we'll go Social as primary, then Physical, then Mental.

Social, I'll dump 3 into Presence and one each into Manipulation and Composure.

Physical, I'll put two into Strength and one each into Dexterity and Stamina.

And, Mental, I'll put two into Wits, one into Intelligence, leaving Resolve at 1, which is perhaps unwise for a vampire, but eh.

Step Three: Skills. Same drill, 11/7/4. Hmm. Now I have to think about who he was in life and what he was skilled at.

I think I'll put Mental last again; that'll be the remnants of his mortal-life Skills. I'll put Physical primary and Social secondary.

For Physical, I want three in Brawl (to protect Satine), three in Stealth (lurking), two in Firearms, one in Drive. I'll stick the other two in Athletics, because always take Athletics.

For Social, I'll put three in Intimidation, two in Persuasion, one in Expression, and one in Streetwise.

And Mental is pretty easy. One in Computer, two in Occult, one in Academics. He had a job involving files and archives, he thinks. It probably wasn't important. It couldn't have been, she wasn't there.

Step Four: Skill Specialties. I'll specialize Brawl in Bodyguard, so I can get between Satine and a threat. I'll specialized Firearms in Called Shots for the same reason. Finally, I suppose I should make some attempt to call back to the mortal this guy once was, so I'll specialize Academics in Psychology. Was he a clinical psych? Behavior profiler? Who cares? (The Storyteller might, but I'd leave that to her.)

Step Five: Add Kindred Template. And then, the Embrace happened. So what clan should my character, and therefore Satine, be?

The obvious choice is Daeva. So that's what I'll do, because it makes too much sense. That lets me add a dot to either Dexterity or Manipulation. Easy choice. I'll take Dexterity.

I know I want to put him in the Circle of the Crone, so that's covenant taken care of.

Now, Mask and Dirge. These replace Virtue and Vice for vampires. Mask is how you hide amongst people, Dirge is the monster you really are. Hmm. I think his Mask is Follower; publicly, he belongs to Satine and he doesn't care who knows it. He actually wants people to know it; that's part of the thrill. But his Dirge is Junkie. The dark, sticky secret is that he's addicted to Satine, fully and utterly, with all the problems that implies.

And then a Touchstone, which is a person, place, or thing that keeps me grounded and in touch with humanity. But he's forgotten most of what grounds him in humanity, and I don't want to take any of his mortal family as Touchstones. Instead, I'll take the club where he met Satine. He was still human there. That's the last place he ever drew breath. We'll call it LuAnn's Bar. He still goes there sometimes, but has to dodge his former friends. Or maybe he's just killed them, who knows.

Disciplines! Two have to be in-clan (Majesty, Celerity, Vigor) and the third can be whatever, including Cruac. Lessee now. I do want a dot of Cruac to represent what Satine has taught him. And then the question is, two Celerity or two Vigor? Hmm. Celerity has some benefits, including being able to interrupt someone else's action, but Vigor is better for doing damage. I...think I'll do one of each, actually.

As for my Cruac ritual, they don't really get good until level 2 (seriously, the level 1 rituals in Circle of the Crone are kind of meh), so I'll take Rigor Mortis, 'cause that's fun.

And, of course, 1 Blood Potency.

Step Six: Add Merits. I get 10 dots of Merits, as it should be. And there are a bunch in here.

But you know what, I'm gonna bite the bullet and spend 5 and raise my Blood Potency by 1. That'll let me activate Vigor and Celerity in the same turn, which is good. That does eat 5 Merit dots, sadly, so let's see what's left. I apparently don't get a free do in Covenant Status anymore, so I should take one. I like Acute Senses, and that's just one, so that's good. My character doesn't have Kiss of the Succubus, though clearly Satine does.

Boy, some of the Merits feel unnecessary. Unnatural Affinity, for example. Why does that need to be a Merit? If something has blood, you can feed on it. I can see a Merit allowing you to take "blood" from ghosts...except there's a whole Discipline about that (called Essentiaphagia; I know because I wrote it). Anyway.

I like Anonymity. I'll back-burner that, though, because I want to look at fighting style Merits. Ok, I want Close Quarters Combat (or Fighting Style: Burn Notice, take your pick), which requires me getting out God-Machine Chronicle, but I'm OK with that. I'll take two dots there. And for my last dot, I would take Anonymity, but it's more effective at higher levels. I'll take a dot of Mentor, though, for Satine. I choose three Skills (or two Skills and Resources); these are things she can do for me.

Now, interestingly, the lower the dot rating, the less your commitment to your Mentor, but the effect is still much the same. The Mentor has successes on the Skills in questions (if they'd make a roll for you) equal to the dot rating, but surely that's only useful at 1 dot and five dots, for the most part? Huh. Shoulda thought that through a bit more (I mean, I didn't write it, but it pops up in God-Machine Chronicle which means I vetted it). Well, it works in my favor like whoa, so I'll choose Resources, Investigation, and Subterfuge as my Skills, how 'bout. As for what she wants from me, well...probably a lot less than I'm giving her anyway (drain the whole sea, get something shiny).

Derived traits are easy; Humanity 7, Defense 5, Willpower 3 (ugh), Health 7, Size 5, Speed 11, Initiative 5. Just need a name, then. I think Satine calls him Amon. He's forgotten his mortal name.

I picture Amon as a young Antonio Banderas, actually. Wears blacks and reds, maybe some onyx jewelry. Carries a pistol in a back holster. Wishes he could get her name tattooed on him somewhere.

And that's it!

Movie #281: The Dark Crystal

The Dark Crystal is a fantasy movie done with puppets, directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz and starring Henson, Oz, and Kathryn Mullen.

The movie starts with a whole heap of voiceover, and informs us that 1000 years ago, some bad shit happened, the Dark Crystal cracked, the Skekis appeared and took over, and killed the shit out of all the gelflings (elf/halfing like things; they had a culture and writing and everything, but it's mostly gone now). Likewise, the Mystics (lizard-like, peaceful, singing creatures) popped up at the same time.

The movie opens with the Skekis Emperor and the "wisest of the Mystics" dying at the same time, and the latter tell Jen, the supposed last of the gelflings, that he needs to grab the shard of the Dark Crystal from Augra. He does, dodging attacks from the giant-bug creatures called Garthim (servants of the Skeksis), and eventually meets up with Kira (Mullen), another gelfling. Together they travel to the castle of the Skeksis, heal the crystal, and merge the Skeksis and the Mystics into one, weird-ass ghost-like race, which promptly sods off and leaves the two gelflings to make the world in the Crystal's light.

The story is actually really simplistic, and it annoys me a little that the Mystic dude couldn't just say, "Get the shard from Augra. Head to the big ol' Skekis castle. Heal the Crystal. Watch out for the bug-monsters." It's not in-genre, of course, and the guy was dying, but still the mission itself is pretty straightforward. There's definitely an undercurrent of tension, because if the Great Conjunction happens the Skeksis rule forever, but there's also a weird element of fatalism that runs through it - the bad ending might actually happen, and that would suck, but something's going to happen.

I'm informed that there's a Ganakagok hack using The Dark Crystal as a basis, and I can totally see it working - everyone knows the end is coming, it's just the particulars that are up in the air. Also, the whole movie has a very mytho-poetic feel to it.

The voice acting is largely meh, Jen especially comes off as whiny and Luke Skywalker-ish, but Kira is a little more engaging (and she actually has shit to do, too). The worldbuilding is pretty fantastic, and you can tell that mostly this was an excuse to build a bunch of monster puppets and put them on screen. Which is fine - that alone is worth a watch - but the pacing is a little slow, and that trips me up some.

My Grade: B+
Rewatch value: Low

Next up: An Ideal Husband

Promethean: Investigations and Callbacks

Last night I ran Promethean, as I'm wont to do.

The characters, recall, had gone back to Enoch's place to do a little research. Enoch put the ciphered pages they found up on the wall to try and figure them out. Avalon, meanwhile, made some art (wrapping Fluffy in plastic wrap and doing some sponge/splatter painting; she's trying new methods), and Feather went out and got pizza.

Enoch, in studying the cipher, realizes it's a book cipher - he needs the key book to solve it. It's not the journal that he nicked from Rivers' apartment (not enough pages), so the characters figure they might go back to said apartment and poking around. They also want to swing by the pharmacy and see if they can get a sense of who poisoned poor Charles.

They head back to the apartment, and realize the door is unlocked. Grimm uses Piercing Sight and looks through the wall - three men. One, a very handsome, very well-dressed man, is sitting on the couch looking through a book. The other two, obviously well-trained and buff, are looking through the bookshelves, checking the door and the window every few seconds. The characters go downstairs to figure this out.

Avalon suggests she could go into the apartment and claim to be a neighbor checking on her elderly friend. Grimm disagrees, saying that these guys are trained and might see through this deception - they should take them down. This becomes an argument between Avalon, who is frustrated with Grimm's rush to violence, and Grimm, who is annoyed that Avalon doesn't appear to recognize the gravity of what's happening. Meanwhile, Enoch just walks in and claims to be a student of Charles (taking a Beat for his Refinement Condition). Matt and Avalon follow, while Grimm and Feather stay downstairs.

The leader introduces himself as Devon Parker, and when he learns Enoch is a student of Charles, reveals that he, too, is an alchemist (though he doesn't say the word). He claims that Charles was in the process of joining Devon's "social club," but as it's exclusive, they're here looking for the correspondence between him and Charles so they can get rid of it so it doesn't get out to the general populace. Devon seems intrigued by both Avalon and Enoch, and hands Enoch a business card from a gold case, inviting him to dinner. Matt notices that Devon wears a gold ring with a scales etched onto it. Avalon, meanwhile, checks the room to see if any books are missing, but fails the roll to figure that out and takes the Beat for a dramatic failure, and is thus convinced that these guys stole some books.

Downstairs, Grimm vents to Feather and indicates his plan to go off to the pharmacy alone. Feather tells him to wait, and they check outside - sure enough, a third dude is watching the building from a car. Grimm sits down to cool off, and Feather makes a milestone (talk someone down from a rash or violent act). Presently, the others come downstairs (and Grimm and Feather hides as Devon and company leave).

The characters go upstairs and start searching for a book that would work as the cipher. They don't find it, and Avalon is of the opinion that Parker's people have it. They go downstairs a while later, as the sun is setting, and a young man with a soft black jacket and pale skin passes them. Grimm knows a vampire when he sees one, and Enoch notes that he doesn't leave a handprint on the glass door - he doesn't sweat. Does a vampire "live" here? They see him go upstairs, but don't follow.

They head downstairs to look for a storage unit, and find one. Opening it up, they find a footlocker with a bunch of shabby, but folded, clothes, and boxes of knickknacks from across the country. Enoch, remembering the journal he found, realizes that these things were all from Charles' Ramble, the souvenirs of his Pilgrimage. In the piano, they find a number that seemed to be an SSN, but not other referent.

They head down the street to the pharmacy. The pharmacy is family owned, not a chain, and the pharmacist is very old. They tell him of the death of Charles Rivers, and show him the inhaler - he confirms that Rivers got it here. Avalon glances around using Identification, looking for mercury cyanide, but doesn't see any (though she can't see far back into the guy's workshop). They chat a bit, and learn that Charles has been a customer for nearly 20 years, but only once came into the shop with someone else, a young woman named Carla. The pharmacist also mentions the tattoo on Charles' hand; they got into a discussion about it (the pharmacist is Jewish, and assumed Rivers was, too, and there's that whole prohibition against marking your flesh). But as Charles explained it, if he ever vanished or died, he wanted that to be the end of it. The pharmacist also gives them the number that Charles had listed as an emergency contact - but there is no name with it.

The characters leave and head back to Enoch's apartment, and discuss things a bit. Grimm wonders, again, if Charles might have killed himself, but Enoch says that if he wanted to die, he was capable of much less painful poisons. They talked about Rivers' apparent request for closure, but they'd pretty much already violated that. Avalon does a little hacking, and isn't able to match the SSN with anyone who's died or is receiving death benefits. She also finds that the phone number is an internal phone number for a company called ChiTech, but the company doesn't seem to have much real presence - no web site, no records online. Might be a shell.

The characters figure they have three main avenues of exploration, here: Devon Parker, the SSN, and ChiTech. We shall see what happens next time.

Notes for the Pilgrimage(s)

Notes for Promethean. Players quit reading....



....


wait for it....


...NOW!