Blog – Page 77 – The Designer Monologues

August 1, 2015

#RPGaDAY2015: Day 1

Today is August first, and for the entirety of this month, I’ll be taking part in #RPGaDay2015, organized by Dave Chapman, designer of Doctor Who: Adventures In Time and Space. Dave launched this last year — a daily opportunity to talk about various topics related to tabletop RPGs. He put together a daily topic list, and people from all over the world posted their responses on various social media. Last year, my responses were on my Facebook page, and I pointed to them via Twitter, Google+, etc. However, over the past year, I’ve begun using my Facebook as a personal site only, limited to actual friends and family, and so it wasn’t a good match for a public-facing project like this. Thankfully, I have a sadly-neglected public blog, so this year I’ll be making the posts here every day. Makes much more sense, and hopefully will get me back in the habit of putting stuff here regularly.

If you’d like to participate in #RPGaDay2015 yourself, click on the image above to see a full-sized version of the topics. Grab the image, and post your own entry! Make sure to promote it with the hashtag #RPGaDay2015 (the year is important, otherwise last year’s entries will show up in any searches).

Dave is doing his entries on video, and, since he’s 6 hours ahead of me in the UK, I’ll be linking his videos to my entries here, so you can see what Dave (and his daily video guest stars) have to say on the day’s topic. If you keep watching, you’ll see various figures from the game industry make an appearance… perhaps even a few you know. (ahem)

So here’s Dave’s entry for today, with guest Dominic McDowall-Thomas from Cubicle 7:

Now to my response to today’s question: Forthcoming Game You’re Most Looking Forward To.

Like Dave, I’m going to try to avoid self-promotion here, but the game I’m most looking forward to is, if I’m being honest, my own FAR WEST, which is horribly and legendarily late. We’re coming up on 4 years since the Kickstarter, but it’s still not out yet. Getting there, though. So close.

But rather than shill my own stuff, I’m going to go with another game that I’m massively looking forward to:

Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, from Modiphius. You can read all about it here. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to get a look at the playtest materials, and I’m so excited to see the final product. I’m a Conan nut, and Modiphius is doing this RIGHT. In recent years, Conan has been shoe-horned into rules systems which don’t quite fit the feel of the Howard stories — but not this time. Care and attention is being given to every aspect of this game, and I cannot wait to tread the jeweled thrones of the Hyborian Age beneath my sandaled feet.

So that’s what I’m most looking forward — how about you?

March 27, 2015March 27, 2015

Saying No to Indiana

As I’m sure most of you know by now, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed his state’s so-called “Religious Freedom” bill into law, a transparent backlash against the growing tide of marriage equality. It is, bluntly, a “right to discriminate based on my bronze-age superstitions, because Invisible Sky Pixie sez so” law. Here’s a dead give-away — if this law was so God-Bless-America AWESOME, the signing ceremony wouldn’t have been held in private.

Many businesses have come out against this latest overreach from the American Taliban — including GenCon, the largest convention in my industry. Now that the law has been enacted, GenCon has said that it will effect their decision to remain in Indianapolis after their current contract ends in 2020.

I don’t have a contract until 2020. I can decide to stay away from Indiana right now. I was not going to attend GenCon as an exhibitor this year (I no longer have shared space in a booth, and the waiting list for new exhibitors is too long), but I was planning on flying in and having meetings, talk with colleagues, & line up freelance work (both as a freelancer and a publisher). I cannot, in good conscience, do that now.

It’s bad enough that my tax dollars go to support the benighted ignorance of Kansas, the state where I currently reside. But I have more of a choice in where I travel for business. Indiana isn’t getting any money from me.

I know I’m not a big deal. My presence or absence will be noted by few. For me, though, it’s about drawing a line.

I see friends and colleagues struggling with whether or not to attend — and those who are attending say that we shouldn’t penalize GenCon, or the folks in Indianapolis who don’t support this law. That we should attend anyway, and show our support for those people, and maybe engage in protest while we’re there.

I’m sorry, but that doesn’t work. The only way things will change is if we don’t go, and we make it clear why.

For boycotts to have any impact, they need to be stark, immediate, brutal and unflinching — even if it ends up isolating the folks in the state who don’t support the law. The only way this gets overturned is if there’s massive economic damage.

For me, “I’m still going, to offer support/protest” veers just a bit too close to coming up with excuses to keep doing something I like, because I like it. I recognize that tendency within myself, and I’m not comfortable with it. Boycotts are not supposed to be comfortable or easy — otherwise they’d have no meaning. They should be a sacrifice on the part of the boycotter.

My fear is that enough people will end up coming up with reasons WHY they should just go ahead and attend that it will undercut the effectiveness of any boycott attempt, especially given the depressingly large percentage of gamers who have expressed support for this law, or bemoaned that gaming “should stay out of politics.”

You see, they’re ALREADY going.

And if you go, you’re counted with them, regardless of your intentions.

You’re a turnstile number in attendance, money going into the economy, and part of the reason why those that enacted this law will say “see? it was all nothing in the end.” Other states will look at that, and be more likely to press ahead with their own laws, knowing that there will be no real blowback.

I can’t be a part of that. I hope you can’t, either.

March 24, 2015

Doctor Who: Back For 10 Years Now…

Fan-made trailer celebrating TEN YEARS (Holy SHIT) of NuWho.

It’s a great reminder of how wonderful it felt that my favorite show came back, after a 9-year gap since the last attempt — and a full 16 years since it had last been a regular series. It’s easy to forget that — to get wrapped up in the “this episode was disappointing” or “this season wasn’t as good as the last” or “I don’t like this Doctor as much as…” stuff. Doctor Who is back, has been back for a decade, and is bigger now than it has ever been.

That’s… well, “Fantastic!”, to borrow a phrase.