I posted this to an RPG forum, but I thought that I’d put it here for further discussion, if warranted. Plus, if I write something, I like to post it as widely as possible. It’s good for my ego.

Thanks, Joce. I appreciate the kind words.

Just thought that I’d add a note about Forge theory.

But, best of all, this is a game you can just pick up and play, without requiring any knowledge of Forge RPG theory. This was a flaw in the two indie games I have read in the past (Dogs in the Vineyard and My Life With Master). If you didn’t know RPG theory, you missed out on some stuff, or some of the rules ended up being hard to grasp. That annoyed me to no end in both cases. It’s not the case with Dirty Secrets. Although I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been designed in a vacuum, it’s written in a vacuum - everything is explained plainly in the book, without the need for you to have read anything else, be it another RPG or Forge ideology.

I really appreciate Forge theory. I’ve been on the Forge since its inception in 2001, and I’m grateful for the body of thought that has come from that site, including the games that have resulted from the theoretical work done on the site. Dirty Secrets is well within that stream of thought, and I acknowledge my primary design inspirations, which include Ron Edwards’ Spione, Ralph Mazza’s Universalis, and Ben Lehman’s Polaris.

But….

I really don’t like it when design theory jargon (or my preferred title, which is “terms of art”) work their way into a game manuscript.

I firmly believe in the importance of design theory to inform your design, and, if anyone here really cared, I could break open the various aspects of Dirty Secrets and explain their theoretical underpinnings, using the proper terms of art. But the game text is not the place for a theory discussion; it’s the place to teach how to play the game. So, for example, unless your game is Sorcerer, you shouldn’t be talking about Bangs in your game text. The concept, absolutely. The word, no.

By analogy, imagine a computer game. There’s a lot of technical work that goes into making a computer game work. But the computer game documentation shouldn’t discuss (say) how to interface with DirectX or how to construct the neural net that runs the AI opponent. Those are terms of art, used to discuss the design of the game. Rather, the game documentation should teach you how to play the game in the clearest manner possible.

And that’s what I tried to do with Dirty Secrets.

Brian Peters had ordered a copy of Dirty Secrets around the time when Indie Press Revolution was out of stock. So I offered him a copy of the PDF to tide him over until his printed copy came. Here’s what Brian had to say about the Dirty Secrets PDF edition.

“One of the best looking PDF RPG books I’ve ever seen!”

“If more [RPGs in PDF format] had linking and cross referencing and the nifty bookmarks and such like yours does, I’d be much more interested in purchasing games in pdf format.”

Thanks, Brian!

I sent Jocelyn Robitaille a copy of Dirty Secrets to review for RPG.net. He makes some initial comments here:

This game is tight, y’all - I am very impressed with how focussed and streamlined the bits and pieces all are.

But, best of all, this is a game you can just pick up and play, without requiring any knowledge of Forge RPG theory….Although I’m pretty sure [Dirty Secrets] hasn’t been designed in a vacuum, it’s written in a vacuum - everything is explained plainly in the book, without the need for you to have read anything else, be it another RPG or Forge ideology.

Thanks, Jocelyn!

Earlier this week, one of my co-workers sent me a link to an article by Doug Phillips about horror films. Here are a couple of quotes:

Genres reflect philosophical and theological priorities. Some genres are so immersed in anti-Christian presuppositions that to divest them of their perverse worldview is to destroy the genre itself. Consequently, some genres are unredeemable. Pornography would be one example. Horror is another.

Horror is an example of a genre which was conceived in rebellion. It is based on a fascination with ungodly fear. It should not be imitated, propagated, or encouraged. It cannot be redeemed because it is presuppositionally at war with God.

Those of you who know me already know that I disagree with this assessment, both of horror and of this approach to the arts. And normally, I would vigorously disagree, especially with the assertion that this genre is “unredeemable”. But, you know what? I just can’t be bothered.

Part of this is because it’s been a rough week, and I don’t really have the emotional energy to rebut this argument without pulling an emotional muscle. When I’m tired and depressed, outrage very quickly turns into a deeper depression, and I’d rather avoid that right now.

But, I think that there’s a truth here to be embraced. I was talking a little about this at Wednesday dinner, in the larger context of a discussion about Christians and the arts that came from a conversation about this thread on Moving Truth. I mentioned that I watched the film of the performance of 4′ 33″ and actually appreciated it. So Raquel asked me if I was going to weigh in on the thread.

And I said no.

Honestly, I’ve become tired about arguing art theory. I’ve become tired about tossing around hypotheticals and philosophies and worldviews, trying somehow to get them to stick together so that we can then go do art. Instead, I think that Christian artists need to Go Play.

Go Play is a meme in the gaming community. The symbol is a white triangle on a field of green. (Bonus points to someone who writes that up in proper heraldic form.) According to Mike Sugarbaker, here’s what it means:

Play is good. Play is necessary. Play keeps us young. Play keeps us alive. Play leads to new ideas and new ways of looking at the world. Play teaches us about each other and about ourselves. Play makes us human.

This symbol says, “Have play in your life.” It does not say “I am ______ and you are not.” For that matter, it does not say “I am ______ and so are you if you understand this.” No, not even when you fill in the blank with “gamer.”

This symbol is not even really an exhortation. It’s a yelp of joy. It says, go us. Go team. Go humanity. GO PLAY.

I frequent a roleplaying site called the Forge. Once there was a lot of theoretical discussion there on the theory forums. But then the site owner and moderator decided to close them down. He wasn’t opposed to the theory discussions. Rather, he wanted them to improve by rooting them in discussions of Actual Play. So, rather than having theoretical discussions that trail off into the stratosphere, theory discussions would be an attempt to refine and understand techniques and concepts discovered while roleplaying. The point: go and do, then discuss what you did. Don’t just sit around, discussing what you might do. Go Play, and then talk.

The same is true of Christians striving to work in the arts. Go Play, and then talk. That means that you need to feel free to experiment, to make mistakes, to mess up, to do it “wrong”. In return, we need to be willing to let them experiment and do it “wrong”. Then talk. Now you can discuss the worldview of a given work or the various techniques that were used to make it work. But now the discussion is rooted in a concrete thing, not just an abstract discussion.

And, to bring it back to the original topic, while I do disagree with Doug Phillips’ take on the horror genre, I do appreciate that he has started this film festival to encourage Christians to take a shot at making movies. And who knows? Maybe some aspiring film maker will make a horror film that will change his mind.

I earned myself a Go Play keychain at GenCon for being in a demo of Shock:. Really hard, I know. So, do you want a Go Play keychain? Click here to order one!

Okay. So I have just a couple of minutes to scrawl this down. But if I don’t do it now, I’ll forget and never do it.

I taught Versus mode over lunch today. My fellow player has been around RPGs but he isn’t really a gamer. However, he left me a comment on my blog indicating his desire to give it a whirl. So we did.

We ended up playing with a loose turn structure so that he could get a feel for how the game works, which went well. And boy did we have a lot of fun.

In this corner, Thomas Paine (played by Jeremy).

In this corner, George Washington (played by Seth).

The issue: censorship.

The actual issue text:

“In New England farms, the People consider censorship. Supporters teach correspondence after detractors replace an arms cache!”

Now, oddly enough, I just realized that I completely reversed this in my head when we played. “Supporter” meant “favored freedom of the press”. Oh well. It worked out anyways.

I suggested that the issue was that there were still Tories doing nasty Tory things who were being rounded up. But the new government was suppressing the publication of texts describing the rounding up of these Tories. Need to protect the security of the nation and all that. (Any correlation to modern-day events is purely in your head. Really.)

So Thomas Paine stood to speak against the suppression and George Washington argued for it.

Without replicating the entirety of play, let’s just say that things quickly went from bad to worse for Paine. He tried to implicate Washington as a Tory sympathizer, even producing photographic evidence of secret meetings between Washington and the Tories. But Congress wasn’t paying any attention, and Washington just ran roughshod over Paine. At one point, Jeremy was locked out of cards after I had a significant base of cards on my own side of the table, so I romped all over him. Washington had Paine thrown out of Congress and kicked him when no one was looking. Then he led the troops out to round up the remaining Tories. Capitalizing on this, he launched a campaign for President, which he won in a landslide. Then he had Paine imprisoned for the win.

In the final analysis, Paine wrote his memoirs, but he quickly realized that no one would read them. So, when he was finally released from jail, he retired to the obscurity of private life. Washington, who was by then the Emperor of the United States, made sure that the few copies of Paine’s memoirs were suppressed. Bad for security, you know.

And all this, even with the slower card play, in about 45 minutes.

So, yay!

Playtest comments are at the Forge, but I thought that I’d share here, too.

So, given that the “More” does indeed hide the rest of the text from the RSS feed, I can now ask my question. This involves the use of a PG-13 term (at least, that would be my rating for it), so I’m putting it below the fold.

But it is a serious question.

(more…)

I’m curious how the “More” works. In particular, I’m curious if the text below the “More” shows up in an RSS feed or not. My documentation claims that it does, but I’d like to see it for myself.

So I’m going to find out!

(more…)

From Kallisti Press:

It’s times like these where you have to ask yourself: “Isn’t it about time I punched Tories in the face with clockwork gauntlets?”

The Sons of Liberty beta playtest is on, and runs through October 31st. I’m looking for brave souls to try a night of madcap clockpunk revolutionary action, and a few even braver souls to try their hand at the game’s multi-session Campaign Mode.

It details a game that is impossible to play without shouting.

It very well be more anachronistic heroics and madcap fun than you’re able to handle.

I had a chance to playtest this at GenCon, and it was a ridiculous amount of fun. I’m really hoping to be able to dig up the right people to give this a whirl. If you’re interested, you can download the playtest from this page.

No prior roleplaying experience required! Just a couple decks of cards and the strength of freedom!

As I prepare to run Steal Away Jordan, I also want to point to modern-day slavery. According to this site, there are more people in slavery today than in the last four hundred years.

In other words, remember Constance.

He called me names on a messageboard!

Something that Gabrielle and I realized when reflecting about our game of Bliss Stage is that our characters did the exact thing that we often criticize in other Christians: bailing out of the city to hide in the country. I think that our playing through this game has given us a different perspective on the issue. Yes, it’s possible to be hiding in the country from the problems of the city. At the same time, it’s also possible to withdraw from the city in an attempt to regroup and to train your children to be better warriors than you are. Sometimes you just don’t have enough of a foothold to be able to fight effectively.

Still, it feels retreatist to me. But how much of that is because it’s the truth, and how much of it is my own hang-ups? I’m still trying to figure that out.

Post-Game Reflections

First, just to get this out of the way:

Ben! I played a girl! Are you happy now!!!?!?!??111eleventyone

Actually, the most awkward part of the experience was actually trying to step into a character that had been characterized by someone else for so long. Had I been doing so from the beginning, it might not have been so odd.

Gabrielle noted that, in the end, our group raised horses and grew gardens. It’s such a girly ending. She pities me.

We didn’t realize that we could end the game whenever we wanted after we were done to one remaining pilot. In some ways, the ending would have been more powerful if it had come immediately on the heels of Marcus taking over as leader. But, the last mission gave him an opportunity to demonstrate his superior leadership skills.

Now, for the biggest item of discussion: the ending.

At first, I didn’t like the ending. It felt…weak, somehow. I kept wanting there to be something else to make it satisfying to me, and it wasn’t really coming.

We ended up having a serious discussion about it. In my mind, the group had taken the cowards’ route. They ran, when they should have fought. In the end, the ground that had been fought for was lost. They should have stayed. Even if they had lost, it would have been a noble end.

Gabrielle and Crystal argued the other way. What else was the group supposed to do? They were out of pilots, and they were slowly losing. Plus, they couldn’t keep out the Bigelow Boys forever. They said that I needed to think multi-generationally about this. The group hasn’t given up the fight. But they needed to withdraw for a while, regroup, and train their children to be better warriors than they had been able to be. And what good is a noble end if the aliens win? Crystal put it most forcefully: if they had stayed, would they have been fighting for victory, or just for their pride?

Made me think, it did. And in the end, I think that Crystal and Gabrielle are right. But, at the same time, it feels a lot like behavior that I do not like in others. Rather than being willing to take on serious issues, people hide away. At the same time, sometimes what looks like hiding is really just a temporary withdrawal, until a true victory can be won.

This is a major point for me, and it’s something that I’ll be mulling over for a while.

Conclusion

Joseph says it’s time to go. I’ve already been broadcasting too long, and he’s concerned that the aliens will be able to triangulate our position. Time to bug out and work our way towards home. So, for the Peoria Resistance Group, this is Seth Ben-Ezra.

See you on the other side.
…end transmission…

Infiltrators

But it was not yet time for peace. Marcus came to see Jude the next day. They had spotted incoming aliens, and he needed Jude out in an ANIMa. So Jude launched.

Because Gabrielle was now the GM, I received ownership of Leah, her anchor. So, for the first time, I was able to anchor a mission. Yay!

Mission Brief
…begin briefing…

Infiltrators
Destroy alien brain probe
Must be done first
If failed, Kay blisses out
Locate other probes
If successful, destroy other probes
Repair destroyed sensor package
…end briefing…

The aliens were playing for keeps. They had sent probes to kill the children as retaliation for the raid on the alien growth pods. So Jude ran around, destroying probes. During the fight, Jude’s electro-chain was ripped off his ANIMa. (That’s his relationship with Jude.) So, to replace it, Jude manifested his relationship with Marcus as a strong arm that fired expanding balls of laser from its palm.

Again, we know our symbolism.

But then Marcus spoke into the mike. He needed Jude to go north and repair the sensor package that had been disabled in the assault. So Jude headed north and was able to repair the sensors. But alien slime climbed up his arm, melting it away. So Jude started yelling, “Eject! Eject!”

Jude had Blissed Out.

Our Happy Home

That was the end for Jude. He and Leah packed up their few belongings and headed north. They were gone for a year, but they found a place to live near Rockford. There was an old campground, fairly secure and beautiful. So then, they returned to Peoria to gather the rest of the group.

Then they left Peoria.

Jared was already gone. He had vanished one day, abandoning Eve and Hope. So now, Eve is a single mother, but the community is helping her with her daughter.

Beth gave birth to a boy. Leah has given birth to a little girl, and Jude is just ga-ga over her.

Joseph refused to let the Bigelow Boys benefit from their hard work, so he set fires in the base. Flames licked the sky as they began their exodus to the north. Looking back, one of them saw an alien remote, striding through the ruins, highlighted by the burning city.

But now they are safe. They are careful to stay off the grid so that the aliens can’t locate them. And yeah, all they are doing is growing herbs and raising horses. But they are also teaching their children how to fight.

And one day, they will finish what their parents started.

…incoming transmission …
… Peoria Resistance Group…

Bliss Stage makes me think of this.

I love the design of the Ignition Stage book. It’s small, white, and friendly to hold. I’m conflicted on the lack of title on the front of the book, but I don’t really care that much. It’s an elegant object.

So, imagine my distress when I discovered that a drop of coffee had somehow worked its way through the top of my satchel and left a brown spot right in the middle of the front of the book. Argh!I guess that I’ll just call it battle damage. So now, my Bliss Stage book has one point of Trauma. I wonder how a book gets Trauma relief?

Last night, we finished our Bliss Stage campaign. It was good and bad and difficult and thought-provoking, and everyone got what they wanted, except maybe me, but that’s probably a good thing, and anyways I learned about myself because I didn’t get what I wanted, so that’s good, too.

So suit up, strap in, and prepare for launch!

Pods of Darkness

I wanted to keep the pressure on, so I started us with a briefing action. Jared summons Marcus and tells him to go track down those alien growth pods and destroy them. Jared is really not doing well at this point. He is tired and strung out, and he is slowly losing control of everything. But Marcus goes anyways.

Mission Brief
…begin briefing…

Pods of Darkness
Locate alien growth pods (must be done first)
If failed, remaining goals fail
Establish psychic shield
This is a secret goal
Destroy alien growth pods
If succeeded and no psychic shield, one character is harmed.
Destroy alien growth pods
If succeeded and no psychic shield, one character is harmed.
Evade alien patrol
If failed, wild card goal. Pilot must improvise something.
This is a secret goal
…end briefing…

The mission was largely uneventful, except for the moment where Marcus was lost to anchor contact while trying to hack together a psychic shield out of his power mace. I did invoke Panic during his attempt to evade the alien patrol, which finally worked out for me. In the past, when I’ve invoked Panic, the player has rolled minimal neutral results, which means that Panic has actually helped out the player. This time, not so much. But still, Marcus burst from hiding and flattened the alien attacker.

By the end of the mission, Marcus was only a couple points away from Blissing out.

A Change at the Top

After the mission, Marcus went looking for Jared to express some concerns with how things were being run. He’s feeling like the group is taking too many risks. Instead, Jared completely comes apart on him, sobbing that it’s all too hard. Marcus tries to encourage him, but Jared just walks off. Marcus sighs and slumps into Jared’s chair. Trauma Relief.

Yeah, we’re not always subtle with our symbolism.

So, when Jude came in to find Jared, he found Marcus instead. Jude and Marcus talk about the future. Jude and Leah want to leave. They don’t think that the city is a good place to try to raise a family. Instead, they want to find a safer place to be. Maybe raise horses. At first, Marcus isn’t really sure if it’s a good idea, but eventually he tells Jude that it’s his decision. “It’s your family, not mine.” Jude leaves, but Jared overheard it all. Trust Breaking with Jared, but Trust Building with Jude.

That broke Marcus’s relationship with Jared, forcing him to Bliss Out.

So, Gabrielle narrated the resolution action with Marcus. Jared comes storming back into the room and accuses Marcus of usurping his position and stuff like that. Marcus finally confronts Jared about how he is being a bad leader. Instead of listening, Jared cusses out Marcus and dashes from the room.

Marcus became the new authority figure. So Gabrielle became the new GM, and she was able to resolve our Hope.

Yes, we can establish a stable community…somewhere else.

So Marcus grabbed Jude and said, “Let’s have a group meeting to discuss leaving. Round up everyone.”

And Jude said, “Yes, sir” and did it.