tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16159996551993179172024-02-18T20:42:50.073-08:00Ian's BlogIt's called Ian's Blog because it actually is Ian's blog. Hire me for my creativity.
This is an infrequent collection of posts about RPGs, socialism, and video games, not necessarily in that order.Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-10436672928420885602015-11-03T15:54:00.001-08:002015-11-03T15:54:22.391-08:00This blog is defunct, go to my websiteI've got a proper website with woefully infrequent blogging over there.<br />
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http://ianwilliams.xyz/Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-8931994345978898272015-06-11T11:18:00.005-07:002015-06-11T11:18:51.820-07:00Professional Wrestling is the American DreamDusty Rhodes died today. I contributed an essay to Nathan Paoletta's pro wrestling roleplaying game, "World Wide Wrestling" (as well as serving as editor). With Nathan's permission, I'm printing it here in tribute to one of the greats. I'm godawful upset. RIP Dusty.<br />
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<br />
The mother of one of my childhood friends would cry whenever Dusty Rhodes would cut a promo. She wouldn’t sob or carry on. Dusty would speak and I’d glance over to find that her eyes were wet as she half–paid attention to the grainy screen of a mid–80s television set.<br />
<br />
I grew up in Lexington, North Carolina, one of those mill towns John Edwards made so central to his biography during the 2004 and 2008 presidential races. It was small, somewhere between a town and a city, but booming. Everyone worked in a factory, either furniture or textiles, less often the local fiberglass plant, and it was good money in a place where the cost of living was low. I had friends who had pools in their backyards due to a line worker’s salary. Nice, fast cars. Big barbecues every weekend, with cock rock blaring and pigs cooking.<br />
<br />
Lexington happens to be about 45 minutes north of Charlotte, which was home, in those days, to Jim Crockett Promotions, base of operations for the crown jewels in the slowly eroding NWA. Ric Flair,<br />
Magnum TA, the Andersons, the Rock 'n' Roll Express, and a host of other barrel chested pro wrestlers of the Southern branch of the art form. This was during the Rock 'n' Wrestling Era up north, where the heroes were steroid abusing freaks aiming to tap the deep well of wanting American superheroes to restore some semblance of pride after the still fresh wounds of the Carter years. Hogan et al were aiming to do the job for us working folks. We could never be Hulk Hogan, only<br />
admire him from afar.<br />
<br />
And then there was Dusty.<br />
<br />
Dusty wasn’t what all us Southern working class kids and adults wanted to be. He was what we already were. Dusty was fat and slovenly, his dress alternating between work clothes and garish, sloppy attempts at what you might think a rich man dressed like had you never actually seen one. His forehead bore the marks of his career, a mass of deeply grooved scar tissue after years of chair shots and blading. He wasn’t great in the ring, but was a master of psychology and storytelling. The stories he told were working class stories. He took his lisping Texas drawl and married it to an African–American preacher’s cadence. Not for nothing was one of his earliest nicknames the White Soul King. Rather than outright co–option, it seemed to be a sincere effort on Rhodes’ part to speak to a pan–racial working class, setting him up as a hero for blacks, whites, and Latinos to cheer on against whatever villainous rich guy he was put up against.<br />
<br />
Fighting those rich guys is what he did best. In the 1970s, it was his famous series with “Superstar” Billy Graham. Graham was the forerunner to Hogan, a muscled, tanned, blonde braggart. Hogan grievously ripped Graham off, turning the latter’s arrogant muscle worship into a face gimmick (though, if you pay attention, Hogan didn’t spend much time working face). Rhodes went north and the two wrestled the hell out of each other in Madison Square Garden before the WWWF<br />
became the WWF. The subtext was clear: plain old Dusty Rhodes, the White Soul King and working class schlub, against the steroid abusing, vain freak, Billy Graham. Rhodes won on technicalities, never grabbing the title from Graham, but it didn’t matter: old footage reveals the crowd going nuts for Rhodes like they did for few others.<br />
<br />
And why not? The reason why Rhodes mattered is essentially the reason why wrestling matters. Wrestling tells working class stories to working class people, even today in the slick, overproduced WWE. Dusty Rhodes is the greatest storyteller in that vein who has ever wrestled. He’s not my favorite of all time; his nemesis, Ric Flair, is and has always been my favorite wrestler. But if we stop measuring greatness by titles, instead going by pure quality of the storytelling, physical or verbal, Rhodes is arguably the greatest of all time.<br />
<br />
Look up what’s popularly become known as the "Hard Times" promo. Rhodes (and the NWA, by extension, where he was the top face at the time) rattles off a list of the reasons why the common person has it tough as a way of dumping on Flair’s heelish reasons why his life is rough. Rhodes talks about declining wages, the first stages of what would become a new American tradition of outsourcing, and fears of being replaced by automation.<br />
<br />
It was hot fire, left as hell, and delivered in a way that made Southern mill workers cheer. He was the American Dream, with all of the hope and melancholy that entails. When he asked the fans to touch<br />
the screen, touching their hands to his hand, it was a two way street. Because you felt at the time that you really could touch Dusty if he happened to be next to you. He was the approachable hero, the image of us. He was your dad or your brother or your co–worker.<br />
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Not that all was well with his career. He carried his weight poorly as he aged, carried his responsibilities poorer still. He was booker off and on, leading to the famed Dusty Finish, a situation in which the babyface triumphs only to be screwed by a technicality or rules shenanigans. He leaned on it heavily as a way both to keep him in the public eye and easily get out of tough booking decisions. For every innovation he made as booker, like War Games, there were six or seven disasters.He eventually booked his way right out of Jim Crockett Promotions.<br />
<br />
Vincent K McMahon was only too happy to pick him up. But there was none of his father’s fascination with Rhodes as a working class hero. The younger McMahon was set on mocking him as a buffoon, sticking him in polka dots and giving him skits centered on unclogging toilets. Even up north, in the changing working class landscape of the early 1990s, Rhodes made it work as best he could. His feud with Macho Man, whose own star was just beginning to fade, was better in retrospect<br />
than it seemed at the time. The cheers were still there, the promos goofier but still tight. The age and the weight caught up with him and, shortly after introducing his son, Dustin, to audiences, he retired from in–ring competition.<br />
<br />
His retirement came just as the working class of America shifted drastically. The 1990s brought about mass de–industrialization. That it coincided with Dusty’s retirement and the disappearance of the American Dream character (he still uses the name, but no fire accompanies it) is one of pro wrestling’s little ironies. Dusty Rhodes could only exist in the South of the 1970s and '80s, where a boom time was the product of working class pride and awareness. Neither Dusty nor the South of<br />
those years could survive the 1990s. Hard times became desperate times and there’s no going back.<br />
<br />
The story of Dusty Rhodes is what we want from pro wrestling and it’s what the form has always delivered. No matter how corporate the modern product may be, no matter how beholden to television deals or the stock market the feds may get, it is the tale of the American working class. Its fans are working class, its heroes are working class, and it is the only form of working class entertainment which is still visible in American life.<br />
<br />
In Dusty Rhodes, you can see the foreshadowing for those working class heroes who came after. Steve Austin, with his swearing, boss–hating, beer–swilling badassery a few years later. CM Punk, the dumpy kid who came up through the industry the hard way, in backyards and hardcore feds, through sheer work ethic. Even John Cena, seemingly more Hogan than Rhodes, is reliant on the cross–racial appeals which Dusty pioneered.<br />
<br />
And this is why pro wrestling, particularly in the United States, matters. It’s history in microcosm. The arc of a wrestler’s career maps closely to his or her times. In Dusty Rhodes’ career, the history of the American working class’ aspirations and fears during the 1970s and '80s is written as surely as in any book.<br />
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<i>You can buy World Wide Wrestling here: http://ndpdesign.com/wwwrpg/</i>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-9777061206482445272015-05-29T15:48:00.002-07:002015-05-29T15:50:11.604-07:00The Physical Language of Action MoviesI was tagged into a conversation on G+ today about action movies and violence. It was a small circle conversation, so I'll refrain from giving names, but it was an interesting discussion about violence, maleness, and media. Obviously, those are things which are on everyone's minds since <i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i> is (depending on who's talking) the most feminist big budget film produced this century or a false prophet injecting acceptance of violence into feminist discourse.<br />
<br />
I can't speak to that. I've not seen <i>Mad Max</i> and I probably won't until it's on DVD or streaming. Having a five year old and a wariness of expensive babysitters tends to curtail your movie options. Plus I just hate watching movies in theaters. I'm old and cranky. So this blog post isn't about this.<br />
<br />
Instead, it's about the notion that violence is what action movies are about. I was tagged into the conversation because I wrote and am currently trading edits on <i>ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD</i>, an upcoming tabletop roleplaying game which will hopefully be out this year. My purpose with that game is to deconstruct what makes action movies of the genre's golden era (say 1980-1998, or roughly the VHS era) tick. Sometimes I write an article when I want to examine something, sometimes (rare) a blog post, every so often a game.<br />
<br />
So here's my thesis: action movies aren't about violence. They are, of course, violent. Very violent. And that violence is very front and center. But rather than being about violence, what they're actually about is physical expression of emotions.<br />
<br />
Think about action movies. Yes, anger turns into killing. But love and lust turn immediately into sex scenes. Friendships become about back pats, high fives, and surviving physical adversity together. Characters in action flicks yell and laugh louder than we do, because a big laugh or a loud yell are fundamentally physical acts.<br />
<br />
The ramping up of the physicality in quick fashion is the trick. If the natural expression of feeling is physical in the world of action movies, going at a more traditionally dramatic pace is, by definition, <i>unnatural</i>. So you see action heroes behaving in really weird ways, like high fives turning into impromptu arm wrestling matches:<br />
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It strikes me that zeroing in on the violence of action movies misses a lot of interesting things. The scale of the violence seems like low-lying fruit when we talk about this type of movie. And, maybe counter-intuitively, I think the more low budget the action movie, the more honest and open this portrayal of physical emotion is. <i>Deadly Prey</i> isn't trying to subvert anything like maybe <i>Mad Max</i> or <i>Alien</i> are. It merely <i>is</i>, and that <i>is</i> is maybe ugly or funny or weird, but it's stripped down and lean. This is part of the reason why I love low budget and/or bad movies. You've got filmmakers and actors who aren't quite good enough to conceal their ids from the viewer.<br />
<br />
There's definitely a discussion to be had about the maleness of action movies, their role as propaganda, whether they inure us to violence, etc. All of that is worthy. But I think that when we zero in on violence as the essential kernel of the genre, we're missing out on more interesting questions about how we express emotion and, maybe more importantly, how we wish we could express emotions in our dream worlds.<br />
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Pure game talk: <i>AMW</i> is undergoing edits right now as we can. It will be published by <a href="http://www.flatlandgames.com/" target="_blank">Flatland Games</a>, fine creators of <i>Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures</i>. Check the tags for past playtest documents and notes on the game's creation.<br />
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Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-3372239884369973502014-12-10T08:42:00.002-08:002014-12-10T08:42:26.585-08:00The Maturing of the One Ring - SongbookSongs are a big part of fantasy literature, especially where Tolkien is concerned. Setting aside whether you <i>like</i> Tolkien's verse, a Middle-earth game must have rules for songs to be complete.<br />
<br />
The problem is that RPGs have historically done a terrible job with songs. D&D set the tone early, with bards being relegated to bland buffbots. It wasn't that the rules for songs in D&D were uninteresting (though they were). It's that there was no interesting fiction attached to them. For repositories of oral lore, bards sure weren't encouraged to keep track of what their songs were about.<br />
<br />
This has continued right up until the modern day. Songs give buffs (TOR does this; more in a moment) and that's it. You <i>can</i> track your songs or write something in-character about your adventures, but there are scant few hooks to get you to do so, just like in the old days.<br />
<br />
TOR was in a similar boat. For being in a world where song is so important, the base rules relegate it to a social skill only. Rivendell fixes this and lashes it to the fiction.<br />
<br />
The PCs can now write songs as a Fellowship activity. The process is simple: roll Song to compose it, with the success of the roll determining how difficult it is to actually sing. You then (and this is the important bit) log the details of the song in a communal songbook for reference throughout the campaign. The idea is to create a shared history through the songs the characters write. It's simple, and by no means does it have to be the emphasis of a campaign, but the mere existence of the songbook tells everyone at the table that songs are important.<br />
<br />
Each song is of a particular type and the difficulty is altered during the writing, with Traditional and Thematic being harder to write, Elvish more difficult. The song types break down as: Traditional (tied to a specific culture, +2 difficulty for outsiders to sing), Thematic (cannot be sung outside a specific event, like meal-time or marching), or Elvish (harder to write but can be used more often).<br />
<br />
So what are the benefits? Like most rules in TOR, there's a theme of leaning on and reinforcing your friendship in the song rules. The party can sing each song in the songbook once per adventure (twice for Elvish). If you succeed, you're Inspired, giving you two extra dice to spend on rolls for the duration of the adventure.<br />
<br />
This can be game-changing in narrow circumstances, like a hairy combat roll, but it's not remotely overpowered. And this is exactly what it should be: a nice benefit without being too much, with a deep attachment to the fiction.<br />
<br />
It's this attachment to the fiction that TOR does so well. Because the designers seem to think in terms of discrete and self-contained actions (a la a board game, as stated in the last edition of this quick look at Rivendell), they can drum up the "feel" of Middle-earth in very little text.Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-16153431446567119802014-12-06T12:16:00.002-08:002014-12-06T12:16:50.476-08:00The Maturing of The One Ring - RivendellI don't post much here. I'm a bad blogger. But I'm going to fire this up again in the next few days for something which is, compared to my last few posts oh so long ago, fairly trivial. Which is all good by me, since trivial means I'm having fun.<br />
<br />
What's moved me is The One Ring, the pen and paper RPG for Tolkien's world put out by Cubicle 7. I'll spare the intro except to say that the tabletop RPGs put out for the license historically have been (and I'm being generous here) a little at odds with the spirit of Middle-earth as Tolkien imagined.<br />
<br />
This wasn't really the fault of the creators of the two prior systems, MERP and Decipher's The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game. They came around at a time when design goals were different and it was both fine and good to plug a generic rules system into a setting. Decipher did better than MERP in this regard, but it was still lacking, while MERP put out remarkably in-depth setting books attached to a slightly stripped down Rolemaster, an explicitly generic fantasy system.<br />
<br />
The One Ring is different. Every rule in the game has been very explicitly inspired by a piece of M-E fiction. It plays in an almost board game-esque fashion; by that I mean that there are distinct moves and phases to the game. This enhances the fiction, rather than detracts from it, by making each one of those moves and phases feel momentous. It's no surprise that the designer, Francesco Nepitello, is both a board game designer and inspired by the games of Greg Stafford, a man who also liked those deep dives into rules as a means of emphasizing specific actions in play.<br />
<br />
This isn't really a review of TOR, though. It's not even really a review at all, even though it's going to read like one. TOR recently put out a new supplement called Rivendell. It opens up the game to Eriador and the titular vale of the elves. It also adds a lot of new rules which are elegant and mature.<br />
<br />
I keep coming back to the word mature when I describe the book. It's the work of a team who have thought about every nook and cranny of where the rules came from and where they're going. They're remarkably well-thought out and clever, expressing the <i>feel</i> of M-E through hard rules text. The rules breathe in a way I don't know that I've seen many game texts do. And they're not complicated. Quite the contrary, they're mostly simple. But that's why it's so tight and interesting.<br />
<br />
So that's why I've come to blog. I'm going to do some periodic short entries, each on a different bit of rules text in Rivendell to talk about why they're so interesting. I'm that jazzed about this one single, not even that thick game book. So let me start with a short one:<br />
<br />
<h3>
Rivendell as Land of Dreams</h3>
<div>
In Tolkien's text, there's a hazy, dreamy quality to Rivendell for everyone but the elves who live there. That exists in any of the elf-holds which he mentions, but Rivendell is almost a anthropomorphized character in its own right.</div>
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<div>
But that's hard to model in rules text. Hell, it's hard to describe with enough style that your players fully get it, no matter how good a GM you are.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Francesco leans on his board game background here. The GM is supposed to make very clear that characters visiting Rivendell have a choice, one which has benefits and drawbacks. It's very consciously made. The rules:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1) If you spend adventuring time in Rivendell, the Shadow rating of the characters is considered zero. (Shadow is the measure of how weighed down the heroes are by the ugliness happening in Middle-earth). Characters also heal from physical wounds at a much faster rate.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
2) If you do the above, however, you only get 1 experience point that session. Period. If you were set to get 2, 4, or a dozen, it doesn't matter. You get 1. Because time is weird in Rivendell. It passes slowly. You get complacent. It's too wonderful to leave, especially when it's so ugly outside of it. You get lazy, basically.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And that's it. A lesser game might rely on the well-worn fantasy game trope of "make a willpower save to leave" or something equally blunt. Rivendell (the book) presents a firm choice, equal parts good and bad: stay here if you want, enjoy it while you do, but realize that you're risking your competency long-term.</div>
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<br />Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-57626828517844208512014-02-19T08:58:00.001-08:002014-02-19T10:57:53.620-08:00The Best Case Scenario With Irrational GamesYesterday saw the <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/211067/Ken_Levine_shutting_down_Irrational_Games_to_start_anew_at_TakeTwo.php" target="_blank">surprise closing of Irrational Games</a>, developers of the Bioshock series. I say surprise because, by all accounts, Irrational was a well-regarded, profitable entity in 2K Games' constellation of studios. Bioshock, of course, is considered one of the finest games of the past decade. Bioshock Infinite was almost as much of a critical success in the mainstream gaming press, though it was much less so on blogs and independent outlets, being criticized for some very unfortunate in-game racial commentary.<br />
<br />
(It should be noted that I have not played either Bioshock nor do I intend to. My FPS adventures have always been limited to multiplayer PVP fests, and that was before I lost a noticeable step in my mid-30s.)<br />
<br />
The commentary on twitter and elsewhere has been pretty pointed, primarily because studio head and Bioshock series creator, Ken Levine, has landed on his feet at Take Two. He wants to make smaller boutique games. Not small or boutique enough to start an indie studio, of course, and that's an important tell. Between his comments about storytelling blocks, a weird press release by 2K, and his desire to concentrate on "core gamers" (I'll give some easy odds on what gender, race, age, and class his "core gamer" is), it sure looks, from the outside, like a bored guy with an enormous amount of name recognition shutting the gate behind him. And it should be stressed that an awful lot of people were left behind; he's taking anywhere from 0 to 15 people with him, going by snippets, while an estimated 185 people lost their jobs.<br />
<br />
Naturally, the conversation has centered on these dimensions. Essentially, the thinking is one of two things.<br />
<br />
1) 2K didn't want to back Levine on his next project and told him no. Levine said, "screw this, I'm going on my own". Levine leaves, 2K reckons that Irrational is nothing without Levine, and everyone gets fired.<br />
<br />
2) Levine really did get bored and restless. He still had a lot of control and basically just shuttered the studio on his way out.<br />
<br />
I'm simplifying greatly, here, but the two most common takes are those. What I've seen less of is an examination of the third option: that Irrational Games was unprofitable and probably misrun.<br />
<br />
Before we go further, I think it's vitally important to read two very good pieces on the situation, linked directly below. The politics of the aftermath of the closing are really important.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://theconversation.com/games-by-humans-23399" target="_blank">Games By Humans</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://dropouthangoutspaceout.tumblr.com/post/77084982926/ken-levine-isnt-looking-for-a-job" target="_blank">Ken Levine Isn't Looking For a Job</a><br />
<br />
On profitability, I'm leaning on my friend, <a href="https://twitter.com/nite_moogle" target="_blank">Russ</a>, who pointed out that Bioshock took six years to complete and was certainly over budget. Yes, it sold four million units, but that was <i>maybe</i> just enough to break even. 2K, when Levine started making noise about wanting to do something with narrative Legos or storytelling primitives or whatever pomo garbage he's considering doing, is naturally skittish about Bioshock Infinite's issues.<br />
<br />
And what about those issues? Think about this for a moment, away from the politics. Bioshock Infinite moved four million copies and it wasn't profitable. Obviously not all of those were at the release price point of 60 bucks, but let's just say, for the sake of argument, that half were moved at that price and the other half were at an average of 30 (current price is about 15). <i>That's 180 million dollars.</i> And it wasn't profitable.<br />
<br />
No matter how long it took or the size of the staff, the fact that 180m doesn't break even is <i>insane</i>. That is not a sustainable number, particularly when looked at in conjunction with Square Enix announcing a few weeks ago that the latest Tomb Raider only just <i>now</i> broke even... <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-17-tomb-raider-finally-achieved-profitability-by-the-end-of-last-year" target="_blank">after 3.4 million sold in the first month</a> and, presumably, reaching right around twice that overall.<br />
<br />
There is no silver lining to those numbers and the unprofitable theory. These simply aren't sustainable numbers and they're a disastrous portent for the industry. Essentially, numbers like that are going to translate into a more rapid revolving door, as people are laid off in greater numbers as impossible targets aren't met, and more consolidation around the biggest players, as the medium studios are priced out of making anything.<br />
<br />
The refrain is always that indie games are the savior here (that was said numerous times in response to my <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/11/video-game-industry/" target="_blank">Jacobin piece</a>). My response is always the same: they aren't. Indie games are the savior if and when they can provide a livable wage and decent benefits. That's not a slight on the quality of product which indie studios churn out; indie games are good or bad the same way major studio games are good or bad. It's simply an empiric observation that the long hours and terrible wages aren't any better at an indie and, according to Gamasutra's yearly survey data, are probably worse.<br />
<br />
This is what we're left with, then: a critical darling which moved a whopping number of copies wasn't profitable. Around 200 people lost their jobs without warning. Ken Levine is going to be just fine.<br />
<br />
There's no real answer here. The industry is going to have to implode before it changes. Or the social safety net in the US is going to have to be able to catch people like the ones who just got canned. But I do want to zero in on Ken Levine being fine again.<br />
<br />
More than just about any other sector of the entertainment industry, video game creation is reliant on a lot of people. Your writing can be good but if your code is garbage, people will know and remember the shoddy code. Your animations can be great but your art can be terrible. Contrast with film, another team effort (I hate that term) but one where a good actor or director can carry a movie, or with writing, which is almost always an individual effort.<br />
<br />
By all accounts, Bioshock Infinite was at least solid, possibly very good. Everyone did their jobs and did them well. Everyone but one person: Ken Levine. Levine's primary job, more than the writing, was to bring Infinite in on time and under budget. If Irrational had become unprofitable because of Bioshock Infinite's overrun, no matter how unfair and insane the budgetary bloat which has taken hold of the industry, that's on Levine's head.<br />
<br />
And yet here we are, with an entire studio turned out on its collective ear for doing its job properly, while the one true failure in the story has not just landed on his feet but is poised to crank out vanity projects, post-Spore Will Wright style, for the rest of his life. The games press, for the most part, is salivating about what he's going to do next, thereby enabling this sort of behavior the next time. Hovering over it all is the vicious irony that a man who made his name by writing about a Randian dystopia is going to be just fine because we're currently living in one.<br />
<br />
Like I said, I don't have any answers, at least not any which don't involve the industry as we know it completely collapsing. I am heartened that, in the comments sections of major industry news outlets, there seems to be scant patience, this time, for yet another rock star dev landing on his feet after a failure while hundreds go home with a severance check. Small as it is, cracking the myth of the video game auteur may be the first step in fixing the industry.<br />
<br />Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com88tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-51975757219745059292013-09-24T11:14:00.001-07:002013-09-24T11:27:41.082-07:00A Rebuttal to a Rebuttal<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://jacobinmag.com/2013/09/the-substance-of-geek-culture/" target="_blank">Jase Short wrote, and Jacobin published</a>, a rebuttal to my
piece “On Geek Culture”. I think it’s a well-thought out piece and I appreciate
the respectful tone. The fact that this happened, by the way, is one of the
reasons why I like Jacobin so much. It’s not monolithic, just as the left isn’t
monolithic. The editorial staff are willing to get dissent within the ranks
even when it’s stuff that they obviously approve of enough to publish. That’s
really cool.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That said, I do want to rebut the rebuttal, but here in my
own space. I feel as though Mr. Short has misunderstood a bit of what I wrote,
not least of which is the notion that I’m defining being a geek as passive
consumption of culture. Since that kind of underpins the rebuttal, I think it’s
important for me to respond.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some of this misunderstanding is really about how the piece
was written. I was a bit of a victim of my word count, an eminently
understandable situation. This forced me to truncate bits of my argument. Some
of it is that this is an evolving thesis and, really, two pieces in one. The
first piece is trying to shift what we mean when we say geek. If I’m frank,
this is the argument that I’m most interested in of the two; I firmly,
categorically think that geekdom has nothing to do with <i>what</i> you like but how you like it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The second piece is how that passion is harnessed by
corporations. I think I do a decent job of showing how this happens in the
video game industry workplace in my prospective next Jacobin piece without
making the argument an outright follow-up. I’ll avoid long spoilers for now,
but the tradeoff in the industry is “you work insane hours, you get to do what
your subculture considers awesome”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But let’s zero in on the first piece of that combo. As near
as I can tell, Mr. Short and I are in total agreement: the geek is defined by
the depth of passion toward the admired object. It seems strange that the
rebuttal should center on the “passivity” of the geek when I really argue no
such thing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact, I argue something quite the opposite. The passion
of the geek toward the object or activity, whether that’s Star Trek or a sports
team or record collection, is so great, the interaction so rewarding, that it can
and does supplant ties of race, gender, and class solidarity. It’s not enough
to both be dock workers; if one is a traditional sports-hating geek and the
other is a rabid anime-hating Giants fan, odds are that the casual bonds of
commonality which might, say, let them work in opposition to management much
more naturally don’t form.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mostly my piece was well-received, but one of the common
counters (and Mr. Short touches on it in his) is that this is really just human
nature. That <i>of course</i> you make
everyday social bonds around common interests.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which is absolutely true. The problem, of course, is one
which is much broader and that is corporate intrusion and ownership of what
those common interests are. And, again, we return to the passion/passivity
argument. By exalting those common interests to such a degree, the geek (and,
again, I remind readers that I’m using this to mean people very different than
the commonly used term) is essentially exalting a corporate brand as identity.
It is not passivity which is the problem; it’s the passion and what it does.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what of reclaiming the properties? What about cosplay
and fanfiction? These are, indeed, active forms of engagement with the object.
My counter is: reclaim them from what? If a property is created by a
corporation, owned by a corporation, <i>there
is no way to reclaim it.</i> Its essential nature is corporate. There is no
separating out Iron Man from Marvel. Mr. Short brings up Lucas selling Star
Wars to Disney; left unsaid is that Lucas was hardly a non-corporate entity. I
daresay he’s the poster child for Boomer monetization of intellectual property
and that Disney may be kinder to the intersection between capitalism and fandom
than he was, though that’s a bit of a side argument.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There seems to be an air that I am dumping on geek culture
as low brow or worthless. That is absolutely not the case. I love low brow
stuff. I watch almost exclusively terrible movies. I love stupid games with no
real higher message. I eat junk food and watch NFL football while obsessively
watching my fantasy football scores. I own two Arsenal jerseys. So it is most
certainly not that I have a disdain for mass culture.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I am asking for is merely awareness of where the
beloved media in question comes from, coupled with (and I could have done a
better job putting this to the fore) a sincere attempt to liberate creators on
the part of fans. On the creator front, I have seen so many geeks claim love
for creators, whether that’s a running back or a comic artist. When push comes
to shove, when those creators are sincerely, unequivocally abused by the
corporations which employ them, geeks are largely silent. Not all of them, as
Mr. Short is quick to point out, and that’s true, but the majority are
conspicuously on the side of the ownership class, not the creator. It is
galling, even as a non-comic reader, to see calls for boycotts by bloggers met
with “creators will <i>really</i> starve if
we join in”. That <i>is</i> passivity and
helplessness, a perversion of the usual passion which is deliberately and
consciously harnessed by the ownership class in these media industries for poor
ends.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One final note on Mr. Short’s piece, one which I think
reinforces my premise that geek culture ends up supplanting traditional cultural bonds. Toward
the end he writes:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“For
many, the act of “owning up” to a label once imposed by oppressive social
forces, most often in middle school and high school, is analogous to the
re-appropriation of labels by oppressed groups.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I
cannot get on board with this. Being a geek growing up and reclaiming the word is
not the same thing as owning up to racial, gender, or sexual preference slurs.
He immediately says that it’s not the same scale or type, but by putting it out
there at all the equation exists. I admit that I’m taking the least charitable
reading, but I see this time and time again with those who have grown up being
teased: no, it’s not like being called the N-word, but we were made fun of and
we’re taking the word back, so it’s sort of like that in a small way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t
ever want to question the severity of bullying or tell people to get over it,
but there are some bounds here which must forcefully be called out when crossed.
Being a geek is not something you’re born into. There is nothing set in stone
which says that you must wear that media allegiance on your t-shirt or on your
mug. Nobody should ever be tormented for those things, but it is not remotely
in the same league as racism, sexism, classism, or homophobia.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I
sincerely doubt that Mr. Short (who seems like a very sharp, well-meaning
fellow) meant to equate these things. Perhaps we need a new language for this
sort of thing. Or, perhaps, we should be wary of exalting media consumption and
the passion it sometimes engenders to a place where such analogies exist at
all, which is really the core of my argument.<o:p></o:p></div>
Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-23964845380809265062013-09-23T11:35:00.001-07:002013-09-23T11:35:17.643-07:00It's been an age, hasn't it?I've left this blog fallow for quite a long time. I think my last post was in June and even it wasn't very long. Status updates, though, are good for the people who found out about Before Iron and ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD through here.<br />
<br />
<b>Before Iron: </b>This is still in limbo, despite my having been told that I could talk about it a year and a half ago. It is, I am assured, still a priority. I've received some good news on the Before Iron front from Stewart, but it's not the sort of thing I can share publicly.<br />
<br />
It'll be out when it's out. I don't know when that is, but it's probably best to not think of it until I post firm news.<br />
<br />
<b>ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD: </b>Always in caps. Always.<br />
<br />
As far as I'm concerned, AMW is feature complete for testing. Not feature complete for release, of course, but for testing, absolutely. You can find the latest playtest docs here:<br />
<br />
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BxzKPjPAQ2CYcHBVY1hLX0pCMDQ&usp=sharing<br />
<br />
The <i>only</i> reason I haven't been playtesting the hell out of this online (we've done some locally and it's gone swimmingly) is because Apocalypse World derived games are really tough to do properly without playbook pdfs to consult. There's something deliciously tactile about the *W experience, so doing it without those pdfs is both incomplete and lacks a certain ease of use.<br />
<br />
The pdfs are slowly, ever so slowly, coming together. Work on them has been turned over to my brother and co-author on Before Iron. But he's started a new job at a new school, which slows things down, and I've started school again, been busy with other projects, and my daughter started preschool, which slows things down even further. Rest assured that our mutual breaks in the action are devoted to things like the playbook and script pdfs. I suspect testing will come in hardcore once the holidays roll around and everyone has some time off. I also suspect it might be ready for release by the end of Summer 14, though that is optimistic.<br />
<br />
Release is already more or less settled. My brother and our friend (that's <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/108304876550958396292" target="_blank">+Peter Williams</a> and <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/116204164326162503357" target="_blank">+John Cocking</a>, respectively) have a company called <a href="http://www.flatlandgames.com/" target="_blank">Flatland Games</a> which publishes a very nifty and well-regarded OSR titled Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures. AMW will be released there when it comes out.<br />
<br />
Will there be a Kickstarter? That's unsure. Frankly, signing on with Flatland means that it's not strictly necessary; the infrastructure for printing on demand and having an awesome pdf are already there. That doesn't mean it won't happen, however; I like Kickstarter as a way of helping with lump sum payments to talent and getting the word out.<br />
<br />
If we do go Kickstarter (and this is probably a topic for another post), it will be handled quite differently from many others. For one, it won't go to KS unless and until it's fully written. Since it's not necessary to have the operating capital a KS could offer to get it out in some form, I see no need to kickstart it and then write it over the next however many months. This is not least because I'm rotten at time management and I want precisely zero risk that it goes over my time allotment.<br />
<br />
We also won't have any stretch goals as they've come to be thought of. It'll be very simple: more money means better art. Maybe there's a hardcover version. Maybe it's in color. The initial goal would be very modest, as well. I prefer things simple and streamlined as much as possible.<br />
<br />
<b>Geeky & Genki: </b>I'm proud to be doing some entertainment writing over at <a href="http://www.geekyandgenki.com/author/ian/" target="_blank">Geeky & Genki</a>. It's a bunch of cool folks I respect the hell out of doing podcasts and writing on all sorts of things. If anything's suffered because of my busy Fall, it's really G&G; I hope to write some more for them very soon (I already have my In the Heat of the Night cultural criticism magnum opus written in my head for Fall break).<br />
<br />
<b>Jacobin:</b> Being a more or less lifelong socialist of one stripe or another, I've been very excited to be able to write for Jacobin (and by extension Salon) <a href="http://jacobinmag.com/2013/08/on-geek-culture/" target="_blank">on geek culture</a>. Jacobin is a magazine I really and truly respect, young as it is, and to have my name next to people like Eileen Jones, Bhaskar Sunkara, Connor Kilpatrick, Corey Robin, etc truly, sincerely blows my mind and humbles me.<br />
<br />
If all goes well with the draft, I'll have a long read on the political economy of the video game industry in the next print issue. It should hilariously torpedo any hopes I may have had of returning to the video game industry (spoiler: I actually have no desire to return), but I hope it proves a thought-provoking read.<br />
<br />
Anyway, keep an eye on here and follow me on G+ for updates. My next focus is AMW, AMW, AMW, at least once midterms are done.Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-48633577553371694552013-06-02T18:08:00.000-07:002013-06-02T18:10:00.749-07:00Another ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD Playtest Report<a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/113398084379918937946" target="_blank">+Jonathan Reiter</a> was awesome enough to do a playtest of AMW's current alpha rules. Feedback was good. It was very cool because I'm extremely into seeing what people do with the game when I'm not there. I know how I run the game and I know how to explain it. Those two things can cover a lot of holes. So it's always nice to see what happens when I'm not there.<br />Anyway, I've excised some of the specific feedback for readability, interest, and because I prefer to keep feedback notes (good and bad) in the design talk vault while it's in development. But the play report is below.<br /><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I GM'd a one-shot of +Ian Williams' Action Movie World:
First Blood for five willing-ish test subjects. Here's what happened.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
THE MEAN GREEN<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cast:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Brandt Sterling as AGENT JONAH STAIN<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2Wack as OFFICER FORD ABRAMS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Chip Fistwell as DETECTIVE DRAKE TUNGSTEN<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jason Stacy as OFFICER ISAAC<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Malory Pariso as OFFICER TILA MARTINEZ<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Premise: Jonah Stain is an Irish INTERPOL cop on the case of
a transatlantic human trafficking ring. Officer Ford Abrams is the NYPD
wunderkind who is mere inches from finding Shadowsmith Sanderson, the head of
the ring. Can Stain drive out the snakes on a St. Paddies' weekend in NYC?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some key moments:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. The Musclehead (Tila) is undercover with her partner in
Vice, The Gunfighter (Isaac). They are infiltrating a strip club that is the front
for the ring. Tila is the working girl to Isaac's pimp, and they are decked out
in green sequined bikini and crushed velvet jacket respectively. They decide to
bring in their informant, and a gunfight breaks out. Tila uses her boiled ham
thighs to drag the informant out while Isaac provides slo-mo covering fire.
"Next time," Tila says exasperated, "you get to wear the
bikini."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. Our Op (Jonah) is the lead. The Smartass (Ford), is
driving. They are hot on the tail of Isaac and Tila's car, which is currently
being flanked by two black Hayabusas, riders armed with TEC-9s. They shoot
ahead of the chase via shortcut. While Ford t-bones one of the cycles into
flames, Jonah throws his cane at the other rider. The riders falls roughly into
a heap of garbage. Jonah stands over, uses the cane to flip open the visor,
exposing his love interest, Katya, and her gorgeous flowing auburn locks.
Smoldering looks are inevitably exchanged.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. After Ford is kidnapped by the smugglers, everyone at his
precinct falls apart a little bit. At the bodyless funeral, The Thesbian
(Drake) tries to deliver a lifting soliloquy over Ford's presumed death.
Unfortunately, despite the best effort of his NA sponsor, Jonah, Drake has
fallen off the wagon. He harangues about how the department is filled with
bastards and lectures the shocked crowd about the inevitability of violent
death.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
4. Isaac drives a shamrock diesel truck into a vacant party
supply warehouse in Queens, burning tons and tons of goons and himself in the
process. Pathos for Jonah who comes crashing in to the third floor through a
skylight, assaulting goons with his cane. "And now you know why they call
me Jonah Stain," he says economically, leaving behind a heap of bloodied
bodies. Jonah tangles with Sanderson, and they both go out a window, leading to
broken bones and Pulp Fiction limp chase. Meanwhile, Tila convinces Katya to
get out of the ring through a released captive daughter, an emotional high for
the flick.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5. A tank chase in the middle of the St. Patrick's Day parade,
as Sanderson threatens the city with a dirty bomb strapped to Miss Delaware's
chest.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was super fun and people had a ton of fun. I initially
thought it was going to be very hard work, because 5 players is a bit much for
an AW game. But, it turned out fine.<o:p></o:p></div>
Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-1634735201266589182013-06-02T11:09:00.004-07:002013-06-02T11:09:44.612-07:00Frirek I (930-962) round twoA time of troubles came to Novgorod, to all Slavs and Norse<br />
Brother battled brother for years<br />
Weakling Frirek was determined, with respect on his mind<br />
Brother Hrodalfr began war anew<br />
<br />
Black Suzdal became new brother to Hrodalfr, Yarsolavl joined<br />
Finally Borkvard fought Frirek, too<br />
Frirek jarl again, jarl removed again<br />
To Novgorod and Torzhok, Frirek retired<br />
<br />
Love bloomed late for Frirek, lust-cunning Pora captured his heart<br />
Frirek's senses fled him and he took her name<br />
Af Odense as their children were called, a curse on Rurikovich<br />
But Frirek believed naught but his heart<br />
<br />
Brother Borkvard remembered Rurik, the promise of Rus anewed<br />
To Setyamka to Rus a demand<br />
"Restore Rurik's throne to me, Rus by right is mine!"<br />
The Muromids met Rurikovich in battle<br />
<br />
Blood proved bonding for brothers, thicker than Muromid oaths<br />
Save for Frirek and Pora<br />
Remained in Novgorod rutting, replacing Rurikovich blood with af Odense<br />
Barid died in battle while Borkvard was cast in a pit<br />
<br />
Rus-king reigned ruinously, Frirek did not care<br />
His eyes halted upon Pora<br />
Rich as he remained, richer still he became<br />
Lagoda left to Frirek with Narva not far behind<br />
<br />
Finally an heir, finally a Rurikovich son!<br />
Concubine-born castoff<br />
Eleven years of life altogether, young Rikulfr yearned for a throne<br />
But Pora believed only in the others and had him killed<br />
<br />
Years and years wore on, young af Odenses swarmed Novgorod<br />
Frirek was fraught with terror at what he'd wrought<br />
His love halted years prior, hatred consumed his heart<br />
Too late his loins had stirred<br />
<br />
Peace turned pillage again, past foes invaded once more<br />
Sweden came swimming from the west<br />
A Norseman on the throne again, no rejoicing aloud<br />
With Denmark came danger not six years later<br />
<br />
Frirek's fate was not happy, rebellions followed again<br />
Damned Frirek's dungeon was not pleasing<br />
Pora's face turned from Frirek, he fainted from stress<br />
Never to stir to awakening again<br />
<br />
So the Sons of Rurik were no more<br />
<br />
<h3>
Out of Character</h3>
<div>
So this is the first game of CK2 I've ever lost. I've played counts, dukes, kings, republics, everything.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Some of it has to do with a possible bug. Frirek got married and it was apparently matrilineal. I'm not discounting the possibility that I might have clicked on matrilineal marriage at all, but this is the second time this has happened with the expansion pack, though the first one was with my female heir in a different game trying to have a matrilineal marriage which just didn't get recognized.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I decided to work it into my story. Frirek was so entranced by his prospective bride that he rashly took her name, meaning no Rurikovich babies. From a game standpoint, once I realized that all of the kids were from the af Odense dynasty, I went nuts trying to get some concubine kids going. And I did! Twins! A boy and a girl. Except Frirek's wife promptly murdered the only Rurikovich son and that was it. My fate was sealed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The brothers might have hung in there, but they all died in a dumb rebellion after Borkvard took the Novgorod ducal title from me. Two in prison, one in battle. That left just me. I had tons of land, since I inherited all of their titles save the ducal one (the king stripped that one from Borkvard and wouldn't give it back). I decided to wait things out, hopefully overthrowing the new king once the rapidly aging Setyamka kicked the bucket.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Well, Sweden put a stop to that. They invaded in force to subjugate Rus, which they did. That left me with only Narva to my name Then the Swedish king died and gavelkind kicked in, leaving his six year old on an unstable throne. <i>Then</i> the Danes invaded to subjugate the Finnish portions of the kingdom (ie me) and that was basically it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I ended up in prison in 961, where I died in 962. An af Odense took the throne. There were other Rurikovich folks out there, but none of them had land, meaning they weren't playable. So that was it for the game.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I like this expansion, but it's hectic. The Norse, as I mentioned, can be incredibly powerful. By default, they are. All the pagans are. But the gavelkind inheritance and the massive cliff to climb to get out from underneath it can really, really screw you over. Wars are nearly constant. The more or less permanent casus belli from your other pagan neighbors means that they can swoop in for the leftovers after whatever dynastic struggle du jour wraps up. There's a real sense of chaos to things, particularly when you're over in Russia, which makes for an active game.</div>
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<br />Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-39138048641392981532013-06-01T18:15:00.000-07:002013-06-01T18:15:07.923-07:00Barid I (928-930)From temple flew Barid, full of wrath and desire<br />
True Norse to the tips of his bones<br />
Whispers filled whole speak-chambers, where Novgorod stood<br />
Blood from blessed Rurik's veins seemed clear<br />
<br />
But Frirek, damned Frirek, to fight was his cause<br />
Brother Oleg became his victim<br />
Smothered in sleep, sixth son of his father<br />
Tis how Torzhok came to damned Frirek<br />
<br />
Subtlety was scarce, the duchy saw it all<br />
Frirek cared for nothing save the throne<br />
Justice's demanded Barid's deeds, for Frirek had fled<br />
Raising flag in rebellion against brother-liege<br />
<br />
Frirek was faster, cunning-fox<br />
Brother fought brothers<br />
Luki and Lagoda, helped lay Frirek's trap<br />
Barid bid farewell and to Scotland sailed<br />
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<h3>
Out of Character</h3>
<div>
I have a feeling this pattern is going to hold for a bit. Things seemed good! My vassals actually sort of liked me! I could kind of hang in there with Barid. His stats were sort of stinky, but that's okay! He wasn't Frirek.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So here's what happened. Frirek, as eldest surviving Rurikovich brother, stood to inherit whatever titles his other four brothers left behind. Barid had no kids and the other three were 15, 12, and 11, so they weren't even married. So, from way far away in Norway, he offs Oleg of Torzhok. Now, he's Count of Torzhok.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But Frirek is still bad at all of this, so the whole kingdom knows. This is my chance. I have a 71% chance to capture him, strip his titles, and let him rot in prison forever. So I send out the guard to go get him. And fail. Frirek rebels, but all of my vassals join him! Yes, the same vassals who all hated him, <i>including</i> the kid brothers.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Once again, I have a rebellion I can't put down. I relent and Barid is banished to his wife's former court in Moray, Scotland, where Ivar the Boneless' kin rule. Frirek is once again Jarl of Novgorod. I fully expect things to remain incredibly cutthroat and messy.</div>
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<br />Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-2644680643509742662013-06-01T12:56:00.000-07:002013-06-01T12:56:38.284-07:00Frirek I 927-928While war raged without cease, young Frirek went to Novgorod<br />
Ill-favored, ill-mannered, weak<br />
His favored father's sins forgotten not, for a year Frirek reigned<br />
Young Frirek yet strove to be king<br />
<br />
Novgorod's councils never kept near poor Frirek, nearer his brother they were<br />
To Barid's temple blew the message<br />
"Novgorod, oh Novgorod, come newly to Frirek, Barid rescue us!"<br />
So Frirek sought shelter so far from home<br />
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<br />
<h3>
Out of Character</h3>
<div>
Well, this didn't take long. Frirek took the ducal throne while the wars were still raging. He was reduced to a whopping one county for his personal demesne, his brothers taking over the rest of Rurik's former holdings, and everyone hating him. This meant that, once the already raised troops were spent in one of the four(!) ongoing wars, that was it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Things looked reasonably bright at the start, despite all this. Two of the wars were resolved quickly and the 700 men still left to me tore through the Danish invaders on my west. Unfortunately, they were decimated by a returning stack. I couldn't raise more than 74 troops after that.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Hot on the heels of that, my Spymaster and Steward, both counts, came to me and delivered an ultimatum: my brother Barid was going on the throne whether I liked it or not. Barid, it should be noted, was one of the brothers shunted off to the Norse priesthood in order to remove him from the line of succession. A quick glance of the factions in Novgorod showed that they had ca 200% of my troops. I gave up the throne and Frirek headed west. He'll be okay; I had him betrothed to a young Norse duchess in Norway. Maybe in another 100 years it'll come back to me, the player.</div>
Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-80374704444832641022013-05-31T17:19:00.000-07:002013-05-31T17:19:42.951-07:00Rurik I 901-905 (King of Gardariki/Rus) 905-927 (Jarl of Novgorod)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
(Rurik is the second Rurik I, because he's the actual first Rurik to be King of Rus.)<br />
<br />
Rurik born of Rurik's son, Rus-king and reaver<br />
Wily and wise and cruel<br />
The throne bore his thin frame, though heavy it was with doubt<br />
None saw Novgorod's throne as sure<br />
<br />
From far to the east, Muromians became foes<br />
Seeking the sacred seat of Gardariki<br />
Betrayal became thick, bastard Kiev did strike<br />
The thunderous tribes of Perm followed<br />
<br />
Rurik read tactics, ran forth with his blade<br />
Gardariki's foes were too grievous<br />
Parush Pauper-lord, his people loved him so<br />
The throne of Rus became him<br />
<br />
A bargain became Rurik's savior, Parush bore his debts<br />
Rurik remained in Novgorod<br />
Duke Rurik did rule wisely, years of peace to his name<br />
But Rurik remained unsated<br />
<br />
Red-haired Ragnarr, brother of Rurik<br />
His home was in Tver<br />
Til Rurik twisted a carriage wheel, sending Ragner to a canyon floor<br />
Tver nestled next to Rurik's breast<br />
<br />
Parush Muromid perished, poor child-king dead in his grave<br />
Shkay his brother's brother became Rurik's lord<br />
True truces held in Novgorod, Duke Rurik reigned well and good<br />
Monoliths and monuments to his majesty spread far and wide<br />
<br />
Still Rurik schemed and plotted, the throne of fair Rus so far away<br />
With Shkay withering slowly on the throne Rurik wished for<br />
Rurik's loins left no issue, left barren and bereft<br />
Rurik's royal line remained fallow<br />
<br />
Til sons sprang quite suddenly, from wife and concubine alike<br />
Six sons in beds sleeping soundly<br />
With succession secured, Rurik seemed pleased<br />
But gavelkind grows ever unkind<br />
<br />
Ivar his heir had claim to Lithuania, Rurik had reason to push<br />
Warrior woman Malusha was unrelenting<br />
Thrice the chieftess threw Novgorod back, til the men were broken and bleeding<br />
To an oubliette Ivar was thrown<br />
<br />
Jarl Rurik yelled to the heavens, yelled to Odin for his son<br />
Yet the Jarl heard no reply<br />
Stupid and simple Frirek stood to inherit, Rurik sank to despair<br />
Ivar died in an oubliette alone and afraid<br />
<br />
Rus, fair Rus, ran red with blood, young ruler Setyamka was spent<br />
The kingdom came crashing around him<br />
Old Rurik assumed command of Rus forces, Asgard and Valhalla in his eyes<br />
He fell in fields of Muscovy as his father's father had before<br />
<br />
<h3>
Out of Character</h3>
<div>
Apparently it was time for a demotion. As soon as I inherited, Kiev and Perm declared war on me. More alarmingly, the Finnish tribe just south of me, a big one, decided to subjugate Rus. This meant that I was going to be demoted right back down to Jarl of Novgorod if I lost. And I lost. Badly. My vassals hated me, so I had fewer troops to begin with, and it just snowballed from there.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Weirdly, I had really good relations with the Muromid dynasty which took over. They never tried to strip any titles or shove me around, despite my Norse paganism (there was one offer of conversion, but screw that), and generally supported me.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Just as last time, I set up a plot to kill my brother and retrieve the Duchy of Tver. This was a double-edged sword, as I ended up with two civil wars trying over the title with other families. I held out, but they really put me in bad positions elsewhere.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As mentioned in the last entry, Rurik came to the throne at 33 with no wife and no kids. This freaked me out, particularly when I hit age 40 and <i>still</i> had no kids. Toss in a dead brother and a sister (who could inherit) with no husband and I was staring at the end of the Rurikovich line.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I, of course, freaked out. In addition to my wife, I took three concubines. <b>Must have sons.</b> Well, they started popping up left and right. I suddenly had a problem in the opposite direction: six sons and gavelkind coming up.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This was really not good. To make it worse, the only one worth a damn (Ivar) died in a dungeon after his claim on Lithuania was denied by some vicious defense. We're talking me outnumbering the defenders 3:1 and losing repeatedly. I still have no idea what triggered this.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So Ivar's dead and I'm trying to shunt as many inept sons off to the priesthood as possible to narrow things down. It's going fine until all hell breaks loose for my liege. In my reign, I had lost Rus to a six year old, seen the six year old murdered by his uncle, and had the uncle die, leaving his son. That's four kings of Rus in 26 years, if you're keeping score. This was all too much for the kingdom and basically everyone but me rebels.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I half considered it, too. Instead, like an idiot, I decided that the Muromids had been good to me and it was better than the Tengri kingdom which had invaded on top of everything else. So I sallied forth in support of my king, where I promptly died in battle, leaving my worse son, Frirek, on the throne at age 17. There are honestly seven year olds with better stats than him.</div>
<div>
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<div>
Onward!</div>
<div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The world. Denmark is a little bit OP.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-91744913319476108942013-05-31T09:05:00.000-07:002013-05-31T09:07:48.436-07:00Helgi I 881-903Helgi the Hated, first ruler of Rus<br />
His brothers have never risen<br />
Children oh children<br />
One fell off a tower wall, one ate pheasant and turned blue<br />
Away to Asgard for Anlaufr and Ormr<br />
<br />
With Swedes wood-swimming, where Ingria meets the sea<br />
And villainous Veps nearing Novgorod<br />
Helgi the Hated gave his land, never to return<br />
Hills and heath never to return<br />
<br />
For poor Faste af Ostrov, steward and friend<br />
Peasant-hate pulled him from horse and home<br />
Torn and twisted, Faste's body faltered<br />
Til two pieces of Faste, littered the ground<br />
<br />
Thus the rebels came, war never waned<br />
For Helgi the Hated knew no peace<br />
Twenty two turns of the year, he knew no peace<br />
Moskva and Mozhaysk left in cold blood<br />
<br />
Still Helgi the Hated bore on, placing crown upon crown-seat<br />
King of Rus the Red<br />
Gardariki the Grey, with great forests and water-roads aplenty<br />
Hail King Helgi the Hated<br />
<br />
The new king with crown and cape of ermine, made haste to Smaleskja<br />
There battle was borne to the heavens<br />
Kupala laughed lightly, while new king led his men onward<br />
Smaleskja smoldered as Helgi strove on<br />
<br />
An arrow from afar, pierced Helgi's arm<br />
Barbed and bleeding arrow scarring poor Helgi<br />
Rust-water ran from the riven wound, Helgi's health did fester from then<br />
Eleven years ere his death<br />
<br />
Smaleskja soon fell, as Norns had foretold<br />
But Helgi the Hated slept in Holmgardr<br />
Weeping was wanting when Helgi passed on, no peasants wept for what was gone<br />
But Rurik returned from away to the west upon Helgi's death<br />
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<h3>
<br /></h3>
<h3>
Out of Character</h3>
<div>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_of_Novgorod" target="_blank">Helgi</a> was kind of a disaster but <i>still</i> ended up being first King of Rus (or Gardarkiki; the names change depending on your ethnicity and maybe religion, which is way cool). From day one, the nascent kingdom was rocked by invasions and rebellions. I'm rethinking that the Norse are inherently overpowered. <i>Some</i> of them certainly are (I'm looking at you, Ynglings and Denmark), but the constant wars really grind your forces down. There were a couple wars which I was forced to yield immediately, since I had to prioritize which places to fight (I was always at war with multiple parties, large and small). In 22 years, Helgi saw 5 of peace.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The first thing I did to consolidate was have my two kid brothers killed via intrigue plot. They were eight and six but they were also the Duke of Tver and the Duke of Belo Ozero, respectively; the game's tough. One of the attempts failed and I was outed, which is partially what started the rebellion spiral; my vassals were not pleased at all.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Weirdly, Helgi latched onto Slavic paganism. My son, Rurik I (he's going to be the first because he's actually the first king of Gardariki, not the legendary Rurik), stayed at his mother's court in western Norway, so he'll be properly Norse. Still, I'm sitting on a barely stable powder keg of ethnicities, religions, and power struggles. Which is, I guess, a lot like the real Russia of the time. Still, I'm eyeballing the upcoming second bout of gavelkind and considering conversion to Christianity just to have stable inheritance laws.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Rurik's coming in unmarried and 33 years old. This could be a big frigging problem, since his brother is, too. Conceivably, due to not having control over their marriages when they were young since they were at a foreign court, this could go very badly for the Rurikovich dynasty if the zygotes don't align properly.</div>
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<br />Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-80266723944173461192013-05-30T18:12:00.000-07:002013-05-30T18:20:57.672-07:00Rurik I "The Noble" 862-881<br />
Fire-haired, father, foe<br />
Rurik Ring Giver<br />
Do the stones by his passing, sing his name still?<br />
A man of away west<br />
<br />
Battle-bells tolled long and low, beside the Volkhov banks<br />
Norse, Slavs, Finns, scythed low<br />
Oh old Nygardr, oh years past gone<br />
The thane-seat still strains from Rurik's weight<br />
<br />
Ravens tell and relate, the wars of Rurik<br />
Ransom and ruin brought down upon the clans<br />
All for fair Rus, Rurik's dream of Rus<br />
A vision Odin's oracles foretold<br />
<br />
Three sons he had, three thanes from his loins<br />
Helgi with hair of spun silver<br />
Anlaufr and Ormr, out of lust born<br />
Rurik's burden became, a fear of sovereignty split<br />
<br />
But Rus before then, before his sons would quarrel<br />
Winds wailed as the kingdom was won<br />
The dream discharged, Rurik decayed far too young<br />
Rus, fair Rus, drank Rurik's life-water<br />
<br />
A man of one hundred, would scarce wane as Rurik<br />
But Rurik's bravery and boldness was too great<br />
Rus, fair Rus, was within Rurik's grasp<br />
Til Muscovy's meadows struck their blow<br />
<br />
Meltskaya the Murderer, his name maintains its grasp<br />
Smote Rurick savagely with sword and axe<br />
Rurick tumbled to the turf, eyes closed tight<br />
Meltskaya the Murderer, eye-closer<br />
<br />
Olafr Odin-speaker spake Rurik's words<br />
Rus, fair Rus, remained silent for Rurik's life<br />
Wife Ingrjerdr went mad with grief, wailing and gnashing her teeth<br />
Prince Helgi prepared for kingship<br />
<br />
A year more Rurik moaned and lingered, Rus in his mind<br />
Til no tomorrows would wake him<br />
Rus, fair Rus, became a ravaged nightmare<br />
Rurik passed too promptly to see his dream come to life<br />
<br />
<h3>
Out of Character</h3>
<div>
A mixed bag here. Rurik is a beast of a character, but he's in a surprisingly (to me) bad spot. Unlike the Norse rulers over in the British Isles, there is no Norse populace. Everyone is a Slavic or Finnish pagan, which makes all of your vassals crankier than usual. As such, I pumped my tech into Cultural Flexibility, which mitigates it somewhat.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Being Norse, I'm primed for war. So that's what I did. I took the Ambition to form Rus, which gave me a valid Casus Belli against anyone in that de jure kingdom. I expanded quickly as I could, picking off as many one and two county principalities as I could.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Rurik became Infirm at age 45 for no reason I could discern and it lowered his stats by two across the board. This was offset by his Quick trait, but it was still non-negligible. Maybe that's what eventually led to his head being caved in during a battle which I outnumbered my Slavic enemies by three to one. It was a totally freak accident but it screwed everything up; Spymaster Olafr af Pestovo took over, but the gains I'd made were hanging on by a surprisingly slim thread.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is because I had to form the Kingdom of Rus before Rurik died. Once Rurik was dead, gavelkind succession was going to kick in and two-thirds of the realm were going to end up in Rurik's concubine sired sons' hands. Guess what happened? If you guessed that Rurik lingered as a mental vegetable for a year before dying with a scant month to go before I had the money to create the title, you're <i>right</i>!</div>
<div>
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<div>
Now King Helgi I is going to have to essentially start over to form Rus. He's also starting out at war with a rebelling Jarldom of Chud. It's a bad scene.</div>
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<br />Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-33771478932827919162013-05-30T13:43:00.003-07:002013-05-30T13:43:33.748-07:00The Epic of Rurik and His SonsAbout a year ago (almost exactly, actually), I decided to do an<a href="http://igwilliams.blogspot.com/2012/06/being-history-of-de-rennes-family-of.html" target="_blank"> after action report for Crusader Kings II</a>. Totally rad game which really lends itself to emergent stories.<br />
<br />
It was a lot of fun. To keep my brain fresh over the summer, I'm going to do another one. The (probably) final expansion for the game, called The Old Gods, is out and it adds a lot of cool stuff. It allows playable pagans and is particularly Norse-centric, with lots of very neat events and rules changes involved. It also pushes the start date back to 876. While Dark Ages history isn't really my forte, I've always been enamored of the quasi-mythical rulers of the era. Ivar the Boneless, the Karlings, the Arpads, and (especially) Rurik.<br />
<br />
Rurik was a viking raider who set out and founded Russia. The dynasty lasted into the late 16th century. That's the short version; go read up, if it sounds interesting.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I'm going to do an AAR of the Rurikovich dynasty, starting in 876 with Rurik and going until I die out. Since the Norse are a <i>teensy</i> bit overpowered right now, I'm probably not going to die out, though the dynastic meltdowns which paganism is subject to should keep things interesting.<br />
<br />
The format's going to be different this time, because I don't think I can churn out ca 30k words again. Instead of doing a straight narrative, I'm going to be doing alliterative verse a la the Eddas. I should stress that I'm not a poet and the only thing I know about how that particular form of Old Norse verse is structured comes from wikipedia and a couple scholarly sources I browsed. It's probably going to be brutal but fun.<br />
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Following the verse, I'll do a bit of fully out of character writing about how the game is going. Just like my Brittany AAR, each entry will be a ruler, so some will come faster than others.<br />
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<br />
That's Rurik's starting realm in the dark green. Holmgardr.<br />
<br />
Now to go play.<br />
<br />Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-88069717973522321402013-05-06T12:00:00.001-07:002013-05-06T12:00:50.877-07:00ACTION MOVIE WORLD Actual Play Report<br />
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The first real playtest of ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD
went extremely well. It certainly exceeded my expectations. A non-zero portion
of that is that I was running it for guys that I have gamed with off and on
(more off than on after my move to Raleigh) for well over twenty years, but
it’s equally true that a non-zero portion of it is just that rough spots I was
concerned with weren’t that big a deal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is pretty long (about 3500 words) but I want to make
sure the first actual play report touches everything important in a little more
detail than maybe I otherwise would. Even then, there are still spots which
could use MORE detail, so ask questions about rules and where things are going.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The players were John, Peter, and Scott. It was decided at
the outset that Peter would get to be the Lead in whatever movie was chosen as
it was his birthday shindig that this was all taking place at. Right now, it’s
pretty nebulous how Lead is determined; that’s something to firm up, for sure,
but it was easy enough for the first test.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Peter opted to play The Yeller, a Reb Brown, screams all the
time, beefy sort of actor. John went with The Pugilist and decided to go a little slapsticky with his martial
artist a la Jackie Chan. Scott went with The Gunfighter, a Chow Yun-Fat gun-fu
type.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The actor names were as follows:<o:p></o:p></div>
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Peter: Chet Bradford (Yeller)<o:p></o:p></div>
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John: Jack Sprat (Pugilist)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Scott: Chip Kaiser (Gunfighter)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Once the playbooks and actor names were picked, the group
chose their moves. Chet picked “Just Yell”, which allowed him to roll +Muscles
instead of +Drama for certain scenes, and “Move, Move, Move”, a move which
allows him to egg his companions on when speed is needed. Jack decided on “Go
for the gut. He’s soft there”, a straight +1 Agility, and “Sting Like a Bee”,
letting him roll +Agility instead of +Muscles in close combat. Finally, Chip
decided to go for “Gun Ballet”, granting –area to any ranged weapon he uses,
and “This Is My Gun”, giving him a +1 to all Stunt rolls while a ranged weapon
is in his hand.<o:p></o:p></div>
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These are the actors. You can think of the actors as brands
and these moves as calling cards of each particular actor. Using Chet as an
example, we see an actor who delivers heavy emotional scenes by screaming his
lines and who tends to rely on screaming at his costars to hurry up. So, quite a
bit like Reb Brown, actually.<o:p></o:p></div>
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With the actor playbooks chosen, it was time to pick a genre
of movie and see what we could come up with. Right now, I only have the Cop
Movie and Barbarian Movie Scripts (movie playbooks) ready. I’ve got plenty in the
pipeline, but if I set a bar of “all the Scripts are done” as a minimum for
testing, then this thing is never going to get tested because, ho boy, it’s
practically limitless.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The guys decided to go with the Cop Movie. I was pretty
happy with this, since I’d done a one on one with the Barbarian Movie once
before.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The first thing you do is sort out what sorts of
relationships the characters have with one another. Starting with the Lead and
going to his or her left, you roll on or pick from a chart (or make something
up entirely) to see what the relationship is. It’s deliberately reminiscent of
Fiasco; one of my favorite bits of Fiasco is the way that it forces you to
think about what the relationships between the characters mean.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We determined that Chet’s character and Jack’s character had
a cop-informant relationship. We knew that Chet was going to be the Lead in
this film, so it was pretty easy to sort out which was which: Chet was the cop,
Jack was the informant. Jack was next to roll and he ended up with a
relationship of precinct buddies with Chip. Problem: we already established
that Jack was going to be playing an informant in this film. Easy solution:
Jack was an ex-cop, disgraced but still of use to the force as an informant
from his new vantage point from the docks. Finally, Chip rolled to see his
relationship with Chet and got a 12. They had both seen something terrible.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We paused here. We had a slowly coming into view picture of
what the movie looked like. We knew it was a cop movie (duh), that Chet and
Chip were cops who had witnessed something terrible, and that Dusty was an
ex-cop (and ex-partner) of Chip’s who had fallen on hard times. Nice. Time to
drill down more.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Before we went any further, I wanted names of the film
characters the actors were playing. This isn’t the same as the actor’s names;
actor’s names won’t change, while film character names will change each movie
(yo, this is meta: you are a real person playing an actor playing a character).
Chet decided to play Sgt. Lance Anger. Chip, his current partner, played Rob
Collier. And Jack played poor Dusty, a man who left his last name and badge
behind him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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With names done, we returned to the setting. What was this
terrible thing that Lance and Rob had seen? After some discussion, it was decided
that they saw a terribly mangled body with its fingers snipped neatly off at
the site of a diamond heist. Some sort of message, but what did it mean? Going
further, the precinct (it was also decided that it was set in Los Angeles) was
in a tizzy about the ghastly crime. Dusty, our informant, was a drunk fisherman
with his ear to the ground in the dockyards. He’d been implicated in a prior,
years ago jewel heist, so some suspicion was coming his way.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Next up were the Script moves. Each player picks a move from
the chosen Script, exactly the same as with their Actor playbooks. Script moves
only last for the duration of the current movie, however; they’re tightly tied
to the genre being portrayed, while Actor moves tend to be more general,
pan-genre action moves (experience expenditures can make Script moves
permanent, though). Lance went with “Supercop” (+1 all stunts), Dusty with
“Corrupt Is As Corrupt Does” (can spend holds to get access to illicit goods),
and Rob with “High Speed Chase” (a demon behind the wheel).<o:p></o:p></div>
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The characters picked
their gear (Lance Anger loved his nightstick, Dusty still had a stash of
teargas grenades, and Rob Collier had his assault rifle) and then it was time
for the final step: picking a villain. In this stage, the Director (me) gets to
pick, though the players have veto power. Each Script comes with a list which
you can pick from. The entries all have associated impulses, familiar to anyone
who’s made a Front for Apocalypse World. I’d heard Dusty talking about drugs
with his Script move, so I floated a drug kingpin; the group wasn’t too keen on
that and floated the police chief being the big bad guy. I thought that sounded
cool, so I named him (Brent McGillicutty) and off we went.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We opened in the precinct office. Chief McGillicutty had a
hot tip that Dusty had some information regarding the diamond heist and
mutilation; he asked Lance and Rob to head down there, since Rob had a
relationship with Dusty dating back a decade. Lance had to go, too; he was
Rob’s partner and the best cop on the force. (Peter really played the yelling
aspect of things to the hilt; he would yell borderline incoherently at random
times and kept it up for around three hours) The partners grabbed their squad
car and headed down to the docks.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There was an obvious break in the action so it was time to
jump cut over to Dusty. He had an old fishing boat which he lived on now. His
cousin, Nick, was fixing the motor for him and was wrapping the job up as we
cut over. Nick and Dusty exchanged some pleasantries, with Nick expressing
concern for his well-being, when Lance and Rob pulled up. Nick and Dusty
greeted the two cops and Nick excused himself, stating that he had his kids for
the weekend.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The scene shifted to a bit of heavy pathos, with Rob
assuring Dusty that he was a good cop caught in a bad situation, while Dusty,
reticent to help, insisted he wasn’t. Lance decided he wasn’t interested in
this and decided to convince Dusty to help by making an emotional connection.
This is a +Drama roll and varies from the more direct manipulation roll in
approach. The emotional connection move is about delivering a stirring speech
of some sort and trying to elicit an emotion or memory.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lance rolled and ended up with a 12; obviously a rousing
success. At this point, we ran into a small rules snag. Lance was going to
punch Dusty in the stomach to snap him out of it before delivering a speech
about how he was still a cop at heart; Dusty decided that he wasn’t going to go
along with that and wanted to resist. Lance’s narration was totally valid <i>only as long as the target didn’t resist.</i>
He could’ve narrated it differently, with maybe just a speech and no physical
contact. The second physical contact was initiated, Dusty had the option to
resist and cause a fight to break out. This isn’t currently adjudicated in the
rules and was just a judgment call on my part; I’m inclined to keep it that
way, as this particular situation strikes me as somewhat rare.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I gave Lance a chance to change the move. He definitely
wanted to, as his in-character intention was to snap Dusty out of it, not start
a fight. Rob jumped in here and suggested that he stop the punch from behind
before it was thrown; Lance thought that was a really good idea and agreed. So
Rob stopped the punch, shouting that this wasn’t the way. Lance huffed and
relented.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“You’re still on the force to me, Dusty! You’re still on the
right team!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Dusty relented and agreed to help. I asked Dusty what he
knew, putting the decision in player hands. Dusty knew that the Pier One Gang
(yes, that Pier One) was rumored to be involved in some heavy stuff. He used
his “Corrupt Is As Corrupt Does” move from the Cop Movie Script to do this. It
wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was something. Before the group could pull off,
though, a cop car pulled up and out stepped officers Jane Lillard and Bob
Thomas with a search warrant for the boat. Stand up cops and acquaintances of
all three of the heroes. They presented the search warrant and said that Lance
and Rob could certainly contribute.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Things took a weird turn here. For whatever reason, Lance
and Rob decided to knock out the two searching cops. Dusty, for his part,
wisely stayed out of it. We turned to some combat rolls, with punches thrown
and pistol whippings galore. Dusty opted for a stunt move to get the hell out
of there, tumbling over the side and into the water. Bob took a tumble down
into the ship’s cabin, while Jane landed in the water. Dusty ended up dragging
the unconscious Officer Lillard onto the deck; Rob searched her and found a
crumpled note with the address for the Pier One scribbled on it. Lance, for his
part, went to go question Bob down below. Bob was coming to when, out of the
corner of his eye, Lance caught sight of an open briefcase of crisp, unmarked
bills sitting on a table.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A series of accusations broke out between Lance, Rob, Dusty,
and the still groggy Bob. A couple of read a person moves established that Bob
wasn’t behind planting the money there. Only one person made sense: Dusty’s
cousin, Nick the mechanic. Lance and Rob tried to talk Bob down from radioing
in what, from their perspective, was a massive misunderstanding. That was
obviously the persuade move and it was flubbed, badly. No dice: Bob was getting
the still comatose Jane and radioing in backup. With no choice, the two beaten
up cops were gently left on dock and the boat roared to life, course set for Pier
One.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rob decided to roll High Speed Chase, netting an 8; he opted
to take a shortcut, but either he or the vehicle would take some damage. He
narrated ducking between tugboats and eking every bit of speed out of the old
boat, while I described the fishing gear getting knocked loose during a clip
with one of the tugs. Not particularly crunchy, but it made for a cool
narrative moment and was actually one of the most visually striking scenes when
placed in my mind’s eye.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The heroes (I use the term loosely after the search warrant
fiasco, but it’s also not entirely outside the source material) killed the
motor as night fell and headed up to the Pier One warehouse. There’s no real
stealth move, or acting under fire, so sneaking around unseen defaulted to a +Agility
based stunt move. This brought up an interesting flow of play question: do I
want AMW to be the sort of game in which a roll is needed by everyone to make
what amounts to a group move or do I just defer to the most competent one? It
felt more in keeping with the conversational tone to just ask for the one roll;
that may be something I revisit, but it felt right last night.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Everyone climbed up to the top of the warehouse unseen, to a
glass skylight. Peering down, they saw members of the Pier One gang unloading
military grade weaponry from crates which had just arrived. Assault rifles,
rocket launchers, grenades, land mines… the whole nine. And who did they see
with Teeth (leader of the Pier One gang)? If you guessed Cousin Nick, you were
right.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The climax was coming. Dusty decided this would be a good
time to go for a Camaraderie move, a sort of abstracted move meant to revel in
the friendship that most action movies have as a theme. You actually have a
communal Camaraderie score, which goes up and down throughout the course of a
movie. Before he did this, though, he decided to go for a killer one-liner
move; one of the outcomes of a successful one-liner is a +1 to your Camaraderie
score.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dusty stated that it was “time to get a drop on these guys”
as he prepped to toss out hi-fives before diving through the glass to kick some
ass. Unfortunately, he missed his one-liner move. In this case, a miss taps
into the meta, just a movie portion of AMW. The line elicited laughs mixed with
groans at the table. In the movie, Dusty’s buddies were into it. But a miss on
a one-liner meant the imaginary audience wasn’t into it; it fell flat. It was
lame. It gave Dusty a -1 to his next move which was, of course, a Camaraderie
move.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dusty gave his hi-fives and everyone prepared to go in. He
rolled the groups +Camaraderie (which was a 0; that’s where it starts in every
film and it hadn’t been bumped up or down) with his -1 from the lame one-liner
and missed. The consequences for a failed Camaraderie roll can be pretty dire. In
this case, Dusty chose to have the Director make an immediate and very hard
move against one of his compatriots (not him; important note).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Teeth glanced up and saw Rob at the edge of the skylight.
The gangster whipped a grenade launcher out of his trench coat (the movie was
set in 1992 so of course it was a trench coat) and took a blast at Rob. Rob’s
body was shattered, near death. He coughed up blood as Lance grabbed him,
swearing to return for him, asking him to hang on.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lance and Dusty, tears in their eyes, jumped through the
skylight. Dusty chucked tear gas down into the crowd via a successful stunt
roll, opting to give the +1 forward the success granted to Lance. Lance put it
to good use, diving right onto Teeth while Dusty handled Nick; Dusty nailed a
combat move and opted to hit a whole ton of people in addition to disabling
Nick.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The heroes handcuffed their quarry to the boat’s railing
before running to the roof to check on Rob. Rob was definitely dying. When a
supporting cast member dies, the actor gets two experience, while the surviving
PCs gain the option to demand Vengeance; Vengeance is a hold which can be spent
to gain a 10+ automatically on a move.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The death scene was great. Rob asked Lance to make sure his
family was okay before reaching into his pocket with his last breath; he handed
Lance adoption papers for a puppy he was going to get for his wife for their
anniversary, along with a photo of said puppy. Then he was gone. Lance and
Dusty swore vengeance before returning to the boat.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Once back on the boat, a few more emotional connection and
manipulation moves had Teeth admitting that Chief McGillicutty had been behind
the operation and that most of the police force was corrupt, while Nick
repented and, for family ties, agreed to help out where he could. Sirens were
heard.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One of the current holes is what to do with players of dead
characters. I opted to try my current first option, which is to assign control
of an NPC (starting with the main villain) to such players. Scott (Rob’s
player) took over for Chief McGillicutty. I still set the scene as I would for
most other NPC centered situations, but I granted Scott a lot of leeway in
terms of how McGillicutty acted and spoke.<o:p></o:p></div>
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While McGillicutty and the cops were on their way for a
final showdown, we cooked up a quick montage of the heroes and Nick setting a
trap. Nick, being a mechanic, wired what was basically a gigantic powder with
explosives (action movie logic, don’t ask). Dusty hid in his boat with a rocket
launcher. Lance hid out at the door of the warehouse.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I loosely set the scene for Scott so he knew, generally, how
to proceed with Chief McGillicutty. I narrated an army of cops pulling up, with
him at the lead. He rolled with it, describing the chief getting out of the car
with his bullhorn and doing a classic “give yourselves up” line. Lance shouted
that he wanted to talk to McGillicutty, one on one, inside the warehouse.
McGillicutty shouted back that he agreed, but remained by his car, motioning
for the police to surround the warehouse.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dusty figured this was his chance and he shot his shiny new
rocket launcher at the now separated McGillicutty. An intersection of two rules
occurred with this. One, the main villain has plot immunity from everyone but
the Lead; only the Lead can kill him. Two, Dusty failed the roll. Badly. I sort
of cheated here and shouldn’t have (though this did lead to an interesting
potential rules change). McGillicutty caught a glimpse of Dusty in the boat and
pulled his pistol, shooting poor Dusty between the eyes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lance lost it at this point and invoked his Vengeance move.
The warehouse blew as Lance jumped out of the blast radius, propelled forward
in a mega-tackle of McGillicutty (10+ on his stunt move from Vengeance). Lance bellowed
that he was taking the chief in legally. It was time to fist fight.
McGillicutty squirmed free after clocking Lance with an elbow to the temple. I
gave Scott the option of how to react; McGillicutty ran like hell. Lance took
this opportunity to hop in a squad car and run the erstwhile smuggling
mastermind down.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The movie closed with credits rolling and wailing guitars.
Lance was on the boat, heading out to sea. “I’ve seen enough of the city. It
gets to you,” he said. “Time to try my luck out there. On the bay.” The sun was
setting and a red sheen on the water paved the way for Lance Anger’s next
adventures.<o:p></o:p></div>
Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-52119831889833423422013-03-27T07:45:00.004-07:002013-03-27T07:45:54.855-07:00ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD March ProgressThe playtest documents are done. More or less. I've discovered that Google Drive's formatting is awful when it comes to bulleted lists, but that's okay for an alpha document. I'll shape it up for the next pass.<br />
<br />
So, what's it look like?<br />
<br />
Structurally, not much has changed. The work was in getting the details in there for a playable document of some sort. There are some things which need to be firmed up, but that's why it's an alpha. I definitely need to detail how a movie is expected to play out, but I also want to see what people do with it now. Plus, I need to run it several times on Hangout or something to help guide me on how I communicate that.<br />
<br />
One interesting thing cropped up which reminded me a bit of Pendragon and, by extension, Before Iron. Obviously these are two different styles of gaming, but in both AMW and Pendragon you know how things end.<br />
<br />
In Pendragon, this is specific: you know that Uther will beget Arthur, that Lancelot will betray him, that Mordred will slay Arthur, and that the dying Arthur will sail off on his little boat to his little imaginary island and everything sucks.<br />
<br />
In AMW, this is more general. The good guy wins in an American action flick. He or she (it's almost always a "he", but I'm very into being gender inclusive in this project, even if the movies aren't; the Cynthia Rothrocks of the world deserve no less) is going to kill or capture the bad guy, get the love interest, and ride off into the sunset.<br />
<br />
How do you make this interesting? It's not going to be for everyone. I've had players balk at the notion that they weren't going to wield Excalibur (I mean, you <i>can</i> play Pendragon that way, but I don't find it interesting so I didn't run it that way) or rule Britain. Others (most) thrived on it.<br />
<br />
Pendragon took the tack that your knights were equal to the greats but different. The big stories were there as backdrop, but the stories of the PCs were running in parallel. So, no, you were never going to get Excalibur, but you might get Farfar the Axe of Jormungandr in Fairy Land or whatever. You might go to the Battle of Badon knowing that, in the larger narrative, Arthur is guaranteed to win. Which is lame, maybe, until you consider that what's <i>not </i>guaranteed is your PC's survival or glory.<br />
<br />
In AMW, by contrast, one character is designated as the Lead. This rotates and you can't do it a second time until everyone else has had a crack at it. The Lead essentially has plot immunity. He or she can't die and is guaranteed to eventually kill the bad guy. I say "eventually" because the Lead absolutely can be beaten up, set back, and generally screwed with to make it hard. But the Lead can't lose.<br />
<br />
The supporting cast, of course, can and probably should lose. I offer a mechanical carrot of 2 XP if a supporting character dies in the movie (which really isn't terribly punitive, since you just come back for the next movie), but even there, broad leeway is given to those characters in how and when they die. What drama demands comes first, mechanical doodads and notions of balance/fairness come second.<br />
<br />
I like Vincent Baker's maxim that a roleplaying game is a conversation. If I didn't, I probably wouldn't have latched onto Apocalypse World as tightly as I have. So AMW is a conversation, too, but it's shaped differently than AW's conversation. What's going on is that we know how the conversation in each movie in AMW begins and how it ends, but we don't know what it looks like. We don't know how the AMW heroes know each other. We don't know where they are. We don't know how the big villain gets his or her comeuppance or even why it's deserved. That's what you determine in-game.<br />
<br />
Interestingly, I feel that this overlaps with another AW engine project I've been testing, <a class="g-profile" href="http://plus.google.com/113171717066139475855" target="_blank">+Nathan Paoletta</a>'s World Wide Wrestling. It is, as you can probably guess, a pro wrestling game. Pro wrestling matches are scripted (what? NO!) and Nathan's been cooking up ways to acknowledge that while giving the players control of how things look. He's doing a good job of it so far, but I imagine it's challenging; at the least, it's challenging for me.<br />
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I'm going into this knowing that this is going to be completely uninteresting to some people. I'm totally okay with that! As my father-in-law says, it wouldn't do for everyone to like the same things. I do think that, because of this difference in what the conversations are like, it's important to be up front about the expectations and zero in on conveying how the conversation should ideally look once the blanks begin to get colored in.<br />
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That's really the most challenging part of the project. I'm mostly happy with the playbooks and Scripts. I'm generally happy with most of the moves, though I feel like there's a bit too much overlap in some of their outcomes. It's making sure a movie "looks" like a movie that's tricky.Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-28019024792901838482013-02-25T12:55:00.002-08:002013-05-01T15:38:50.700-07:00ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD February Progress<br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I'm using my child transmitted flu or cold or whatever to knuckle down on some ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">By way of progress, I'm feeling good about getting a playtest document out by the end of March *provided* mid-terms and a busy end of that month (Rafael-con, Easter, my stepmother's retirement party which has me cooking paella for twenty) cooperate. I say that more as a precaution than anything else; I'm feeling good, but I also know that 1/3 of the days in March are spoken for, with another 2-4 days on midterms. That's a not insignificant chunk of time.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Actually sitting down and writing is always clarifying for me in a way that notes and spreadsheets aren't. I like gaming books as a sort of quasi-narrative art form, rather than as instruction manuals. Always have.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Because of that, the difficulty I was having in firming up Scripts (the movie playbooks) just kind of melted away once I sat down, stopped <i>thinking too damned much, </i>and just started making them. Which isn't to say that *any* of this is perfect; it's not and that's what playtests are for. In fact, I see things I'm not entirely pleased with right now but I want to see what other people say before I nix them or alter them. There are times when I am (quietly, neurotically) extremely hard on my work. Not that you'd know, since I don't verbalize it too much, but it's there. My subpar bit of writing or awkward rule is another person's favorite bit of the whole thing.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">But Scripts are coming together, which were the real final hurdle to making a playable document. These are the playbooks representing the movies which you play. They're recognizable and consist of several parts:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b>Background and Relationships -</b> This is something which can be </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">completely</i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> done without the aid of charts and such, but I wanted to include some in order to make things flow smoothly in case people were stuck for ideas. The start of a movie feels somewhat tough to me in a vacuum. There's no "what's a typical day for you?" situation as there is in Apocalypse World. While the players will drive all of the intervening points between A and Z, there still has to be an A and a Z.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">So, a bit like Fiasco, you go around the table and establish a relationship with the person to your left. Everyone does it and, yes, in groups of four or more, not everyone will have a relationship with everyone else. This should grant a base on which to build.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b>Script Moves - </b>These are exactly like playbook moves. Each Script has five moves related to the genre of action movie you're playing. Each player picks one and has it for the duration of the film. The only catch is that each move can only be picked by two players; if two people pick the same move, that one's off-limits for everyone else.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Extra-bonus: you can spend XP on making the script moves permanent, carrying them from movie to movie. This is where your cross-genre, potentially goofy mayhem comes in. I fully expect this is going to break the fictional tenets of the game, as Arnold Schwarzenegger does a ninja movie, learns the disappear into thin air trick, makes it permanent, and then uses it in a cyborg warfare movie. I'm completely okay with this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b>Gear - </b>Weapons, gadgets, and such. This is, of course, Script dependent. Everyone picks a gear package and that's what they have for the movie. So with the barbarian flicks, you can be the dude with the sword, the dude with the bow and arrow, the dude with the spear, etc, etc, etc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b>Villains - </b>So, action movies always have a big, bad villain at the end. He or she is motivated by whatever and things revolve around that. This is how to set up Point Z.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">The players will pick who the villain is. Initially, the plan was to have this be a typecast actor. Think the group picking Danny Trejo and dealing with Danny Trejo moves for the duration of the movie.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">The problem is that this did nothing to help gel the fiction. As work has gone on, it's increasingly clear that this game is about (referencing my earlier sentence) what happens between Points A and Z, not what A and Z actually are. Because A is determined on a per-movie basis and Z is always the same (hero kills villain, crowd cheers) in action movies with <i>extremely</i> rare exceptions. Incidentally, that sets up a very interesting, rather unexpected parallel with my playing of Pendragon and my work on Before Iron which I might write about later.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">What will happen now is that each Script will present a list of villains and the players will choose one. This will be sort of like a mini-front. A list of possible motivations and techniques will be listed (I'm trying to thread a needle between too loose and too restrictive), along with a special move which pops up when the villain is active.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">So, for the barbarian movie Script (the one I'm working on now), the villains might be a cult leader, an evil monarch, a ravenous barbarian tribe, and a master assassin. The cult leader might have possible motivations of "to conquer", "to convert", and "to lay waste" or something similar. Then, we'd have a move which might make it tough to directly attack him or her due to powers of persuasion. Those are all just examples off the top of my head (most of this Script is done except the villain specifics) but you get the general idea.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">My hope, with the Scripts, is that a group will get enough starting and end point help that they can worry about the explosions and stunts in between, while simultaneously giving a heaping helping of player choice about how the beginning and ending work. I expect that how I thread this particular needle is going to be one of the things which shifts most in playtesting.</span></span><br />
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<br />Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-66107140355961959442013-01-30T11:15:00.001-08:002013-05-01T15:38:50.704-07:00ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD Design NotesWith <i>Before Iron</i>, I've been left to dole out information on a completed (minus layout/art) project after the fact. It's been difficult to settle on precisely how much information to give out and when, since I've no real idea when it's going to go out. I don't want to say a whole bunch of stuff when release might be another year away, finding that I have nothing to say when I actually need to promote a real, existing, solid book that's in my hands.<br />
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With <i>ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD, </i> I get to do something a little different, which is talk about things I think are worth talking about as they get formed enough to do so. I'm not inclined to design in the open, but I do like to get people excited. Or bummed out! Whichever. I can feed off of that a bit and it can help solidify certain ideas which haven't quite gelled.<br />
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So, notes. Before I get to those, work's been going well. I tend to binge write, leaving things fallow for two or three days before going on a mad, all day spree. This is no different. Since I hit my homework in the same fashion, AMW:FB has meshed pretty well with my current schedule, which is good. I feel good about a preliminary playtest document maybe in March, though I don't want to overpromise. Anyway:<br />
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<h3>
Stats</h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">The stats are set at +Muscles, +Agility, +Drama, +Sexiness, +Swagger. The names are subject to change; they're all nouns but I sort of want them to adjectives. And Drama doesn't quite fit the way I want it to, in that the others are things that a person has, while Drama is read differently.</span></h4>
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I reached these stats by breaking down what action movie stars do in movies. Stunts and violence, yes, but pathos-filled speeches about personal loss, love scenes ranging from touching to down and dirty, and non sequitur wisecracks left hanging for effect. Plus, not all stunts are performed the same way or for the same reasons; a muscley guy holding a portcullis open in a barbarian movie isn't doing the same thing as a person doing a backflip out of a helicopter.</div>
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So Muscles (I'm dropping the plus sign, since it tries to tag people in G+) is for stunts involving strength and close combat. Agility is for stunts involving dexterity and ranged combat. Pretty bog standard stuff but I'm happy with that split.</div>
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The other three tie into the meta aspect of the game a bit more. Even though you're never, ever supposed to directly acknowledge it, the conceit is that we're all in the know that this is just actors doing a movie. So it's not just that the actor seduces that guy, it's that the seduction is, ideally, interesting to this imaginary audience. Again, I don't want this to be directly acknowledged, but it affects the way the fiction works as you roll for your outcomes. A better example may be the wisecracks which come with the territory; they make no sense whatsoever in a "real world" situation, but make perfect sense if you imagine that everything you're doing is a scene on a screen, <i>even if the narrative fluctuates due to your actions.</i></div>
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So, Drama is about how good you are at conveying real emotion and making connections with people which go beyond the deliberately superficial relationships in action movies. Sexiness functions an awful lot like Hot and is probably the closest to the AW stats of the five. Swagger is the unflappable sense of cool and humor which folks like Kurt Russell and Han Solo/Indiana Jones era Harrison Ford have.</div>
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Playbooks</h3>
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Playbooks are mostly designed in a first pass sort of way. The mechanics, I'm certain, will change, but I'm pretty content with the action movie actors being represented.</div>
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Each has a primary stat and five moves. At least one move is always of the active, roll Stat and make choices type. The playbooks are:</div>
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The Musclehead (Muscles): Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno type. Lots of raw power and menace in the moves. Right now bears a (totally accidental) heavy resemblance to the Gunlugger and I'm not entirely happy about that.</div>
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The Yeller (Muscles): Reb Brown. Reb's a little obscure and never actually did any "good" movies, but it's my game and, by damn, he's going in. He substitutes yelling for dramatic chops. Or he's a bard, if you prefer. A bard who yells.</div>
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The Gunfighter (Agility): Chow Yun-Fat. The John Woo, gun-fu type. I've had to expand the moves to include all ranged weapons, simply because it would be really lame to play a gun wizard in a barbarian movie. Moves center on making ranged combat look completely badass and creating dramatic scenes which revolve around the Gunfighter's weapons.</div>
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The Pugilist (Agility): JCVD, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Cynthia Rothrock. This is the actor who got a start in martial arts or boxing and parlayed it into a career. Moves center on hand to hand combat, with one training montage move. Because of course there has to be a training montage.</div>
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The Thespian (Drama): Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone. It's really easy to forget just how good the first Rocky movie is. Sly showed some real acting chops, even if his range isn't stellar. This Playbook is that sort of action movie star, one who can drop real moments of drama in things. This may end up being my favorite because, in the course of doing the actual design, I found that I was making Drama for the Thespian function as a real narrative changer. Picture the guy in the movie (any movie) giving a soliloquy about what's going on in the plot or the conflicts driving things. Now, let's pretend that it's a chicken and egg argument, that it's insight of what's already happening but that the observations <i>actually make things happen. </i>A kind of reality bending through dramatic training. That's what the Thespian can bring to the table.</div>
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The Wiseass (Swagger): Kurt Russell. This one and the Operator (I need to change that name, since there's an Operator in AW) are my current work and, frankly, the toughest of the seven to get where I want. Unlike the others, the niche is mostly "stuff other playbooks do but BETTER", which is a tougher thing to make interesting than "stuff nobody else does".</div>
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The Operator (Sexiness): Sean Connery, Daniel Craig. The sexy Bond type. I feel better about this one than the Wiseass. I settled on some moves to grant some narrative control through romantic interests and making things "sexy".</div>
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The Other Stuff</h3>
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I'll leave things like basic moves, the Camaraderie stat, and Scripts (movie playbooks) for another time. Short version: basic moves are good, though with a surprising amount of overlap with AW's and I'm not happy about that, Camaraderie is sketched out as a communally used stat which goes up and down through group action, and Scripts haven't been cracked yet (plus will probably be the most labor intensive part of the game).</div>
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Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-49430175942015342992013-01-18T13:23:00.002-08:002013-05-01T15:38:50.702-07:00ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">(and yes, it is always, always in caps)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Work is rolling on what I hope ends up being a commercial AW hack. I'm ready to crack the door open a little bit more on it, since it's progressing more quickly than I expected.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Yes, it's about action movies of the 80s/90s variety. I'm aiming to deconstruct the common threads connecting American action movies of the era before building them back up in game form. <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/110363041874696671681" target="_blank">+Bret Gillan</a> has been of great help in shoring up some ideas. It was kind of limbo for a few months after we initially dove in, but once I sat down a few days ago and actually wrote at length, it really began to gel.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Now, I know there are plenty of AW hacks out there. I hope some of the ideas pique the interest of people who might be inclined to wander away from "another AW hack". In somewhat brief form, some highlights of what AMW:FB is going to do:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">-One of the big things is that there's a bit of a "meta" aspect to AMW:FB. Drawing a bit of inspiration from <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/113171717066139475855" target="_blank">+Nathan Paoletta</a>'s currently in beta pro wrestling AW hack, the action is both real and not real, scripted and unscripted. Players of AMW:FB will be playing in the sort of unscripted fashion you would expect: outcomes are decided at the table, people die, people fall in love, etc. This is just as you would play any other AW engine game; no railroading allowed and player control is front and center. But it's also not real and is scripted, if only in retrospect: the action happens on an imaginary screen in a theater somewhere. Your <i>character </i>might die but your <i>actor</i> won't. It's going to require a dual-track in your head and I need to firm up the language, but that's why it's rough draft.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">-Playbooks are going to represent actors in this very meta sense. This is to represent Arnold being Arnold in all of his movies. So if you pick The Musclehead, you are, in a very real sense, picking a brand. The Arnold Brand. Or, if you pick The Pugilist, you're picking the JCVD Brand (before it became passe, of course). That's what you will be throughout your movies. Typecasting is the goal.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">This bit is also "genreless". The idea is that there's this larger, super-genre called "action movies" which is an umbrella for the individual types of action movie people know and enjoy. Actor Playbook moves are designed to be plugged into any of those individual genres, rather than tied to assumptions about what type of movie your group is playing.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">-What are movies? In addition to the Actor Playbooks, the game will have Movie Playbooks. These contain your setting assumptions. It's expected that the group will play a Movie for four or so sessions before wrapping up and choosing another one. A Movie Playbook (and I may call them Scripts) will have your gear options, charts to help organize a loose plot for the movie, some Fiasco style relationship building help, and special moves. This is where the character/actor distinction really shows up. You can be Barnold Dortsenegger the Musclehead playing Tronan the Beerbarian for the length of the movie. All played by Joe, the real person.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">The movie moves. This deserves a bit more explication. Each Movie Playbook will have four or so moves which are tightly tied to the movie genre being played. Each player will pick one. For the duration of that particular movie, he'll get that move, with an option to make it permanent through experience spending later (which leads to some wacky crossgenre potential with enough spending). </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">So, going back to The Musclehead, he comes in with two Musclehead moves (we'll say +1 to Muscles and a move which helps him with stunts based on that stat). Everyone decides to pick a Ninja Movie Playbook. Not what big meatheads are known for, but fine. Looking at the list, he decides he really wants a move which lets him disappear in a puff of smoke. For the duration of the ninja movie, he has that move and can use it normally. He can make it permanent at the end, if he wants, and it becomes a sort of calling card, integral to his brand.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">The combination of Actor Playbook and Movie Playbook should offer a wide variety of styles of play while both staying under the action movie umbrella and providing a sly wink that it's just a movie.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">-Other things will be done to model some of the conventions. Incentives to allow your PC to die horribly (we need high body counts), a rotating lead role capacity which allows a certain level of immunity to death, tying certain GM moves to a player picked lead bad guy role (again, based on actor... pick Danny Trejo OR Tex Cobb analogues), and a stat based on friendship which allows powerful moves on the part of the group. These are more mechanically shored up than I'm communicating here because I've already gone on quite a bit.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Anyway, it's in very obviously rough draft status, but work is going quickly, as I said. I'm glossing over a lot of details above; it's not prototype status but it's not quite ready for public consumption, either. I may be looking for playtesters in a month. Maybe a little less. When the time comes I'll be posting on G+ and maybe here. My hope is that it ends up being something cool that people want to play.</span></span><br />
Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-26918075050518681902013-01-02T13:24:00.000-08:002013-01-02T13:30:08.247-08:00Things To ComeA new year means that I should update this fallow blog.<br />
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Why is it fallow? Because I don't have much to report! Still, if you come here at all and are interested in my perpetually in development projects, an update is likely welcome. So how do things look for 2013? Let's go project by project:<br />
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<i>Before Iron - </i>This, of course, is the big one. I've written at length about it and have more to write, but I have to time infodumps with the development status. The final final draft was sent off to Greg prior to the holidays... timed just right so as to coincide with his work on <i>Book of the Estate.</i><br />
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What does that mean? A little longer. I've seen a partially laid out version of an older draft. I'm hoping this drops in 2013. It's done. I feel good about this last draft. There's just a lot of busy stuff on the part of all sides: I have school and a three year old, <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/108304876550958396292" target="_blank">+Peter Williams</a> has his career and <a href="http://www.flatlandgames.com/" target="_blank">Flatland Games</a>, and Greg is perpetually busy with <i>Pendragon, </i>continuing Glorantha writings, and generally being a busy, cool guy.<br />
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So, <i>Before Iron</i> is done but not done. I'm confident that 2013 will see it hit the market.<br />
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<i>Gonzo - </i><a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/110363041874696671681" target="_blank">+Bret Gillan</a> and I have gone back to the drawing room on this, at least as far as the system goes. <i>InSpectres</i>, while a great game, just wasn't a great fit when we looked at the finished project. And it was, more or less, finished, which stings greatly. We had art and were weeks away from a Kickstarter campaign when we (with some of Jared Sorensten's input) decided to go in a different direction.<br />
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The good news: we both feel better about what's to come. While it's on the back burner at the moment, the rework will fit the source material better. A significant portion of the non-system specific material is perfectly portable over to the new book (I posted a chunk <a href="http://igwilliams.blogspot.com/2012/11/gonzo-journalism-and-exploitation-cinema.html" target="_blank">here</a> in fact), so the work should go fast, once things line up. I'm <i>not </i>confident of a 2013 release, but I do feel good about the project in a holistic sense.<br />
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<i>Amaranthology - </i>This isn't my project, but my first short story should be published "soon" in a game fiction anthology for Machine Age's fine RPG, <i>Amaranthine. </i>I haven't flogged it publicly too much, simply because it's going to be out when it's out, but I'm immensely excited and honored to be associated with names like <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/113439620543055736400" target="_blank">+Filamena Young</a> and <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/102598717561259337811" target="_blank">+Chuck Wendig</a> for my very first foray into short story writing. I'll post something once it's released, of course.<br />
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<i>Unnamed Project Which May Not End Up Existing </i>- Bret and I have a thing. A proto-project. It's potentially very, very awesome, using an open source game system which we all know and love (well not ALL of us; it's <i>not</i> an OSR). One or both of us will spill the beans on this more when it's out of the planning stages, but there's potential for coolness if we can get over a few creative humps regarding the marriage of rules to game world. Which, of course, may never happen; games sometimes just disappear, and that's a good thing, not a bad one. It won't be 2013, certainly, but I do hope it gels the way I think it's going to.<br />
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So, that's it. It's a bit of a lull, at least with game/writing related stuff, but I'm busy otherwise and planning on a good year. As always, you can find me on G+ or here and updates of any appreciable importance will be posted both places. A happy new year to all of you!<br />
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Oh! As a late Christmas gift, here's a link to some late draft character sheets for <i>Before Iron.</i> Hopefully this whets the appetite for later.<br />
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<a href="https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0BxzKPjPAQ2CYYU8xd09tMWdnbW8/edit" target="_blank">Before Iron Sheets</a>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-64560024173172391902012-11-29T08:18:00.000-08:002012-11-29T08:25:33.667-08:00Gonzo Journalism and Exploitation Cinema<br />
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We're drastically reworking Gonzo in the coming months. I'm actually pretty excited about the system changes we're going to be going with, though it's going to end up putting the whole endeavor on the back burner for a few reasons I won't go into (nothing bad; just coordination and other projects and such).</div>
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As it is, there's an awful lot of Gonzo already written. One of the bits is a long essay that I penned on Gonzo journalism, exploitation cinema, the history of both, and why they fit together. Bret helped out with some of the genre write ups in the movie discussion.</div>
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This may never make it to the final Gonzo cut. I think it's good, but there's also something self-indulgent about it. You probably don't need ANY of this to play what will be a rules-lite game. But I wrote it, all 10k words of it (minus quotes), and it kind of kills me to think that 10k words could just disappear into the ether. So, here... maybe it'll be a good read, get you stoked about the eventual Gonzo release, or otherwise prove interesting.</div>
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Gonzo journalism arose as an offshoot of New Journalism, a term which didn't come into being until 1973 but which referred to interpretive and literary, rather than traditionally dispassionate, reporting. The idea behind New Journalism, as typified by people like Tom Wolfe, was to create a novel out of facts, blurring the stylistic line between fiction and nonfiction. The end result was ideally a nonfiction book which read like a novel.</div>
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Where gonzo differed from Wolfe's New Journalism was primarily in scale. Gonzo journalists ventured into caricature, a way of setting themselves apart from the status quo in the most obvious ways which they could: drinking heavily, using hard drugs, swearing like sailors. Sex, drugs, and rock n roll. This seems, on its surface, rather passe to 21st century eyes. Drugs? Drink? Sex? All in a normal college weekend. But this was a different time. Smoking marijuana, softest of the illegal drugs, in the middle decades of the 20th century was a political statement on the part of a generation, a blanket fuck you to their parents, with their 50s morals, segregation, and Vietnam.</div>
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It was edgy and intense. Yes, it could be (and usually was!) wacky, but the modern usage (particularly used by gamers) of gonzo as over the top, cartoon action and zany situations isn't what is meant in this case. Gonzo journalism was, underneath the drugs and outlandish humor, deathly serious. It was political. It was a way of examining very real things in very real ways, satirical or roundabout though they might be.</div>
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Hunter S. Thompson</h3>
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Hunter S. Thompson, the creator of gonzo journalism and one of the giants of 20th century American writing, took this to an extreme level. The idea was to insert yourself into the story, becoming both character and narrator, and to drop all pretense of objectivity. To paraphrase Thompson, sometimes you have to stop being objective in order to figure out what the truth is. This "reporter as actor" motif was taken further by Thompson's massive drug use. By using drugs so openly and often, the line between truth and fiction which New Journalism exploited was further smudged. The reader was left to figure out whether a given stunt or situation was real, a soberly concocted lie, or a drug-induced hallucination neither true or false.</div>
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Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs was Thompson's first foray into what he would eventually call gonzo. Thompson was approached by The Nation to write about the archetypal motorcycle gang. There was increasing overlap between the gangs and the nascent hippie culture; the public was paying attention and wanted to know what to make of biker culture. Thompson inserted himself into the Hell's Angels, befriending several members, including the gang's notorious founder, Sonny Barger, in the course of his writing. While veering closer to traditional (though not remotely objective) journalism, the book's warm critical reception bought Thompson just enough cache to veer into truly uncharted territory. He would do this with an article about the Kentucy Derby for Scanlon's Monthly, a short-lived magazine based in San Francisco.</div>
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In The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved, Thompson and his good friend (the two didn't know each other before the Derby article), artist Ralph Steadman, did a report on the Kentucky Derby as spectacle, concentrating on the people in the stands rather than the race. He wrote it drunk and exhausted, ripping the pages from his notebook and mailing them off as he finished. What emerged was a bizarre, taut examination of American class politics, with upper-class hedonism ruling in the stands. The piece was packed with subjectivity and outright falsehoods about the crowd's behavior, both of which aimed to offer up symbolic truth over objective reality; this theme comes up again and again with Thompson, specifically, and gonzo journalism, generally.</div>
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Armed with good reviews, Thompson jumped to what are inarguably his two finest works: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. The former would become widely regarded as one of the best novels of the second half of the 20th century; the latter one of the most important pieces of political literature.</div>
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was Thompson at the height of his literary genius. Ostensibly a loosely organized work about two buddies doing drugs on the way to cover a law enforcement convention, the narrative served as a means for Thompson to grapple with the slow demise of the counter-culture. You can see a profound disappointment with how things turned out; while it's never quite stated openly, there's a constant wondering if the only thing that people took away from the 60s was a love of drugs. You can also see the disdain for the culture of his parents' generation, expressed (paradoxically) in the wanton drug use of his alter ego, Raoul Duke. It was an in your face way of showing disregard for prevailing cultural norms, which then looped right back into the wondering about the role drugs played in the fall of the counter-culture. The city of Las Vegas became a grotesque stand-in for America as a whole, with Duke and his companion wandering it in a haze, strangers in a strange land, outsiders to what everyone else considered good and worthwhile.</div>
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By the time of Las Vegas' publication in 1971, that counter-culture, so near and dear to Thompson's heart, was in full retreat. The "real" hippies of San Francisco had fled to the counties, leaving a mess of drug addicts wandering Haight Street. Nixon had won and looked poised to win again. Vietnam still dragged on but the fury against it was largely spent. For the most part, even the most ardent had exhausted themselves into near surrender. For Thompson, there was a terrible wistfulness for his generation's glory days, only recently in the past. The most famous passage from Las Vegas illustrates this. Referred to as the wave speech, it captures all of Thompson's sad nostalgia for the recent past:</div>
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"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.…<br />
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.<br />
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)… but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that…<br />
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.…<br />
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…<br />
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."</blockquote>
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Hot on the heels of Las Vegas came Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, a campaign journal done for Rolling Stone. It was, for the time, a remarkably hi-tech venture; Rolling Stone gave Thompson access to a new-fangled device called a fax machine, which he lugged around with him in order to just barely meet his deadlines for each dispatch.</div>
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Since Nixon was obviously going to win the Republican nomination, Thompson followed around the Democratic contenders almost exclusively. No event was too small, no nuance too subtle for Thompson to skip over. He revealed himself as a remarkably astute observer of the political process in '72, realizing that George McGovern (a dark horse candidate and eventual Democratic nominee) was likely to win well before anyone else did.</div>
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'72 has Thompson savaging the traditional Democratic establishment as personified by Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey, the two men most likely to be nominated when the campaign kicked off. He reserved special ire for Muskie, famously accusing him of doing hallucinogenic drugs before his speeches in order to counteract his soporific manner of engaging the crowds. Humphrey, who, it should be noted, was the man who eloquently demanded a civil rights plank in the party platform in 1948, is portrayed as indistinguishable from Nixon. In 1972, Vietnam still trumped everything for the New Left and Humphrey was still too hawkish compared to McGovern.</div>
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The book is, like most of Thompson's works, at least as much about the author as it is the subject. Here we can watch Thompson start out skeptical of the whole sordid process, only to see him become enthused by McGovern (they became lifelong friends) almost despite himself, before ending with the despair at McGovern's landslide defeat, leaving him exhausted and demoralized. Thompson serves as a familiar figure on the American left: the man who is almost pathologically disappointed in both the process and his fellow citizens but keeps tilting at windmills to offer something, whether policy or political awakening, which might change what he feels is the country's disastrous course. He never does, the despair is compounded, and yet he keeps going, alternately cynical and hopeful.</div>
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McGovern's defeat was a terrible blow to what remained of Thompson's optimism. The disappointment in his generation and refusal to accept the world of the squares on display in Las Vegas gives way, after '72, to bitterness. He also simply aged. Drugs and drinking take a toll and it gets worse as you age. He was accused of not evolving, of descending into self-parody, of playing the role of media gadfly instead of driving things forward.</div>
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Thompson almost never calls out his generational fellows out directly. There's always a Nixon or a Reagan or a Bush to deflect the blame, to keep him from truly giving up hope. Instead, what you see is a hardened cynicism and constant reminders that how things ended up weren't set in stone. That paradox, the man who fights and the man who wants to sit back and laugh at all the jerks out there, remains unresolved throughout his career, driving his later writing. There were flashes of brilliance, to be sure, and he was always prolific enough that the dedicated Thompson fan could find plenty to be happy with. But there was never the killer book, never another Las Vegas or '72. There's a grand irony that Thompson arguably peaked and declined in precisely the same fashion that his generation did.</div>
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Gonzo and Deeper Meaning</h3>
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One of the things gonzo journalism does is play with the nature of reality. Through hyperbole or outright lying about events, the best gonzo journalists show truth by getting beneath the veneer of square society erected to cover the truth up. It comes up again and again, sometimes very subtly.</div>
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Thompson was a master of this, largely owing to his superior writing skills. The entire Kentucky Derby article, through his use of hyperbole and outright falsehood, served as an examination of the behavior and motivations of the largely upper middle class crowd. They were revealed as drunks, perverts, and brawlers, as at the mercy of their base natures as any poor prole on the outside, if not more. The absurdity of covering the Derby while the newspaper headlines screamed about Vietnam escalation and dead soldiers was also a feature. By the end, Thompson and Steadman realize that they, in their drunken rampage through their hotel and in the stands, were every bit as bad as their subjects. There was truth there in some of the personal events, but Thompson mangled and twisted them in order to tell a tale of human nature and what's truly important.</div>
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The most infamous example of Thompson's toying with the distinction between reality and truth was in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Thompson hated Edmund Muskie, Senator from Maine and early frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, finding him everything wrong with the New Deal Democrats. He was stuffy, awkward, painfully square, a war hawk, and weirdly uncomfortable around minorities. He was, after Nixon, the ultimate Dad candidate, the worst blandness of the War Generation rolled up in a neatly wrapped package. Indeed, for the remaining true believers of the New Left, the differences between Muskie and Nixon (and Humphrey, for that matter) were completely negligible.</div>
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Thompson mentioned in one of the dispatches that Muskie was addicted to ibogaine, an obscure hallucinogen from West Africa. In the article, he writes:</div>
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"I immediately recognized The Ibogaine Effect — from Muskie's tearful breakdown on the flatbed truck in New Hampshire, the delusions and altered thinking that characterized his campaign in Florida, and finally the condition of "total rage" that gripped him in Wisconsin.<br />
There was no doubt about it: The Man from Maine had turned to massive doses of Ibogaine as a last resort. The only remaining question was "when did he start?" But nobody could answer this one, and I was not able to press the candidate himself for an answer because I was permanently barred from the Muskie campaign after that incident on the "Sunshine Special" in Florida … and that scene makes far more sense now than it did at the time. Muskie has always taken pride in his ability to deal with hecklers; he has frequently challenged them, calling them up to the stage in front of big crowds and then forcing the poor bastards to debate with him in a blaze of TV lights.<br />
But there was none of that in Florida. When the Boohoo began grabbing at his legs and screaming for more gin, Big Ed went all to pieces … which gave rise to speculation. among reporters familiar with his campaign style in '68 and '70, that Muskie was not himself. It was noted, among other things, that he had developed a tendency to roll his eyes wildly during TV interviews, that his thought patterns had become strangely fragmented, and that not even his closest advisors could predict when he might suddenly spiral off into babbling rages, or neocomatose funks.<br />
In restrospect, however, it is easy to see why Muskie fell apart on that caboose platform in the Miami train station. There he was — far gone in a bad Ibogaine frenzy — suddenly shoved out in a rainstorm to face a sullen crowd and some kind of snarling lunatic going for his legs while he tried to explain why he was "the only Democrat who can beat Nixon."<br />
It is entirely conceivable — given the known effects of Ibogaine — that Muskie's brain was almost paralyzed by hallucinations at the time; that he looked out at that crowd and saw gila monsters instead of people, and that his mind snapped completely when he felt something large and apparently vicious clawing at his legs. We can only speculate on this, because those in a position to know have flatly refused to comment on rumors concerning the Senator's disastrous experiments with Ibogaine. I tried to find the Brazilian doctor on election Bight in Milwaukee, but by the time the polls closed he was long gone. One of the hired bimbos in Milwaukee's Holiday Inn headquarters said a man with fresh welts on his head had been dragged out the side door and put on a bus to Chicago, but we were never able to confirm this… .<br />
This was patently absurd. Muskie had probably never sniffed a joint, much less pounded psychotropic drugs. The media missed the absurdity, with some outlets picking it up and running with it. Muskie was enraged, complaining to the mainstream press. The senator was revealed as peevish and overly sensitive; the media as obsessed with a scoop and unable to discern fiction from non-fiction. The notorious ibogaine story wasn't real; what it revealed about the press and, especially, Muskie was true. To prove the truth, Muskie would withdraw after (probably) crying on television about a Nixon planted story that he had referred to French-Canadians as Canucks, an admittedly dirty trick but certainly small potatoes for a man who aimed to have control of the Button."</blockquote>
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Thompson's reply, made years later? "I never said he was (taking ibogaine), I said there was a rumor in Milwaukeee that he was. Which was true, and I started the rumor in Milwaukee. If you read that carefully, I’m a very accurate journalist."</div>
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This reality versus truth motif should ideally play a significant role in a game of Gonzo. Between the drug usage by the characters inherent in the setting and the bad movie villains, there's ample space to distort reality in order to reveal a Thompson style truth. Keep it subtle; the game shouldn't be a political polemic, by any means, but toy with what's real and what's not in order to let the cynicism and the political views of the time seep through.</div>
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A good example is our playtest scenario, in which the characters are tasked with following the local mayor to a national mayor's convention. If the mayor has an image of a squeaky clean family man when he leaves and the game ends up showing that he's a coke fiend in league with virgin sacrificing cultists, then all the right buttons have been hit. The real (nice guy mayor) versus the true (drug-addicted politician murderer) has been set out in the game and it's all weird enough that, were it published in Rolling Stone, a reader would end up scratching his head.</div>
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Gonzo's Evolution</h3>
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While nobody did it like Thompson, gonzo journalism didn't stop with him. The self-insertion of author into story waned, as did the worst drug use, but the use of language, hyperbole, and style came to permeate independent journalism. This accelerated with the advent of the internet, as bloggers and citizen journalists struck out on their own without corporate restrictions and a copy editor lurking with every submitted story. Gonzo journalism, as imagined in the early 70s, morphed into a general style guide: swearing, cynicism, muckracking, drug references, sex. If the initial approach, as pioneered by Thompson, has all but disappeared in the 21st century as corporate media has closed off most avenues to political access, it's become so pervasive in the general tone of independent journalism that it can't be considered anything but a massive victory for Thompson and his lesser co-stars. Even the squares are swearing lividly at their representatives on Facebook these days.</div>
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The new style arguably reached its apex with The Exile (subsequently The Exiled, once Vladimir Putin booted them out of the country), an online magazine formed by a group of ex-pat gonzo journalists for the primary purpose of examining Boris Yeltsin's decadent, crazy, after the fall Russia. Led by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi, they did as many drugs and hit as many whorehouses as they possibly could. Not everything was a hit (particularly, they flirted with borderline grotesque levels of misogyny on occasion) but, at their best, they rivaled Thompson's palpable contempt for those in power. They went on for years until they finally began to burn out; Ames still plugs along at The Exiled, with several other modern gonzo luminaries like Yasha Levine, while Matt Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone and has become downright respectable. These guys all do more straight muckracking journalism with a heavy dose of the transgressive, rather than Thompson's more literary style, but they're direct descendants of the master of the form.</div>
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Even the author as character still crops up every now and again. In 2011, Ian Murphy of The Buffalo Beast infamously posed as billionaire David Koch in a call to Scott Walker, the union busting governor of Wisconsin. Hilariously, Walker couldn't tell it wasn't the real David Koch, despite Murphy dropping any number of clues. The reality? David Koch wasn't really calling. The truth? Walker was revealed as a groveling, none too bright worshiper of the sort of money and power Koch could supply. Of all the gonzo journalism practiced from the Reagan administration on, including that of Thompson, nothing else has come as close to matching the brilliance of the Fear and Loathing era master as this one stunt did.</div>
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Late night television, networks like Comedy Central, blogs, news story comments… gonzo style is everywhere. More than being ubiquitous, it's practically become the default style of expressive writing for going on two generations of Americans. In that sense, Thompson is the most influential American writer in a century, with gonzo journalism the most influential genre. The genie, made of raw cynicism and impolitic language, can never be put back in the bottle.</div>
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Grindhouse Cinema</h3>
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Ask most anyone and the 1970s will be pointed to as one of the best decades, if not the best, for quality film making in history. The Godfather and The Godfather II, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The French Connection, Patton, Chinatown, Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, Jaws… Scorsese, Coppola, Allen, Forman, Kubrick, Fellini… it would take up an entire book of its own to list the legendary actors who either got their starts or hit their peaks in this decade.</div>
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But there was another genre of filmmaking which was in the shadows of this fertile period of global filmmaking, particularly in America. This was called grindhouse cinema, after the seedy, low rent cinemas which played host to the style. While not strictly the same thing as exploitation cinema, the two became mostly synonymous; Gonzo uses the two terms interchangeably.</div>
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Grindhouse was a sort of carnival barker style of filmmaking, with directors and screenwriters playing up lurid sex and graphic violence to sell tickets to a curious public. It was the spirit of the freak show which animated the small studios churning out grindhouse films and the men hawking tickets outside the dingy theaters on 42nd Street. Whatever the outer limit of what could be shown in a licensed theater, grindhouse theater was there. The films weren't always devoid of artistic merit, just most of the time.</div>
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More interesting than whether a given film was worthwhile or not (and there actually were worthwhile films) was what these movies said about the culture around them. Paraphrasing John Landis in the great documentary, American Grindhouse, movies are always reactionary, reflective of what's going on in the wider culture, and never a catalyst for change on their own. With grindhouse by definition being shocking or prurient, an observer can trace the specific fixations and anxieties going on in a culture by examining the subject matter and techniques of the films.</div>
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While drawing spiritually from the long legacy of the American carnival, the direct forerunner of exploitation cinema was mainstream Hollywood of the late 1920s to mid 1930s. These years fall between the invention of the talky and the imposition of the Motion Picture Production Code, or Hays Code. The Code was a long list of guidelines regarding sex, violence, swearing, and religion which was aimed at quashing Hollywood's reputation as a lawless den of vice.</div>
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Known as Pre-Code Hollywood, those years between 1928 and 1934 were anything goes when it came to making movies. The calculus was simple: sex and violence sold tickets, sold tickets meant more money, so movies had sex and violence. Outright pornography was still taboo, and prevailing social norms were still staid enough to prevent too much gore, but the movies of the Pre-Code era were rife with innuendo and edgy situations. Once those situations began to spill into real life, with a rash of early deaths and scandals, the big studios decided to impose their own guidelines on what could be portrayed in their product.</div>
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Once the Code was implemented, high profile movies became squeaky clean and safe. The desire to see things you weren't supposed to on the big screen didn't go anywhere, however. It migrated to the grindhouse. To get around the regulations, grindhouse theaters began to show movies which were marketed as educational. Films about sex education and live birth became popular, with the film roll outs become events in their own right, featuring live speakers before the films.</div>
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The Code was loosened considerably in the mid-50s and big budget movies started dealing with previously taboo subjects. Grindhouse theaters increasingly began to rely on burlesque shows to make ends meet and, in the late 1950s, a huge boom in nudist movies after non-sexual nudity was ruled by the courts to be legally depictable. The nudist movies were all very mundane and boring, showing naked people hanging out at camps or playing sports, but they brought paying customers in to see the bare flesh on display.</div>
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The 1950s also saw low budget exploitation flicks go mainstream. Monster movies became huge business, with aliens and giant animals stomping across the screen. Movies centering on teenagers, newly affluent and self-possessing, became even more popular than monster movies. The teenager movies revolved around things like cars, local gangs, conflict with the older generation, dating… when the two genres were combined, studios like American International Pictures (giants of the B-movie and exploitation sets) made good, fast money. Drive-in theaters catered to the young crowd and the seedy grindhouse theaters took another big hit.</div>
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Things reached an equilibrium, with the low-budget fare devoured by teenagers crowding out earlier, more adult exploitation cinema, until the mid-1960s. The theater owners dealing in verboten topics were left floundering after the advent of drive-ins and the mainstreaming of exploitation cinema. They catered to ever smaller crowds and an increasingly narrow range of topics, the two problems feeding on and exacerbating the other. Two things would happen in rapid succession which would drastically change the fortunes of grindhouse cinema.</div>
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The first was the ending of the Motion Picture Production Code. By the late 50s, very well-regarded directors like Otto Preminger were openly flaunting it. It had become increasingly difficult to enforce and the morals of mainstream moviegoers had relaxed just enough that a bare breast or the sight of Frank Sinatra shooting heroin wasn't going to cause fainting spells. It was officially ended in 1966 but had ceased being relevant several years prior.</div>
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The second was the popularization of gore films. Gore films went well over the top in their depiction of violence, concentrating on showing the grotesque aftereffects of violence. Combined with outright torture or sex, the gore genre was too much for the drive-ins or the tastes of decent people; the grindhouses had their big draw once again. Led by a young director named Herschell Gordon Lewis, films such as Blood Feast and The Wizard of Gore went all in on spectacle, bringing back the carny days of shock and titillation for those brave enough to go to the bad part of town in order to see them. Lewis also pioneered the shock trailer, showing just enough of the gore to entice you to come in while an announcer gravely intoned how terribly shocking it was in the actual theater. The trailer for Blood Feast was the first to repeat the chanted voiceover, "It's only a film… it's only a film…" That chant would become a staple of grindhouse films from then on.</div>
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Teenager movies would also morph into something far edgier and even sinister. Once hippies and bikers were on the scene, the old teenager flicks, terribly hokey in retrospect, became about overt rebellion against society's elders and drug use. It was a new breed of film, a rebellion against Vietnam and the New Deal, a libertarian ethos made manifest by people who just wanted to get high, get laid, and be left alone. Actors like Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, and Dennis Hopper got their starts in this genre, even crossing over with a mainstream (and legendary) version of the hippie/biker movie, Easy Rider.</div>
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The hippie and biker films overlapped a lot with drug movies, both those which cautioned against drugs and those which slyly advocated for their use. Eventually, the three genres became practically indistinguishable. As Vietnam wore on and the 60s gave way to the 70s, these movies began to take on a sinister tone, most clearly seen in the much more mainstream Easy Rider. If the government could kill you in a war, if people could shoot two Kennedys and a King, then humans were the enemy. The monsters of the 50s and early 60s in the movies gave way to humanity as the antagonist. It was a startling loss of innocence in a short amount of time.</div>
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A golden age of exploitation cinema dawned with the 1970s. The Code had fully fallen away, replaced with a close approximation of today's movie ratings. This opened the flood gates to any topic imaginable. America was going through an extended nervous breakdown after the turmoil of the 60s and the interminable war in Vietnam. People wanted cheap entertainment, they didn't want restrictions on what they could see, and they wanted it now. The country was changing, drastically and quickly, and the exploitation films of the era give insight into what the moviegoing public thought of those changes. As the famed film theorist, Siegfried Kracauer, said, "The films of a nation reflect its mentality in a more direct way than other artistic media." The neuroses of the nation were on full display in the 1970s grindhouse.</div>
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<h4>
Anti-Government</h4>
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This isn't properly a genre of film at all. Rather, it's a motif which links a lot of the 1970s films Gonzo incorporates.</div>
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By the dawn of the 70s, the unease over the government was well on the rise. As government began to take a more proactive role in things such as civil rights and women's rights, while simultaneously refusing to budge on Vietnam and flirting with losing control of the economy at any moment, the portrayal of government and government officials began to change drastically from the generally positive portrayal which had dominated previous decades.</div>
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Never was the government good at its job, only meddlesome. Time after time, the government would arrive to fight the monster, to rescue the lost hikers, to quarantine the city, only to have it bungled by vast bureaucracy and base incompetence. This extended even to the way the armed forces were depicted; it's a shocking 180 from the modern American veneration of the troops to see solders regularly shown to be greedy, stupid, or hyperviolent. The message was simply that government was not going to help you, only make things worse.</div>
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The Crazies was the apex of this portrayal. Ostensibly a zombie movie (by George Romero, no less), it's a plodding, really quite bad movie. As it turns out, though, the "zombies" aren't the important part; the way the government behaves is. The army comes in, quarantines the city (badly), rushes around taking over houses and squatting when the quarantine goes wrong, kills innocents, and can't even keep the lead scientist working on a cure from being thrown into a room full of the zombies in their own headquarters.</div>
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This is a big theme to work into Gonzo, one which overlaps perfectly with the stuff gonzo journalists deal in.</div>
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<h4>
Bikers</h4>
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The biker film got off to a roaring start with Marlon Brando and 1953's The Wild One. The film ensconced the outlaw biker as an early hero of the counter-culture. With cowboys looked at as hokey heroes to the masses, the biker represented an alternative, free of square mainstream morals, with the open road as the only thing he followed.</div>
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Unsurprisingly, the hippie movement latched onto the biker flick and its largely anarchist or libertarian messaging. The two began to merge by the late 60s, with movies like The Hellcats and The Wild Angels providing overt links between hippies and bikers with their shared love of free love, easy drugs, and flaunting social norms. The latter film, in particular, shares a direct link with the mainstream biker epic, Easy Rider, with Peter Fonda the star of both films.</div>
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By the beginning of the 70s, that inextricable linking of the two movements caused the biker film to begin to fade from prominence. The hippies were a spent force, increasingly objects of ridicule, and bikers simply weren't cool anti-heroes anymore after the murder at Altamont. Grindhouse directors, always ones to wring every last penny from a genre, went more and more over the top, adding horror elements, more nudity, and wanton violence before the genre well and truly petered out at the end of the decade.</div>
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Examples: Hell's Belles, The Hard Ride, Werewolves On Wheels</div>
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Themes: Freedom, Freaking the Norms, On the Run</div>
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<h4>
Blaxploitation</h4>
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With the civil rights movement simultaneously successful and with a long ways to go, African-Americans began to assert their creative rights as actors, filmmakers, theater owners, and moviegoers. What emerged was Blaxploitation, a term referring to the particular strain of low budget film which reflected black heroes fighting against oppressive mainstream society. Sometimes the fight was figurative, with the heroes being anti-social types like pimps or portraying a black power ethos in stark contrast to mainstream society. Often, it was literal, a raging gun battle between the black protagonists and the scourges of the black community: drug dealers, racists, politicians, crooked preachers… The Man.</div>
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Unlike most of the exploitation subgenres which were made for primarily white audiences, Blaxploitation flicks were aspirational in nature. Most exploitation cinema was there for quick shock value more than anything else; any artistic merit or meaning was only realized by accident. Blaxploitation was different; the endings were usually upbeat and the entire enterprise was about making movies by the black community, for the black community. While the producers were often still white, the partnerships were more even in nature, and there was no shortage of African-American actors and directors who made their names in the 70s Blaxploitation scene.</div>
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The genre found its beginnings with the 1971 releases of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Shaft, both claiming the mantle of first real Blaxploitation film. The subgenre continued drawing right up until the end of the decade (a pattern which will be repeated; the 80s and Reagan's election brought a bizarrely abrupt end to most of the popular subgenres of grindhouse). Periodic homages are produced once every few years, but they're played almost exclusively for laughs, the butterfly collars and pimp shoes stealing the shoe from what was, 40 years ago, immensely edgy social commentary.</div>
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Examples: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Shaft, Foxy Brown</div>
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Themes: Violence, Freedom, Fighting Oppression</div>
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<h4>
Cannibals</h4>
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With the word cannibal in the title, audience members knew what they were coming to the theater to see and the directors knew exactly what they had to do to deliver on that promise. Cannibal films revolved around white, Western adventurers journeying into the jungles of the world and encountering pre-industrial tribes with customs shocking to the audience's sensibilities. Graphic dismemberment, orgies, drug use, and any other thing that could conceivably make the audience gasp would get crammed in. The primitive tribes would be depicted as completely lacking in the shared morals of the West, little more than animals in loin cloths. The racism and cultural superiority running through all the films is impossible not to comment on, but is a central theme of the films. The deeper you get into the wilderness, the more savage, amoral, or feral the humans you will find there are - reflection of the dangers of the wilderness and the degeneration of man absent law and (Christian) religion.</div>
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In addition to the encounters with the cannibals themselves, the adventurers would also run into other perils on their way through the jungle, though fatalities would often be absorbed first by their dusky native guides. Booby traps, poisonous or man eating animals, and falls from great heights would whittle down the cast. As time went on, each new cannibal movie would try to outdo its predecessors with deaths that were gorier, more graphic, and more torturous, though there was always a subtext that the adventurers brought it on themselves by exploiting or abusing the natives or the jungle.</div>
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The transgression of cannibalism appears in many of the other subgenres of grindhouse, so there is often overlap even if the jungle setting and barbarous indigenous peoples are left behind. Redneck, Satanic cult and zombie films all take advantage of revulsion over the consumption of human flesh, making it not just a subgenre but a grindhouse trope.</div>
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Examples: The Man from the Deep River, Last Cannibal World, The Mountain of the Cannibal God</div>
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Themes: Transgression, Violence, Humans Versus Nature</div>
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<h4>
Deadly Animals</h4>
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Also called eco-terror or natural horror films, the scary/deadly/dangerous/giant animal movie has been a staple of exploitation films since the very earliest days. The 1950s saw their biggest flowering, as nuclear paranoia received an outlet in a parade of movies involving animals made giants by nuclear accidents or experimentation destroying cities and eating upstanding Americans. The subtext was clear: animals are a force of nature, barely controllable, and so is nuclear energy. Each symbolized the feeling that some things are best left alone by mankind. Combine the two and trouble happens.</div>
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The deadly animal movies just kept going, never waning in quality (they were already pretty bad so there wasn't much room to get worse) or quantity. By the 1970s, the nuclear scare had given way to a distrust of pollution and the big corporations which did the polluting. The concerns affected practical change with the setting up of of the Environmental Protection Agency by Richard Nixon in 1970. They never abated, however, and the deadly animals were mutated by pollution rather than nuclear testing.</div>
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The genre morphed again after the release of Jaws. Jaws was an absolutely massive blockbuster, the sort of movie which had people lining up around the block to see. Exploitation producers smelled an easy cash grab and began making knockoffs of Spielberg's big hit. Predatory aquatic gribblies became the big draw, with derivative stuff like Piranha (with Roger Corman producing a semi-parody of his old monster movies as well as ofJaws) packing the low-budget movie houses. The post-Jaws eco-terror movies also mark a subtle shift in the way the animal antagonists were portrayed. While they didn't disappear entirely, giant size and mutations became less of a theme, replaced by mostly normal animals who were just mean for no reason than the natural world can be mean. Parts of the increasingly urban American population had finally decided that there was no rhyme or reason to the depredations of nature, just as the shark in Jaws was a random killer. Killer animals simply were.</div>
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Examples: Night of the Lepus, Day of the Animals, Piranha</div>
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Themes: Humans Versus Nature, Corporate Malfeasance, Getting Lost</div>
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<h4>
Nazis</h4>
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Of all the movie subjects which 1970s exploitation portrays, the movies about Nazis are probably the least worthwhile. Most of the films aren't actually about Nazis in any sort of meaningful sense. Instead, the figure of the Nazi is used as a vessel to tell stories about violence, sex, and the intersection of the two. In this way, Nazis provide an easy out to the filmmaker wanting to make an indelible mark on the scene, a sort of taboo which goes beyond the imaginary horrors of demonic possession and giant monsters. They were, particularly when far more veterans of World War II and even a few architects of the German war effort were still alive, global villains of a still raw immediacy. If it was easy to use Nazis as antagonists, it was also effective. Curiously, Italy was a huge producer and consumer of the Nazi films, particularly Nazi sexploitation.</div>
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While almost entirely devoid of artistic merit, the Nazi movies (and there aren't a lot of them) are worth mentioning in the context of Gonzo because they provide an equally easy out for a group looking for antagonists. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using Nazis in this way (they make great, iconic bad guys), though the attached subject matter from the Nazi films may be too much for most groups. GMs are urged to be cautious here.</div>
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Examples: Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, SS Girls, Salon Kitty</div>
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Themes: Sadism, Violence, Oppression</div>
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<h4>
Rednecks</h4>
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The idea of the rural hick being an object of ridicule or revulsion is a long-accepted trope of American literature. The redneck, Southern or otherwise, is illiterate, stupid, uncultured, smells, has a funny accent, is lazy, etc. Not just common, the stereotype has been a downright respectable go-to move for generations of authors and screenwriters.</div>
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The 70s took the well-worn redneck character and turned it up to 11. With America moving ever more rapidly to a primarily urban way of life, the redneck/hick/hillbilly/Southerner became almost a symbol of the increasingly distant wild. In terms of what the redneck represented, there was a lot in common with some of the eco-terror movies. He was angry when intruders penetrated his way of life or came through town. Farms and small towns became foreign, weird places to the increasingly removed city-dweller. That it was so easy and effective to make the rural man (and it was almost always a man) the villain speaks to this gulf. For the folks in Manhattan or Los Angeles, he may as well have been an Amazonian tribesman.</div>
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The genre overlapped a lot with others. There were movies with redneck Satanists, redneck cannibals, redneck gore films, and redneck slashers. The apex of the genre was Deliverance, a relatively low-budget film which gained a lot of respectability at both the box office and critics' columns. It was undeniably an exploitation film, despite the mainstream cred and top-notch cast. Perhaps weirdly, given the sort of easy out which rednecks provided, a lot of the redneck movies have held up better than the other genres. The Hills Have Eyes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the latter at least as much a slasher film) are classics of 70s horror.</div>
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Examples: Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes, Eaten Alive</div>
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Themes: Humans versus Nature, Violence, Stranger in a Strange Land</div>
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<h4>
Satanic Cults</h4>
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Perhaps no subgenre of exploitation cinema was as fertile as movies involving Satanism and cults. There's also a tremendous amount of overlap with the other classifications of grindhouse film, with Satanism's tendrils stretching into everything conceivable, from bikers to cannibals to hippies to Nazis. But the pure, distilled Satanic cult movie has a heritage all its own and they were everywhere in the 70s.</div>
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The genre was spurred by a few pop culture phenomenons. The first were the trials of the Manson Family. While the murders weren't inspired by Satanism, they did have a cult oriented vibe to them. Combined with the suddenness of the violence, it drove home that the peace and love ethos of the 60s was over, that murder could happen out of the blue. The strange behavior of the Family members in the widely publicized trials after the Family was rounded up captivated the public. The cult was now in modern consciousness like never before.</div>
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The second was the mainstream success of The Exorcist. Just as with Jaws two years later, a subject traditionally reserved for the grindhouse audience broke through to the mainstream. What Rosemary's Baby made okay to watch openly, The Exorcist made big business. The Exorcist was a massive critical and financial success, even by today's standards. It was the first horror movie nominated for Best Picture, garnering a total of ten nominations, and is still the biggest grossing rated R movie of all time, when adjusted for inflation. Once again, like a snake eating its own tail, exploitation and mainstream fed on each other, this time with the grindhouse producers going into high gear to cash in on the craze around the movie.</div>
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Finally, the rise of the Church of Satan in the public's consciousness, particularly its head, Anton LaVey, brought the legitimately edgy (for the time) practices of the Church out into the open. More properly atheistic, the Church of Satan purported to reject Christian norms of behavior, extolling virtues of selfishness and hedonism. The Satanic Bible, a ponderous book which takes the obvious route by mostly advocating the exact opposite of Christian theology, was written by LaVey, himself. Satanism was also an inversion of the New Age beliefs which some of the hippies flirted with in the late 60s. In this way, it served as a perfect example of the sort of dark things the GI Generation figured their kids were doing all along, with its openness a sure harbinger of society's accelerating decay.</div>
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LaVey was a master showman, adept at harnessing the media as a platform for personal gain. Soon enough, hanging out with LaVey and getting real Satanists on your movie projects became marks of counter-cultural cache. Sammy Davis Jr. was at least a friend of LaVey's and was rumored to be a full member of the Church. The producers of the film The Devil's Rain made sure that the picture had plenty of authenticity by having LaVey consult on the set; he even has an extended cameo in the movie. He hit talk shows, radio, movies, print… to say he was a major celebrity would be untrue but he definitely became one of the most high profile counter-culture figures remaining as the 70s wore on.</div>
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A perfect storm was created of media visibility and public fascination with the Satanic side of the occult. Some films were legitimately good by any measure, such as the aforementioned The Exorcist or The Omen. Most, however, went into the vast, middling-to-terrible exploitation library of the decade. Curiously, big time celebrities were particularly okay with appearing in these sorts of films; The Devil's Rain featured Ernest Borgnine, Tom Skerritt, William Shatner, Eddie Adams, and a young John Travolta. Whether it was actors trying to regenerate a lost edge or legitimate fascination with the subject matter is hard to gauge and mostly reliant on the observer's unironic belief in the occult.</div>
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Unlike most of the subgenres of exploitation theater, movies about Satanism and ritual cults never faded. The 80s were a fertile ground for the so-called "Satanic Panic", with borderline hysteria over mostly trumped up charges of outright murder on the part of Satanists keeping the momentum going. Also, unlike most of the subgenres we discuss in this chapter, the Satanism craze was truly global, with Italy and Spain, in particular, supplying some truly memorable movies of the type; some of the foreign films also flirt with outright respectability in terms of cinematography and pacing, though the subject matter veers far more quickly into the overtly offensive than their American counterparts.</div>
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Examples: The Devil's Rain, Race With the Devil, I Drink Your Blood</div>
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Themes: Paranoia, Religion, Conspiracy</div>
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<h4>
Slasher</h4>
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If you are alive, you have probably seen a slasher film. One of the more enduring and mainstream grindhouse subgenres, slasher films prey on the fear of human-on-human violence. The fear that in that alley there could be a killer with a knife who doesn't even know you but wants you dead. Every unsolved murder story in the newspaper fills us with an anxiety that slasher films exploit.</div>
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While this type of story had been told before, slasher films really came into their own in the 70s and to become box office hits. Halloween came out in 1978 to such success that it spawned numerous sequels and imitators, and while movies such as Black Christmas carved out the subgenre with its mysterious killer and murdered co-eds, Halloween established the masked killer who is relentless and unstoppable.</div>
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Meanwhile, in Italy, the slasher subgenre was spinning in a different direction. Named giallo, the movies featured high body counts and gory, explicit murders. Giallo was stylish and mysterious, and was known for its strange and upsetting scores and jarring camera angles.</div>
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Examples: Black Christmas, Halloween, Suspiria</div>
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Themes: Violence, Vulnerability, Mystery.</div>
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<h4>
Truckers and Racing</h4>
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Carsploitation and truxploitation are closely related genres of exploitation film centering around motor vehicles. Capitalizing on the good old American love affair with anything having four wheels, the genres reached their artistic and commercial heights in the 70s. The line between exploitation and main stream is perhaps most blurred here, with car movies being churned out by big and small studios, alike.</div>
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These films always centered around car chases and car crashes, with the plots (such as they were) being almost entirely negligible. Whether it was a road race, running cargo, or fugitives on the run, the whole thing was just an excuse for the action, with plot points conspicuously only showing up only at the beginning and very end.</div>
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The trucker movies were fewer in number, not really enough to constitute a distinct genre, but are worth mentioning in light of their contribution to one of the truly odd pieces of 70s pop culture: the trucker as hero. With the decline of both Westerns and biker movies, Americans started scrounging around for a new hero of the open spaces, a man who was his own master. They settled on the trucker, who became a mix of cowboy and good-hearted outlaw. By the mid-70s, there were songs and television shows with truckers all over the place. Trucker lingo was all over the place. If the movies centering on truckers weren't huge business, television was where they lived and breathed, with single episodes and short story arcs dedicated to truckers in all sorts of programs across genre. The fascination only lasted a few years but it burned brightly in that sliver of time.</div>
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You only have to look as far as The Fast and the Furious to see that the car movies haven't gone anywhere and probably never will. The genre sometimes lays dormant for awhile, but always comes back with audiences eager to take part in the slightly goofy spectacle that is a carsploitation movie.</div>
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Examples: Vanishing Point, Gone in 60 Seconds, White Line Fever</div>
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Themes: Freedom, The Open Road, Truth</div>
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<h4>
Vigilantes</h4>
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Rising crime rates were a serious problem in the 1970s. Everyone in every decade thinks that crime is a big problem, but in this case, it's 100% true. Between 1960 and 1974, robberies more than tripled, while rape and murder rates more than doubled. In the biggest cities, the middle class simply packed up and left for the suburbs, exacerbating the problem by leaving inner-cities to the criminal element. The spike in crime was accompanied by crippling inflation and other economic shocks, plus a healthy dose of racial mistrust between whites and blacks.</div>
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At the movies, the anxiety about crime led to a small but steady parade of movies about vigilantes or rogue cops taking the law into their own hands. They were often hyper-violent, a sort of wish fulfillment primarily targeted at white men who just wanted to feel as though they could protect their families. This shouldn't be taken to mean that the films were always about white protagonists; there's a strong vein of the vigilante as hero in blaxploitation, while films like Billy Jack featured Native American or Hispanic protagonists. The fear of crime crossed racial and class lines in the 70s.</div>
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They tend toward the formulaic: the cops look the other way while a crime occurs, usually affecting the protagonist or his family. This forces the protagonist to take matters into his own hands, breaking the law in order to save the peace.</div>
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Examples: Death Wish, Walking Tall, Billy Jack</div>
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Themes: Corruption, Violence, Family</div>
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<h4>
Zombies</h4>
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In 2012, it's hard to imagine a world in which zombies are still vital and fresh. They've become so ubiquitous, especially as a part of geek culture, that the saturation point has been reached; a zombie joke now marks you as terminally unhip and uncreative. But this wasn't always the case.</div>
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While a feature of horror movies going back to the 1930s, zombies only really entered the public's consciousness with George Romero's 1968 Night of the Living Dead. The film had its pulse on the zeitgeist, with its portrayal of civilization breaking down in microcosm, and it became a huge cultural touchstone. Romero went on to make several more zombie movies, while other directors picked up on the genre.</div>
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The great thing about zombies is that they offer a broad canvas on which to paint. They've been used to tell everything from allegories for the dangers of consumerism to comedies to straight gore flicks without anything deeper going on than blood soaked spectacle. For this reason, they make great features in a game of Gonzo, though they shouldn't be overused lest they become trite.</div>
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Examples: Return of the Blind Dead, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Dawn of the Dead</div>
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Themes: Conformity, Civilization's Collapse, Fear and Dread</div>
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<h3>
Playing at the Intersection of the Two</h3>
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So what's with all the words and quasi-intellectual examination for a game which is about taking drugs and replaying bad movies?</div>
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The 1970s were an incredibly fucked up decade that saw America going through a lot of changes, not all of them good. They weren't usually as immediately explosive as the 1960s but they were no less stressful. Thompson saw this clearly in his work and addressed it, repeatedly and pointedly, throughout his writing in the decade. He was, in a word, terrified of what was going on in 1970s America. The pessimistic terror he felt and the rot he saw were covered in layers of scathing humor and insane drug use, but they were certainly underpinnings. He saw the rise of Nixon, the cracks in the New Deal, the bipartisan consensus on Vietnam, and the demise of the counter-culture as emblematic of a terrible retreat from critical thinking by the American populace.</div>
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Just as Thompson was terrified, so was the public, albeit not necessarily for the same reasons Thompson was. The public did what they always do when they want a distraction: they went to the movies. The thing about B-movies (all B-movies, not just the grindhouse stuff we're dealing with) is that they tend to have sub-par writing, in addition to the sub-par acting and directing. A bad writer doesn't hide his inner motivations on the page very well. If he's scared of something, it's there on the page. If he's horny or angry or happy or paranoid, it's there, naked for all to see if they pay attention.</div>
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So what we have when we put the two together is the collision of a very good writer trying to make sense of a world he saw going mad and a lot of very bad writers and directors trying to interpret their</div>
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audience's fears. It's this collision of the two, the rare blend of cynicism and idealism of the gonzo journalist and the raw neurosis of the contemporary American public, which makes Gonzo tick.</div>
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How do you do that? First, forget everything you just read. Don't make any of this conscious. A game of Gonzo shouldn't take itself any more seriously than a movie like Night of the Lepus takes itself. Hell, most people reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas come away from it thinking it's only about drugs and partying. That's more than okay; it's expected.</div>
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Any symbolic stuff going on in the game should be completely unintentional and organic. The aftermath of the session, when the story's being written and everyone reflects on what's transpired, is the time to retroactively look for themes which emerged in play. Without putting in strenuous effort or too much time, that's the part where everyone should examine the events of the wrapped-up assignment and see what sorts of political commentary and symbolism crept into actual play.</div>
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Playtesting revealed that players did just the right thing with no prompting. An assignment to report on a mayoral convention ended up with the mayors snorting coke on a yacht before being attacked by giant alligators. You get your heavy-handed (we like heavy-handed!) social commentary with the coke and hooker binge that the ruling classes went on while also getting a good dose of weirdness with the giant alligators. It was bonkers and weird, with just a little seriousness peeking over the margins when viewed in retrospect… just like Thompson's work. Everyone consistently went home happy.</div>
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The Nutgraf</h4>
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We elaborate on this in the chapter dedicated to the game's play structure, but games of Gonzo have a defined progression of events, which we'll discuss briefly here. We call this progression of events the Nutgraf, after a particular type of narrative oriented opening paragraph used in some newspaper stories.</div>
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The first stage is the Lead. This is fairly mundane and straightforward: cover the mayor's convention, interview Mick Jagger, etc. It's a normal old magazine story assignment.</div>
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The second is the Weird. This element occurs in the middle of the session. It should be very personalized and surreal, usually related to the PCs' drug use. We recommend things and people which figure prominently in 70s pop culture, both because it tends to be funny and make things more grounded in the era. It should also leave doubt as to whether it happened at all. Maybe David Cassidy offered to smoke weed with the group on the plane, maybe he didn't. It's all hazy because everyone was so hammered before they even met him. And did you guys really abandon him in the airport after stealing his underwear? That's the sort of thing to shoot for.</div>
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The last is the Grind. This is the insertion of a monster, character, or other plot device from exploitation cinema. Pick a genre and run with it. Hell, rip off your favorite flick, entirely. Just as with the Freak Out, toy with reality. Our assumption as Gonzo's authors is that any giant killer chipmunks or satanic bikers which show up in your games are both real and true; you don't have to agree and it may prove more interesting to have the whole thing be one gigantic shared hallucination. Just be coy about it, if you're the GM.</div>
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The game fiction included in Gonzo follows this structure. You have the Lead (check out Bohemian Grove), the Weird (ritual sacrifice led by famous people), and the Grind (murderous cultists coming to kill the Narrator and Diego). The specifics are, of course, highly mutable. Richard Nixon didn't need to be a cultist. Henry Kissinger certainly didn't need to be leading them in ritual human sacrifice. Those bits are the things you can change, though aim big, weird, and even silly. Insert famous people, make things explode, kill people and bring them back… grindhouse cinema isn't subtle and Gonzo shouldn't be, either.</div>
Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-41998965658987871962012-08-22T10:38:00.002-07:002012-08-22T10:39:53.477-07:00Age of Bronze? More like Before IronSo, officially, Age of Bronze will be titled Before Iron when it comes out.<br />
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Lookit the short and to the point blog post.Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1615999655199317917.post-83948488143467879452012-08-16T09:36:00.003-07:002013-05-01T15:33:58.568-07:00Hubris and the Single HeroLet's talk about Hubris (the Age of Bronze game mechanic) and hubris (the real world thing) a little bit.<br />
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Hubris is the axis around which a campaign of Age of Bronze revolves. The game is designed for you to reach a tragic end. This shouldn't be fought, but embraced. The number of Greek heroes who got home and lived happily ever after can be counted on one hand; even then, they usually weren't actually happy endings if you squint your eyes a bit (looking at you, Helen and Menelaus).<br />
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The tragic story arc is facilitated greatly by the Pendragon campaign structure, which we ported over wholesale. Just as with Pendragon, a campaign is one adventure per year, with a Winter Phase for you to take care of all that between session life stuff. All of that is mostly unaltered, though we have some rules about keeping up with appropriate sacrifices and such in order to keep the Olympians happy.<br />
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This pace helps. You can't tell that story inside a year or even two. For the most part, the Greek heroes took years to flame out. There are certainly the quick ends, like Icarus, but that wasn't the usual way it went and we have them covered, too.<br />
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So, what is hubris (as opposed to Hubris, which I'll get to at the end) as it's presented in Age of Bronze?<br />
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First of all, it's not simply pride, even larger than life, overweening pride. It certainly <i>can </i>be that, but that's a very small piece of the puzzle. Pride is certainly tied up in the whole thing, though. This might sound confusing, but there's a key to figuring out how telling a story about hubris and tragedy works.<br />
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Most importantly, we're working from the idea that religion is, at base, a way of communicating a society's values to its people. The stories, the deities, the heroes, the lessons... they're all there to let the listener understand what the rules are. The gods expect you not to kill, not to steal, etc. It's all fairly universal from culture to culture, with little tweaks here and there.<br />
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The interesting bit is when you take secularism out of the equation. There is no secular society offering "universal" values based on things like tolerance and human rights. Since laws govern mortal and immortal alike (and make no mistake, Zeus suffers for violating them as much as anyone else, when it's all said and done), all laws are deemed to have passed down from Olympus. The laws are the same whether you're in Athens or in Zeus' palace, right?<br />
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Here's where hubris comes in. Violating the laws of society is the same as violating the laws of Olympus, since they're one and the same. That is an <i>extraordinarily</i> prideful thing to do, just not in the way most modern people think of pride. In this sense, a minor crime like petty theft becomes hubristic; the thief has exalted himself above the laws of the cosmos. Not terrible, mind you; it's still a minor crime. It is still hubristic.<br />
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So as soon as the player hero steps off his farm into the wider world, he's set himself up for violating the rules. If society expects all men to be humble farmers or shepherds and all women to be mothers, doing anything else is preparing for a glorious, but guaranteed, fall. The hero leaves the farm, fights people, crosses the gods, disobeys the king, etc, etc. This is all hubris.<br />
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Of course, for every rule, there's a loophole. There's ample space to talk about the stuff which results in protagonist death which doesn't quite line up with these basic guidelines. That's okay! To quote the Age of Bronze rulebook:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Furthermore,
the issue of hubris in the Greek world is one of incredible
complexity and falls well outside of the scope of this game. There is
a great deal of very interesting scholarship covering the ancient
concept of hubris, and many readers would be surprised to find that
some things they have always considered to be hubristic are not,
while other things which never occurred to them are. Many of the
great mistakes of the Greek heroes would probably not seem to be
hubris at all to an ancient Greek (Orpheus looking back at Eurydice,
which was mentioned in the opening of this chapter, is almost
definitely not hubris in a traditional Greek sense, but it is equally
definitely a very bad mistake which ruins his life and which causes
the gods to make him suffer). These rules simply allow us to model
the improper acts of Greek heroes and their consequences within the
game world without devolving into an academic debate regarding
semantics. Just remember that there is a difference between hubris, a
complex word in Ancient Greek, and Hubris, a game mechanic in </span><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Age
of Bronze</span></em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">and
things should run smoothly.</span></blockquote>
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Or, use the above about societal laws and divine laws being comparable as a jumping off point. Oedipus having relations with his mother isn't worse than Herakles braining people with his club, yet one is clearly deemed worse than the other <i>in the context of their respective stories. </i>It's okay to state that some things are of enough cosmic import to get several Hubris points.<br />
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Yes, Hubris points.<br />
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In Age of Bronze, the hubristic acts a hero commits nets Hubris points. Each character has a score from 1 to 20. 1 is a normal person, liable to do nothing much, while hitting 20 means it's time to have a tragic end for your hero and get the next one ready to play (probably one of your kids).<br />
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Theft is worth 1 point, while murder or trying to reach Olympus is worth 5 or more. The Gamemaster has room to play here, though we provide a pretty good list of different acts and their suggested penalties.<br />
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Getting from 1 to 20 without complications would be boring, so we prevent that by imposing penalties at 5, 10, and 15 points. At these break points, the hero encounters his Nemesis. Divine comeuppance is headed his way. The penalties are primarily there to make his life miserable, rather than kill him. The penalties are:<br />
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1) A +5 to all his Personality Trait rolls. He ends up being more extreme in his emotions, at the mercy of his feelings, which leads to more hubristic acts as he loses control.<br />
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2) A further -5 penalty for fumbling a Passion roll. The character ends up in longer and more severe depressions when they occur.<br />
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3) A directed trait related to the act which put the character over the top must be taken, at a score of 2d6. If Ariston drunkenly urinated in a stream sacred to Demeter, the Gamemaster might decide that he gets a Weakness for Mead directed trait of 2d6 attached to his Indulgent score. Again, this is about making the character more extreme in his behavior, which invariably leads to more and more Hubris.<br />
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4) An extra 1d6 is added to his city of residence's Weather rolls at the end of each year. Minor plagues, locusts, harsh winters, whatever. Things get tough for the city harboring a hero who has annoyed the gods.<br />
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These penalties are cumulative and Hubris <i>cannot</i> be decreased, ever. A hero going from 1 to 12 Hubris gets double the penalties (one set for 5 Hubris plus one set for 10).<br />
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While Hubris can never go down, a character can remove the penalties before they stack up. To do this, he must atone for his crimes. He visits an Oracle or a character (PC or NPC) who has the Divination skill. The Divination roll must be successful and only one roll is allowed per year.<br />
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If the roll is successful, the character is given a task to perform which, if successful, will remove the Nemesis penalties. The diviner or Oracle consults with the gods, finds out what's needed, and points the hero in the right direction.<br />
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In play, all of this adds up to a subtle but pronounced (especially when combined with Aristaea, which is another post) increase in the speed of Hubris accumulation. It's slow at first, but as heroes become more powerful and more unhinged, it comes more and more quickly.<br />
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In the end, Hubris never goes down. Every hero will hit 20, whether quickly or slowly. Once 20 Hubris is reached (and there's no Nemesis penalty for 20), the hero's player and Gamemaster sit down to chat about how to end things. However it shakes out, whatever's decided based on what's come before, the hero's career will end tragically. This is the chance for big, literary stuff. Shoot the moon. Make Orestes wish his tale was half as poignant and unsettling as yours.<br />
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<br />Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11172461587667407942noreply@blogger.com8