Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours

A PERFECT WIFE

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 21:26:57 +0800

A PERFECT WIFE

(It is Vampire Weekend! Have a pontianak-themed urban-horror investigative adventure. I wrote it with Kuala Lumpur in mind, but it should work for any big city just fine.)

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DISAPPEARANCES

An inner-city neighbourhood, too ugly for gentrification. Refugees have settled here. They fled war in their own country. But they have not escaped violence.

People work basement sweatshops, or clean toilets in nightclubs. They stumble home in the morning dark. At dawn, their neighbours find gore blotching the dumpsters.

The first disappearance was a year ago. Now it happens with alarming regularity—every fortnight. The neighbourhood is tense. Most agree the following precautions work:

Cross the road if you spot rats.
Walk on if your name is called.
Do not look for the baby crying.

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THE COMMUNITY CENTRE

A school for refugee children. A girl in pink polka dots tugs the sleeve of a hijabi woman. “Shingalong time, Missh Shara?” she asks.

Sara gives in. Poor Yinyin! Her father vanished over the weekend. Sara offers cash for information about what happened to him. The authorities don’t seem to care.

Sara cares. She teaches English here, weekdays. Last year, when she miscarried, she bled all over the felt carpeting. She paid to have it cleaned. A faint stain remains.

YINYIN, THE ORPHAN
Sniffling, hiding, remembering.

A bundle of giggles, playing with her friends—but as soon as she is allowed a moment on her own she crouches, hugs herself, sobs.

Yinyin tells you her Papa is short a finger on his left hand, and has a picture of a scary black cat on his right arm. Yinyin tells you she loves her Papa.

“Shaturday night, Papa wentsh out to buy shtuff at the shop. Papa hashn’t come home. Will you ashk Uncle Yat when Papa will be home?”

SARA, THE WIFE
Literature, pastry arts, embroidery.

At brunch her friends coo: “Look. At. You! You’re glowing!” Then they smile, half-cringing. They know she knows they’re lying.

Sara has not been sleeping well. Hormones, she thinks. She is six months into her second pregnancy. This will be her firstborn child. She will not disappoint her husband the doctor again.

She has a nail embedded into the back of her neck. She cannot feel it. Her hijab means nobody else sees it.

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THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

Shop signs in a language you cannot read. Even the thoroughfares feel like alleys. Whenever you turn a corner, roll an encounter:

Music blaring from a phone. A gang of six 38-ers. They whistle passers-by over, to squeeze for snack money.
Excited yaps. Seven dogs, four puppies. An elderly man has brought them rice and curry, in styrofoam packets.
The flutter of yellow paper. Ideograms and a tiger, drawn in red ink. Somebody has lost their protective talisman.
Squeaks from a smelly drain. A rat pokes its head out, peers at you for a full minute, then continues on its way.
Police tape. “Move along, move along,” Sub-inspector Rafiq repeats, bored. A severed finger has been found.
“Eh-hek, eh-hek, eeeeeeeeeh!” A baby has begun to cry, close by. Just behind that pile of boxes. Sara’s baby.

38-ER, GANG MEMBER
Machete use, boasting, escaping.

Tattooed on their bare shoulders: the number “38”, stylised to look like the symbol for the sacred sound Aum.

Are these disappearances the work of some rival triad, trying to take over their turf? They were protective amulets. They move in groups. One in every group carries a gun.

They are still losing. Three senior members have gone missing. Their boss Uncle Day has not left his club in weeks.

SARA’S BABY, THE GHOSTLING
Stalking, mimicking, exsanguination.

There was no funeral because she lost them so early. She buried their remains, mourned them in private. She doesn’t know their spirit is still abroad.

Usually invisible; materialises to attack. Appears as a child with corpse-green pallor; talons; and proboscis-like umbilical cord.

Will never harm Sara. Hungers for her affection. Often spies on her at the Community Centre. May copy her teaching voice: “Quiet please!” “Sit down, children!” Make a check, or obey.

DEALING WITH SARA’S BABY

As resilient as an ordinary five-year-old. Harmed by mundane weapons. If slain, reappears the next new moon. Even full funeral rites will not put them to rest.

The wrong that made them was done to their mother.

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REFUGEES

It is a close-knit neighbourhood. Folk gossip about your business. Some are becoming familiar faces. At every location, roll to see who also happens to be here:

An eleven-year-old. Suki. Organising, hauling, shortcut-taking. With five siblings to support, she has stopped school. Is a gofer for most businesses. Has keys to most back doors.
A one-armed man. Uncle Tin. Marksmanship, bushcraft, forgetting. His panther tattoo marks him as a former resistance fighter. Cheap rum in his pocket. An assault rifle in his flat.
A woman, heavy makeup. Sanda. Dancing, drinking, scrimping. Go-go dancer. Annoyed that the the new girls at the club pinching her regulars. Uncle Day’s favourite niece.
A bald head, robes. Brother Pha. Selling, haggling, spellcraft. Peddles a camphor liniment. “I bless, I bless!” Claims it wards against evil. It stings spiritual entities like pepper spray.
Always taking a call. Mr Nong. Spying, deception, pistol-use. Seems helpful, but feeds you bad leads. Actually a private investigator keeping an eye on things for Dr Azman.
Waddles like a duck. Mya. Cooking, scolding, knife-use. She is expecting twins—two boys. “My hubby’s so happy.” Unless you get involved, will be the next person to disappear.

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THE SHOP

No signboard; doesn’t need one. Sells cosmetics; produce and spice pastes for dishes from the old country; third-hand phones.

Also roasted sunflower seeds; cheap rum; smuggled cannabis—enjoyed at tables in the alley out back.

UNCLE YAT, THE SHOPKEEPER
Smuggling, gossiping, electronics.

“See this panther here?” He points to a tattoo on his left arm. “We fought. We believed! But we lost. That’s life.” He takes another drag of his spliff, and chortles.

Yinyin’s father was here, Saturday, drinking. “Putting the charm on some girl. Real pretty! And getting real close, touching his face, all that. They left together.”

Yat gets quiet. “After what we’ve been through? We all deserve some happiness.” Yat thinks she was a go-go girl. “They work at the club. Go ask Day.”

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THE POLICE KIOSK

Community board: empty. Front desk: empty. Air-conditioning: freezing. You have to press the call buzzer four times before an officer appears, irritated.

Whatever you say, she will ask if you want to make a report. “Here, the form. Write. Sign.”

SUB-INSPECTOR RAFIQ, THE OFFICER
Report-writing, delegating, pistol use.

Takes cigarettes breaks to escape the kiosk’s chill. Obliged to set up a cordon around any scenes of obvious violence. Treats his job as a pensioner’s hobby.

A grey moustache, holding your attention. Friendly but unhelpful. Mention Sara and his eyes narrow; he asks whether you know Dr Azman.

“Because I do. The doctor’s wife has pure intentions, yes. But she is naive. These refugees? They are bad people. We should protect pure women from bad realities.”

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THE CLUB

A poor person’s idea of what wealth looks like: lots of glass; lots of pleather. Driving dangdut. Dancers gyrating on stages in front of murals of elephants, phoenixes, panthers.

Upstairs, a 38-er with a shotgun guards an armoured door. To meet the boss, you must be vouched for.

UNCLE DAY, THE BOSS
Speechifying, martial arts, rifle-use.

A fifty-year-old veteran with hippie dreads. Panther-themed ink. Day was a military commander. Now he fights on a different plane.

“My people’s true war is spiritual. You appear on a lucky day—very lucky. It is fate. Preordained! What insight do you bring, heavenly messenger?”

Confirms that there are many fresh faces on weekends. “Beautiful girls are sacred animals, you understand? We cannot turn away beauty!”

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THE WOMAN OF YOUR DREAMS

This happens on the next weekend night, to the most cishet male person among you:

Maybe she is in some sort of trouble, and her car won’t start. Maybe she is on a corner, smoking—one black eye. Maybe she is on the podium, enduring gropes and jeers.

She is beautiful. Exactly your type. You can save her, be her hero. She will be grateful.

There are warning signs. There is no car. She will not describe her assailants. She leads you down a dead end. Her fragrance is sweet, like rotting flower garlands. Every dog in the neighbourhood bays.

She lowers her eyes, bites her lip. How can she repay you? she asks. This is a game she likes. Gratification delayed. It makes the end delicious.

Show suspicion, fear? She gets annoyed. Why aren’t you playing along?

Her neck twists around. She grins, chin over the nape of her neck. Arms at wrong angles, fingers ending in talons. She lopes after you, running backwards with a digitigrade gait.

SARA, THE PONTIANAK
Pretending, pursuing, disembowelling.

The pontianak is a nightmare: born when an unhappy mother dies at childbirth; made when life is destroyed, trying to satiate the demands of the patriarchy.

The pontianak is a predator: she eats men. Women are exempt—except when they are pregnant with a male foetus. Baby flesh tastes best.

The pontianak is reversal. In human form, her physical features are tailored to appeal to potential victims. She must reveal her monstrously twisted form to feed.

The pontianak is fear. She wants her victims to know. She has tells. She always smells of rotting flowers. Dogs hate her: one will flee; a pack will attack.

SARA’S POWERS

She may whisper to any man she can see. The target hears this whisper over any distance. She materialises by his ear.

She may laugh, a high-pitched cackle. Men who hear this laugh develop debilitating fever a day later. Breaks after a week.

She may touch your clothes. Unerringly locates any man wearing any article of clothing she has previously touched.

She may fly. Moves through the air as if running on solid ground.

She may change shape. Besides taking human woman’s shape, she may also transform into a bay owl.

DEALING WITH PONTIANAKS

As resilient as three human persons. Harmed by mundane weapons. If slain, reappears the next new moon.

A known solution is imprisonment: a specially-prepared nail, stabbed into the back of her neck. This transforms the pontianak into a human woman.

Unaware of the nail, amnesiac, she is easily groomed by her captor. Often she is made to perform sanctioned gender roles—marriage, family-making—roles she previously abandoned.

The pontianak remains within. Her children may be born as monsters. If the nail is removed, she remembers what she is, and once again goes free.

DEALING WITH SARA

A pontianak always has a nest—typically a banana plant, banyan, or frangipani. This is where the root of her spirit resides; where she retreats if her body is slain.

Kill the pontianak, wait for her to retreat to her tree. Trap her inside with mystic wards. Burn the tree. This destroys her permanently.

Sara’s banana plant is in the back garden of her house.

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THE HOUSE

A two-storey bungalow, in one of the city’s oldest suburbs. The neighbours are cousins of sultans, hedge-fund managers, architects.

The perfectly manicured back garden has spider lilies, frangipanis—and a single banana stem, in a person-sized urn. “Easier to control the corm, so it grows neat,” Dr Azman explains.

The banana’s trunk has a girdle woven from coarse black thread. Look closer: the thread is human hair.

DR AZMAN, THE HUSBAND
Gardening, surgery, spellcraft.

Has a driver with a concealed-carry licence. Went to boarding school with the current Defence Minister. Framed: doctorates in a variety of medical fields; a masters in anthropology.

“Black magic? Bloodsucking spirits?” He shrugs. “Charlatans, placebo effect, criminal types using spooky stories to hide trafficking operations.”

You notice a vial on a cord around his neck. Inside: a single hair, suspended in dark oil. He buttons up his shirt without a word. He asks Sara to bring tea. “You’ve met my wife?”

DR AZMAN’S WIFE

Dr Azman wanted a wife. He did not leave such a thing to the vagaries of love; he made one for himself. Etched the nail in her neck; wove the girdle around her tree.

Dr Azman wants a son—though he is willing to accept a daughter. His first try failed. His perfect wife does have some downsides.

Dr Azman is trying again. Curious how gestation goes easier if his wife’s spirit is let out, given leave to feed. Nourishment for the foetus? Once every two weeks.

When he removes her nail she blusters and threatens. She doesn’t mean those things, he knows. He wears protection, as a precaution.

Dr Azman’s vial contains oil distilled from the flesh of Sara’s original corpse. Sara may never harm the person who wears this vial.

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Some notes:

This was written with page references—ie: “turn to pg xx”—because that’s what I do as a matter of course in drafting. But I couldn’t get internal hyperlinks to work with Tumblr’s text editor; my html-fu isn’t good enough. Sorry. Hope it is still legible nonetheless.
The original version of this was written as a monster entry for an urban fantasy game. Stripped the system-specific stuff out; expanded the adventure bits (locations, characters, shape of What Is Going On). Basically rewrote the whole thing.
Writing for a contemporary setting is interesting. Felt okay to use an even more basic version of the system-neutral “stat block” I usually use. Mechanics aren’t a prerequisite to contextualise action in modern-day reality, consider we (most of us, anyway) actually live here.
Malaysian hantu / monsters are overwhelmingly gendered female; most are created from childbirth and its horrors. They are nightmares of the patriarchy (and its callous treatment of women’s bodies) made manifest.
Every Malaysian writer eventually writes a pontianak story. This is mine, I guess? The one bit in the pontianak mythos that arrests me most is the idea that she can be captured, turned into a “proper” woman. And that this is spoken of as some sort of victory, some sort triumph against evil—men win, in the end, always and forever.
The refugee angle is me working through Malaysian society’s xenophobia towards of asylum seekers. I have written about it before; it is still relevant now.
This adventure explicitly casts the husband as the villain. He should get his comeuppance. Any way the situation develops, Sara—an innocent woman—will not come out of this unscathed.
Felt okay to sketch the NPCs, but not the monsters, because I’m not a good enough artist. Your imagination is better than I.

Image credits:

Mechanics as Bits

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 19:34:41 +0800

EDIT:

Freddie Foulds over on Bluesky found the post for me! It was a Chris McDowall post: Alien Dojos.

This is now a fan post about the genius that is Alien Dojos.

Every martial art described there (for use with Into The Odd) has a resolution mechanic that involves doing something tactile with dice, beyond just rolling.

For “Bafistan Fist Fighting” each punch is a d6, “rolled” by “throwing them into the air and punching them”—but you have to punch them in such a way they still land on the table; if you miss your punch, or punch them off the table, that’s a failure.

Or, how about “Five Way Stick”:

Initiate: When fighting with a Martial Stick (d6, Bulky) stack 5d6 in front of you and try to flick the top die from the stack. If any other than the top tie fall, fail and treat the roll as 1. Continue down the stack until you fail or choose to stop.

These are:

Functional subsystems (clear resolution mechanics);
Thematically appropriate to fiction they are meant to represent (little minigames of player dexterity to resolve character actions involving martial arts);
Physical spectacle (at the very least you will be focused on the “roll”, if not dodging flying dice);
Goofy as shit (a virtue in itself).

I want to make rules like this.

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Today I spent a few hours watching this Alien-abduction themed actual play of Dread, on Smosh. I liked it a lot! More than I thought I would!

(Please don’t laugh at me too much for my very vanilla Internet media consumption! I am an old, and very uncool. Today I was watching YouTube between digging up banana corms.)

I almost never watch actual plays, mind you. I tried Critical Role and bounced right off; I have seen maybe two Dimension 20 sessions ever; the last AP series I followed really was HarmonQuest, which was—what, the twenty-teens?

Watching the Smosh Dread thing got me wondering:

How often do mechanics / system talk come up in the course of big mainstream actual plays?

I don’t mean:

“Pull from the Jenga tower.” (simple resolution mechanics); or
“I cast Fireball!” (diegetic, arguably)

But:

“Okay so let’s look it up. Fireball is 20ft x 20ft, and *doesn’t* set stuff on fire.” (non-diegetic rules clarification); or:
“You have four ‘Mercury’ symbols, and from last round you have the "somebody will betray you” narrative trigger, let’s consult the relevant oracle table …“ (complex resolution mechanics)

This analysis by Trilemma of the transcript of a Critical Role episode [and additional commentary by Thomas Manuel] goes a ways towards answering how much general rules talk occurs, though it doesn’t make a distinction between the types of rules talk in the sense I’m thinking of.

Here’s a (totally untested) hypothesis:

If actual plays are edited / watched for the uninterrupted flow of action / banter / emotion at the table (as ones geared towards general, non-TTRPG-enthusiast audiences like Smosh and HarmonQuest certainly are);

and:

If certain kinds of complex mechanics tend to divert attention into cul-de-sacs of meta-narrative detail, interrupting said flow of action / banter / emotion (these are generally absent from the APs I can sit through, or at least edited out);

then:

The games that work best for actual play are basically party games, with light and (more importantly, for this post) VISCERAL resolution mechanics:

Jenga-d suspense;
The sleep rituals in stuff like Werewolf;
An overdramatic rock-paper-scissors game; etc

Or, alternatively, they are games whose systems can get out of the way enough to function like party games. I’d argue that D&D counts as one such game. It is go-to mainstream TTRPG actual play system because yes, of Name Brand Recognition—

But also because it is possible to not play with any actual D&D rules (and therefore avoid the tedium of looking up what stuff like Conditions mean) and still be playing D&D culturally.

Basically:

How suitable a tabletop roleplaying game is for actual play depends on how easily its mechanics can function as bits or performances, in the improv sense.

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So this is very shaky ground for me; I don’t watch actual plays and I am talking out my ass. But through the sewage of my bullshit is perhaps the firmer ground of a design opportunity, maybe?

Namely:

Could we be designing TTRPG mechanics as performances / for performativity?

I’d argue that Dread is so well-known because its simple core mechanic is a novel for precisely this reason: you and your friends enact your suspense around the Jenga Tower physically and viscerally (even if it is anxious silence), for each other (if not for an outside audience).

There is the sense that you are acting. Doing something.

How else could we manage this?

Rolling dice or revealing a card are already performances, technically—but for our purposes here I’d argue that they are very "small”; they don’t have enough presence.

How can we treat dice rolls with the pomp of ritual, construct more ceremony around a card-based resolution system?

Boardgames are already good at fun counters and tactile props and click-y dials—but these are also small, in that they live mainly on the table. You are still sitting on your ass.

Props that make you get up! Rulesets that necessitate play-fighting!

LARP totally fits. Throwing pouches and yelling “Magic Missile! Magic Missile!” 10 out of 10 no notes.

Finger games (rock paper scissors; lat ta li lat ta li tam pong; thumb war) fit.

A chase scene in fiction resolved by a game of tag is maybe too on the nose, but also fits.

I’ve been trying to find this blogpost I vaguely recall, that proposes exactly the kind of thing I’m thinking about.

It suggested a list of unusual fighting styles (or maybe martial arts) for D&D. It has stuck in the substrate of my mind because the proposed fighting styles all had non-standard, action-based resolution mechanics.

Ie: the GM tosses a handful of dice; you (the player) try to punch as many of them in mid-air with your fists; how many you get determines how many hits you score in fiction.

Something like that. Imagine that goofy shit at the table!

I can’t find this post any more. Does anybody else remember something like it? Help! I want to find it again!

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GNS is not a Theory; it is a Tradition

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 18:28:43 +0800

This post is a brain-fart—me trying to jot a thought, lurking and seeing TTRPG folks react to GNS Theory for the upteenth time.

Context:

GNS Theory seeks to frame, understand, categorise, and model tabletop roleplay—and, via this framework, suggest solutions and improvements to the craft of TTRPG design as a whole. Understanding GNS Theory, it is asserted, will allow you to create better-designed (“more coherent”) games.

Edwards compares the utility of understanding GNS to that of understanding physics:

I use a physics analogy: prior to the insights of Newtonian physics, bridges could be built. Some of them were built rather well. However, in retrospect, we are well aware that in order to build the bridge, the designer must have been at the very least according with Newtonian physics through (1) luck, (2) imitation of something else that worked, (3) use of principles that did not conflict with Newtonian physics in a way that mattered for the job, or (4) a non-articulated understanding of those principles. I consider the analogy to be exact for role-playing games.

“Is GNS Theory right or wrong?” is usually the question when TTRPG folks talk about it. This feels unusual for an art theory—but is perhaps understandable in GNS’s specific case.

Edwards presents his ideas as actionable: a science by which you can make better games; principles you can rely on to build your own bridge. It becomes paramount, then, that those principles be factual. Otherwise the bridge collapses.

(Edwards infamously called people who enjoyed “incoherent” games [according GNS standards] brain-damaged, but the less said about this the better.)

Also because nerds are perverts about taxonomy:

Here is a sorting hat that will let us categorise and self-select our fandoms and selves.

We love this tribal shit. “Are you a Gamist? Narrativist? Simulationist? Take this quiz! Argue in the comments!”

GNS is two decades old by this point.

It was the chief theoretical framework of the Forge. It guides the work of designers like Vincent Baker and Paul Czege. Game lines like Burning Wheel and its descendants are entirely informed by GNS conclusions about players and player behaviour, resulting in specific strengths, quirks, and frustrating design “solutions”.

On the other hand:

From the Noughties onwards there has been any number of interesting and excellent games made without adherence to (or even knowledge of) GNS. Tabletop roleplaying games have flowered much since the Forge’s heyday.

All that long-winded shit to get to the thought I had:

Rather than asking: “Is GNS true? Does GNS work? Does GNS accurately describe tabletop roleplaying games?”

It is probably more useful to consider GNS as a TTRPG art tradition. A school or movement or genre, that creators and designers have chosen to belong to / define themselves by / work in the lineage of.

Similar to:

Dadaism as a movement; or
Animation that falls within the anime genre due to context and lineage; or
Tanztheater / Pina Bausch’s place in contemporary dance; or
How employing Method techniques results in specific styles; or
Music theory, which should be more accurately called the “harmonic style of 18th Century European composers”.

But Dada is not the whole of art; nor is anime synonymous with animation. Pina Bausch is just one albeit influential choreographer; nowadays method acting has an antiquated, faintly ridiculous legacy.

Meanwhile, European music theory today is often seen as the scientific yardstick by which all music should be measured, just as nerds are wont to do with GNS vis a vis tabletop roleplaying games in general.

But we should remember that GNS is a lens, one way of considering and practicising the craft of TTRPGs. It is one lens amongst a multitude. Whether it is a good lens is up to you. Some designers have followed its precepts, and made games informed by said precepts; such games vary in quality but share a particular vibe.

A bridge built in the Moorish style isn’t necessarily superior or more stable than a bridge built any other other way; but you may find it beautiful, provided you are partial to Moorish architecture.

I think that analogy works for GNS.

Monument vs Shrine

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:12:39 +0800

In “Replica, Aura, and Late Nationalist Imaginings”, the political scientist Benedict Anderson (most famous for his Southeast Asia scholarship and that definitive critique of nationalism, Imagined Communities) muses on the Lincoln memorial:

Within a temple explicitly mimicking “the religious edifices of a safely pagan Greece”;
Mazda Corp floodlights designed “to ward off unnatural, indifferent sunlight”;
The abstract enshrinements of “Lincoln’s memory” in the “hearts of the people”, while neither Lincoln’s actual remains or any rites for people to perform are present;
The sense that ultimately the most reverential thing to do there is to take photographs.

The Lincoln Memorial; the Jefferson memorial next to it; both figures repeated again on Mt Rushmore; both figures repeated ad nauseum on dollar bills.

These monuments are designed to proliferate. Not only must they create a sober, stately experience for the visitor—but they must also do so consistently, because they are built for visitors: the mass audience of the national population.

Otherwise they must be physically replicable: a memorial to a particular national hero, erected in every city.

The very format of monument-building get copied:

Post-colonial countries, in need of new myths, choose to manufacture national cenotaphs of their own, in imitation of Western models.

Malaysia has Putrajaya, a federal capital sprung ex nihilo from palm-oil agricultural land, its buildings all arches and onion domes and imitation arc de triomphes in inhuman scale, its avenues broad and utterly unwalkable in the tropical heat.

At such monuments the citizen is cast as tourist.

Of this state-sanctioned object of devotion you are encouraged to take photographs, sell merchandise—ie: continue the process of replication. With every copy nationalism is reified.

God forbid you tweak the official monument with your own meanings, though! While writing this post, I found the following story, from December 2023:

“Lincoln Memorial temporarily closed after being vandalized with ‘Free Gaza’ graffiti”

Anderson’s essay cites instances where the personal and irreproducible sneak back into, or leak out from, or vandalise, national monuments:

“Early in the 1910s,”—in Manila’s Cementerio del Norte, a municipal cemetery planned by an American urban designer—“a small pantheon was constructed for the interment of Filipino national heroes.”

This monument was to emulate the Pantheon in Paris, where “great Frenchmen” of the national canon are memorialised.

But the Filipino version failed.

“Today, hardly anyone in the Philippines is aware of this dilapidated pantheon’s existence … What has happened is that the Filipino Voltaire and Rousseau have managed to escape, summoning devoted, often familial bodysnatchers, to convey them to home-town shrines.”

Not that the municipal cemetery itself is deserted. Custodians and their families live in the very mausoleums they care for.

Further, Anderson describes All Saints’ Eve in the Cementerio del Norte, when thousands pour into its precincts.

But these multitudes adjourn to their own myriad family graves and small ancestral shrines: spending the day with immediate loved ones, “drinking, praying, gambling, making offerings …”

Most of the Philippines’ presidents have mausoleums in Norte, “but no one pays attention to them … and only their separate descendants come to attend them.”

“There is something exhilarating here that one rarely sees in national celebrations, maybe because the structure of the ceremonial is not serial, but entirely cellular.”

Hometowns re-exerting themselves within the nation; ordinary people scrawling meaning onto the edifices of the uppercase-P People. A multitude of the singular, instead of a single mass.

Despite nationalism’s efforts to centralise and clone a national identity, still we mutate, still we bootleg, still we graffiti, becoming once again ourselves.

And—particular to post-colonial societies—in doing so we casually continue the work of liberation, sneaking the idea of freedom away from our own architects and elites and prime ministers, who would seek to seize its meaning for their own purposes.

The churches or mosques or temples to demos that the federal government builds are ours to transform. To take from. To ignore.

“No need. We’ve got our own shrines at home.”

National heroes become local saints and slip out of national control.

Does the Filipino government really control the various Rizalista sects? Karpal Singh is now a datuk kong, without his political dynasty’s consent.

Across Melaka and Negeri Sembilan there once existed shrines dedicated to Hang Tuah, Malay folk hero, now a powerful figurehead of Malay-Muslim ethno-nationalism.

One such shrine existed at Tanjung Tuan:

With a plain altar—more a porch, really—of poured cement, for folk to leave food offerings;
Sunlight mottled from the surrounding forest, and fluorescent lights from a nearby gazebo;
A large rock, with an indent on its crown, said to be Hang Tuah’s actual footprint;
The idea that this was a sacred space, where you could come to ask the spirits of the place for love or children.

The shrine that existed was sited in a forest reserve. It was swept clean of leaves by locals; its adherents belonged to all faiths and ethnicities; following the transactional logic of folk religion, those who had received its blessing would’ve paid for its maintenance.

“Existed”.

Because the Religious Department of the State of Melaka destroyed the Hang Tuah shrine sometime in 2022, for the crime of idolatry.

A double heresy. An affront to both orthodox Sunni Islam—

But also to the Malaysian state, that sanctions Sunni Islam as its official religion; whose nationalism requires its mythic hero to have only the attributes and magics the state ulama and historians say he must have—and no others.

Local shrines are destroyed, because the nation-state intuits them to be threats to its exclusive franchise.

Image sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_five-dollar_bill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_de_Triomphe
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putrajaya
https://www.facebook.com/PilipinasRetrostalgia
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/984521.shtml
https://www.facebook.com/PerakPress
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malays_(ethnic_group)

SILVER’S CHILDREN SEARCH FOR THEIR MOTHER

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:02:21 +0800

At her funeral Silver’s children did not cry. Their grief was dry as pyre kindling. They said:

“We will sail east past the border. We will search for our mother in the shoals of the dead. We will bring her home to the warmth of the sun. We will see her smile again.”

They were Samry the brother, older and bolder; and Sellie his sister, smaller and smarter. They spoke such words, such oaths against nature. Their kinfolk shushed them quick.

“Fool children! Do not blaspheme,” their kinfolk said. “To find your passage through the sea of souls, you must blind yourself to all things living. Who between you will give up sight?”

They heard their kinfolk’s scolding as instructions to follow. Their grief was like a roaring fire. Samry was bold; he said: “My sister Sellie, you are the better sailor. We need your eyes for the voyage ahead.”

Samry put his eyes out with netting needles. And Sellie sailed their boat behind the sun.

Together they entered a nighttime world. It was a place that knew neither moon nor day. Here no compass told the truth; stars blinked in fake constellations. Here waves appeared as hands—clawing, dragging their prow astray.

Without eyes Samry was blind to misdirection. Wherever he pointed Sellie steered. She sailed their boat to a candlelit island. There dwelled men with tigers’ faces.

“Big brother, little sister! We have your mother, Silver,” the tigermen said. “She is our treasure. Giving her up will make us poor. We will trade her only for a prize of equal measure!”

They thought the tigermen’s deal a bargain. Their grief guided them like a steady flame. Samry was bold; he said: “My sister Sellie, I do not fear such men. I will remain. Take care of our mother, see her smile again.”

Samry pierced his chest with a fishing spear. And Sellie shed a tear for her brother.

Their mother’s soul was already aboard, seated at the bow. Wherever she pointed Sellie steered. Now the stars hid; Sellie’s compass stuck. Now the waves appeared as arms—heaving, pushing their boat home.

Sellie felt uneasy. Her mother would not speak. She heard birds calling instead. A cormorant with a gibbon’s face alighted on the rudder; it fixed her with a laughing smile.

“Young missy! You have been deceived,” the cormorant said. “You cannot save your mother! Her flesh went up in a funeral pyre. Her naked soul will burn in the sun.”

She took the cormorant’s words as a challenge. Her grief was bitter as white ashes. Sellie was smart; she said: “My mother Silver, I was born of your blood. I give you my body. Wear it as your own, and return to the living world.”

Sellie drowned herself in her mother’s breast. And Silver wept with her daughter’s voice.

A single woman sailed their boat back west. She slipped into warm daylight. She wrote her name as Silver, though she wore Sellie’s face. Her kinfolk treated her careful, asking many questions. She answered:

“Two children went east past the border. They searched for their mother in the sea of souls. But the son was lost, and the daughter too, and their mother did not return.”

The woman spoke such words, such riddles—and little else. Her grief was empty as an urn.

+++

( Image sources:
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-funeral-pyre-7865
https://www.lensculture.com/articles/francesco-cilli-the-night-without-moon
https://www.audubongalleries.com/pages/books/7629/john-james-audubon/florida-cormorant-from-the-birds-of-america-amsterdam-edition
https://artreview.com/customised-postures-decolonising-gestures-gajah-gallery-singapore-review/ )

WHO GETS TO BE A PERSON?

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 03:13:37 +0800

The opening of my soon-to-be-real Cairn RPG adventure, The Tide Returning, is a crime scene.

The king of Zum and his sceptre has gone missing in the night. Hired to find him, you are allowed a tour of the royal bedchambers, to find clues to where he’s gone.

Design objectives for this opening:

Give players an idea of who and where their quarry is. Who did the king prefer spending time with? Why did he write a letter to the governor of a nearby town? Why was he swimming the span of the canal?
Allude to the faction politics of the adventure. These are mainly embodied in the characters present in the intro, and their relationships with each other. What is the culture of Zum like? How do they treat the indigenous witch-folk culture? Do the witch-folk resist? Do the witch-folk disagree on how to resist?
Present complex setting detail in an evocative, gameable way. The fact that the Zum-folk practice slavery, and how that slavery functions, isn’t just set dressing, and shouldn’t be conveyed via lore dump. Players should be engaged, alarmed, invested.

Particular to culture of Zum is canny-ware: human servants permanently bonded to heirloom objects or furnishings.

This is what the adventure text says about it:

CANNY-WARE
To the priests of Bowed God Market bring 500gp, a thrall you own, and the inanimate object you wish to make canny.
There will be one night of fearful rites. In the morning: your thrall is permanently joined to this object—if physically separated from it, they are wracked with agony; harm done to it transfers to their flesh, instead.
Henceforth your thrall is no longer a person. They are called by the canny object’s name. Their own is expunged from all record.
War galleys and weapons are never made canny. The priests insist murder is the province of actual people, not mere things.

The idea that things have their own spirit is pretty common, ya? You beg your computer not to crash; you plead to your car to go just one more kilometre on an empty tank.

Plus: the baseline animism of Southeast Asia.

Plus: the fantasy trope of the sassy talking sword, the whispering One Ring.

So: if things have spirits and personalities, worthy of respect and consideration; if we already treat our possessions as characters in their own right—

Could the things we own be people?

Why not?

Considering we own animals which we believe have rich interior lives. Considering our history of owning actual humans; our ongoing objectification of whole genders; our industrial extraction and toolification of whole classes, cultures.

In Zum a magical self-propelled cart is not powered by magitek nor combustion engine. It is pulled by a person whose personhood has been erased.

Canny-ware expands on an idea I used in (of all places) a personal essay on language and being a bilingual writer from the third world:

A prisoner of war is given to the sultan—“At the palace she was called Dagger. Because that was her function: to bear the royal dagger.” Because the magic dagger is, in her cultural context, considered more worthy of personhood than she is.

Who gets to be a person?

What degrees of personhood are they allowed? How are these various degrees of personhood changed, or challenged?

I’ve fixated on this question for most of the time I’ve been thinking about and making art.

A perennial, perhaps now-overplayed question in science fiction: “OMG are robots / AI human???” “Do you lose your humanity the more cyborg you are???!!!” etc.

I like the question better in fantasy, though.

Asking whether a robot is a person gives the question a “Is this where we are headed?” speculative frame. Asking whether an ancient tree is a person lends the question a mythic “Maybe this has always been an issue?” air.

Its proper register, I think! Contained within the question is—everything, honestly? Everything in history, everything happening now. Colonialism, imperialism. Race, sex, gender, class. The webs of relation / power / violence in all these subjects.

Anyway, back to the intro for The Tide Returning.

The royal chambers are full of precious heirloom canny-ware. They include:

The front doors—a pair who can tell you who came in and out of the rooms that night. The chamberpot—a blind fogy who’s kept the king’s hygiene and confidence since boyhood. The pillow—a jealous girl who was the king’s lover, before he started favouring the sceptre instead.

The writing desk—a prim woman who scoffs at indigenous traditions. She is indigenous, herself, but has grown accustomed to present luxuries.

The peacock fan—an agent working with local rebels, trying to maintain her cover. The silk parasol—who bristles at their bondage, the only one who will tell you their own name (Kanan) and that of the missing sceptre (Shiri).

Essentially: looking through the king’s room is a series of interviews.

Less CSI, more Murder On The Orient Express. Clues aren’t facts passively waiting to be discovered, but NPCs with personalities you have to roleplay with.

Having play-tested this introduction with my home group I am pleased to say it is a fun time, and works as intended!

My players came away with the facts they needed; a better idea of what to expect in the hexcrawl ahead; and a deeper understanding of the stakes.

Playtest highlight:

“Wait wait, how does this canny-ware thing work, actually? Is it Beauty And The Beast? Because if it’s like Beauty And The Beast, then the chamberpot—” (cue horrified faces)

+++

( Image sources:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canopy_Bed_of_the_King_at_the_Chakraphat_Phiman_Hall.jpg
https://yayahkiki.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/cari-keris-berdiri-berani-harga-tinggi/
https://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/objects/1725
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:China;_a_woman_carrying_buckets_of_night-soil._Wellcome_L0056427.jpg
https://www.theatreco.com/galleries/beauty-and-the-beast/ )

TO PUT AWAY A SWORD

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 20:26:17 +0800

David Blandy + Daniel Locke’s post-apocalyptic hopepunk TTRPG ECO MOFOS is back from the printers. Meaning it will soon be in our hands.

Am fairly hyped for it, because I wrote an adventure!

To Put Away A Sword is about the woes of building a home on poisoned earth. The terrible powers that hurtled us to the end of the world continue to bear bitter fruit in your garden.

You are villagers living under the shadow of a fallen giant mecha. Its reactors and warheads leak into your groundwater, poison your goats. What will you do about it? What can you do?

Mechanically it is a pointcrawl around your local valley. Not super complex, design-wise; but I was pleased with my gimmick solution for mapping both the adventure’s dungeons:

Grab a mecha figure, pose it, place it on the game table; each part of the figure corresponds to a location in the dungeon key. Solves for stuff like relative orientation.

Easy!

To Put Away A Sword is me making a mecha adventure.

Disclaimer: I am not a mecha nerd. I am unfamiliar with most of the genre. Anything I know about Gundam I’ve absorbed by osmosis.

I was mainly into giant robots in childhood. Receiving a Macross figure for my birthday. Pouring over the manual for The Crescent Hawks’ Revenge, which my brother left behind:

While I was not much a fan of mecha, I was very much a fan of Evangelion. I spent my middle teens obsessed with it. The biomechanical, pseudo-mystical stuff; the teen angst. I wanted to be Shinji. I thought trauma was so cool.

So cringe. Anyway:

One of the inspirations for To Put Away A Sword is the survivors-rebuilding-a-town-and-planting-rice sequence in Thrice Upon A Time; probably my favourite part of the whole franchise, now.

The joy and difficulties of trying to build your paradise in the weird ruins of the old world:

Yeah, the adventure has a lot of Evangelion in it. There’s a Nerv HQ analogue to explore. There’s a content warning for child soldiers.

The other inspiration for To Put Away A Sword is this piece of box art, an accessory set for Macross’s iconic Stonewell Bellcom VF-1 Variable Fighter:

I don’t know what this kind of arrange-your-missiles-in-front-of-your-fighter-jet photo is technically called. Hardware porn parade?

You see it often enough. Here’s a real-life photo of the Lockheed Martin F35 Joint Strike Fighter:

Fairly or not, in my head I associate mecha with seeing copies of Jane’s Defence in airport magazine racks. The genre feels like such a natural way to riff on the hyper-charged corpo-military-industrial complex.

After the brush war ends, and the natural resources extracted, and the ethnic cleansing concluded, and the profits announced, who gets to clean up after a Raytheon missile?

In To Put Away A Sword—you do.

Ultimately, as always, I am writing and designing from my lived experiences.

See that? The gas flare from the Hengyuan Refining Company? It is about 200 metres from my living room.

That gas flare surfaces constantly in the stuff I make. As I write this post I am breathing its acrid chemical smell. My nose itches. I was asthmatic as a child; I seriously worry about cancer, nowadays.

At night it lights up the sky like Barad-dur.

The plant obviously and continuously flaunts regulations. We’ve tried lodging complaints: with its corporate management; with the Department of Environment. Nothing has worked so far.

“A home on poisoned earth” is a visceral fact of my life.

To Put Away A Sword is wish-fulfilment, I guess? In the world of the adventure, at least, the forces that are poisoning your home are post-peak oil.

It is nice to imagine a reality where a kind of survival and flourishing is still possible. My partner Sharon and I talk a lot about imagining hope.

Last month she bought this small mecha-looking thing. A wireless camera! She built a little hut for it on our garden wall. It is trained, 24-7, at the gas flare.

Environmental activists we’ve met say video evidence of emissions is important. We’ll see. We imagine it helping.

Anyway. David just sent me this photo of my adventure, in print:

Looking good. I hope folks play it and enjoy it.

Preorder ECO MOFOS and its adventure bundle >>>HERE<<<

EVANGELION

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 15:22:04 +0800

Neon Genesis Evangelion was my whole identity, when I was fifteen.

I was an angsty boy from a small town. I longed to have a fiery redhead be mean to me (or to just meet one); to be part of world-ending events (or to be part of a clique that mattered); to pilot a god (or to just feel powerful in my own body).

As I grew up I’ve managed to sublimate those longings, I guess?

All my middle-age aches tell me my body is friend who cannot be taken for granted; their are not a flesh-tool. On good writing days, I do feel like I make some meaning in the world.

And, while I’ve still never met a fiery redhead—I no longer see Westerners as aspirational, so meeting them now feels human instead of symbolic.

Last year I watched the Rebuild series through. I liked it! Parts of the new movies remind me of Shin Godzilla (my favourite Hideaki Anno work).

Some notes:

1. CAD leads to overdesign

True when Tim Burton got CGI; true when Games Workshop started to sculpt minis on computers; true for the nonsense Evas, Unit 05 onwards, and that over-busy flying SDF-1 knockoff. I mean, what the fuck am I looking at here???

And while some stuff like the Eva 07s are neat (they’ve got these skull + pharaoh-chin designs), it’s moot because you can barely see them, because they only appear in scenes like this:

So dumb, so dumb.

The new angels were sick, though. Because when you overdesign by computer you pass into the realm of the inhuman, and the angels are supposed to be eldritch inhuman creatures.

Sahaquiel was my favourite re-designed angel. It got these ridges that look like leaping evangelical choirs.

2. Meta-indulgence

I’ve aged out of thinking that breaking the fourth wall is clever. I did like the meta stuff in last film, though? Calls back on the series finale + End of Evangelion. But crucially it felt really different.

It felt like a satisfying (and kinder!) end to the characters’ stories; more satisfying closure for the fans. It felt like Anno was saying goodbye to his demons, putting the franchise to bed, and turning off the lights. Moving on.

(All instantly rendered moot when they announce a new Evangelion project / tie-in / whatever. Because of course they will. Because Capitalism.)

3. Rebuilding

The best part of Thrice Upon A Time is the first third of the film: minutiae from a community of survivors trying to pick themselves up from the end of the world. Planting rice, arranging hot baths, playing with pregnant cats.

Evangelion finally got some actual, undashed hope.

The whole movie could’ve just been this—the characters staying in this small town, dealing with their demons, learning how to feel and heal and actually live the lives that were stolen from them.

That would’ve been a really good way to end, honestly.

4. Child soldiers

The most obvious thing about Evangelion is this:

its protagonists, the pilots of the giant mechas, are emotionally and physically tortured preteens, gaslit and manipulated by every adult they meet.

This is a show about the use and abuse of children. My teenage self never clocked it. Hm, I wonder why!

Maybe because I didn’t yet have the discursive tools to understand that stuff; 2000 was a different time, after all.

Maybe I didn’t care. Surrogate mommy please kiss me and dangle that sex-carrot so I’ll go kill the world, oh yeah! Use me, mommy!

Because when you’re that young you’d do anything to be treated as important, as an adult. You want to be used, because being used means you are legitimate.

And nothing is as legitimate as suffering.

GRANDAUNT NGENG WILL NOT MARRY

Wed, 22 May 2024 23:12:57 +0800

Ngeng ap Ten was no grandaunt then—her breasts stood high, her arms were masts, her hair flowed like the night breeze freely.

And like all young chieftesses she was quick to folly. She would not flee from a fight. She looked at the Zum King, saw his soft belly, his pale lips. She judged that she could not lose. She would have been right.

She kissed her spear and said: “I accept your challenge, o king. Should I win you will never seek me again, and live in peace always.”

He pointed his sword and said: “I accept your terms, o queen. Should I win you will give me your hand, and rule with me in splendor now and ever.”

Ngeng ap Ten laughed aloud and answered: “Never!”

She was no grandaunt then—her eyes glared fire, her fists were mallets, and her hair swirled like a storm approaching.

Spear haft sang, spear point shrieked. But though the Zum King was slow, unskilled, she found she could not fight him. Her thrusts were forced away. Her slashes she threw aside. She found she would not spill his blood.

She dropped her spear and said: “Calumny! Treachery. My own right hand betrays me!”

He sheathed his sword and said: “I am a son of the gods of heaven. No mortal arm may hurt a star.”

The Zum King offered her his open palm and said: “Come!”

Ngeng ap Ten was no grandaunt then—her heart beat steady, her brow an unbowed arch, her hair hung still like a veil never to be parted.

With her left hand she seized his sword. With his sword she severed her right arm at the elbow. This she offered to him, in accordance to his terms. He asked for her hand, if he won. It was her hand that she gave him.

Thus the Zum King, who thought to trick Ngeng ap Ten, was tricked in turn, and went home to his city with a wife he could not marry.

So it has been to this day: that the kings of Zum rule palace and markets with an arm now bone as their scepter.
Thus Ngeng ap Ten, who thought to best her enemies with might, learned guile instead, and paid a limb for wisdom.

So it has been to this day: that she is our Grandaunt Ngeng, living ever free and alone in the heart of the wood.

+++

This is a self-congratulatory post.

The above fable is part of an adventure I have just I have finished writing, for the Cairn 2E Boxed Set. The adventure itself is titled: A Tide Returning.

It is now in layout, and will receive proper art and cartography by proper artists. (These sketches are my own personal studies.)

Of late I have been doing poorly, mental- and emotional-health-wise—so it is a wonder I finished anything at all. I am glad I finished A Tide Returning. I am pretty proud of it.

A little shy, because it retreads the same general themes as a lot of my past work—the mangrove setting; colonial-capitalist violence done to a people and landscape.

Am rationalising the above worry thusly:

I have now written a trilogy of TTRPG adventures, set at the beginning (Lorn Song Of The Bachelor), middle (A Tide Returning), and end (Spy In The House Of Eth) of a settler-colonial project. Taken together, they make the point that:

Colonial projects are long-term, violent throughout, and an evil not simply halted by the defeat any single Big Bad.

But also that:

Resistance is as long, and as tenacious, and righteous action is its own victory.

Thank you Yochai for letting me write this thing.

PS: the header image is that of the Heritiera littoralis, or looking-glass mangrove—the kind of tree Grandaunt Ngeng appears as, in the adventure.

How To Play The Revolution

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 19:48:24 +0800

So: I do not like the idea of TTRPGs making formal mechanics designed to incentivise ethical play.

But, to be honest, I do not like the idea of any single game pushing any particular formal mechanics about ethical play at all.

So here I am, trying to think through the reasons why, and proposing a solution. (Sort of. A procedure, really.)

Assumptions:

Some genres of game resist ethical play. A grand strategy game dehumanises people into census data. The fun of a shooter is violence. This is truest in videogames, but applies to tabletop games also.

Games can question their own ethics, to an extent. Terra Nil is an anti-city-builder. But it is a management game at heart, so may elide critiques of “efficiency = virtue”.

Not all games should try to design for ethical play. I believe games that incentivise “bad” behaviour have a lot to teach us about those behaviours, if you approach them with eyes open.

The systems that currently govern our real lives are terrible: oligarchy, profit motive; patriarchy, nation-states, ethno-centrisms. They fuel our problems: class and sectarian strife, destruction of climate and people, spiritual desertification.

They are so total that the aspiration to ethical behaviour is subsumed by their logics. See: social enterprise; corpos and occupying forces flying rainbow flags; etc.

Nowadays, when I hear “ethical”, I don’t hear “we remember to be decent”. I hear “we must work to be better”. Good ethics is radical transformation.

If a videogame shooter crosses a line for you, your only real response is to stop playing. This is true for other mechanically-bounded games, like CCGs or boardgames.

In TTRPGs, players have the innate capability to act as their own referees. (even in GM-ed games adjudications are / should be by consensus.) If you don’t like certain aspects of a game, you could avoid it—but also you could change it.

Only in TTRPGs can you ditch basic rules of the game and keep playing.

So:

D&D’s rules are an engine for accumulation: more levels, more power, more stuff, more numbers going up.

If you build a subsystem in D&D for egalitarian action, but have to quantify it in ways legible to the game’s other mechanical parts—what does that mean? Is your radical aspiration feeding into / providing cover for the game’s underlying logics of accumulation?

At the very least it feels unsatisfactory—“non-representative of what critique / revolution entails as a rupture,” to quote Marcia, in conversations we’ve been having around this subject, over on Discord.

How do we imagine and represent rupture, to the extent that the word “revolution” evokes?

My proposal: we rupture the game.

+++

How To Play The Revolution

Over the course of play, your player-characters have decided to begin a revolution:

An armed struggle against an invader; overturning a feudal hierarchy; a community-wide decision to abandon the silver standard.

So:

Toss out your rule book and sheets.

And then:

Keep playing.

You already know who your characters are: how they prefer to act; what they are capable of; how well they might do at certain tasks; what their context is. You and your group are quite capable of improv-ing what happens next.

Of course, this might be unsatisfactory; you are here to play a TTRPG, after all. Structures are fun. Therefore:

Decide what the rules of your game will be, going forward.

Which rules you want to keep. Which you want to discard. Jury-rig different bits from different games. Shoe-horn a tarot deck into a map-making game—play that. Be as comprehensive or as freeform as you like. Patchwork and house-rule the mechanics of your new reality.

The god designer will not lead you to the revolution. You broke the tyranny of their design. You will lead yourself. You, as a group, together. The revolution is DIY.

+++

Notes:

This is mostly a thought experiment into a personal obsession. I am genuinely tempted to write a ruleset just so I can stick the above bit into it as a codified procedure.

I am tickled to imagine how the way this works may mirror the ways revolutions have played out in history.

A group might already have alternative ruleset in mind, that they want to replace the old ruleset with wholesale. A vanguard for their preferred system.

Things could happen piecemeal, progressively. Abandon fiat currency and a game’s equipment price list. Adopt pacifism and replace the combat system with an alternative resolution mechanic. As contradictions pile up, do you continue, or revert?

Discover that the shift is too uncomfortable, too unpredictable, and default back to more familiar rules. The old order reacting, reasserting itself.

I keep returning to this damn idea, of players crossing thresholds between rulesets through the course of play. The Revolution is a rupture of ethical reality like Faerie or the Zone is a rupture in geography.

But writing all this down is primarily spurred by this post from Sofinho talking about his game PARIAH and the idea that “switching games/systems mid-session” is an opportunity to explore different lives and ethics:

Granted this is not an original conceit (I’m not claiming to have done anything not already explored by Plato or Zhuangzi) but I think it’s a fun possibility to present to your players: dropping into a parallel nightmare realm where their characters can lead different lives and chase different goals.

Jay Dragon tells me she is already exploring this idea in a new game, Seven Part Pact:

“the game mechanics are downright oppressive but also present the capacity to sunder them utterly, so the only way to behave ethically is to reject the rules of the game and build something new.”

VINDICATION! If other designers are also thinking along these lines this means the idea isn’t dumb and I’m not alone!

+++

( Images:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-23-fronts-and-generals.1497106/

https://www.thestranger.com/race/2017/04/05/25059127/if-you-give-a-cop-a-pepsi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames

https://nobonzo.com/

https://pangroksulap.com/about/ )

(Don’t) Incentivise Ethical Behaviour

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 09:36:44 +0800

In the ongoing project of rescuing useful thoughts off Xwitter, here’s another hot take of mine, reheated:

“Being good for a reward isn’t being good—it’s just optimal play.”

The quote comes from Luke Gearing and his excellent post “Against Incentive”, to which I had been reacting.

My thread was mainly intended as a fulsome nodding along to one of Luke’s points. It was posted in 2021, and extended in 2023 after Sidney Icarus posed a question to it. So it is two threads.

Here they are, properly paragraphed, hopefully more cleanly expressed:

+++

(Don’t) Incentivise Ethical Behaviour

This is my main problem with mechanically rewarding pro-social play: a character’s ethical choice is rendered mercenary.

As Luke Gearing puts it:

“Being good for a reward isn’t being good—it’s just optimal play.”

Bear in mind that I’m not saying that pro-social play can’t have rewarding outcomes for players. Any decision should have consequences in the fiction. It serves the ideal of portraying a living, world to have these consequences rendered diegetic:

The townsfolk are thankful; the goblins remember your mercy; pamphlets appear, quoting from your revolutionary speech.

What I am saying is that rewarding abstract mechanical benefits (XP tickets, metacurrency points, etc) for ethical decisions stinks.

A subtle but absolutely essential distinction, when it comes to portraying and exploring ethics / morality, in roleplaying games.

Say you reward bonus XP for sparing goblins.

Are your players making a decisions based on how much they value life / the personhood of goblins? Or are they making a decision based on how much they want XP?

Say you declare: “If you help the villagers, the party receives a +1 attitude modifier in this village.”

Are your players assisting the community because it is the right thing to do, or are they playing optimally, for a +1 effect?

XP As Currency

XP is the ur-example of incentive in TTRPGs. It began with D&D’s gold-for-XP, and has never strayed far from that logic.

XP is still currency. Do things the GM / game designer wants you to do? Get paid.

Players use XP to buy better mechanical tools (levels, skills, abilities)—which they can then in turn use to better perform the actions that will net them XP.

Like using gold you stole from goblins to buy a sword, so you can now rob orcs.

I genuinely feel that such systems are valuable. They are models that illuminate the drives fuelling amoral / unethical behaviour.

Material gain is the drive of land-grabbing and colonialism. Logger-barons and empires do get wealthier and more privileged, as a reward for their terrible actions.

If you want to present an ethical choice in play, congruent to our real-life dilemmas, there is value in asking:

“Hey, if you kill the goblins you can grab their treasure, and you will get richer. There’s no reward for sparing their lives, except that they are thankful.”

Which is another way of asking:

“Does your commitment to the ideal of preserving life outweigh the guaranteed material incentives for taking life?”

The ethical choice is the difficult choice, precisely because it involves—as it often does, in real life—sacrificing personal growth and gain. Doling out an XP bounty for doing the right thing makes the ethical choice moot.

“I as the player am making a mechanically optimal choice, but my character is making an ethical choice!”

A cop-out. Owning your cake and eating it too. The fictional fig-leaf of empathy over a calculated a decision to make profit.

Sidney Icarus asks a question which I will quote here:

“… those who hold to their beliefs of good behaviour don’t feel rewarded, and therefore feel punished. And that’s not a good feeling.
It’s an unpleasant experience to play a game where the righteous players are in rags, and the mercenary fucks have crowns and sceptres.
So, what’s the design opportunity? How do we make doing the right thing feel pleasant without making it mercenary? Or, like reality, do we acknowledge that ethical acts are valuable only intrinsically and philosophically?
I have no idea how to reconcile this.”

I would suggest that the above dichotomy—“righteous players in rags, mercs in crowns”—is true if property is recognised as the only true incentive.

Friends As Property

Modern games try to solve the righteous-players-in-rags “problem” in various ways. Virtue might not net you treasure or XP, but may give you:

Contact or ally slots, which you can fill in;
Relationship meters you can watch tick up;
Favour points you can cash in later;
etc.

How different are these mechanical incentives from treasure or XP, really?

Your relationships with supposedly living, breathing beings are transformed into abilities for your character: skills you can train; powers you can reliably proc. Pump your relationship score with the orc tribe until calling on them for reinforcements becomes a once-per-month ability.

Relationships become contracts. Regard becomes debt. Put your friend in an ally slot, so they become a tool.

If this is what you want play to be—totally fine! As stated previously, games say powerful things when they portray the engines of profit and property.

But I personally don’t think game designers should design employer-employee relationships and disguise these as instances of mutual aid.

Friends As Friends

In the OSR campaigns I’m part of, I keep forgetting to record money. Which is usually a big deal in such games, seeing as they are in the grand tradition of gold-for-XP?

In both games, my characters are still 1st-Level pukes, though it’s been months.

I’m having a blast, anyway.

My GMs, by virtue of running organic, reactive worlds, have made play rewarding for me. NPCs / geographies remember the party’s previous actions, and respond accordingly.

I’ve been given gills from a river god, after constant prayer;
I’ve befriended a village of monsters, where we now live;
I’ve parleyed with the witch of a whole forest, where we may now tread;
I’ve a boon from the touch of wood wose, after answering his summons.

I cannot count on the wood wose showing up. He is a character in the world, not a power I control. Calling on the wood wose might become a whole adventure.

Little of this stuff is codified my stats or abilities or equipment list. They are mostly all under “misc notes”.

Diegetic growth. Narrative change that spirals into more play.

This is the design opportunity, to me:

How do we shape TTRPG play culture in such a way that the “misc notes” gaps in our games are as fun as the systemised bits? What kinds of orientation tools must we provide? What should we say, in our advice sections?

A Note About Trust

The reason why it is so hard to imagine play beyond conventional incentive structures has a lot to do with trust.

Sidney again:

One of the core issues is the “low trust table”. I’m not designing just for myself but for my audience. For a product. How much can I ask purchasers and their friends to codesign this part with me?

Nerds love numbers and things we can write down in inventories or slots because they are sureties. We’ve learned to fear fiat or player discretion, traumatised as we are by Problem GMs or That Guys.

The reason why the poverty in Sidney’s hypothetical (“righteous players are in rags”) sounds so bad is because in truth it represents risk at the game table. If you don’t participate in the mechanics legible to your ruleset (the XP and gear to do more game things), you risk gradually being excluded from play.

You have no assurance your fellow players will know how hold space for you; be considerate; work together to portray a living world where NPCs react in meaningful ways—in ways that will be fun and rewarding for everybody playing.

You are giving up the guarantee of mechanical relevance for the possibility of fun interactions and creative social play.

The “low trust table” is learned behaviour–the cruft of gamer culture and trauma.

When I game with folks new to TTRPGs, they tend to be decent, considerate. I think there’s enough anecdotal evidence from folks playing with school kids / newcomers / etc to suggest my experience is not unique.

If the “low trust table” is indeed learned behaviour, it can be unlearned.

Which rules conventions, now part of the hobby mainstream, were the result of designers designing defensively—shadowboxing against terrible players and the spectre of “unfairness”?

How can we “undesign” such conventions?

Lack of trust is a problem that we have to address in play culture, not rulesets. You cannot cook a dish so good it forces diners to have good table manners.

This is too long already. I’ll end with an observation:

Elfgames are not praxis, but doesn’t this specific dilemma in the microcosm of our silly elfgames ultimately mirror real-world ethics?

To be moral is to trust in a better world; to be amoral / immoral is to hedge against the guarantee of a worse one.

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What Do Ability Scores Represent?

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 13:11:57 +0800

Recently, Into The Odd and the players in my home game helped me realise something fundamental:

Ability scores represent how good you are at acting under pressure.

STR isn’t strength, it’s toughness;
DEX really means reflexes;
WIS is more accurately calm or willpower;
etc.

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It is convention in roleplaying games that your ability scores / attributes / six stats determine who your character is.

High DEX means your character is spry, capable of acrobatic flourish; a good Willpower generally means you can browbeat others / themselves / reality (if you are spellcaster) into doing what they want; etc.

There is pleasure in looking at a sheet and seeing: Oh! These are the things my character is good at.

But you do run into problems. Does my 18 DEX rogue know they are fleeter than the 17 DEX bard? What if my wizard thinks she is stronger than her 10 STR? What if I have a brilliant scheme but my barbarian only has 9 INT?

How well, in other words, does the map represent the territory?

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(Art by Vesha, who is an illustrator! source)

I’ve got three players in my home game:

Vesha plays the teenaged trader Khabar (and his buffalo friend / parent-figure, Paal);
Amanda plays the monkey warrior Boots-Ra, now going white-furred;
Aish plays Captain Phung.

Phung does not yet own a proper sea-going vessel. Perhaps he lost his previous ship? Perhaps he never had one. (He does have a magic five-person sampan, though!)

He is impulsive. He tends to make dodgy deals with hapless village-folk, pick up dangerous-looking objects, and flirt with dangerous-looking men.

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Mechanics-wise, here’s how my interactions with Aish / Phung tend to go:

Me: Okay, make a DEX save to duck before the hunter stabs you.
Aish: Damn, my DEX is only 6, guess we’ll see …
Amanda: Oh, no, Phung!

In a previous session:

Me: Okay, I think I’ll call for a WIL save, because the ghost in the goat skull is trying to possess you.
Aish: Well, my WIL is 5, hopefully this works out …
Vesha: Oh shit, Phung!

Some sessions back:

Me: The automaton shoves you. Make a STR save? Otherwise you’ll be on the ground at its mercy.
Aish: Guys I have 6 STR, I may be in trouble here.
Me: Wait wait wait. What are your stats again?

So it turns out that Aish had terrible rolls at chargen. STR 6 DEX 6 WIL 5. Just going by ability scores, Phung is an idiot weakling.

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Thing is, Phung isn’t an idiot weakling.

I’ve got crafty players; they are pretty good at cooking up multi-part schemes. (Their go-to tactic is bamboozling rival factions to show up at the same place, then benefit from the fallout.)

Phung is generally the face for whatever racket they’ve got going: he’s the most obvious leader (the party is generally “Captain Phung and crew”), and Aish plays him as a capable, charismatic go-getter.

Looking at the character sheet, is Aish playing Phung wrong?

Fuck that. A player cannot play their own character wrong. I reject this notion outright.

What’s going on?

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Different rulesets try to bridge the gaps between player action, character ability, and abstract math in different ways: eliminating mental attributes; going totally skill-based; etc.

The ruleset that comes closest to “solving” this, for me, is Into The Odd.

Saves are the only kind of test player-characters make, in ITO and its derivatives. This is key.

The ruleset assumes competency on the part of characters; you only go to the dice if you need to figure out stuff that is out of your control.

How badly a straight-up fight goes; whether you can jump aside in time if you’ve accidentally sprung a trap; whether you can improvise a lie on the fly.

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Implicitly, and in practice:

The STR stat in ITO is more accurately toughness—ie: how well you can withstand a physically demanding situation you didn’t prepare for.

Ditto DEX, which is an abstraction for how quickly your reflexes trigger.

Same with WIL, which is how well you stay calm under duress.

I can be sharp when I’ve got time and it is a subject I have experience in. But suddenly ask me to make a speech and I’m toast (low INT).

Some folks have no martial arts training but can hold their own if a brawl breaks out in a bar (high STR).

Captain Phung is a pretty cool operator when he’s in control, but tends to seize up when things go off the rails (low WIL).

There’s my answer to the conundrum of Captain Phung: he’s a genuinely capable guy. He’s just not necessarily great under stress. His reach exceeds his grasp, sometimes.

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Your ability scores don’t represent who your character is. Your ability scores represent who your character is, when under duress.

In other words:

Ability scores are who your character is when they are not in control. Ability scores are your character’s reactions.

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I do feel slow on the uptake, for only grokking this now.

Chris McDowall probably has a post from the mid 2010s or something where he discusses this aspect design in detail, the clever genius bastard. It is probably internalised play-culture within the ITO-and-descendants community; Emms points out that the current edition of Mothership explicitly talks about stats in this way.

Still!

Am glad to have a regular TTRPG group again, and I have them to thank for my epiphany!

(They are kickass. I ran them through Whirling Mummy a while back and it was a RIOT)

DECOLONISING D&D

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 12:50:30 +0800

In 2019, after seeing yet another round of alarmist discourse in Xwitter about how Dungeons & Dragons is FULL of COLONIALIST tropes and patterns, and needs to be revised, SCRUBBED of its PROBLEMATIC FILTH—I rage-tweeted this brainfart:

“Decolonising D&D”

I’ve seen this thread round the community, since. Humza K quotes it in Productive Scab-picking: On Oppressive Themes in Gaming. Prismatic Wasteland quotes it in Apolitical RPGs Don’t Exist. Most recently, it was referenced in a 1999AD post about Western TTRPGs (an interesting discussion on its own merit; one that already has a counterpoint from Sandro / Fail Forward.)

If folks are still referring to it five years later, maybe I should give the thread a little more credit? Perhaps the fart miasma has crystalised into something concrete.

In the interest of record / saving this thought from the ephemerality of Xwitter, here is the text in full, properly paragraphed, and somewhat more cleanly expressed:

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“DECOLONISING D&D”

Firstly: saying “D&D is colonialist” is similar to saying: “the English language is colonialist”.

If your method of decolonising RPGs is to abandon D&D—well, some folks abandon English; they don’t want to work in the language of the coloniser. More power to them!

For those who want to continue using the “language” of D&D—

Going forth into the “wild hinterland” (as if this weren’t somebody’s homeland);
to “seek treasure” (as if this didn’t belong to anybody);
and “slay monsters” (monsters to whom?)

Yeah. There’s some problematic stuff here, and definitely these aspects should make more people uncomfortable.

But! I think it is an error to “decolonise D&D” by scrubbing such content from the game.

That feels like erasure; like an unwillingness to face history / context; like a way to appease one’s own settler guilt.

Do you live in the West? Do you live in any Asian urban metropole? White or Person of Colour™—you are already complicit in colonialist / capitalist (yes, of course they are inextricably linked) behaviour. (I can’t speak for urban metropoles elsewhere, but I bet they are similar centres of extraction.)

Removing such patterns from the TTRPGs you play might let you feel better, at your game table. But won’t change what you are.

I think it is more truthful and more useful NOT to avert one’s eyes from D&D’s colonialism.

The fact that going forth into the hinterland to seek treasure and slay monsters is a thing, and fucking fun, tells us valuable things about the shape and psychology of colonialism. Why conquistadors in the past did it; why liberal foreign policy, corporations, and post-colonial societies do it today.

Speaking personally:

I write stuff that evokes / deals with the context I’m in—Southeast Asia. An intrinsic part of that is looking at the ways colonial violence has happened to us—as well as the ways / reasons we now, supposedly free, perpetrate it on others.

A long chain of suffering. Heavy stuff.

I also write for people who want to have fun / kill monsters / pretend to be elves, of course. But for those people who want to consider serious stuff like colonialism: I offer no FIGHT THE POWER righteousness, no good feeling, no answers.

Only discomfort. Because the truth is uncomfortable.

Here’s a screenshot of the Author’s Note for Lorn Song of the Bachelor:

“Any text inspired by Southeast Asia has to reckon with colonialism … This text presents a difficult situation; there are no easy solutions.
”… If I offered a mechanical incentive for you to fight colonial invaders, you wouldn’t be making a moral decision, but a mercenary one.
“The choice you face should echo … the kind of calculus my grandparents faced.”

I stand by that.

Also: might we be more precise and more careful about using the term “decolonising”, please?

Here I quote Tuck and Yang’s landmark and (sadly) still trenchant “Decolonization is not a metaphor”:

“Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies …”

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BLOGGIES 2023 BEST BLOG POST OF THE YEAR

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 12:49:13 +0800

On 31 January 2024, the tabletop-roleplaying-game community voted for the Best Blog Post Of 2023.

Contenders were drawn from the winners of four categories. Links, as well as their very excellent acceptance speeches—more exhortations and manifestos, really!—found here:

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Anyway—you voted. Results were very close; I was constantly worried about a tie. Nevertheless, a winner emerged:

Congratulations are in order, and an acceptance speech follows.

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(Like an idiot, I didn’t plan for, and therefore didn’t have the time to make a bespoke prize for the overall Bloggie winner. So they’ll just get a full quadtych of lino prints. Fortunately these don’t look too bad together!)

PLATINUM BLOGGIE FOR BEST BLOG POST OF THE YEAR:

🔮Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction🔮
from SachaGoat

Sacha:

As an (award-winning) blogger who only started 6 months ago - I want to use this “acceptance speech” to share the 5 steps that will start your blog:
1. You don’t need a cool blog name. screenname(dot)blogspot(dot)com is probably available - you can move it later if you think of a cool name. The trick here is to set it up so your ideas can go live as soon as you’re happy (or tired of editing).
2. Post something. Dust off your notebook (or note-taking app) and turn those musings into a structured post with paragraphs and context. Don’t have anything ready to go? Take your latest game session and write a play report or spotlight a specific moment. This will take less time than your ttrpg prep.
3. Share it! With your gaming group, ttrpg friends, community discords, xwitter/bluesky, reddit, forums etc.
4. Don’t worry about the rest. I don’t have a fancy blog template. I’ve yet to compile a sidebar or blogroll. I don’t have a newsletter or patreon.
5. Continue. Your readers will contribute with comments. You will be shared in community newsletters. Peers will write posts inspired by your posts. Your ideas will be used at another gaming table. (And if you’re lucky, you can win the next BLOGGIES.)
If you’ve shared your prep with a fellow DM… if you’ve contributed opinions on a ttrpg discord or forum… if you’ve read a blog post and have a thought that builds on it… if you have any tabletop advice or ideas … 👏 Start 👏 a 👏 blog
This finally brings me to the “thanks”. Winning the 2023 BLOGGIES is such a wonderful welcome to this creative niche. Many thanks to the creators who encourage the community to blog (especially around June 2023, I can actually see the thread that motivated me to start). I also want to thank a community whose collective enthusiasm and support nudge me to release the next post. And finally, everyone who voted for my post over the amazing nominations this year - a huge thank you.

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On a personal note: I am really thrilled at this final result.

The BLOGGIES can come off as clique-ish. Voting is public, but “public” on the Internet generally means a circle-jerk between subculture friends, a popularity contest.

This thing began as a jokey riff on those best-tweet-of-the-year polls over on Twitter. While Prismatic Wastelands grew it into a celebration of OSR blogging culture, it still has NSR / POSR inclinations—the specific community soil it sprung from.

As host this year I tried to extend the BLOGGIES’ reach. Canvassing for nominations outside the OSR space got a couple of indie-RPG designers on the finalists list. Am proud of that; we have much to learn from each other.

I made prizes—hoping that, one day, with enough dangling carrots, these awards will eventually be tasty enough for non-POSR cliques / communities to attempt a takeover? We’ll see.

Ultimately: I am glad to water this sapling and watch it grow slowly. Community is made by growing trees, not building greenhouses.

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SachaGoat snagging the final win is a vindication.

Sacha’s blog is new. We don’t share any Discord servers. We’ve never spoken, hitherto; the first time I messaged him ever was to tell him he’d won the Advice category.

The BLOGGIES fulfils its purpose: to introduce folks to quality blogs; to preach the gospel and importance of blogging. Its shade is spreading.

I’m glad to get to know Sacha and his blog. (Obviously it’s been added to my must-read list!) I am honoured to be passing the torch: Sacha has agreed to host BLOGGIES 2024.

Thank you, everybody. Here’s to growing trees.

BLOGGIES 2023 REVIEW WINNERS

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 10:58:20 +0800

Week four of BLOGGIES month has ended. Soon there will be a four-way free-for-all, where GOLD winners in each of the four category brackets will vie for BEST BLOG POST OF 2023!!!

But first: your winners of the REVIEW category, their medals, and acceptance speeches!

(I asked these designer-critics for some thoughts about their winning entries, and where they think we in TTRPGs are going.)

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BRONZE BLOGGIE FOR REVIEW POST:

🥉MICROBLOG: CHILDREN’S BOOKS AND TABLETOP GAMES🥉
from FAIL FORWARD

Sandro:

Firstly I’d like to thank anyone who thought it was a good idea to give me an award of any kind. It’s humbling and bewildering and y'all are the best.
This was a just-for-funsies lunch time blog post that almost didn’t happen. It was inspired by carefully listening to folks much wiser than me talk about what makes them tick. (Often times I think people’s aspirations can tell us a lot about what their origins and inspirations might be) Yet here we are, an award winning post! Let this be a testament that it’s always better to put yourself out there because you never know what people will resonate with!
I’d like dedicate this award to children big and small, in and out of homes of all shapes and sizes. The suffering so many kids endure is heartbreaking, so if you take anything from this little speech let it be this: Be kind to the next generation. What we pass down to the young readers of today shapes the writers of tomorrow. No pressure ~

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SILVER BLOGGIE FOR REVIEW POST:

🥈Plagiarism in Unconquered (2022)🥈
from Traverse Fantasy

Marcia:

I am so happy that Ènziramire’s excellent critique of The Mwangi Expanse won first place for reviews this year, for three reasons. First, because he is a wonderful friend and I am so excited to celebrate his successes. Second, because his critique is such an insightful application of historical materialist and anti-colonial theory to the realm of tabletop game literature, above all the rest deserving first place. Third, I’m upset that my “review” was nominated and voted for to such a degree over other bloggers’ more deserving work as well as over my own actual reviews and critiques. Being nominated for a long-form call-out post, and it being treated as a significant accomplishment on my part, feels gross. Someone had to write it, but all it had to be was over and done with. It did not, and should not, need to be celebrated. I’m very glad that an actual review, especially one so cohesive and incisive, won in the end. Congratulations, Ènziramire!!
As for the content of the post itself, here’s my final word on it: if you’re going to commercialize your work, commercialize YOUR work. My constant emphasis on the distinction between copyright infringement and plagiarism is more than pedantic: it’s the difference between disrespecting intellectual property (about which, who cares!) versus privatizing the work of others. Going forward, sure, we should work towards a better culture of creative attribution, but we should also work towards non-commercial interactions with our hobby. Pseudo-Paul says, “The love of money is the root of all evil”, and it’s difficult not to see the constant grind of commercial publishing and social engagement as responsible for this incident. Isn’t an ideal creative culture not just an attributive one, but a free and accessible one disentangled from the demands of capital (even if expressed through our particular needs)? We should attribute generously, but we should also share freely as well. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need!

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(In lieu of a medal, Gold winners will get a linocut print; here’s a design inspired by Ènziramire’s post & Christina Sharpe’s In The Wake: On Blackness and Being—a dragon and her wake. )

GOLD BLOGGIE FOR REVIEW POST:

🥇An Empty Africa - PF2E’s The Mwangi Expanse and the strange career of Black Atlanticism🥇
from A Most Majestic Fly Whisk

Ènziramire:

“An Empty Africa” was, if you’ll forgive the joke, written in a spirit of homecoming. Pathfinder was my first tabletop RPG and the frustrations with bourgeois Afrodiasporic creative spaces expressed in the post are the same exact ones that compelled me to make a blog in the first place. The post’s reception in those same Black spaces has been varied but the most important conversations about it that I’ve participated in have been characterized by a kind of low level nervousness. What does trans-Atlantic intimacy and community look like if many of the ‘natural’ connections between Black folks we take for granted are actually expressions of Afrodiasporic supremacy? Is the desire to feel wounds together (with the Middle Passage as the ur-wound) inherently imperial? There’s nothing wrong with a bit of healthy concern, but a perspective on diaspora that includes and inscribes Africa as a constitutive locus (as opposed to a static source for diasporic self-invention) is one that opens up passages. It’s trendy to say that the politics of Afrodiasporic relation, real capital-P Pan-Africanism, ‘dies’ in the 20th century bc a solidarity of shared suffering is somehow false or limited. Fuck that. Solidarity between people going through it is just one basis for affiliation, but it’s a basis that continues to demonstrate its power and relevance. South Africa and Palestine, average Chadians rescuing Darfuris targeted by genocidal militias in Sudan, Rwandan activists risking prison or worse to protest their government’s role in the bloodletting in the Kivus, mutual support networks linking queer Ugandans and Namibians together, and so much more. My father, himself a stubborn old pan-Africanist from Somalia’s “born-free” generation, is fond of saying that the experiences with racial capitalism which make immigrant Africans Black are blessings if you read them backward; mourning together gives you new kinfolk.
My advice for people with similar fears: don’t let liberal constructions of identity constrain your love. The part of you that wants to be caught up in the emotional worlds of cultural Others—what Glissant might call the entangled co-creation of selves, “unities whose interdependent variances jointly piece together the interactive totality”—is something to be cherished and scholars of Black music have noted that serious play allows us to explore forms of diasporic belonging that respond to difference with joy instead of masking it behind strategic essentialism. Africa should be more than an object of retrospective rediscovery, yes, but genuine familiarity is the most potent weapon we have to combat that tendency. Anyone insisting that this work, learning to reflect each other more honestly, must be restricted to (nebulously defined) ‘people of African descent’ for it to matter is an idiot or a huckster. We’ll fuck up, but that’s family, yeah?
Thanks for reading, y'all.

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Thank you, TTRPG family!

(Special thanks to Martin / Sharkbomb for his assistance tidying up the medal graphics.)

BLOGGIES 2023 ADVICE WINNERS

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 13:21:00 +0800

With the third week of voting over, I now have the final results of the BLOGGIES 2023 ADVICE category.

Behold: your winners, their medals, and acceptance speeches!

(I asked these eminences for some thoughts about their winning posts—why they were prompted to write them; what responses they received from people who followed their pointers; how they feel about winning.)

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BRONZE BLOGGIE FOR ADVICE POST:

🥉RANSACKING THE ROOM🥉
from Mindstorm

Ty:

The BLOGGIES are a wonderful celebration of the RPG scene, and I was ecstatic to be nominated, let alone winning bronze for my little post. So much of the hobby and industry is built solely on word of mouth, and the more we write down and preserve, the more knowledge we can collectively pass on to newcomers.
Ransacking the Room is a fun little framework that I’ve been using while running games and it was a interesting exercise to write down and codify it. My favourite thing about the post is the comment section and the follow ups I’ve received—people taking the framework and adapting it to countless other situations that I hadn’t even thought of. To blog is to be part of a wider community, and I’ve felt the love with the Ransacking post and Mindstorm as a whole.

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SILVER BLOGGIE FOR ADVICE POST:

🥈How to Handle Parley as an OSR DM🥈
from Goblin Punch

Arnold:

Lots of roleplaying games don’t have much roleplaying in them.
We’ve been misled by our habits, I think. We’ve gotten so used to thinking about tabletop as a game of hard numbers and sharply defined processes, that we attempt to apply the same logic to social interactions. But this leads to blunted, unsatisfying mechanics. There’s no beauty in spherical cows in a vacuum.
An even worse approach is to elide conversations in their entirety. (“If there are no hard rules about roleplaying, how can you trust that the DM will rule fairly? Better to remove all stakes from conversations.” Fie.)
I believe that roleplaying encounters can have as much depth, drama, and tension as a combat encounter, but it requires a radically different approach than what we’re accustomed to. It’s a softer science, but a science nonetheless. If combat requires a mathmatician, then roleplaying requires a psychologist.
A few DMs have managed to trace the silhouette of compelling roleplay (Gus L. and Chris McDowall come to mind) but it’s still a challenge to capture it, much less to teach it. The lightning shuns the bottle.
It’s an ongoing conversation, and I’m proud to have contributed to it. But there are other people that will be able to articulate it better. I’m looking forward to reading the essays that are yet unwritten, because I believe that there is still a lot to be said on the subject of how to make roleplaying tense-yet-open, dangerous-yet-fair.
This is all a roundabout way of saying that if you disagree with me, you should blog about it and let us all read it. Our hobby will be richer for it.
Thank you, everyone who organised and contributed. You guys rock.

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(In lieu of a medal, Gold winners will get a linocut print; here’s a design inspired by Sacha’s post: a dragon curling around, linking, and being party to geography.)

GOLD BLOGGIE FOR ADVICE POST:

🥇Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction🥇
from SachaGoat

Sacha:

I’ve always cherished the fantasy wilderness. Having now run most must-try sandbox settings, trekked through the worlds of Pariah and Wolves Upon the Coast, and recently concluded a substantial Dolmenwood campaign—I wanted to explore how we can make it better.
Dungeons are great but the overworld’s permanence makes it a defining part of the campaign identity. A lot of the community feels the same way—there’s been so many posts on how to make exploration captivating. The wilderness shouldn’t be just a backdrop or sideshow.
The bloggers and designers exploring these ideas today are poised to shape the role of the wilderness in dungeon-games going forward.
Oh and let this be a testament to those considering starting a blog. My debut post, part of an unfinished series that mused on par-boiled ideas, won in its category. You could win the next BLOGGIES - you just need to start. We want to read your ideas. We want to build our games and worlds off them. I put it off for too long. Please blog.

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Yes, 100%—please blog!

(Special thanks to Martin / Sharkbomb for his assistance tidying up the medal graphics.)

BLOGGIES 2023 GAMEABLE WINNERS

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 20:18:40 +0800

Another week of voting is over, the responses have been counted, and the results of the final round of the BLOGGIES 2023 GAMEABLE category are in.

Here are your winners, medals, and acceptance speeches!

(I asked the winners to say a few words about their winning work—where they were at when they wrote the posts; whether they have additional insights; how they feel about winning.)

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BRONZE BLOGGIE FOR GAMEABLE POST:

🥉Flux Space🥉
from Papers & Pencils

Nick:

Even after years of percolating in my head it took 5 months from the first draft to feel like I’d communicated myself clearly. Almost immediately people began telling me about ways they planned to use Flux Space which I’d never intended, some of which contravene the whole point I was going for. That’s not a complaint, it’s something I marvel at, and am humbled by. The author is dead, long live Flux Space!

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SILVER BLOGGIE FOR GAMEABLE POST:

🥈Pointcrawling Character Creation🥈
from Rise Up Comus

Josh:

How I feel winning an award:

but for real:
It’s enormously humbling to get a single vote when the competition was against some of the best blog posts this year from all the people I so greatly admire. Blogs are the best way that I know of to quickly get an idea out of your head and onto paper, look at it, turn it around from a different angle, and see how it resonates with people. That’s all I was trying to do with Pointcrawling Character Creation, and I’m pleased someone out there thinks it’s an idea they’d like to play with, too.

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(In lieu of a medal, Gold winners will get a linocut print; here’s a design inspired by Jo’s post: a clutch of eggs that are worlds, and a dragon hatching from one of them.)

GOLD BLOGGIE FOR GAMEABLE POST:

🥇Laws of the Land: meaningful terrain via in-fiction limits and conditions🥇
from Was It Likely?

Jo:

This, as with all such statements, is a thing only true in the moments of its making; accept then, the memory of a truth: the most valuable contribution of the OSR is the idea that TTRPGs are more or less choice generation machines; they provide decision points situated in contexts of complexity that cannot be replicated outside of the human mind. The OSR also has made a fetish object out of the idea that such decisions should be procedurally derived, rather than placed directly into the game. “Laws of the Land” was born out of a dissatisfaction with that fetish object and a desire to place the object of play directly in my games. Be brave enough to make the statement: this is true, this must be done, the world is shaped in this way. The best art is itself of itself, and aren’t we all artists? Those of you I love are, anyway. And I love you. I hope the things I make bring you joy. Kisses, Jo.

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And I love you, too. Congratulations everybody!

(Special thanks to Martin / Sharkbomb for his assistance tidying up the medal graphics.)

BLOGGIES 2023 THEORY WINNERS

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 12:57:29 +0800

A week of voting has passed, and the results of the final round are in. We have our winners for the BLOGGIES 2023 Theory category.

And now: winner announcements, medals, acceptance texts!

(I asked the winners to say a few words about their winning work—where they were at when they wrote the posts; whether they have additional insights; how they feel about winning.)

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BRONZE BLOGGIE FOR THEORY POST:

🥉 being a problem - playable orcs at the limits of humanity 🥉

from A Most Majestic Fly Whisk

Ènziramire:

Wrote this while putting my nieces to sleep (exhausted by the Pete the Cat incident mentioned in the post) and they helped me pick the Marshall painting so it’s only fitting that I name Ms. Amaya and Ms. Malia as my co-authors. Race / orcs talk will probably be bad forever, or at least as long as the hobby is structured this way, but a benefit of The Discourse’s remarkable ability to trivialize and misinterpret is that it illustrates the flaws of liberal incorporationism in a manner seldom achieved by other critical traditions. I’d like to thank Sylvia Wynter and white guilt for this bronze medal.

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SILVER BLOGGIE FOR THEORY POST:

🥈 Critical GLOG: Base Resolution Mechanics 🥈

from Goblin Punch

Arnold K:

I see no reason why tabletop RPG systems shouldn’t be as customizable as the characters; the hobby would very much be enriched if they were.

Certainly there is interest–DMs are continually generating their own small hacks, but only the most adventurous are writing their own systems. The largest obstacle is a lack of familiarity with system design. People may know what they are trading when they sacrifice Dex in favor of Con, but the pains and joys of trading d20 resolution for a highest-in-a-dice-pool are still clouded.

If I have been able to empower even one person to design their own system–the last push that they needed–then the blog post has been a success.

Thank you everyone who voted for me. You guys fucking rock.

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(In lieu of a medal, Gold winners will get a linocut print; here’s the plate inspired by Marcia’s post: a dragon intertwined in / strangled by a banyan’s branches and roots.)

GOLD BLOGGIE FOR THEORY POST:

🥇 OSR Rules Families 🥇

from Traverse Fantasy

Marcia B:

Zedeck asked me to say a couple words about this post, so I figured I’d say that (although I’m not sure how many people voted one way or another) I haven’t been satisfied with its reception in general. It’s been read as a neutral feat of statistics, a basis for taxonomic discourse, or a celebration of the OSR.

As the author I’m obviously dead, but as a fellow reader I’d like to suggest an alternative interpretation: there is so much collective effort spent on making books of rules that are ultimately formal and predictable permutations of each other. Only a few of the books originated rules that would then be incorporated into many of the other books.

Maybe it’s that game designers aren’t that creative; maybe it’s that authors prefer to write systems over adventures; maybe it’s that hobbyists feel pressured to systematize and christen their house rules. You can argue for one or more of these angles, each one representing a lens through which to criticize and re-envision the hobby. Whichever lens you prefer, though, I think they are all preferable to seeing no problem at all.

That being said, I am glad that for some people it helped them find a ruleset that works for them, or to just know what’s out there. I hope this spurs us to find new ways to (literally, i.e., mathematically) break the norm.

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Congratulations everybody!

(Special thanks to Martin / Sharkbomb for his assistance tidying up the medal graphics; I dunno how to photograph art properly …)

THE BLOGGIES 2023: FINALISTS

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 17:33:29 +0800

(If you just want to skip to the list of BLOGGIE finalists, scroll to the “Who Are The BLOGGIES?” section below.)

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WHAT ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Awards for some of the best tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) blog posts to come out in 2022. There will be five awards: Best Theory Blogpost, Best Gameable Blogpost, Best Advice Blogpost, Best Review Blogpost, and, the biggest one, Best Blogpost.

I won Best Blogpost, last year. So I am hosting the BLOGGIES, this year.

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WHY ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Blogs are worth celebrating. Barring the actual playing of actual games, they are our most fertile field, our most volatile laboratory. Longform, text-based, and informal—they are a place to jot down our most outre design ideas. Free and publicly available—they are a vector for open debate and serendipitous discourse. Perhaps most importantly: relatively free of algorithmic social-media pressures—they are the best chance we have at a cultural memory.

I got into TTRPGs because of blogs.

The BLOGGIES are, at best, an affirmation of the above. At least, they are a way to celebrate 64 excellent blog posts from the last year, and maybe get them in front of people who did not read them the first time.

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HOW ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Nominations: I put an open call for blog-post nominations on Christmas 2023; I also canvassed the TTRPG communities I am part of. Nominated posts had to be from between 1 December 2022 to 31 December 2023.

I closed the nomination period on 1 Jan 2024 with 149 blog posts for consideration. I read / re-read them all.

I chose a slate of 64 finalists, according to the following metrics, in order:

Enthusiasm—a post got multiple nominations;
Diversity—no one blog was allowed to be a finalist more than once in a category (except the Reviews category, where this rule was tied to individual writers, due to shared review blogs);
Notability—a post was extraordinary in presenting a novel idea, addressing an important subject, or reflecting a community current.

Obviously, that last metric is highly subjective, and limited to my knowledge and perspective in the scene. I did my best.

I will not have final final say. Finalists will go head to head, vying for to be anointed best of the best by ballot. The bracket was seeded in order of number of nominations received. The BLOGGIES await your vote, o TTRPG folx.

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WHEN ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Throughout January 2024! Voting is >>>NOW OPEN<<< on Google Forms according to the following schedule (I will link to the forms and result threads as I post them):

First Week January - THEORY

3 January: Round of 16
4 January: Round of 8
5 January: Round of 4
6 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Second Week January - GAMEABLE

10 January: Round of 16
11 January: Round of 8
12 January: Round of 4
13 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Third Week January - ADVICE

17 January: Round of 16
18 January: Round of 8
19 January: Round of 4
20 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Fourth Week January - REVIEW

24 January: Round of 16
25 January: Round of 8
26 January: Round of 4
27 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

31 January - FINALS

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WHO ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Your BLOGGIES 2023 FINALISTS are (presented in bracket order):

(High-res version here)

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THEORY

🥉 (1) being a problem - playable orcs at the limits of humanity, from Majestic Fly Whisk
Some deep thinking about the racialisation of the orc in elfgames, why mainstream fixes fall short, and ways to move beyond.

(16) #132: Axes of Game Design, from The Indie RPG Newsletter
An exploration of the design axes / spectrums on which every TTRPG may fall.

(8) The Genres the OSR Can’t Do, from A Knight At The Opera
Sketching the limits of the OSR playstyle by looking at genres which are too differently-bound for it to emulate.

(9) RPG Transcript Analysis: Critical Role, from Trilemma Adventures
Examining a style of play through transcript analysis (looking at what is actually being said during a session), with Critical Role as case study.

🥈 (5) Critical GLOG: Base Resolution Mechanics, from Goblin Punch
A deep dive into dice and resolution mechanics, and what they do in practice.

(12) My favorite problems, from Failure Tolerated
A list of design problems in TTRPGs, and a case for game design and theory to be driven by problem-solving.

(4) Roleplay Is Folk Art, from Wizard Thief Fighter
An impassioned call to consider TTRPGs as folk art as opposed to corpocratic walled-garden IPs.

(13) ART, PRODUCT, BOARD GAMES AND MAUSRITTER, from Fail Forward
Critique of reviews that accuse TTRPGs for being too slick; interrogating the assumptions behind the label “commercial”.

(6) Toolbox Design, from The Dododecahedron
Considering the principles of designing TTRPGs like toolboxes, through the lens of Cairn RPG and similar.

(11) Mario vs ActRaiser vs Final Fantasy vs Zelda - Types of Advancement in RPGs, from Rise Up Comus
Identifying some general types of advancement in TTRPGs, using videogames as a comparative lens.

(3) Posters, Posers and POSR(s), from Prismatic Wasteland
Relitigating whether the OSR is dead, and defining its successor, the Post-OSR.

(14) psychosis is badly written in tabletop games, from paper cult
“Attempting to mechanize something so intensely personal, different, and mutable as mental illness is complicated. I think that makes these depictions bad!”

(7) “Rules Elide” and Its Consequences, from Jared
Considering the implications of the maxim that “a game is about X when you have rules for everything but X”.

(10) Models of High-Level Play, from Benign Brown Beast
Loose but useful classifications for types of high-level play: domains; god-like play; etc.

🥇 (2) OSR Rules Families, from Traverse Fantasy
Sketching the landscape of the OSR, how various systems function, and how their attributes cluster and trend together.

(15) Moralising and manipulation in tabletop roleplaying games, from Playful Void
The importance of having design preferences without tying these preferences to moral judgments.

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GAMEABLE

🥉 (1) Flux Space, from Papers & Pencils
A point-crawl procedure specifically designed for labyrinths / dungeons that are architecturally confusing / samey.

(16) Generating Elevation in a Hexcrawl, from Traveler’s Rest
Procedures and advice on how to generate a mountain-crawl: hiking-focused adventure geography.

(8) The Autumn of Summers, from False Machine
God-monsters born of summer, the hunting culture around such beasts, and random tables to generate their attributes.

(9) MIMICS, from Vaults Of Vaarn
A spread of novel pretender-creatures, with ecological and social implications.

(5) Another take on demihumans as social constructs, from Cavegirl’s Game Stuff
What if we consider fantasy races not as separate species, but as differing social roles?

(12) The Apocalypse Archive, from Bearded Devil
An unfinished by exemplary #dungeon23 attempt that includes wonderful maps and soundtrack notes.

🥈 (4) Pointcrawling Character Creation, from Rise Up Comus
A framework for tying character generation to a geography, generating history and familiarity with campaign locales.

(13) how to be erased, from Straits Of Anian
Procedures for getting lost and getting led astray, and the kith and spirits one meets in those places.

(6) Dungeon Skirmishing, from All Dead Generations
Feature-complete skirmish combat mechanics for OD&D, and the design rationales thereof.

(11) Zelda-Style NPC Personalities, from To Distant Lands
A system of generating quick and punchy NPCs, inspired by the way Zelda videogames present NPCs.

(3) GULCH, from Mindstorm
A starter town specifically designed for contemporary (horror, urban fantasy, non-fantasy) campaigns.

(14) Down the Road: Local Situation Design, from Deeper In The Game
A procedure for quickly generating a powderkeg situation in a local geography of play.

🥇 (7) Laws of the Land: meaningful terrain via in-fiction limits and conditions, from Was It Likely?
A method to generate meaningful diegetic terrain and tone in an adventuring region.

(10) False Equivalent Exchange, from The Graverobber’s Guide
A novel magic system, done in natural language, with discussion on how it could be used in play.

(2) Deeper Catacombs, from Benign Brown Beast
Iteration notes and a presentation of a comprehensive dungeon tracking procedure.

(15) Inadvisable Decisions (GLΔG), from The Nothic’s Eye
An evocative alienist character class, based on drawing the attention of alter-describable things from beyond.

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ADVICE

🥈 (1) How to Handle Parley as an OSR DM, from Goblin Punch
Comprehensive notes on how to run non-combat encounters without resorting to boring rolls.

(16) GM Pointers: Live-Text Games, from Shadow & Fae
Good reminders on how to run live-text games better, so they are better coordinated and don’t take forever.

(8) ONLY Roll Initiative, from Bastionland
Considerations on how to adjudicate combats, if initiative were the only dice roll in a combat system.

(9) Action Mysteries, from A Knight At The Opera
Asserting that good TTRPGs mysteries involve action—not just figuring out the truth but opposing the antagonist’s goals.

(5) Modular Ecology, from The Graverobber’s Guide
A practical approach to including gameable ecology in TTRPGs, by tying materials to specific locations and conditions of the world.

(12) ULTIMATE ANIMIST MECHANIC: EVERYTHING IS A REACTION, from Alone In The Labyrinth
How to run a game where all actions are resolved by reaction roll: everything in the world responds by how much they like you.

(4) Game Mastering Like A Park Ranger, from SILVERARM
Advice about GM-ing, based on the real-world work experience of being a park ranger.

(13) An OSR approach to Spotlight, from Permanent Cranial Damage
The suggestion that intentionally spotlighting characters solves the real-life problem of spotlighting players nicely.

(6) #Dungeon23, from Win Conditions
The idea that spawned a thousand notebook dungeons, plus salient advice on how to start / keep going.

(11) The Storyteller Technique, from Possum Creek Games
When writing TTRPGs, imagine your game text as a diegetic artefact in the world of the game.

🥉 (3) RANSACKING THE ROOM, from Mindstorm
A simple and powerful three-step method to handle room-searching in games: inspect, search, and ransack.

(14) Cairn Crash Course, from Widdershins Wanderings
A masterclass example on how to write player guides to a game, for Cairn RPG.

(7) AN EXAMPLE OF FKR (NEAR-)DICELESS COMBAT (WITH COSMIC ORRERY!), from Underground Adventures
Describing combat in a Free Kriegsspiel Roleplaying (FKR) game, useful in understanding that playstyle.

🥇 (10) Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction, from sachagoat
Figuring out problems with wilderness exploration, and applying a mental-map framework from urban-theory academia.

(2) Dungeon Design, Process and Keys, from All Dead Generations
A detailed process to designing and keying a traditional dungeon adventure.

(15) THE D&D IN MY HEAD: In Only 6 Load-Bearing Numbers, from I Cast Light!
Identifying the essential and minimum rules you need to remember, to run D&D.

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REVIEW

🥇 (1) An Empty Africa - PF2E’s The Mwangi Expanse and the strange career of Black Atlanticism, from Majestic Fly Whisk
A review of Pathfinder’s “The Mwangi Expanse”, and a discussion of Black Atlanticism’s fraught relationship with its sourcelands.

(16) What Hull Breach Teaches Us, from Mazirian’s Garden
An assessment of the Mothership RPG third-party “Hull Breach” anthology as a “new standard for anthology companions”.

(8) Grave Trespass - Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, from Bones Of Contention
A review of the Labyrinth RPG. It’s got all these things which are “bad” in RPGs, so why does it work?

(9) The First Rumor Tables, Part 2: Caverns of Thracia or Caverns of Quasqueton?, from Tom Van Winkle’s Return To Gaming
An investigation into the origins of rumour tables in TTRPGs. Did TSR plagiarise Jaquays?

(5) Standing up for D&D’s Gen X: 2e (Part 1), from Mythlands Of Erce
A full-throated defense of D&D2E, viewing it in the context of its time and as a refinement over 1E.

(12) Systemcrawl: Break!! RPG, from Widdershins Wanderings
A review and system analysis of Break!! RPG, which marries JRPG and OSR inspirations.

(4) Dungeon Crawls in Cinema, from Directsun Games
Evaluating several films on the basis of how well they function as dungeon crawls.

(13) Reasonable Reviews, from Rise Up Comus
A general overview of TTRPG reviews, and what may or may not make them useful.

(6) Deep Dive: A|STATE, from The Indie Game Reading Club
A review of a|state, and how it builds on and departs from the Blades In The Dark formula.

(11) I Read Cloud Empress, from Playful Void
A review of Cloud Empress, the first descendant of the Mothership RPG ruleset.

🥈 (3) Plagiarism in Unconquered (2022), from Traverse Fantasy
A forensic analysis of how Unconquered plagiarised Ultraviolet Grasslands and Vaults Of Vaarn.

(14) Rod, Reel, & Fist (Review), from Benign Brown Beast
A substantial review of Rod, Reel, & Fist, a “system-forward fishing simulation RPG”.

(7) Pedantic Wasteland - Vampire Cruise, from Bones Of Contention
A review of Vampire Cruise, a largely system-neutral horror-comedy adventure set at sea.

(10) Dragon Magazine: Player Advice Collection Overview, from Attronarch Athenaeum
A comprehensive read-through and rating of 143 Dragon Magazine advice articles.

(2) Spire: The Monstrosity of Empire, the Necessity of Violence, from A A Voigt
A comparative-literature analysis of Spire RPG through R F Kuang’s spec-fic novel “Babel, or the Necessity of Violence”.

🥉 (15) MICROBLOG: CHILDREN’S BOOKS AND TABLETOP GAMES, from Fail Forward
Considering the influence of children’s books on TTRPG designers and works like “Barkeep on the Borderlands”.

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It is difficult to describe how hard it was for me to whittle down the list of nominees to these finalists. I consider each of these 64 a landmark in 2023’s TTRPG thinkings, and the folks from which they issue essential reading, going forward. They already deserve a prize.

So here it is, dear bloggers: a hand-carved linocut “finalist’s pin” graphic you are free to use on your sites / posts, should you wish:

(High-res downloadable version HERE)

Thank you for writing! And good luck in the coming rounds of voting!

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CORRECTION: A blog post from 2021 (Not All Crunch Is the Same, from A Knight At The Opera), was included in the soft-launch posting of this list. An error on the part of its nominator, compounded by a data-entry error on my part. It has since been replaced by a post from the same blog with the actual most nominations (The Genres the OSR Can’t Do). I have also double-checked my lists and all finalists. Apologies for my error!

THE BLOGGIES 2023: NOMINATIONS OPEN

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 21:15:18 +0800

If tabletop roleplaying games were a hydra, blogs would definitely be one of its heads.

Probably the smartest, zaniest one? The one with the unexpected ideas; the silliest quips; the most devious schemes; the most profound observations.

The OSR / post-OSR style of play arose on blogs. I was inspired to make roleplaying games because of a blog post (this one, by Patrick Stuart, specifically).

Beyond the actual playing of games with friends, blogs are the most important part of TTRPGs, to me.

Last year, Prismatic Wasteland hosted the inaugural Bloggies.

64 excellent posts from across the TTRPG blogosphere were considered. A celebration of our community, our psychic brain-trust—the many heads of this, our TTRPG beast.

All the nominees are worth perusing. Winners list here.

My post, “D&D’s Obsession With Taxonomy”, won Best Blog Post of 2022. (Thank you, everybody who voted!)

Because I won, it falls to me to host this year’s Bloggies.

Nominations are now open for the BLOGGIES 2023!

Is there a blogpost about TTRPGs from the past year (December 2022 to December 2023) that you think deserves attention and recognition?

Tell me about it! Drop a link to it, tell me why you like it, tell me which category it falls under:

Theory—broad criticism, observation, and analysis about TTRPGs (its cultures, its aesthetics and texts, its politics, etc);
Gameable—cool stuff (monsters, subsystems, bits of design, etc) you could grab and add to your own games;
Advice—ideas, tricks, and procedures for making your games better / easier / more fun, basically adding to the play-culture;
Review—specific criticism of specific books / games / systems / adventures / products.

Drop your nominations in the comments below, or in this Xwitter thread, or wherever else you can get in touch with me on the Internet. Do this before the end of 31 December 2023.

How BLOGGIES 2023 Will Work

Here’s how I am thinking of running things:

25 Dec 2023 - 31 Dec 2023:
Nominations open!
1 Jan 2024:
Nominees shortlist announced!
First week Jan 2024:
Public voting for Best Theory Post!
Second week Jan 2024:
Public voting for Best Gameable Post!
Third week Jan 2024:
Public voting for Best Advice Post!
Fourth week Jan 2024:
Public voting for Best Review Post!
First week Feb 2024:
Final round of voting for Best Blog Post Of 2023!

“Imperfection is a feature, not a bug, of blogging,” as Warren said about the Bloggies, last year. I am but a single person. I will be copying much of his methodology.

I will be whittling down the nominations I receive to a shortlist of 64 posts (16 per category bracket), via personal judgment. No blog will be represented more than once per category—except for reviews (3 posts per blog).

Public voting for each category will happen in four rounds (16 / 8 / 4 / finals). Winners in each category will face off in a four-way vote for Best Blog Post.

Voting will most likely happen on Twitter, same as last year. (I am loathe to do this, but Twitter is still the social-media network most TTRPG people are on, sadly. But am also considering Google Forms. Thoughts?)

Month-long voting gives us the space to celebrate / argue over all the work our community has turned out this year—and gives me time to create prizes. (Am thinking of making linocut prints, inspired by the winning posts.)

Finals being announced in February just before the Lunar New Year justifies the header art above—as the Year of the Rabbit gives way to the Year of the Dragon.

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Here we go here we go here we go!

Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours

A PERFECT WIFE

A PERFECT WIFE

DISAPPEARANCES

THE COMMUNITY CENTRE

YINYIN, THE ORPHANSniffling, hiding, remembering.

SARA, THE WIFELiterature, pastry arts, embroidery.

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

38-ER, GANG MEMBERMachete use, boasting, escaping.

SARA’S BABY, THE GHOSTLINGStalking, mimicking, exsanguination.

DEALING WITH SARA’S BABY

REFUGEES

THE SHOP

UNCLE YAT, THE SHOPKEEPERSmuggling, gossiping, electronics.

THE POLICE KIOSK

SUB-INSPECTOR RAFIQ, THE OFFICERReport-writing, delegating, pistol use.

THE CLUB

UNCLE DAY, THE BOSSSpeechifying, martial arts, rifle-use.

THE WOMAN OF YOUR DREAMS

SARA, THE PONTIANAKPretending, pursuing, disembowelling.

SARA’S POWERS

DEALING WITH PONTIANAKS

DEALING WITH SARA

THE HOUSE

DR AZMAN, THE HUSBANDGardening, surgery, spellcraft.

DR AZMAN’S WIFE

Mechanics as Bits

Could we be designing TTRPG mechanics as performances / for performativity?

GNS is not a Theory; it is a Tradition

Monument vs Shrine

SILVER’S CHILDREN SEARCH FOR THEIR MOTHER

WHO GETS TO BE A PERSON?

Who gets to be a person?

TO PUT AWAY A SWORD

EVANGELION

GRANDAUNT NGENG WILL NOT MARRY

How To Play The Revolution

How To Play The Revolution

(Don’t) Incentivise Ethical Behaviour

(Don’t) Incentivise Ethical Behaviour

XP As Currency

Friends As Property

Friends As Friends

A Note About Trust

Further Reading

What Do Ability Scores Represent?

Ability scores represent how good you are at acting under pressure.

DECOLONISING D&D

“DECOLONISING D&D”

Further Reading

BLOGGIES 2023 BEST BLOG POST OF THE YEAR

PLATINUM BLOGGIE FOR BEST BLOG POST OF THE YEAR:

BLOGGIES 2023 REVIEW WINNERS

BRONZE BLOGGIE FOR REVIEW POST:

SILVER BLOGGIE FOR REVIEW POST:

GOLD BLOGGIE FOR REVIEW POST:

BLOGGIES 2023 ADVICE WINNERS

BRONZE BLOGGIE FOR ADVICE POST:

SILVER BLOGGIE FOR ADVICE POST:

GOLD BLOGGIE FOR ADVICE POST:

BLOGGIES 2023 GAMEABLE WINNERS

BRONZE BLOGGIE FOR GAMEABLE POST:

SILVER BLOGGIE FOR GAMEABLE POST:

GOLD BLOGGIE FOR GAMEABLE POST:

BLOGGIES 2023 THEORY WINNERS

BRONZE BLOGGIE FOR THEORY POST:

SILVER BLOGGIE FOR THEORY POST:

GOLD BLOGGIE FOR THEORY POST:

THE BLOGGIES 2023: FINALISTS

WHAT ARE THE BLOGGIES?

WHY ARE THE BLOGGIES?

HOW ARE THE BLOGGIES?

WHEN ARE THE BLOGGIES?

WHO ARE THE BLOGGIES?

THE BLOGGIES 2023: NOMINATIONS OPEN

Nominations are now open for the BLOGGIES 2023!

How BLOGGIES 2023 Will Work

YINYIN, THE ORPHAN
Sniffling, hiding, remembering.

SARA, THE WIFE
Literature, pastry arts, embroidery.

38-ER, GANG MEMBER
Machete use, boasting, escaping.

SARA’S BABY, THE GHOSTLING
Stalking, mimicking, exsanguination.

UNCLE YAT, THE SHOPKEEPER
Smuggling, gossiping, electronics.

SUB-INSPECTOR RAFIQ, THE OFFICER
Report-writing, delegating, pistol use.

UNCLE DAY, THE BOSS
Speechifying, martial arts, rifle-use.

SARA, THE PONTIANAK
Pretending, pursuing, disembowelling.

DR AZMAN, THE HUSBAND
Gardening, surgery, spellcraft.