Welcome back from GenCon, fellow gamers! To all those who attended as part of the nearly 50,000 gamers who hit the Indianapolis area… are you as tired as I am? Good lord, it was a heck of a convention. I will talk more about it in my next post. First, however, I’m going to riff on a different problem. Let’s talk together, shall we, about Nazis.
Nazis are the bad guys in so many games its hard to make a list. They serve as the ultimate expression of evil given form. Nazis represent the boogeyman of human devastation, of dehumanizing monsters in uniform who have no consideration for their fellow man. They are the perfect example of a person divorced from their empathy for the ‘other’ in the world, willing to destroy lives based on their rhetoric. It’s hard not to see a Nazi in a piece of work and not say ‘that is purely evil.’ That is, in fact, what most game designers count on when they add Nazis into their work. Need a villain that everyone can rally around kicking around? Make it Nazis! Want people to feel comfortable with walloping the crap out of a person in a game with, say, a rocket launcher? Make the villain a Nazi and suddenly people don’t feel anything anymore because, well, it’s the personification of evil. That’s what Nazis have become in games – the shorthand for a villainy so vile there is no explanation needed. It is #evil with a capitol hashtag. And for some people, that’s all Nazis are.
For other people, they are the nightmare of our grandparents’ childhood. They are the stories we heard growing up about relatives we’ll never meet. They’re the reason our relatives never felt safe all the remaining days of their lives, and named their daughters and sons after children that were no longer alive. They were real boogeymen that crawled out of history and into our lives. And to some, they’ve become a media punchline.
I won’t go into how difficult that can be for me. After seeing my third product in the dealer’s hall at GenCon, I may have exclaimed loudly that I could use a moratorium on Nazis for a little while. I could go one year without seeing Nazis used haphazardly in a game. Then I considered that thought and moved beyond it. Nazis being used in games might bother me, but they’re contextualized in those games as the villains they are and ought to be in media. I even saw games that treated the material well, such as Ken Hite’s book Nazi Occult and realized that not all Nazi representations were created equal. The content might be difficult for me but that is me. I can avoid those games, or choose to appreciate them from afar.
Then, I encountered the Nazi cosplayer.
I wish I had a picture of this person, walking down the street past the noodle shop in downtown Indianapolis. I was sitting with a friend, talking about how wonderful the convention had been so far, but not five minutes before I had been discussing how tired I was of seeing Nazi EVERYTHING lately. Then, no sooner had we moved on to another topic but BAM. Here comes a Nazi down the street. I got a good look at the whole outfit and even as I tried to place what he might be cosplaying from (was it a video game? an anime? a film?) my brain came up with the only answer that counted: NOT OKAY.
Context is a very important consideration when looking at difficult content in media. If there is, say, racist content in a piece of media, is it contextualized to represent that racism as acceptable or unacceptable? Is it historically placed? What does the piece of work say about racism through the events going on around it? All of these things provide context. However, cosplay is one of those mediums that offers very little context. Unless someone is crystal clear what that person is costuming as, there is no context between a cosplayer in a Nazi outfit and, say, just someone wearing Nazi regalia and walking through a convention. And left without the context, I couldn’t tell what the hell this cosplayer was intending. Was he intending to just represent the villain of some piece of fiction, or was he glamorizing Nazis through his pristine costuming? I had no idea. All I saw was a Nazi walking down the street past where I was eating and I couldn’t drive that image out of my mind.
Say what you want about freedom of expression. Say what you please about being able to wear what you want. But when you put on a swastika or the whole regalia, death’s head and all, you are taking on the symbology around that and the context that comes with wearing the uniform of one of the most reviled groups in the 20th century. And you carry that around with you into other people’s lives. Is that what you want to bring to a convention of 50,000 people who are there to have fun? Is that what you want people to see?
Now let’s talk about retail. There’s been a lot of talk about what I like to call UnderwearGate 2013. A booth called Belle and Blade (adorable name) put up some underwear that was some of the most ridiculously offensive merch I’ve ever seen at a con. One of the undies actually said “I could use some Sexual Harassment.” Gareth Skarka pointed it out and I got a photo of it out on Twitter, which got folks talking, and there were complaints about it. It’s all chronicled here on Skarka’s blog. But here’s the other part: did you know this booth, which makes its bones selling military movies and gear, also has tons of Nazi stuff?
Previous to seeing what kind of awfulness was available, I went to buy a ‘zombie killer’ patch from this booth for some LARP costuming. It was only after I paid that I turned around in my half-exhausted state and saw boxes with Nazi symbols on it, Nazi signs, and even Nazi pin-up posters on the inside of the booth. That is ALONG with the underwear. So in one shot, Belle and Blade became one of the most egregious examples of what not to represent at a convention by repping sexual harassment AND Nazis in one cash grab.
“But Shoshana,” you might ask, “isn’t it freedom of expression? Isn’t that his right?”
Actually, not entirely. See, the sexual harassment stuff is straight up against the terms of GenCon’s policies on convention harassment and reports were made. But the Nazi paraphernalia is more of a grey area, just like Nazi cosplay. The policies say something about not being able to costume anything that resembles a uniform from the 20th century, but that certainly didn’t stop Nazi cosplayers that I saw. That didn’t stop the stuff from being sold in a booth.
Freedom of expression is the backbone of so many conversations about offensive content. However just as it might be someone’s right to go out and walk the streets of a convention wearing Nazi gear (barring any rules at that event that says you can’t), it’s my right to feel that is unacceptable. It’s my right to question what that person is trying to represent or express. And it’s my right to say that maybe you ought to consider the time and energy you’re putting into so meticulously glamorizing such a symbol of human evil.
Note: In my consideration of the situation, I want to make clear that I don’t blame GenCon for the situation. GenCon is a wonderful convention that I enjoy very much and that puts on a hell of a show every year. Take that as a disclaimer.
Sexism in video games. The conversation has echoed through the internet and the halls of game development companies for months now, as it has seemingly become the topic whose time has come. With women like Anita Sarkeesian doing her best to get the message out there (despite heinous threats against her person), there finally seems to be some serious critical attention being paid to the choices designers make in creating their female characters. If you aren’t familiar with Sarkeesian’s work, I would point to Feminist Frequency and her video series Tropes Vs Women to get some background.
Part and parcel with the discussion of character design has been questions of how female characters are depicted in game advertising. However even in a time when companies are examining how to reach their audiences, there are still some stellar examples out there of blatantly sexual advertisement that is ignoring the conversation altogether. They just seem to be skipping the discourse completely in return for one thing: boobs.
This article is brought to you by some late night reading I was doing that was interrupted when this advertisement caught my eye:
“IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW WHO THIS WAS FOR, WE KINDLY LABELED IT FOR YOU! YOU’RE WELCOME!”
Well, if that isn’t a way to interrupt what you were doing. Ironically I was actually looking up an article on sexism in games when this little jewel popped up. After I finished staring, I then went from laughing my butt off to horror back to laughing. Because – really guys? REALLY?! In the face of such ridiculousness its hard to not laugh because such ads just jump the shark from sexism into plain preposterous.
Once I’d recovered from my laughing fit, I got down to looking this gem up to find out what the heck it’s all about. Wartune labels itself as an “Epic Strategy MMORPG” that secretly seems to wish it was World of Warcraft. But since it isn’t, I suppose its advertisers wanted to find some way to lure in players. So they decided to just forget about, you know, TACT and went for the obvious advertisement choice. With a pop up ad so tacky that it might make some porn execs roll their eyes, Wartune is just another example of the silliness that goes on.
Now, you might think that this is an isolated case of the silliness of internet game advertisements. But it’s not.
“Come play, my Lord.” Yeesh, I’ve seen better dialogue in porn.
Remember these, folks? For a while, you couldn’t log into a website without tripping over the awful advertisements for Evony. It was a city builder that promised it would be “FREE FOREVER!” and decided to use heaving breasts as their primary way to draw people to their game. The amusing part was the game was clearly aimed at a fantasy audience, but as their advertisements went on they just plain through out the premise of sexy elves and went right to modern-looking women on display. The thing became such a huge internet joke that Plants Versus Zombies made a great parody of it for their own game, with a boob-showing zombie asking you to “Save Your Lover!” It was so ludicrous as to become a joke. The game still exists, though now the woman shown smiling at you from their front page is in a Renn Faire style gown and far more covered. As you can see, the precedent was always there for Wartune to build on.
But surely these are just internet games, right? Nothing so egregious could exist in mainstream-
Sorry, nope. Couldn’t even get through the sentence. It isn’t just the tiny online games that do it, folks. The nigh ludicrous objectification lives and breaths in AAA games and has for years. There are so many examples I could give, but let’s just put out a couple here to give some context to the conversation:
Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior – 1987 – Palace Software
Here’s just an example of the historical context. This is a Commodore 64 game called Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior. This is in fact the back cover of the game. The front shows a giant muscle-bound male Barbarian standing over the above woman as she reclines in his shadow. At least on the back they let her stand up and hold a sword. Remember, this is a Commodore 64 game. All the characters are on wee little pixels so basic they make your Super Nintendo look like Star Trek technology.
Want to get more mainstream? Let’s have a conversation about some ads for Soul Calibur. Now I’m a huge fan of this fighting game series but the advertisements for Soul Calibur 5 made me wonder if they forgot they were marketing a game and not skin care products or butt floss. Meet two characters from Soul Calibur 5. Who are they? I can’t tell because no distinguishing features of theirs are actually showing!
Y’know, I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine.
Hi there Sorceress. Nice to meet you. It must be really hard to concentrate on magic with the massive back pain you must have.
Now look, I get it. Sex sells. But there are lines sometimes that just seem so ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh. And then maybe get mad. Mostly at such blatantly over the top examples, however, I have to wonder how worried the designers must be about the weakness of their product that their answer is: “We just have to have boobs! More butt! Whatever you do, don’t put a face on it! Just maximize the sexy factor and they’ll come and play!”
And the sad part is that it kind of works.
Take Dragon’s Crown. This game created a whopping controversy by first creating characters with such gravity-defying proportions that they made people across the industry cringe.
Hi there Sorceress. Nice to meet you. It must be really hard to concentrate on magic over the massive back pain those must cause.
Then it made even more headlines when the designer tried to explain away the ridic proportions of his women by pointing out the guys are just as bad, and then turned the whole thing into a bad gay joke. It was kind of a nightmare all the way around PR-wise but the game came out. And all the gravity defying boobs did their job – they got the game the PR it needed to garner more attention. Am I saying that is why they designed it that way? Maybe not. But maybe it sure didn’t hurt either. The game’s out there. It’s part of the discussion now. And no amount explanation can justify the chiropractic nightmare that is that character design.
Not all examples of bad representations of women in game ads are so blatant of course. These just stand as the eye rolling, knee slapping, I have to laugh so I don’t get furious examples of the egregious sexist representations in games. They exist, I believe, so that when people come out to say that there isn’t a problem with sexism in the industry and that women should just calm down, I can pull these beauties out of the drawer. I keep them around so as to provide juxtaposition to other examples of sexist ads to ask ‘how very different are they?’
Case in point the comparisons being made between how the female characters are portrayed in two of 2013’s biggest AAA titles, Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us.
Now I’m a huge fan of Bioshock Infinite but when the cover to the game came out, there was an uproar over the design. Elizabeth, our female companion to the hero Booker DeWitt, is relegated to the back cover of the game box. Sure, she’s clothed as heck (thank heavens for small favors) but she’s on back. Heck, even the Barbarian bikini woman got to be on the front too! Kenneth Lavine, lead designer of Infiniteexplained his choice as meant to appeal to the “uninformed” consumer. He described actually visiting frat houses to find men who hadn’t heard of Bioshock and then designed the cover based on their suggestions. Dude on front? Check. Gun? Double check. Woman relegated to somewhere less important? Done!
By comparison, The Last of Us placed lead character Ellie front and center in the advertisements for the game despite pressure not to do so. In fact, designer Neil Druckman reported in the above linked article that their company Naughty Dogs was under lots of pressure to take Ellie out of the ads altogether. Still they stood their ground and right now, you can’t throw a stone in the game industry without hitting praise for The Last of Us and its brilliant Ellie. This was a conscious choice that Naughty Dogs made about how they were going to present their female lead and it paid off big time.
Comparing the over-the-top T&A show of the above ads to the more subtle question of representation in Infinite versus Last of Us does nothing if not to point out how insidious the problem really is. While critics can discuss the problems of the big name titles, though, and the more subtle choices designers are making, sometimes it bears pointing out the blatant ones too. Otherwise stuff like this might slip us by:
It’s that time again. Time for me to make a little comment on commentary. Why? Because who watches the watchmen, really. Who critiques the critics? Well apparently I do, and this week I’m aiming my sights at those who critique nerdy things for the media. I’m specifically looking at you, Linda Stasi over at the New York Post. She recently wrote up a review of the upcoming SyFy television show, Heroes of Cosplay. And let me tell you, this review is a positive stinker.
Right off the bat, Stasi opens up her review admitting something: she doesn’t understand cosplay. She admits she doesn’t get it in the least. Then she spends the next few paragraphs trying to describe cosplay to the uninitiated viewer who might not be familiar with this subset of geek culture. Hopelessly floundering, Stasi falls back on sayings like “Renting is so last decade!” and “What the hell is that?” I’m sorry, Ms. Stasi, but this isn’t Sex in the City and you aren’t Carrie Bradshaw. What you are, however, is clearly attempting to cover up your ignorance with cute quips that don’t quite do the job. The reviewer here was clearly unfamiliar with the material and therefore went for the cheap joke. No surprise here, since reviewers have been falling back on the stereotypical ‘point and laugh at the nerdy folks’ trope for their commentary since geek chic began.
Newsflash: there are more television shows on about supernatural/fantasy elements than ever. Game of Thrones is winning Emmies. Lost was a thing for ages. The Avengers blasted down the doors at the box office. The Big Bang Theory (like it or hate it) is HUGE. NERDS ARE IN. So why are we still accepting nerd-hater reviewers throwing their ‘cool kid’ crap all over the place?
Folks, it is no secret that reviewers have to watch a lot of crap. They sit through television shows, books, movies and plays that they might think are great, but a lot of the time they’re going to get stuck with things they hate. At the end of these drawn out experiences they have to fill up column inches or blog posts or even on-air commentary about the pros and cons of said piece of work. Yet if the reviewer has any familiarity with the material, has done even the slightest bit of their homework on the piece they’re reviewing, and was approaching the material with the least bit of respect, it shows in the work. Those reviews at least give honest critique and commentary on a piece of material, citing points and facts about it rather than falling back into little snide jokes.
It’s not as if audiences aren’t noticing the difference. Just last year was the awful One Girlfriend’s Guide to The Avengers debacle, in which a Moviefone review (purportedly satirical, but only indicated as such after the fact) not only insulted women but anyone with an IQ about who would be interested in seeing The Avengers film. That movie went on to break records in the box office and prove that comic book movies can not only rock, they can kick the crap out of earnings reports. Reviews, screw with that at your peril.
What is even worse about this kind of review is that its once again laugh at the nerd day. Reviews like this come off as superior, smug high school cheerleader nonsense at its worse, and yet they are perpetuated. I’d like to remind folks of something: nerds spend money on these products and are a huge part of the commercial audience. Embrace the geek or risk alienating key portions of your audience. Media outlets that splash pictures of sexy cosplayers during New York Comic Con week and then publish reviews like this (I’m talking to you, New York Post, you had your NYCC coverage too) have very short memories indeed about how popular geek cultural items have become and how they draw readership both from geek communities and from everyone else. Instead of embracing that, some outlets have clung to treating geek media and culture like it is some kind of sideshow attraction rather than actual valid popular culture.
Worse yet, these outlets ignore an incredible resource they could be utilizing: the geek community themselves. There are vital, vibrant, passionate commentators within the geek community who know their business both as enthusiasts and as critics and would do a much better job presenting informed media review. It’s the outlets that have embraced the geek – like MTV and CNN to name two- that understand just how much cultural capitol geekdom has right now and find ways to welcome rather than alienate, to include rather than ridicule.
Meet the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi – instant media sensation.
This week saw news outlets reporting on a major casting choice for the upcoming television season. No, it wasn’t who was going to be on the next Bachelorette, or the replacement of someone on CSI. This was an announcement as big as the fanfare over who will be the next Bond, and came from the same part of the world. It was the fantastically geeky Doctor Who announcement of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor and it rocked news outlets everywhere. If a single one of those outlets had a reviewer going “God, this is so nerdy!” they’d be laughed out of their britches by the number of Whovians across the world and the power of a single fandom. Media outlets instead recognized the cultural capitol at work here and offered it the respect that power is due. And you know what? That’s the way it should be.
The time of snarky, dismissive reviews of nerddom are over and those who don’t get geek culture better grab some internet time on Tumblr or Buzzfeed to catch up or risk finding themselves extinct. Because nerds can do their job better, folks, and we’ll do it without being insulting.
That time is almost here: when gaming geeks of all kinds extricate ourselves from the rest of the world and head to Indianapolis for that mecha of nerd fun, GenCon! GenCon stands as my favorite of the big conventions. It is huge, noisy and full of people, all of whom are coming together to bask in the glow of the gaming things we love. If you’ve never been, it’s a jam-packed experience full of panels, demos, games to play, merch to buy, and people to meet. There are parties, awards ceremonies, and after-hours fun to be had too, then you get up in the morning bright and early to do it again!
This will be my fifth year attending GenCon but it is my privilege to be going this year not as an attendee but as a speaker. On top of attending great events like the Diana Jones Awards and the Ennies (go Night’s Black Agent! Win!) I’ll be behind a microphone at the following:
Thursday August 15 @ 2PM – Getting Started In The Industry – Crowne Plaza Ballroom C – Have questions about how to get started in the industry? Want to know how freelancers got their beginnings? What about self-publishing, is that really for you? Come and ask questions and listen to people who have gone through the process answer you back. I’m pleased as hell to be on this panel with the likes of Brian A Liberge (Beer Star Games), Tracy Hurley (Sand and Steam Productions), Eloy Lastana (Third Eye Games), and Matt James (Vorpal Games) and can’t wait to speak to folks about my experiences thus far.
Thursday August 15 @ 4PM – Depression, Anxiety, Treatment and the Gamer – Crown Plaza Victoria Station C/D – John Adamus will be leading more of a conversation about how to be a game developer (or just a gamer) when facing issues of mental illness. It’s my privilege to be involved in this discussion, as this topic is near and dear to my heart and my experience as a designer struggling with bi-polar disorder. This talk is meant to be a supportive environment to discuss how to keep creating and working in the industry while still dealing with the monsters you have to face. Come to share if you feel comfortable, or just listen.
Friday August 16 @ 5PM – Religious Representation In Role-Playing Games – Crown Plaza Victoria Station A/B – Come join me as I sit down with Lillian Cohen-Moore and Jaym Gates to discuss how religions are represented in role-playing games. How are real-world religions such as Islam, Christianity and Judaism treated by mainstream gaming? What are the tropes, trends and territories explored by gaming when it comes to religious characters? And what about the issue of religious appropriation of icons, traditions and mythologies integrated into gaming works? Can it be and has it been done respectfully? We’ll pick apart this difficult question together.
So that’s my schedule! In between I’ll be attending lots of other panels, getting down with the awesome D20 Burlesque crew as they show off their best to the GenCon crowd, and celebrating the awards at the Ennies. I’m also super excited to hear Patrick Rothfuss speak – he is one of my favorite fantasy authors! It’s going to be a busy GenCon. To those who will be attending, I look forward to seeing you there!
Interested in getting together with me at the convention to talk shop? Hit me up @ShoshanaKessock on Twitter and we can see about setting up a time.
(Warning: This will not be language safe. Because frankly, this whole argument demands a little bit of four-letter wording).
In one moment, I’m going to show you a video that I saw in a recent Penny Arcade article about the recent Phil Fish / Fez II meltdown that occurred this past week. If you’re not familiar with the situation, let me give a breakdown so you understand what set off this post in the first place. Here’s a little context:
Phil Fish is an indie video game designer who created a game called Fez. He was in development of a sequel to Fez called Fez II when Marcus Beer of the GameTrailers podcast went on his show and verbally ripped Fish fellow indie creator Jonathan Blow a new face. For what reason? I can honestly not pretend to care. It was mostly about the fact that Fish and Blow (who Beer decided to nickname BlowFish) decided not to answer questions about the upcoming indie games offerings on X-Box Live. So Beer decided to target his self-confessed “bitch and moan session” at these creators for not answering questions.
That’s when things went mayhem. Because Fish shot back over Twitter and the two got into a heinous fight over the internet – which as everyone knows, always ends well. And in the end, Phil Fish quit making his game Fez II and who knows what will happen from there. Now, forgetting the fact that this turned into an internet slap fight of epic proportions, let’s step back for second. A guy who is out there making a thing completely lost his shit because, effectively, he was getting slammed by folks in the media. The response from a lot of people have been, “Big deal. The media hits folks all the time. The internet is an unforgiving place. Don’t read the comments, suck it up, walk it off, get back to work.”
Then I saw this video and read this article from Penny Arcade. The video is Dave Chapelle of course being the bastion of goddamn wisdom that he can be:
Then I sat back and I thought about all the things I’ve been seeing on my own Twitter feed recently. A woman helms a project in England to get Jane Austin, arguably one of England’s greatest female authors, on some currency and receives rape threats on Twitter. She stands up to try to get the people prosecuted for threatening her and sparks a controversy. All this over work she’s done, and it comes in over YouTube. Feminist Frequency’s own Anita Sarkeesian, on the same day, tweets about the fact that she had to report two particularly heinous rape threats and she was curious if Twitter would do anything about it. I watched a YouTube recording of Reza Aslan, a twenty-year religion scholar and author of a new controversial book on Jesus, school the HELL out of a Fox reporter because she couldn’t get over him being Muslim long enough to engage him as a human being over his work and made the mistake of looking at the heinous comments section below. It was enough to make me slightly ill to the stomach.
All of it together has got me wondering: what the hell is wrong with people?
Folks, I am a critic. I am. Part of my job is writing reviews of things. I have reviewed books, television, movies. I’m not as famous perhaps as this Marcus Beer (I have no idea, I had never heard of him until this BS exploded) but I have people who have read my stuff. I’ve even written reviews that were heated and sometimes I’ve gone back and questioned whether or not I was entirely too unfair towards a personality involved. Still. I do not remember where in my undergraduate classes on film and media criticism my professors told me it was okay to blast the shit out of someone in a bitch session. I don’t remember where in my raising since childhood someone told me it was okay to take someone to the woodshed for their creative choices by attacking them personally. I don’t remember that being part of the job.
Now I might not be a big deal reviewer but I know some things. Let’s start with this:
One: Calling people ‘toss-pots’ and ‘fucking hipsters’ for doing their jobs in the indie world is not professional. Its shock jock provocateur behavior at its worst. Its third rate Howard Stern armchair quarterbacking. Its two steps above being that guy on Reddit yelling ‘yur mom’. Because you’re not critiquing the actual work these guys are doing anymore, you’re just taking shots at who they are. You’re that guy chasing the Kardashians for a picture of their belly fat and making up new ways to talk about celebrity nip-slips, only you’re doing it about the gaming industry. I don’t care how hurt your feelings are about not getting the quote or not getting the story you want. Learn to live with disappointments.
Two, here’s my question: where’s your game? Where’s your work? What movie did you make? What have you put out there? And how would you like it if someone went all over the place and called you names? If that sounds a little too touchy-feely and kindergarden teacher to you, that’s because that’s the place where people learn those lessons about how to talk to their fellow human beings – in PRE-SCHOOL. If you’re going out and being a critic, you better do one of two things: be prepared to be a human being about how you critique other people’s work or else you better be able to say ‘I’m a creator too’ when people ask you where your work is, and then you better be ready to take the same slings and arrows. Because if you want to sling, you best put your own hard work out there to be slung at too. And if you don’t care, if you can take that kind of muck-raking and don’t see that it is hurtful, then I don’t understand you. I don’t get where your empathy lies.
Phil Fish put this up on Twitter and it resounded so deeply in me, along with what Dave Chapelle said in that video:
So here’s a guy. He made a thing. He put it out into the world and he gets comments all the time. He gets garbage. And finally, he gets one last straw dumped on him and says he’s done. He’s out. And people are saying that he’s crazy or lost it. Think about what Chapelle said there. Think about how it feels when you get criticized and then imagine what kind of magnification a thousand fold this guy is getting. I’m not looking at what kind of a guy he is or whatnot. I’m looking at the stimulus he has to deal with constantly in his face for the simple sin of trying to be a creator in an industry he likes. He’s the ant under the magnifying glass. Eventually he’s going to burn up. Who wouldn’t?
Now I’m not going to lie. I’ve had shitty interactions with people who are creators when I’m press. Hell, I had a shirty interaction with a comic book writer who is SUPER well known that made me so grouchy that I basically still think he’s a douchebag ages later. But I realized something recently that made me think that maybe, just maybe, I owe that guy an apology: he is not my bitch. Neil Gaiman said that of George RR Martin recently to some folks and it bears repeating. These guys ain’t our bitches, reviewers and interviewers and fans. And treating them that way makes us the bitches. Does it suck when someone is shirty with you? SURE. But get over yourself. They don’t owe you shit, even if you’re media. They don’t.
The internet can give you some serious toxic shock if you step out there and try to create, or say a thing, or do a thing. I’ve seen it myself. I’ve had people put up videos calling me names. I’ve had rape threats sent to my inbox because I spoke up against that BS Grope Crew stuff happening on Twitter. I’ve been called names. I’ve had friends called names I wouldn’t call my worst enemy. I’ve seen reporters chase Anne Hathaway through a protest she was attending like a regular person (not a celebrity) shouting at her that she owes him and she’s a bitch for not giving him a quote. I read Wil Wheaton’s recent experience at ComicCon and I start to really think that some folks have lost their ever-loving, self-entitled little minds.
Every time people speak up about this kind of behavior going on, the answers are the same: don’t pay any mind, just let it roll off your back, don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments? It’s not just in the comments anymore! It’s in the self-entitled disrespectful way people are treating one another on the airwaves, across the internet and in person. The only way to get the hell away from it seems to be to just shut down and get out now or just stop doing anything that gets other people’s attention. At all.
I had to go thru recently to see if I could track down how things got this bad. I think I got it. This is the process:
The internet gives us anonymity to say whatever the hell we want. Then folks step out who aren’t hiding but put themselves out as creators, voices, whatever, and they become targets. They become that way for a billion reasons – either someone has an opinion that differs, or someone is just having a bad day, or someone has some angst they want to vent at another target. They hide it behind things like freedom of speech and ‘this is my opinion’ and ‘you put yourself out there so you want the attention so here it is!’ And then they spew. And the good voices, the people who just come to have decent conversations on the internet or speak their opinions and criticism with respect and humor and community in mind get drowned out by waves of absolutely rancid garbage. Or worse, they get drowned out by voices of critics who use their own self-created voices to spew the same trash, except under the guise of journalism.
The Newsroom this week had a quote come out of the main character Will’s mouth. “I’m against censorship but I’m a big fan of self-censorship.” That means that just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean it SHOULD be said. And when you say it, you have a responsibility to consider what kind of impact it has on another human being. Just because you CAN say something a certain way doesn’t mean you should. It’s a matter of respect and empathy and we as an internet society seem to be fighting an uphill battle against a landslide of poisonous garbage that cuts a path through good people who are just trying to do what they love.
I don’t know Phil Fish. I don’t know a thing about him personally, about his behavior, and I have no opinion one way or another about him as a person. I don’t know Anita Sarkeesian. I don’t know Reza Aslan. But I know folks who have gotten this treatment. I have burst into tears over things said to me in hurtful, hateful internet crap. I’ve had people discount all the writing I might do or anything I’ve said on a panel to slam into me for being ‘a loudmouth bitch’ or ‘fat disgusting slag’. I have looked at my computer with open-mouthed disgust and thought, “Who the hell told you it was okay to say such things?”
And I decided it wasn’t okay. And I decided to try to do better, to be more careful about how I addressed others in my criticisms and treatment. I decided to work on examining people’s actions and output in my criticism rather than who they are as people because glass houses world, glass frickin houses. But I also decided not to keep quiet about the phenomenon. If the trolls and the nasty critics and the hopped-up internet bullies get a voice, so do to the folks who say that this isn’t okay. So I’m going to use that voice and say it loud AGAIN. Because, you know, it seems to need a reminder every five minutes.
This shit is not okay. Not anywhere. I don’t care who the hell you are. Learn to talk respectfully to one another again or put down the microphone because your attitude is not welcome in a community of creators, whomever they may be. I’m not prepared to stand as a creator in a community I’m brand new to and say its okay when creators are bullied and heckled and hurt. Or if that is the way the gaming community works, it best come to realize that not all of us signed up for that – I certainly didn’t – and I won’t stand for it in my interactions. I’m holding others to a higher standard now.
So seriously, come to argue, come to be critical of work, come to discuss. But for the love of everything holy, learn to keep a respectful, civil tongue in your head or count yourself as part of the sea of toxic crap that floats along the media stream. Be quality or be part of the problem.
It is no secret that I am a huge Dresden Files nerd. If you haven’t read the amazing book series by Jim Butcher, you are missing out on some of the best urban fantasy around. If you watched the TV show, you’re nearly there – now go to Kindle or the library or your local bookseller and make your eyeballs do the walking across those amazing pages. Ahem. So, as I said, huge Dresden nerd. (I even cosplayed as a female Harry Dresden at last year’s NYCC – no joke).
So when I thought a few years back about what LARP I would love to run, the Dresden Files came to mind. I was a huge fan of the tabletop RPG created by Evil Hat Productions and once i got my hands on the book, we were off to the races. Now, two and a half years later and three versions of the rules (at least!) gone by, my team and I run The Unofficial Dresden Files LARP out of the Double Exposure conventions in Morristown, New Jersey. Over the July 4th weekend, my team and I ran our fourth Dresden Files game to the tune of forty-five people. The game, entitled “Final Frost” was the culmination of our very first chronicle. And it has been a wild ride. Here’s how it all went down.
The cast of the Unofficial Dresden Files game “Final Frost”
The Unofficial Dresden Files LARP
Design Team: Shoshana Kessock, John Adamus, Josh Harrison, Kat Schoynheder
Production Assistants: Justin Reyes, Abigail Corfman, Andrea Vasilescu
Location: Double Exposure Conventions (New Jersey, USA)
How This Happened: As I said before, I’m a huge Dresden Files fan. After running a few tabletop sessions of the Evil Hat tabletop RPG, I came upon the idea that Dresden Files would make a great LARP. Why? It has all the factors that make supernatural theater LARP great – a multitude of different supernatural creatures, a decent balance between human characters and the things that go bump in the night, and a world that ties everything together so perfectly. The fact that the world has such a fan following and such a strong intellectual property made it a perfect level of buy-in for players. Moreover, I felt that Dresden was a supernatural world with all the moral ambiguity and personal choice play that people could get with World of Darkness games without a lot of the darker, sometimes depressing overtones that WoD games can bring. Dresden is a rollicking adventure world where people take their adventure in their hands and go for broke, and that’s the kind of games I love. So I got together a team and we began planning. Now, two and half years later, most of the original team have gone on to other projects but the passionate players of this convention game experience have stayed. The result is a growing player base who have come back four times in a row to see what we can offer.
The Premise: The world of the Dresden Files is a supernatural playground of wizards, vampires, were-creatures, fae and their changeling children, and every flavor of supernatural whozamawhutzits that might come in between. These characters try to coexist in a world that, for the most part, doesn’t know they’re around. Dark powers wriggle around in the background of course and those ‘in the know’ try to figure out how to stay afloat in a constantly shifting supernatural world. The main themes of the game are personal choice between power and humanity and we tried to keep very close to those themes when designing our very first chronicle. We began with “Trouble Signs” in which a powerful CEO tried to jumpstart his career in the supernatural world by signing onto what are known as the Unseelie Accords. His idea? Host a massive auction where he would sell off some of his prized magical items for support. Of course nothing goes correctly and he causes everyone to get in dutch with the Queen of the Winter Fae, Mab herself. By the time game four rolled around, the characters had to travel into the very heart of Winter to the stronghold of Arctus Tor to ask Queen Mab not to explode a huge section of New York City with Mordite. In between there were Denarians, dominance battles by werewolves, possessions and corrupt cops, reconstituted faerie courts and wizards risen from the dead.
Yeah, it kind of went like that.
A wizard back from the dead.
The player briefing before game.
Players learning the new mass combat rules.
Dresden Files: Empire State Chronicles
Players learning the new mass combat rules.
The Preparation: This chronicle, as I mentioned, has been two and half years of work in the making. From concept to final execution it has had literally hundreds of hours of work by multiple people. For the sake of brevity, however, I’ll focus on the prep for Final Frost, our most recent game.
The player briefing before game.
Final Frost was perhaps easier than the previous games in that we had been through the process several times before. In between games two and three we had junked our entire rules system for a brand new adaptation of the brilliant tabletop Fate Core system (also by Evil Hat Productions). Fate is the engine that drives the Dresden Files RPG and the newest version gave us a lot of the agile storytelling options that we wanted to focus on for the LARP. I was lucky enough to team up with John Adamus, who worked as editor on Fate Core, and we schemed ways to adapt Fate Core into a system for the LARP. The results from John was a brilliant adaptation of the Fate numbers system for a card-pull based mechanic that kept the core of Fate games – the Aspect system- intact. The Stunts and Powers for each player were individually crafted to suit the player character’s needs and skills were stripped wholesale from the tabletop in a simple adaptation. The mechanics were tailored to make the resolution systems more narrative focused and quick, as our intent was to foster games where player agency was key. The Dresdenverse is driven by characters that take chances, do amazing things and step out on the edge and that’s what we wanted to support in our players.
Power versus humanity – bargains being made.
For the actual game session we relied on very bare-bones theater-style setting with rooms set up with sparse lighting. We relied heavily on narrators setting the scene and describing what was seen since, to be frank, we didn’t have the budget to build a giant ice castle. Relying on the players imagination and the judicious application of props, we lead players through everything from a Queens warehouse under siege by Black Court vampires, darkened roads through the Nevernever, and the heart of Queen Mab’s territory itself. We relied heavily on small props as well, cleaning out local stores for props that could represent magic and transformations in game. For example: were-forms were a big part of our campaign. Yet transformations into werewolves always bugged me in games. So to indicate transformation we handed out little plastic face masks that went over the nose and mouth. Whenever a were-form would transform, they would pop on the nose and presto, insta-werewolf!
The characters for the campaign had always been pre-generated since the beginning of the chronicle. Players however began to get so attached to their characters that they would register with us before the convention in the hopes of reprising their previous characters, so much so that we had almost a 75% retention rate for players coming back by game four. Each player was provided with a character sheet with stats and a full backstory. Though these backstories originally topped out at over a page long, by game four the necessity for that much information had decreased since players knew their characters well and we managed to get down to one paragraph. That dramatically shortened the workload for me considering I was writing most of those backstories (that’s a lot of typing). And that was predominantly the workload for this game – story ideation, character management, system building and iteration, and sheet generation. Paperwork. Lots of paperwork.
A wizard back from the dead.
The Game: When Final Frost started, the players were headed into the Nevernever to confront Queen Mab over what might become the destruction of everything on Earth. They had opened up a trapped box that held Mordite, an anti-magical substance that would have exploded and eradicated most of New York. The reason for Mab’s ire? The players had managed to help reconstitute the Autumn and Spring courts of the fae, causing upheaval in the fae realms. To that end, she started a near war in New York and the players were out to stop it. The game before had seen some players escape into the Nevernever to find Mab while the others stayed behind to guard the Mordite trap from being stolen by the Black Court vampires. They too however escaped into the Nevernever by wrenching open a gateway using the power of some faeries and the sacrifice of two were-forms (they lived but lost their ability to shapeshift). Once inside the magical Nevernever they were reunited with their friends and headed for Artcus Tor. There they fought Mab’s guards until she stopped the battle and issued a challenge – break the Autumn and Spring Courts and she would stop the box. Pretty straight forward? It’s never that easy! The players were forced to track down the sword of Spring and bargain for the lost magic of a wizard (a player character) to be able to take on the power of the Spring Queen, whose life Mab demanded be forfeit.
Its funny as a storyteller when you set out events before players what happens. The end results might be the same but nobody ever gets there the way that you expect. I had the honor of playing both Queen Mab and the Mother of the Winter Court, Mother Winter, and throughout the night it was fae bargains left and right. Souls were sold, deals were brokered and power changed hands. In the end, however, the Spring Queen was eradicated and the power of the courts broken when the players were given some insight into what would happen if they didn’t do what Mab said. The Mordite box was removed and plenty of people ended up owing Mab their lives when the destruction of the Spring Queen nearly killed everyone involved. For the most part, however, the players returned from the Nevernever in one piece – all except for a lone wizard who had stayed alive long enough to do his job. Then he was taken away by Mab, after sharing a last meal of burgers and fries with his apprentice and their fellow wizards.
The part of this game that was so satisfying was watching the character arcs for so many players come to a (temporary) close after “Final Frost.” It would be impossible to talk about all the great events that went on for the characters but I’ll give some highlights of my favorite story lines:
Changelings hiding from the madness outside.
A rookie New York City discovers he has a magical past that goes back further than he knows. He gains tremendous power, transferred to him by his dying relative, whose violent murder at the hands of a Denarian sends the cop on a mission of vengeance. In the end he found new wizards to learn from, others who share his vengeance, and maybe a girlfriend?
A young woman tries to escape from her bargain with Queen Mab and talks her way into becoming the Queen of Autumn. Yet everything comes with a price and while she’s trying to understand what being a fae Queen is all about, she has to try and save her people from Mab’s wrath. In the end she sacrifices her new power to end the Spring Queen’s life before she can cause calamity.
A charismatic White Court Vampire tries to lead his family through the turbulent times in New York and ends up making deals that drive him in the middle of a war with the fae. When he’s trapped in a warehouse, trying to find a way to rescue himself and his cousin from destruction, he is killed fighting when thrown into the Mordite trap.
A wizard of the White Council comes up from New Orleans to track down the Denarian that murdered his mentor. Upon arrival he’s pushed into the middle of a war, ends up with an apprentice after watching a Warden killed in front of him, and sacrifices his own magic. By the end however he was returned to his power and even found himself the oddest of ladies to fall for, all before watching the Warden rise from the dead to help battle Mab’s trials.
A young werewolf tries to keep his pack together after most of them were slaughtered, including his father, by Red Court vampires. Along with his sister, they long to find protection from anyone who would hurt them. Too bad it was his actions that caused the Red Court to come after his family in the first place- and all over the love of a blood-addicted girl! Reunited with the girl, he ends up forsaking his pack and following her into the Nevernever to end up a servant of the fae Queen of Autumn who rescued her, sworn together as true lovers and leaving his de-powered were-form sister behind.
The list of stories go on and on. And they’re not done yet! This chronicle may be over, but the game will continue. After the success of the last few games, the team decided that we wanted to continue running the game…. with a few changes.
Change Is Coming: There were some things we wanted to change from the original chronicle in response to player feedback and our own experiences running the game. First of all, we wanted to hand over control of characters to the players. Convention games often breed pregenerated characters, but that requires a lot of work on the staff’s part and also is a hell of a pre-game casting process. Moreover, we felt that to create a personal experience for players, we wanted them to be able to have their own characters that could travel with them from game to game. New players would be able to create their own characters as well going forward. Those who played the game in the past would be able to continue playing the characters from the first chronicle – with a few adjustments.
Players learning the new mass combat rules.
As said before, the game was kind of high powered. We had faerie queens. We had Denarians. We had dragons for goodness sake. The game, much like the tabletop, is meant to focus on a lower power scale so as to emphasize the notion of power versus humanity, a staple of the Dresden Files books. This chronicle stepped up that power level to make the events of the game earth shaking. After all that, we decided that we wanted to take the game back down to street level, where players would be dealing with less world-changing problems and instead focus more on manageable power scales. This answered feedback from some of our players who felt that their characters were just not scaled to fit some of the threats showing up in the game.
That said, we also took a look at some of our mechanics that were and were not working. We’ve taken the feedback given to us and gone after our stress system (which is the damage system for Fate) and how it adapts in a faster-paced LARP session. Mass combat was also tested and, for the most part, held up – yet there were a few considerations that needed looking at that we’re taking back to the drawing board. In the end, the stress test of high powered combat worked to give us the data we needed to work on polishing up the system.
A Special Shout-Out: We also had a wonderful experience hosting a LARP guest at the game. RPG editor Amanda Valentine, who worked on the Dresden Files tabletop as well as a host of other games for companies like Evil Hat and Margaret Weiss Productions, came by to watch the game. Specifically she came because her daughter, Mary Rose, wanted to see the game in action. Instead of watching, Mary Rose got to join us by playing the guest star for the evening, the twelve-year-old Archive Ivy. The Archive is a favorite character of mine from the Dresden books and it was a pleasure hosting Mary Rose to play the character. It was her first time LARPing and she took to the whole thing like a champ, which made her a lot of fans among the players. We hope to have her back sometime soon!
The Final Analysis: In the end, the final analysis of the first chronicle of the Unofficial Dresden Files LARP is that its a labor of love for us. I’ve had such a great time working with John, Josh, Kat and everyone else to get this game off the ground. Now that we’ve come this far, there’s no chance we’re going to stop now and with the amazing support of the Double Exposure convention organizers, we’ll be back at Dreamation 2013 with the beginning of the next chronicle. In between now and then, we’ll also be taking our show on the road to present a game at WyrdCon 2013 in California, where the special guest for the weekend at the convention is going to be none other than Dresden Files author Jim Butcher himself. Between now and then we have a lot to do but it’s been a pleasure working on this project so far.
So tune in next time, Dresden Files fans, because we’re just getting started.
UPDATE 7/23/13: Holy cow folks! Only a few hours after I put up this post and people are sending me so many suggestions to add to the list. As I said in the post, this was not a comprehensive list but MAN the list is longer now. I might turn this into a perm-link on my blog and just keep updating but for now, thank you to everyone on Facebook for the suggestions (and spelling corrections – sorry bout that to those I misspelled or mis-linked). Updates ahoy!
A few days ago, RPG writer and all around awesome designer Josh Jordan asked me what I might put on a reading list for someone who wanted to get into learning more about LARP. It occurred to me that I couldn’t find many lists that had many of the texts that I drew on when growing up in the LARP community. So I put together a long list of the books I considered important reading for myself. Note: THIS IS NOT A COMPREHENSIVE LIST. There are dozens of other blogs, articles, books and magazines that are important and relevant and I urge folks to share at the bottom. This is just a reading list that has impacted me and my design. With that in mind, on we go!
Theater LARP
The two biggest subsections of LARP in the US have got to be theater style-games and boffer or live combat games. Theater games have got their history going back ages but there are a number of books that seriously impacted the growth of the hobby.
So there’s a lot of these.
One such game system was the Mind’s Eye Theatre system created by White Wolf as the live-action version of their very popular World of Darkness tabletop series. Created in the 90’s, Mind’s Eye Theatre became the staple for live-action theatre games like Vampire: The Masquerade, Mage: The Ascension, Changeling: The Dreaming and half a dozen more. With easily over thirty books put out in the first line alone, Mind’s Eye Theatre became the originator for the often discussed rock-paper-scissor resolution mechanic in LARP, as well as a good example of the ups and downs of translating a tabletop RPG into a LARP format. The MET books became the basis for the live-action Camarilla Club, an international organization that united MET enthusiasts that still exists to this day. Since I’m a big fan of some of these supplement books, I’ll call out Mage: The Ascension and Changeling: the Dreaming as two of the better ones, as well as the Wraith book Oblivion. These books aren’t just well-done, they’re interesting when compared to their tabletop brethren and often beautifully laid out and designed. I’ll also toss in that a number of them were written by the amazing Peter Woodworth, whose blog will be linked later for sheer LARP advice awesomeness.
Mind’s Eye Theater books went through a number of revisions over the years. The second major revision after the 90’s version (known as Old White Wolf or OWoD) came when White Wolf reset its World of Darkness setting in the early 2000’s. This reset spawned a new set of books with new adaptations from the tabletop rules. These books changed one factor: like the tabletop, they had a core book with basic rules that could then be adapted to any of the World of Darkness core sets like Vampire or Mage or Changeling. The core book bears looking at for the rules adaptation alone, but if you’re not into the individual creature settings the later books are unnecessary (but decent reads).
Recently, Mind’s Eye Theatre has seen its third revamping when it was purchased by another company known as By Night Productions. This new version of the game will be taking the old rules system through a serious set of revamps and recently held a Kickstarter that was extremely successful. Though hints about the changes have been dropped, we’ll have to wait and see what that looks like.
Cover appropriately creepy
So now that we’ve gone through Mind’s Eye, what else is out there for theater LARPs that we can talk about? How about my second love Cthulhu Live! Based on the works of HP Lovecraft, Cthulhu Live takes all the fun you have in those Call of Cthulhu tabletop games, puts you in a room and tries to scare the living pants off of you. This game had three editions and I can site both of them as great reads for different reasons. The second edition, while I’m more meh on the rules system, has a fantastic section in the back about staging games and how to create fantastic monsters and sets for your events. The third edition of this game however is what has my heart as a go-to for simple, intuitive game design that works fast and well no matter where you play. I was introduced to this game at the Double Exposure conventions by the fantastic PST Productions, picked up this book and never looked back. After playing nearly thirty of these scenarios, I’ve always felt this book and its system are a gem that not enough people appreciate for fluid game design and excellent intellectual property adaptation.
And speaking of excellent adaptation and hidden gems, how about Passion Play. Passion Play is the LARP adaptation of the Fading Suns tabletop RPG. Haven’t heard of it? Its not that popular out there and it takes a hell of a lot to find the books these days, but Fading Suns is a fascinating space opera setting that dances over a lot of lines. Its parts Cowboy Bebop, parts Firefly and a lot of space baronies and weird interplanetary politics. Sound like fun? I thought so! I was introduced to the game as a LARP at a convention and worked my butt off to track down the LARP book. While it focuses a great deal on showcasing the setting, the book is a great read about how to translate an existing complex world into a LARP text and also how to adapt that property’s mechanics in a recognizable way. See if you can track it down – it’s not the easiest book to find!
To say that this is the short list of theater style games is absolutely the case. Other books suggested include:
Cyberworld, a Cyberpunk LARP by Dark Ages Games (Older but worthwhile)
Also I’m going to plug an upcoming project that’s now in the works for theater style games – Chronos! Made by Eschaton Media, who incidentally created the Dystopia Rising tabletop books, Chronos is a card-based theatrical LARP system that will be publishing multiple skein worlds for players to enjoy. I’m particularly proud of this project because I’m one of the writers involved, with work done on the corebook as well as for a skein about animal spirits in a noir world. Check out the Facebook group for Chronos for more information or Eschaton Media’s website.
There’s also a ton of theatrical scenarios that are great to take a look at, such as “Voyage of the Mary Celeste” and “Marin County New Age Society Cocktail Party” both by Interactivities Ink (thanks to Christopher Amherst for the suggestion!), but they can be found individually in locations online. (A link is provided to one such resource later in this post).
Another game I want to call out for awesomeness straddles the line between theatrical LARP and, well… more team building exercis – Shelter In Place. This Ennie Award winner is part party game, part zombie apocalypse LARP written by the fantastic JR Blackwell. I’m a huge fan of this simple, fun game. The book itself is gorgeously done and its a perfect example of how a LARP does not need to be complicated, but rather can be played anytime, anywhere, if its the right game.
Boffer/Live Combat Games
Jumping over from theater games, we’re going to talk about a reading list for boffer games! This list is a little more difficult to compile as many boffer LARPs don’t have physical books that have come out and rely on rules systems put out in PDF form. Still, we’re electronic savvy so let’s take a look at what I could dig up and put together.
First will go the one nearest and dearest to my heart: Dystopia Rising. Its no secret that I’m a huge supporter of this fast growing franchise (I work for Dystopia’s flagship game in New Jersey as a full-time storyteller!) but part of the reason for that support comes down to the amazing rules system and LARP book put out by the game. First available in PDF form to players and now released in physical form, called the Dystopia Rising Survivor’s Guide, this rules system is a fluid bit of live combat gaming that combines melee combat and nerf gun ranged shooting into one zombie apocalypse mix. The book is also a great example of a great mix of world setting material, rules information and practical advice and rules for how to play in one of the games across the country. Its easily available to players off the website too and has a beautiful book now for those who want a home edition.
There are other boffer games out there of course. In fact, there are literally hundreds. The well-known names that I could mention include NERO and LAIRE, which are known for their branches across the country and their long history. A working list of these games would start with:
But this is by no means comprehensive. LARPing.org has a fantastic list on their site for games that is listed in the website links below that would do more justice to the vast number of these games then I could possible begin to. Sufficed to say, if there’s a flavor of boffer game out there you want to look into, that’s a good place to start looking.
Nordic Larp
One can’t have a conversation about LARP right now without discussing Nordic Larp. The tradition is so huge in the art house style gaming sector in Europe that it has come over to spread its intense live-action joy over in the US. What’s Nordic Larp about? A great place to start learning more is in the Nordic Larp book, a whopping beautiful full-color textbook of a read by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola. This book breaks down the ideas behind the Nordic Larp movement as well as discusses the important games that have been done over the years. Recently the book was recognized for excellence by winning the 2012 Diana Jones Awards at GenCon. While this book is difficult to get your hands on in the US, it is worth what you need to do to get a copy. (I carried mine back all the way from Norway!)
Other resources on Nordic Larp include the journals for the Nordic Larp conference Knutepunkt. Well, its called Knutepunkt when its in Norway. Otherwise it is called Solmokohta in Finland, Knutpunkt in Sweden and Knudepunkt in Denmark . But the journals from these amazing conferences have some fantastic writing about Nordic Larp including theory discussions, game breakdowns and insightful essays. The physical copies are hard to track down except in Europe but they are available in PDF format. The easiest place to find them all? Linked to this Wiki entry! (Thank you to Nathan Hook for pointing me in this direction).
If that doesn’t give you something to start with, some more links to blogs and websites below will supplement all the Nordic Larp reading madness.
Freeform Games
Want games with a little less crunch that employ a lot of the techniques of Nordic LARP? Look no further than the freeform or jeepform games being developed the world over. This style of games is focused largely around the Fastival conference out of Denmark and a great blog post by Lizzie Stark can give you the lowdown more on what this kind of games are all about. A great example of a game like this would be lots of work done by Emily Care Boss, like her relationship game Under My Skin. I’m still dipping my toes into this kind of LARP form but its influence has certainly unburdened me of the notion that system is a rigid form for storytelling in the hobby.
LARP Scenarios
Not all LARPs come in books of course, or even giant PDFs. Sometimes people write LARP games that come in single PDFs that are easy to access, print out, and play with your friends. These are often scattered all across the internet but a few locations have them all compiled for your downloading pleasure. I put these here because each of these LARPs is almost a unique book in their own right, and having a location to find them all is brilliant.
The first location is this LARP Scenarios posting on RPGnet’s Wiki. It’s got, no joke, more scenarios linked then I know what to do with, and each of them could be a fun encounter or event planned for your group. Special thanks to Nathan Hook for passing this along to me, I’d completely forgotten.
From here we go over to books about LARPs themselves, specifically books that chronicle specific LARPs and document the events. This documentation is a very European concept in games but has been imported by folks like Lizzie Stark and Sarah Lynne Bowman to capture the ephemeral nature of LARP games. While there are bunches of these books, two stand out in my mind in particular as impactful of my understanding of other LARPs and how they work.
The first is The Book of Kapo, edited by Claus Raasted. This book chronicles the Nordic game Kapo, which allowed players to experience simulated life in a ruthlessly bleak prison camp. The game was extremely well documented with extensive interviews with players and many photos and the book goes full color to showcase the full impact of the event. This book is also a little difficult to put your hands on as its availability seems to be mostly in Europe, but there are PDF versions available online.
A second book is a US creation this time. The book of the US run of the game Mad About the Boy, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman with layout by Claus Raastad, chronicles the work done to bring over the amazing Nordic game about a world where all the men have died and society is run by women. Inspired by Y: The Last Man this game has been impactful in gender discourse in games and the book spends a lot of time documenting in detail the experiences of the all-female cast of this one-shot American run of the game. The book is available in PDF format here.
Speaking of Claus Rasstad, another book for calling out is 100.000 Swords Can’t Be Silenced. This gorgeous PDF book, also by Rollespils Akademiet, is a short introduction to LARP with some amazing full color photography. Its intended to be an intro for kids but this book could be an example for all new LARPers. Its got some interesting things to say about framing violence in games too as presented to children that can apply to the discussion about violence in games in general.
Another of note, suggested to me by larp writer and fellow American visitor to KP Christopher Amherst is The White War, the documentation of a well-known game “about culture clash in an occupied land.” I have JUST gotten my hands on this PDF thanks to the Rollespilsakademiet website (to which we owe much for many PDFs listed here) but I’m fascinated to give it a read. And kind of sad I didn’t grab the physical text while I was in Europe. (My suitcase was only so big!)
Books About LARP (Non-Fiction)
So now we head away from game books themselves and start talking about books that talk ABOUT LARP. These non-fiction books are not exactly entirely academic and so they get their own category away from the textbook section (see below). There are two that I would put forward as great examples of this category.
The first is the well-known Leaving Mundania by Lizzie Stark. A well-known writer and journalist, Lizzie spent time immersing herself in the world of LARP to research for this book, throwing herself into a boffer game for months and traveling all over the country to speak to gamers at conventions and events. The result is an intimate portrait of the hobby from the people who play it in many different ways told from the inside. The book’s widely available and is supplemented by articles on Lizzie’s blog.
The second is a collection of essays called Immersive Gameplay, by Evan Torner and William J. White. This book has a collection of discussions about roleplaying and the importance of immersive games in media in general. While not only discussing LARP, this book bears mentioning as well for great input on the conversation.
Another I’ll mention but that’s a little dated is The Book of LARPby Mike Young. This book has been around for a while and is an easy in for early discussions about what is LARP. It includes some basics and deserves a look for those who want to know more early discussion about the hobby. It’s not that easy to find these days either however.
I’m also going to include here Ethan Gilsdorf’s Fantasy Freaks and Gamer Geeks, the biographical exploration of one man’s journey to reconcile his geekiness. As a long time nerd who has mixed feelings about the hesitation lots of nerds feel about embracing the hobby, I found the book difficult starting off but thoroughly enjoyed it overall.
Then there’s Hamlet’s Hit Points, a fantastic resource about writing games by game design legend Robin Laws. This book is an essential tool for writing good roleplaying games, focusing on the traditional act structures of theater and film to instruct GMs how to craft better narratives. I almost hesitated to include this only because there are many writing books about roleplaying that I might do a separate post about but for now it deserves a place. (UPDATE: Do to the large number of just roleplaying and writing suggestions, I will be doing another post about this after all).
Perodicals
While magazines about LARP are not as common, there is one in particular that I collected with some happiness. Playground was a LARP magazine collecting essays about Nordic LARP experiences and techniques, commentary and controversy. It is my infinite sadness that the magazine has unfortunately stopped being published, but there are still some issues out there to be tracked down (predominantly in Europe).
I’ve been looking for more magazines also but I believe most of them are in Europe and I’ve not found as many so far. Also, honestly, the age of the blogsphere seems to be putting these magazines to bed. But if anyone knows of any more, toss them my way!
Academic Texts
So here’s where the rubber meets the road. You want more on LARP and you want to go Academic, there are a few books you can look at. Pervasive Games by Annika Waern, Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola is an immediate go-to for me. The book not only talks about LARP but other pervasive (also known as big) games, such as ARGs. The book digs into the nuts and bolts of what makes these off the table and off the screen games work and the section on LARP is very well done.
Another book is called Functions of Role-Playing Games by Sarah Lynne Bowman. This book, while not just broken down to talking about LARP, discusses the psychological and sociological functions that role-playing games fill in society. A great piece of work by an amazing academic in the field!
An online academic resource to be found is the International Journal of Role-playing which acts as a gathering place for papers regarding roleplaying in all forms. Though not strictly about LARP, this resource is fundamental for anyone who wants to really get into the crunchy discussions about what makes roleplaying tick on a theory level.
There are many individual papers, doctoral theses and articles that could be included as well. However one particular one, On The Edge of the Magic Circle: Understanding Pervasive Games and Role-Playing by Markus Montola is, in my opinion, an important work on incorporating and understanding the construction of roleplaying games in relation to game design theory (such as the magic circle concept). Montola stands as one of the voices on pervasive games (as his above credit on the textbook shows) and his doctoral thesis stands as another example of why.
Blogs and Websites
And now the hard part. Blogs. There are LOTS of blogs that talk about LARP from across the world and tons of websites too. However here I’m going to list just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head that I read on a regular basis. These blogs have articles that discuss LARP events, theory and discourse that can provide great insight into the hobby. Take ’em as they come.
LARPing.org – This beautiful website has articles that cross the spectrum of games across the country. I highly recommend it for an eyeful of beautiful photos and thought provoking discussion. One of their best resources is also a list of games in all parts of the world, but especially by state in the US so check that out. (Also: support their visit to ComicCon!)
Nordiclarp.org – Want to know more about the Nordic scene, events and talks going on about the form? Check out this website. Its constantly being updated and has tons to say. They have a wiki too which is fantastic and a forum! Most of it is in English!
Dymaxion: A Nordic LARP Discourse – Want still more on Nordic LARP? This extensive breakdown on the Nordic LARP tradition includes videos and information about just what is Nordic LARP (a conversation and discussion that has been going on for a long time).
LARP Doctor – This website is completely new to me but its been suggested by a number of folks for great LARP articles. I’m really digging the discussions about great storyteller habits. (Also: support their visit to ComicCon!)
Confessions of a Wrathful LARPER – This blog run by Craig Page of the tri-state area LARP scene has many great articles about issues and ideas in LARP. I’d check it out for easy, fun and thoughtful reading.
Peter Woodworth’s Blog – You can’t get much better than Peter Woodworth’s writing on LARP. His discussion on play tactics are some of the best around and his advice on how to be a great player can inform designers on how to encourage such gameplay.
Lizzie Stark’s Blog – Informed by her experiences researching Leaving Mundania, Lizzie Stark has become one of the leading US voices in LARP, especially as an advocate for the Nordic tradition. Her advice about LARP on the blog and cross-posts about other great things going on in the hobby are fantastic for keeping track of the art-larp scene overseas and here in the states.
Nathan Hook’s Blog – Nathan Hook is a fantastic LARP academic from England whose articles have appeared in numerous publications over the years. His continued work on his blog is a worthwhile addition to any reading list.
The Larpwright – Eirik Fatland’s blog has multiple articles about LARP that highlight why he’s such a crucial figure in discussions about LARP theory overseas. I highly suggest his blog to anyone interested in technique discussion focusing on Nordic traditions, but his talks in general about how LARP can help us understand things like war are fascinating.
I am forgetting things. There’s no way I’m not. But this is a great start for a reading list that is very, very long. There are more projects in development which I’m looking forward to, including an upcoming book on writing LARP scripts and an encyclopedia of roleplay that will have tons of information on the history of LARP. But for now, this is the list that I’ve got. I hope you find something that fits your fancy.
Updates on 11/23 include: Additions such as the Larp Scenarios wiki page from RPGnet, Nathan Hook’s blog, spelling errors and link problems, 100.000 Swords by Claus Raastad, Shelter in Place, new boffer games added, Markus Montola’s doctoral thesis, Hamlet’s Hit Points, and a few more.
Everyone’s still talking about Pacific Rim. The movie has been out for a couple of weeks and the geek world is still buzzing about the kaiju-versus-mech nerdfest that has everyone going stomp-happy into theaters. Sure the movie might not have made as much money as people had hoped, but all together the summer blockbuster fulfilled every geeky childhood whim to see Godzilla-style giant monsters kick around giant action figures. But another conversation that’s come out around the film centers around the film’s not-so-secret protagonist, Mako Mori. Specifically, fans have been questioning Mako as a ‘feminist’ hero. In a time when geek culture is being super critical about its women icons, the debate has been fast and furious about Mako’s feminist cred.
(Warning: There are spoilers herein.)
Mako is at first glance a typical movie heroine. She’s pretty, she can kick the male lead’s butt and still be emotional and vulnerable when needed. She’s top of her class, the adopted daughter of the heroic general. She even has the most tragic of backstories you can imagine, right down to getting her very own flashback as a crying little girl with a tiny red shoe. She hits all the right notes to be an inoffensive movie heroine too. She’s demure when she needs to be, tough when called upon, brilliant otherwise, and self-doubting in a way that makes her seem humanized and reachable. She is written to be pitch perfect in nearly all directions. This is the movie heroine at its finest, right?
Well actually, yes. She is.
Mako embodies a lot of the factors that would point to her being a strong female character in a film. First, she isn’t simply in the film to be the emotional crutch for the main character. If anything, her co-pilot Raleigh is the emotional pivotal point as he guides her forward on her heroic journey. And Mako does have a hero’s journey straight out of Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces, following the arch of the reluctant initiate who seeks out adventure and triumphs in the face of adversity to return home the victor. That role of the young adventure seeker in films is usually reserved for the male protagonist, like Luke Skywalker, and we could almost have imagined Raleigh being written that way. But no, Pacific Rim gave us Mako. And as opposed to transforming that female heroine into a sexualized male fantasy trope, a tight-costumed bit of camera bait to be oggled, Mako is treated as a person as opposed to a sexual fantasy on screen, a woman with brains and will and actual clothing. Considering what we’ve seen for a lot of heroines in movies, these are big steps forward.
Yet and still, some fans are not pleased with Mako’s characterization. Lets unpack why.
The fact that the film flunks the Bedchel test is no question. There would have to be another woman in the film for Mako to have a conversation with for it to actually be possible to pass the Bedchel test. Oh wait, there’s the female Russian pilot of Cherno Alpha, but to have her and Mako have a conversation that isn’t about men or relationships they would have had to give the Russian pilot LINES FIRST. (Ahem, a pet peeve – I loved Cherno Alpha and the Russians, for all we saw of them). That said, this is a legitimate problem with the movie in that its single female character has no other women to talk to. That is a problem with the movie in general and not with Mako’s character, so we can move on. (Pro tip on this one: next time one of the scientists could have been a woman? Or the staff? Or something?) But on to the issues with Mako.
Kaiju ate your family! You’d cry too!
First there’s the charge that Mako is too emotional. She does spend a great deal of the film appealing to folks with wide eyes brimming with tears, caught up in the memories of her vengeance or frustration over being kept back because of her inexperience. This accusation of too much emotion in a female character is a double-edged sword because it implies that to be a strong female protagonist, one has to be emotionless. Worse yet, it equates that emotion with weakness, a fact that has been perpetuated by patriarchal society and media tropes forever. By leveling the idea that emotions are a sign of a weak character at Mako, we are supporting the notion that having feelings and showing them in a movie are bad. Why, because the male characters don’t do it?
The second issue is that Mako feeds into typical female movie tropes by being demure and self-effacing about her capabilities to the men around her. She seems almost intent on filling the humble woman role perfectly, stumbling at times to keep her head down. But is that because she’s a woman or because her character is written as a naive recruit, kept in an overprotective relationship by her mentor/father figure Stacker Pentecost? This self-consciousness in the face of her own success is an uncomfortable line to walk with a female character, as it can seem apologetic. Is Mako portrayed this way because she is showing a character flaw she can overcome throughout the movie in her character evolution, or feeding into the trope of the ‘don’t make waves’ woman? The portrayal straddles the line at times in ways that make it difficult to know the intent. Still, that kind of self-doubt in a young hero (ala Luke Skywalker) would not, I believe, be questioned as intently in a male protagonist. It is expected that a young hero would be unsure, but because she’s a woman we doubt the motivation behind the narrative choice.
“But Daaaaad!”
If anything I believe its that relationship between Pentecost and Mako that leads to the most criticism leveled at the character. Scenes between the two, while touching, can rankle as the relationship seems less at times like a loving mentor/child and more like a stern father figure, limiting Mako’s growth from shy girl into capable woman. That patriarchal hand can feel a little dated for a strong female protagonist and can lead to the idea that Mako is passive for a great deal of the film, only allowed out to have her adventures when the men in her life help her get there. In fact, it isn’t until Raleigh steps up to vouch for her with Pentecost that her mentor even allows her to step into the pilot program. It isn’t her prowess that sets her apart, but Raleigh’s determination to give her a chance to save the world. And therein lies the problem – Mako can’t make a difference in the film unless Raleigh and Stacker allow her to do so. There is her lack of agency and the hand of male authority all over the character.
But does that take away from Mako as an interesting character? Does that remove the fact that she has a great heroic journey throughout the film? No. But it makes the way in which her journey happens a little uncomfortable. It makes one wonder if the overprotective father story would have landed on a father/son relationship if Mako had been written as a boy. In Hollywood, the more traditional struggle story for a woman’s heroic journey is to escape the house of her father. The fact that she doesn’t end up in the arms of a man to replace that father figure is where the traditional narrative deviates and helps set Mako apart. Still, there are all these classic tropes in place that bind Mako to a traditional Hollywood heroine’s narrative. If one looks at all of Pacific Rim, however, you can get an answer as to why that might be the case.
Pacific Rim as a film is cliche as HELL.
These are the main characters, folks! Not the people!
The movie is a ball of cliche wrapped in cliche with a bit of typical blockbuster summer film tossed in. Its a monster movie with giant robots and kaiju/lovecraftian horrors beating each other up in the ocean! There is little by way of expectation of depth in the plot, which is held together by the flimsiest of pseudo-science (though adequately explained) and flashy one-liners. The dialogue is so hammy it rings of old 1950’s sci-fi films like Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, but that’s entirely the point. The movie isn’t in the business of taking itself seriously and relies on typical Hollywood tropes to hold it together so the audience can enjoy some kaiju fun. It’s no surprise then that the characters are all regurgitations of two-dimensional archetypes. There is the reluctant male hero returning for his one last hurrah, the dying mentor who has to see the last battle through, the brash cocky asshole ala Han Solo out to prove his worth to his distant father figure. Let’s not even take apart the sidekicks because its just too damn easy. Each of these characters is textbook simple Hollywood trope o’clock, so why are we surprised that Mako is the same? Why are we picking her apart so much?
I think its because she’s the woman. And we’re looking for something to pick on. We want to find something exceptionally different in Mako and cannot be happy when there are sparks of independence in an otherwise two-dimensionally characterized film. We see the advancements – the lack of a love narrative to hamper the character for example- and we jump up to expect feminist wonders. Yet we’re holding the character to a standard that every other character in the film fails to meet – that of depth – and that is unfair to the character herself. Mako can’t be picked on for not standing as a paragon of feminist discourse, or else we need to pick apart every other aspect of the mindless action movie fun. If we do that, the entire film falls to pieces under the weight of its own cliche.
In the end, Pacific Rim isn’t out to make feminist statements. Its not even out to make statements about individual characters, or give us anything but Saturday Morning Cartoon versions of heroes to hold up its monster-battle narrative. So to expect more from the heroine of the film is almost unfair and certainly cherry-picking problems without considering context. To that end, I submit that perhaps we need to leave Mako alone on this one and celebrate what was done with her rather than pick her apart. Or else complain about all the characters as one whole because you can’t have it both ways.
There are currently four, count them FOUR, articles half finished in my drafts box.
Why, you ask? Why are they unfinished as opposed to gracing this blog with their presence?
I’ll tell you why: side effects.
In a previous article on this blog I talked about being bi-polar. I mentioned how difficult it is to take steps to get healthy. But in the end, I did take the jump to medicating. I’ve been very open both here and on Twitter, because I believe transparency as a creator is important. It helps people understand, both personally and professionally, what is going on with me as I work in my current field. I do it not to fish for sympathy but to illuminate my creative process and how I go about doing what I do. I also do it so that anyone out there struggling with the same thing can hear another voice going: you’re not alone. I often feel like I am, so I want to offer that. So if this sounds familiar to anyone out there, raise a glass. Because we’re going to talk about side effects.
Drugs have side effects. And when you sign on to be medicated as someone who needs mood stabilizers, you realize that you might get these side effects. Sometimes they’re harder to track than others. The doctor will ask you ‘are you finding yourself fatigued?’ and my answer is usually, “I’m an insomniac grad student, when am I not fatigued?” But after a while, you look back at what’s been going on in your life and say, “Hey now. That’s not how things were before.” Then you look up the side effects and you say, “Oh.”
I’ve been having side effects from my medication. Boy howdy have I.
Let’s start with fatigue. I cannot help but sleep ten hours a day. If I want to stay awake and not be half asleep, I have to front load on coffee when I wake up in the morning. I cannot even think about spending time in a comfy chair or near my bed or else WHAM, its nap time. Not in the ‘let’s take a nap, it might be pleasant’ but in a ‘oh hey, I just lost four hours, how did that happen?’ way.
Weight gain. Now I don’t eat well. I don’t exercise well. But that’s been a constant. These days however? Cannot lose a pound to save my life. And worse yet, I feel sluggish. That’s the fatigue working WITH the weight gain. It’s been pretty awful. I’ve always been big but I can feel the difference since I started the medication.
Here’s the one that gets me: my brain feels some days like I’m trying to hold thoughts together as they try to fly apart. They’re polarized to fly apart. They just run from each other like toddlers in a tantrum and my job is to hold them together to put together work. My focus is nigh gone. Reading has become a chore of the highest order. Where I used to polish off a book a day sometimes, I can barely read thirty pages without having to stop. I reread whole pages when I lose focus. I can barely watch an episode of TV without needing to let my thoughts wander like lost sheep. And when that’s not happening, there’s a fog in my head so thick I can barely think through it. I’ve had that before but not this bad.
Why am I sharing all this, you ask? Because of one thing: all this is making it a bitch to write.
I’m getting work done but its at a snail’s pace by comparison to what I’m used to. Where I could churn out ten thousand words in a sitting, I’m now fighting for two. And if that isn’t the most frustrating thing to a writer like me, I don’t know what is.
The hardest part is that my instinct for creating new ideas hasn’t slowed down. There’s still a million ideas building up in my brain, rushing around and pushing into me. I have notes for a dozen things I want to do, but when I sit down for execution? The fog rolls in and I have to slog through where once I could fly.
But hey, I’m not manic anymore. So that’s a plus, right?
That last line was bitter. Its hard not to be frustrated. When I signed on to take medication over just dealing with my Type II bi-polar, I confided in my doctor that I was always concerned about losing touch with that ‘creative spark’ that made manic so appealing. Now, my life has to change to fit this whole new paradigm. And that paradigm includes the thing that I love doing more than anything else – writing – being not the joy that it was but a fight for every page. Its not just work now. Its brutal sometimes.
But I’m healthier than I was, at least in my head. And that’s what’s important, right?
My friend John Adamus says I have to adjust the way I work to adapt to this. And I am… slowly. But I guess this post is to say that though it is necessary, it is a slow process that is demanding a lot of my attention. And it is making me feel off my game. I have not been the ‘get up and go’ Shoshana lately that juggles multiple projects with my usual stubborn tenacity. I’m exhausted, hiding away from distractions to try and get work done. But I am taking the time to do this. Why? Because adjustment means I can be the professional I want to be. It means that in the grand scheme of things, I will find a way to make this work so I can be the best writer and the best person together that I can be. Accepting that things need to change is an adventure. But they did need to change when I went on the medication, they are better off now then they were before, and the work goes on. On all fronts.
I’m talking to my doctor about the side effects. I’m going to ask him if there’s anything I can do to mitigate them. Until then, however, I’m going to keep working. Even if it takes me twice as long as normal to write a thing, the writing will get done. And I’m going to try not to be cranky at myself about it.
This is the first of a few articles writing up my experiences regarding running games at this year’s DexCon 2013. The reason this one convention is broken down into several articles? My team ran three LARPs this year. That’s right, we took on the monumental task of working on three games at once over the last few months and presented those games within a single twenty-four hour period. It was an exhausting, exhilarating experience and I’m going to break it down from my perspective in my post-convention recovery period. (And there is a recovery – I am one exhausted game designer).
Please note: this post is meant to be as extensive a documentation of the game from a design perspective as I can get. When possible, pictures and other evidence of design are included. All photos unless otherwise indicated were taken by Matt Yanega or me, Shoshana Kessock.
Game Name: Battlestar Galactica – Tales of the Rising Star (Game 1 – “Straight On Til Morning”)
Created By: Phoenix Outlaw and Last Minute Productions
Design Team: Shoshana Kessock, Michael Maleki, John Adamus, Josh Harrison, Kat Schoynheder, and Ericka Skirpan
Technical Production Crew: Matt Yanega, Joe Auriemma, Abigail Corfman, Justin Reyes, Ashley Teel
Location: A Double Exposure DexCon 2013 Signature Event (Hyatt Morristown, New Jersey)
How This Happened: Both myself and my team, Phoenix Outlaw Productions, have been running games at the Double Exposure conventions for several years now. After Dreamation in February of this year, I had a conversation with Michael Maleki, who heads up Last Minute Productions. He and I talked about the idea of a Battlestar Galactica game on Friday night of the convention. Apparently on Saturday he mentioned it to Vincent Salzillo, the head of the convention, and Vinny approached me the very same day. He said that he would like to see Battlestar Galactica made into a signature event at DexCon. That meant that we would be producing bigger than we normally did in parlor/theater style games. We’d have to pull out all the stops. I agreed and Mike and I brought our teams together to produce “Straight On Til Morning.”
The Premise:Tales of the Rising Star was an ambitious idea inspired by the amazing work done by the Monitor Celestra team overseas and fantastic full-immersion games like PST Productions Terrorwerks. The notion was trying to design a convention game inside the confines of a ballroom setting that would harken to the Celestra’s immersive atmosphere through prop-building and a focus on more freeform roleplaying styles. Players would get the chance to play one of five groups of characters aboard the Rising Star, a medical ship in the Colonial Fleet, as it escapes from the devastating nuclear attack on the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Officers, Marines, Engineers, Medical Officers, Scientists and Civilians would work together to keep the ship from being destroyed as they dodged Cylon ships, tricky jumps, and of course internal pressure as they try to decide if they’ll join the ragtag fleet of Commander Adama or go their own way.
The Preparation: The game preparation began months before DexCon between myself and the team. We realized that this was a game on a scope that was new to almost all of us: a seventy person game with more prop building and system development than we had handled before. Most of us were used to dealing with games that either a) had lower physical build, b) less players or c) an already established game system. As it was, we were creating a great deal of set design for the game for a max of 75 players and were building an entirely new system to boot. So we broke down the portions of the design, split the work load, and rolled into production.
Build-wise, Mike and his team spent 20+ hour weeks building a nice sized engine prop with working lights and switches for the Engineers, painted nerf guns for use and designed simple mechanisms like cat litter buckets to hide items in. At the same time he coordinated with Abigail Corfman, our computer technical director, who created an interactive DRADIS system to detect Cylons, as well as a system to show characters how much fuel, oxygen and power the ship had. This system was controlled by Abigail herself during the game, hidden behind a screen where she could directly respond to things like jump coordinates that were input into the system.
On the game mechanics side, John Adamus worked with Mike Maleki and Josh Harrison to create the actual system. It drew upon the idea that we wanted the game to be very role-play heavy versus skill-check focused. To that end, all players had three stats to differentiate their strengths and weaknesses from one another. They also had two professions that gave them special abilities they could call upon during game. All challenges were time based. A character would need to stay and repair or heal or calculate for a certain amount of time to accomplish their task, where abilities could cut down on time to use their skills. The currency of the game was Mental Energy (ME) that was expended to do tasks. Items in game, such as drinks or food could bring back Mental Energy. So could spending time with Civilians, which kept them integral to more technical characters. That, then, was pretty much it – the system was meant to support a simple ‘yes, and-‘ improvisational role-play model that encouraged players to support and carry along the story with their actions. This system development was extensive, going through nine drafts before it was codified.
Storyteller Ericka Skirpan in character as the pregnant Minister of Health and rival for Laura Roslin’s presidency.
Then came the characters. We were creating pre-generated characters for all the players, which meant that there had to be 75 individual characters created and available to players. In the past, I had focused on writing extensive backstories for players that interwove them not only into the plot but into each other’s backstories. However with a group this large, that amount of writing for one person would be prohibitive. Instead, we chose to focus on creating short but concise backstories that included: a) a few lines regarding the characters backstory, b) personality traits and c) how they reached the Rising Star in the wake of the Cylon attack. Then we looked at the colonies themselves as inspiration for ways to give roleplaying hints to players. Each character was told their colony and given some suggestions as to the stereotypes for that colony. Additionally we integrated a mechanic I heard about from the Monitor Celestra team, which were roleplaying suggestions at the bottom of a character sheet. For example, a Raptor pilot who had lost his whole family on Picon might be ‘a burnt out stim jockey looking for his next score’, or else ‘a haunted survivor intent to help out his fellow crew’. We provided three options and let players take inspirations from these ‘might be’ hints, giving them the agency to select their own character motivations and goals.
The characters were also split up between their profession groups – Civilian, Officers, Marines, Engineers, Scientists, Medical- and each section was assigned to a storyteller. That storyteller was responsible for not only writing the characters but organizing their backstory ties to other characters, as well as taking charge of the plot lines that would be seeded into each of the groups. Puzzles, challenges and plot goals were designed by each of these storytellers.
So we went. And we wrote. And we built. And printed sheets again and again. And finally we came to game.
The Game: Right off the bat there were challenges. First, massive printer snafus caused paperwork mayhem at game check-in. Characters that were assigned were not where they were supposed to be. Then came the build. It began at noon with the build team going straight on until right before game on at 6PM. At six, we gathered the players outside in the hallway in their self-selected profession group and gave them a chance to look over their sheets. Then at 6:30 came the system briefing. Just before 7PM we went in character and so it all began.
The Civilians debate the future of the Colonial government.
Players dove in to their characters with gusto. Engineers raced around the ship to keep the Rising Star flying against missile attacks, shrapnel issues, and various failures and shortages. The bridge crew stayed at their stations and monitored situations thrown at them by Abigail, as well as monitoring communications with other ships (including guest communications from ships left behind by the Galactica due to no FTL and a discussion over the comms with Colonial One towards the end). The Marines secured the halls and lead sortees into space depots where they encountered toasters (of course) that shot them all to hell. The Civilians politicked in the bar while dealing with a mysterious illness that the Scientists and Medics had to try and counteract, or else see the entire ship wiped out by illness.
Meanwhile, storytellers and out of character techs for the game moved around the space wearing white masks. Players were instructed that if they saw anyone in a white mask, they were invisible… Until they touched a player on the shoulder. At that point the player would be able to see and hear everything they said. This was inspired of course by the Cylon projections in the series, specifically the proclivity of the Six Cylon to touch Baltar on the shoulder. This technique for play was inspired (nay, nearly lifted directly) from one used in the Monitor Celestra game in which staff wearing red would do exactly the same thing. Cylon projections spent their time poking at the buttons built into the characters and helping provoke, terrify and inspire them.
It would be impossible to tell all the stories from that five hour game, but some highlights included:
A Virgon reporter getting her foot shot off for trying to make a run past the Marines to confront the Captain.
A lost Viper pilot lands aboard the ship and finds himself unsure if he’s hallucinating or receiving visions.
An opportunistic Engineer decides to frak stealing supplies and instead saves his commanding officer, throwing him over his shoulder as he escaped a Cylon attack aboard a supply depot.
A Priest of the Lords of Kobol begins receiving visitations from an apparition that promises to lead him to the One True God, and throws him into a crisis of faith under a hail of nuclear missiles.
A lone engineer braves a decompressing airlock to help repair the ship, only to be accidentally vented into space when her crew vents a discovered Cylon device without checking if the airlock is empty first. Her inconsolable brother tries to get the captain to send a Raptor out to get her body, but is refused. Despondent over the loss, he chooses to commit suicide out of the very same airlock.
The civilians decide that they do not accept Roslin’s ascension to the Presidency and decide to challenge it based on their own delegates aboard. The discussion of whether they were committing a military coup against Roslin was put on hold as a base star appeared and they joined to Ragnar Anchorage to join the fleet, and potentially a very tense political situation.
Brace for impact!
An engineer rescues his compatriot from a Cylon attack at the supply depot.
The military versus the ‘secured’ civilians.
A lost Viper pilot rescued by the Rising Star.
“Throw the frakin’ thing out the airlock!” They just didn’t check if someone was inside before they vented…
The Marines debate their control over the Rising Star.
As can be seen by anyone who watched BSG, the events in the game were following the miniseries plot but did not necessarily follow the canon exactly. The Rising Star is a canon ship that is mentioned in the series several times, but events aboard the ship in our game are now in the hands of the players. The game ended with the ship joining the fleet at Ragnar (or at least executing the jump to get there!) but from there, who knows what will happen?
The Wins: The success of this game truly came down to the fluid storytelling style we designed for the game. The team created instances we would put into play around a looser framework of events we would throw at the players. However, for the most part the events were being written by the players themselves. The events in game are completely created by the players and whatever happens from here will be set by the characters in game. (And yes, that means that a sequel game is already in the works for next year). I would also say that the game could not have succeeded had the players not embraced the notion of cooperating to create the best story. To use a Nordic term, these players truly embraced playing to lose often. Who could have imagined a player choosing to throw himself out the airlock in despondency over his sister? That moment set the tone for the story for the evening and drove home the sadness of Battlestar so hard, all because a player chose to let himself (and his character) go.
The Not-So-Wins: Every game has its issues and this one did as well. One thing we discovered was the difficulty of integrating the profession groups together within the game play. The military, of course, was interested in locking down their ship and keeping the non-military characters isolated. That lead to a number of characters trapped inside either the ward room (which became the bar very quickly) and the medical bay. While some players were able to talk their way out into the rest of the ship, that left a number of people left inside one room or another for a large part of the game. It took a more active player to get themselves out into the rest of the plot, and some frustration was felt by players who didn’t know what was going on because of their isolation. This came down to a mix of the profession set up and the proficiency of the military characters at locking down the ship, but it was definitely something the team looked at for the future.
Then there were the technical issues. We had aimed large for the game and had lots of issues with our build, from lights that didn’t always work correctly, expensive lighting bulbs that broke in transit, speakers that shorted out the day before the game, and walkie-talkies for an intercom system that were unusable days before. We won’t even get into the printing and paperwork problems brought on by a complete failure of Staples to print things correctly. All were logistical issues behind the scenes that gave us roadblocks. In the end, myself and Mike Maleki as team heads agreed that we would have to scale back from what we originally intended based upon one simple problem: economic constraints.
The Final Analysis: The game seems to have been a glorious success. Players overall responded positively both in person and online on the Facebook group. The feedback we received as well from the convention organizers said that they would like to have us back for next year, and we’ve already agreed that we’ll probably continue the story of the Rising Star. We have some technical and storytelling lessons we’ve learned, but now we have one year to grow our design.
For now, however, we get to sit back with a glass raised to a great bunch of frakin’ players, the games that inspired us before (all hail the Monitor Celestra and her amazing team!), the convention that hosted us, and the people that came together to make this happen. So Say We All!
Players of ‘Tales of the Rising Star’ – DexCon 2013
Welcome back from GenCon, fellow gamers! To all those who attended as part of the nearly 50,000 gamers who hit the Indianapolis area… are you as tired as I am? Good lord, it was a heck of a convention. I will talk more about it in my next post. First, however, I’m going to riff on a different problem. Let’s talk together, shall we, about Nazis.
