A Dark And Quiet Room

I designed a game tonight!

It’s time for Game Chef, which is an annual game design contest of sorts that’s been running for…um…ten years now, I think. A number of published games have come from this contest, including some significant ones like Polaris, The Mountain Witch, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, and A Penny For My Thoughts.

I somehow doubt that Keepers of the Lantern (PDF) will have the same kind of impact. It’s just a short one-shot RPG poem. Mostly disposable, in fact.

But I really wanted to write it.

This year, the Forge is closing down. The site will remain with an archive of threads, but that’s it.

Eleven years ago, I signed on to the Forge forums. (Aside: through a funny convergence of events, I actually have had a user account on the Forge longer than Ron Edwards. Serious! Here’s my profile, and here’s Ron’s.) And, for that eleven years, the Forge has been a major part of my life.

I’ve launched three games through the community at the Forge.

GNS/The Big Model/Whatever we’re calling it now was a major boon for me, as it helped me broaden my enjoyment of games by coming to see that different people are looking for different things from the same experience.

I’ve made friends and colleagues across the country through the Forge. In fact, I connected with Ralph Mazza largely through the Forge, before either of us lived in Peoria.

My thinking on rituals and ritual design was shaped in part by an article by Chris Lehrich that was posted on the Forge.

There were years–years, I say–where reading the Forge and grappling with the ideas being pushed around there was a major component of my intellectual life. In fact, the Forge proved to me that it is possible to have productive discourse on the Internet.

Over the last couple of years, my life hasn’t allowed as much room for interaction at the Forge. For better or worse, the Forge Diaspora moved on most of the people I was really interested in continuing to connect with. And, as my life changed, my ability to devote the time to this place was hampered. I stopped checking the Forge regularly. Then, over time, it fell off my radar.

I’m probably not alone in this. Ron’s right; it’s time for the Forge to move on.

But still, I like that the last hurrah for the Forge is about design. At its heart, the Forge was all about quality design, leading to quality play. And, from where I’m sitting, it succeeded brilliantly.

So, Ron, Clinton, Vincent, I salute the work you’ve done over the years. Thank you for what you built.

Thank you for the Forge.

Rewind to 2001. I’m just getting into the small press roleplaying field. I’m hanging out on places like RPG.net and the Gaming Outpost. And, one night, I find myself in an IRC chat channel related to RPG.net talking to a guy named Jason Blair. Jason Blair is writing a horror RPG starring children called Little Fears. I want to know why. Really. What sicko wants to write a game about children being threatened by monsters?

And he answered me. He told me about how the monsters were metaphors for various forms of child abuse. He tells me that he wants to educate, to bring awareness. He tells me that he wants a game about children fighting back. (At least, this is how I remember the conversation. As I say, it’s been a while.)

What can I say? He sold me.

I encouraged him to include a disclaimer. I wrote an example right there in chat. Jason turned around and used what I wrote in the front of his book.

I was in.

I went on to write the opening fiction for the game and to provide editing services. Jason and I went on to become friends. Little Fears went on to be nominated for the Origins Award. The rest is history.

Yes, I remember the controversy over the game. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who questioned the moral rectitude of someone who would make a game about child abuse. But I was proud of my work on Little Fears. Before Dirty Secrets or A Flower for Mara, Little Fears was a game about issues. And I knew that I wanted more.

It’s been ten years since Little Fears was released. Life has changed a lot for both Jason and I. But, it’s fair to say that we’re both still proud of the work that we did on Little Fears. So, when I heard that Jason was putting out a tenth anniversary edition of Little Fears, I was pretty stoked.

And then, a complimentary copy of Happy Birthday, Little Fears showed up in my inbox. Because Jason is a class act.

So, if you’re interested in a piece of gaming history, check out Happy Birthday, Little Fears. If you’re not afraid of the dark….

Okay, so I’m throwing in an entry to the RPG Solitaire Challenge. I’ve hacked together a game called Sleepers, which is intended to be an ever-expanding Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game. Sadly, the game needs to be set up on a wiki, and I don’t have the time to do that in this stage of development. However, if you’re willing, I’d love if you’d take a few minutes to read over the rules and tell me what you think. Here’s a link to the PDF. Thanks!

The nice thing about playing “Happy Birthday, Robot!” is that the actual play posts write themselves.

We played “Happy Birthday, Robot!” at Go Play Peoria today. The group consisted of Brian, Arianna, Toby, Elsie, and myself. Of particular note, only Brian and I have reached our majority. The others are between 10 and 12.

Toby laid his hands on the story early, and the rest of us ended up working with it, despite our initial valiant efforts to oppose the darkness. So, this is a little…uh…darker than our previous run.

I have to say, I still enjoyed playing this game. This one looks to get more play around these parts.

Happy Birthday, Robot!

Happy birthday, Robot!
Robot and his dog hate cake and fun but love laser guns.
Robot shot his factor worker and the factory worker got a band-aid and cake.
Robot was not very sorry at all but his dog was.
The dog, whose name was Dave, told Robot off; Robot ran away and cried.
Robot thought about his life and he remembered the story of Pinocchio.
Robot felt horrible and he decided to become a terrorist.
Robot decided to kill the evil president of the robot factory of Mars.
Meanwhile, Dave was following his friend Robot with a big bazooka to help Robot.
But then robot ninjas got in the way and opened fire, but Dave just laughed.
Robot said, “Dave, what is going on!?” and the robot ninjas fell down.
Robot gaped and Dave said, “Do you want to know what happened?”; Robot did.
The Evil President jumped out and shot Robot, but Dave jumped in a dumpster to hide.
The Evil President gloated while Robot was bleeding oil from his gaping wound, and Dave used his bazooka to open fire.
The Evil President was killed; rejoicing spread throughout the factor, and Robot blacked out forever…or so they thought.
Robot retreated into his mind while Dave performed surgery which worked.
When Robot woke up, he looked at his hand and it was a human hand.
Dave said to Robot, “We had to use spare parts when we fixed you.”
“Am I a real person?” said Robot.
Dave said, “We made you a cyborg, Robot.”
“Happy birthday, Robot!” said Dave.

Tim Koppang (of TCK Roleplaying) asked me for an update on Showdown. I figured that there were probably others who were wondering, and I have a languishing blog…. So, here we are.

Right now, the primary thing preventing me from releasing Showdown is time. Right now, other parts of my life have been demanding more and more of my attention. This isn’t really a bad thing, but it does mean that Dark Omen Games hasn’t really been getting my attention. But I really don’t want Showdown to languish in the state of “almost finished”.

This means that I need to start making a plan to ship Showdown.

Therefore, I have just a couple of tweaks that I want to make to the design, and then I’ll declare it to be complete. (I had another idea for Stances that I’m filing away for an expansion, if I ever feel like doing something like that.) I’m thinking that one or two more playtests would be sufficient to make this happen.

After that, I need to write the thing. I also want to play around with some component design. There are aspects of the game that might be served by having a few custom cards and the like. Right now, I’m considering releasing the game as a PDF and POD book, which would include print-and-play cards, and then selling POD cards as an optional add-on through The Game Crafter. I suppose this step could even come separately, if I wanted.

It’s almost there, really. I just need to push it across the finish line. So, now, I guess I should go off and plan out how I can do that.

Over the last year or so, I’ve heard rumblings about Happy Birthday, Robot! by Daniel Solis. The game proper was getting a lot of buzz. A storytelling game, designed to be played with children…. I was intrigued. The method which Daniel used to fund the project (collecting pledges through Kickstarter.com) was generating discussion as well. And then, when Fred Hicks announced that Evil Hat was going to fund a larger print run, I really started to pay attention. I had missed the sponsorship period on Kickstarter.com, and now I’d have a chance to buy it! [1]

But, really, should I? I’ve been conscious of the fact that my roleplaying time has been constrained of late. Did I really need to add another book to the gaming shelf that I might never play? And so, reluctantly, I let the game sit.

One moral of this story is that it pays to follow Fred Hicks on Twitter (@fredhicks). A couple of months ago, he put out a call for reviewers for Happy Birthday, Robot! who would be able to play with children and review from that perspective.

I write about games. I have children. I wanted a comp copy of Happy Birthday, Robot! It seemed like a perfect match to me. So I put my name forward.

Fred agreed, and early last week, I received my copy of Happy Birthday, Robot! in the mail. For free!

In other words, yes, this is a comped review.

However, as I hope I’ve made clear, I was interested in this game long before Fred put out a call for reviewers. Also, receiving this game for free will not sway my judgment of the game. [2]

It doesn’t have to. This is a great game that stands on its own merits.

How the game is played

Happy Birthday, Robot! is a collaborative storytelling game. By following the rules of the game, the players write a little story about a robot named Robot.

Because the game is collaborative, no one wins or loses. In fact, as you’ll see in a moment, the game actively encourages cooperation between the players.

When it’s my turn, I’m the Storyteller. The players to my right and left are my Neighbors. Together, we will write the next sentence in Robot’s story.

The first thing that I do as the Storyteller is roll up to three dice. Some of these I keep and some I give to my Neighbors, depending on what I roll. I can keep doing this until one of my Neighbors has four dice or more.

At this point, I get to start writing the sentence. Each die that I have gives me one word for the sentence. Plus, I can use Robot’s name for free (like “Robot” or “Robot’s”). Then the Neighbor to my right gets to add words to the sentence equal to the number of dice that he has. He also gets a free word: “and”. Finally, the Neighbor to my left gets to add words to the sentence based on the number of dice that he got. His free word is “but”.

I’m going to cheat and steal an example from the book. Let’s say that I got three dice. I could write this as my sentence:

Robot sees a flower.

See? I used three words plus my free word “Robot”.

Then, the “And” Neighbor goes. Let’s say he has two dice. So he changes the sentence like so:

Robot sees a flower and a starship.

Two words added, plus his free word.

Finally, the “But” Neighbor goes. If he had three dice, he might adjust the sentence like so:

Robot sees a flower and a starship that is crashing.

Three more words, and he chose not to use his free word.

Then, I would get a coin for each die that I got (in this case, three), and then it’s the next player’s turn.

Pretty simple, huh?

Those coins are pretty clever, too. They don’t actually help the person who earned them. Instead, the player who earned them can give them to a different player, who then gets one extra word for each coin that he was given.

You keep playing until someone ends up with ten coins. At the end of that round, you do a special Epilogue round to end the story. Then you’re done!

A little about the book

First, you just have to check out the art for Happy Birthday, Robot!. Probably the simplest way to do this is to check out this trailer for the game on Youtube. Isn’t it adorable?

And that’s what the book looks like. Bright and cheerful, with lots of happy colors, cute animals, happy children and, of course, adorable robots.

Moreover, the book is made to look very similar to a children’s storybook. It would look more comfortable on a shelf next to Dr. Seuss than next to Grey Ranks or Hero’s Banner. (Yes, that’s where it lives on my gaming shelf. Alphabetization does funny things sometimes.)

I will admit that I chuckled a bit to see the toothy maw of the Evil Hat on the back amidst all the cuteness, but that doesn’t affect the aesthetics in the slightest. Happy Birthday, Robot! could easily take up residence in a children’s library or a homeschooling bookshelf and be perfectly at home.

I mention libraries and schooling for a reason. The book is filled with tips and hints addressed to teachers using the game as part of schooling. Many of these thoughts are written by Cassie Krause, a fourth-grade teacher who playtested the game with her class.

Also, the book is full of pictures and diagrams, showing exactly how the game is to be played. In fact, the rules summary for the game fits onto one page, but an entire chapter is dedicated to an extended example of play, which does a fine job of showing how to apply the rules in various circumstances. By the time I was finished reading the game, I felt confident that I could easily teach the game to my children.

And so I did.

A little discussion of our actual play

Quotable: “We don’t have enough words for [Roger] to die.”–Isaac, age 10

On Sunday, I sat down to play Happy Birthday, Robot! with my children and my sister Gabrielle. Originally I was going to play with the three older children, but Noah and Justice ended up being a part of the action. Noah played on Gabrielle’s team, and Justice helped me roll my dice.

I started by showing the book to the children and waving the pictures at them. My hope was that the artistic style would rub off and influence the game play. I wasn’t opposed to death-dealing robots of doom, but I wanted the kids to understand that this was primarily a cute game about children’s stories. I think that it worked fairly well.

The game assumes that you will be making special Robot dice, with two BLANK sides, two AND sides, and two BUT sides. This is one area where the small press nature of the game shows itself. I’d love to have custom dice for this game, but I know that there’s no way that Daniel Solis or Evil Hat would be able to pull that off. And, at least right now, I couldn’t be bothered to print little stickers and put them on my dice.

To his credit, Daniel includes simple instructions on how to play with regular six-sided dice. Basically, ones and twos count as BLANKS, threes and fours count as AND, and fives and sixes count as BUT. It works, but it wasn’t quite as intuitive as I would have liked. Oh well. Fudge dice would probably work as Robot dice, too.

I also decided that I didn’t want to use actual pennies for the coins. The game says to keep them on heads until you give them away, at which point you flip them to tails. My children are infamous for fiddling with game bits, and I figured that they would likely flip some of them over and then not remember if they were on heads or tails. Instead, I dug into my game design closet and got out some red and green glass beads. When you earned coins, you took red glass beads. Then, to give someone else a coin, you spent a red bead to give the other player a green bead. This worked out quite well.

Teaching the game was a snap. The kids grasped the rules quickly and were quickly caught up in the joy of rolling dice and earning words. The first hurdle arrived when one of the children didn’t have enough words to complete the full thought that he was wanting to express. Suddenly, the idea of “creative constraints” became apparent to the children. On the whole, though, I thought that they did quite well with the experience. In fact, I think that it was good for them. Constraints breed creativity, and the children rose to the occasion.

Over the next hour, we worked together to tell the story of Robot’s birthday. For your amusement, here’s the story we created.[3]

Our Happy Birthday, Robot! story
by Seth, Gabrielle, Arianna, Isaac, and Samuel
with assistance from Noah and Justice

And so was Emily.

Everyone was engaged from start to finish, and I think that they would all happily play again. I know I would.

Thoughts on the game design

While this game is designed to be played with children, I think that it definitely benefits from an adult player or facilitator. I almost want to say that an adult is necessary, but I don’t know your children. I do know that competition comes easily to people, but collaboration can be hard. Having someone at the table with the social “juice” to insist that the players work together and to set a positive example of how to do that is important.

At the same time, the game provides numerous opportunities for these lessons of cooperation and collaboration to be taught. The coins provide hard mechanical opportunity to help out the other players. Beyond that, there’s the give-and-take of ideas at the table. Gabrielle talked about the game requiring a “generosity of creative space”, where players need to be willing to offer their suggestions while remembering that there needs to be room for everyone’s ideas. This is a good skill for life, not just games, and few people learn it. So, in this way, I think playing Happy Birthday, Robot! is good for its players.

I do think that it’s important to note that Happy Birthday, Robot! isn’t a roleplaying game as such. The players do not adopt any alternate personas or engage with the developing fiction as a participant. The game is very much about a shared authoring experience, making it more of a storytelling game. Additionally, the game is focused almost exclusively on process, unlike most roleplaying games, which are usually more fluid in nature. In this way, Happy Birthday, Robot! joins games like 1001 Nights, A Penny for my Thoughts, and maybe even my own Showdown, where the processes of play are focused more on the authorial experience than the immersive experience of a character.[4]

I have to admit: I’m really digging these sorts of games. Unlike most roleplaying games, which tend to require extensive setup and pre-game prep, these sorts of games are closer to being boardgames or parlor games. You can pull one off the shelf without any previous preparation, play for an hour or two, and then be done without any further commitment.

This style of game is definitely a better choice for children. I’ve tried playing roleplaying games with my children, and, as a rule, they do not yet have the attention span or desire to play in a continuous game over multiple sessions. On the other hand, Happy Birthday, Robot! was simple, engaging, and then, it was over. This is a big deal, particularly to my children, who want to know what we’re going to play next.

At the same time, I think that children who have spent time playing Happy Birthday, Robot! will be better roleplayers.[5] The skills required to play this game well are easily transferred to a full-blown roleplaying experience, and this can only be a good thing.

I should offer a word of caution. The game says that it is for players ages 10 and up. I’d say that’s about right. Players do need to have a basic grasp of sentence structure and the like. So, while Noah (age 6) enjoyed being involved in the game, I don’t think that he’s quite ready to be on his own yet.

Final thoughts

I hope it’s clear that I really enjoyed this game. It’s the kind of game that I can play with my children, and I could even see getting it out to play with non-gamers some evening over drinks. I might even incorporate it into our homeschooling. I know that there are a lot of games out there demanding attention, but this one is definitely worth a second look.

I’ll put it like this: if you are a gamer with children, you should buy this game to play with them. If you are a gamer without children, I still think that you will enjoy this game. It’s light, frivolous, and highly entertaining.

You can buy Happy Birthday, Robot! at the Evil Hat webstore or Indie Press Revolution.

Footnotes

[4] Look, I know that the whole issue of defining what is and isn’t a roleplaying game is somewhat complex. I also know that this analysis is somewhat incomplete, fairly broad, and full of holes and exceptions. Nonetheless, I think my general point stands. The fact that Happy Birthday, Robot! calls itself a storytelling game supports my point. Also, of the game I named, I’m aware that 1001 Nights is something of an edge case, since you’re roleplaying characters who are telling stories.

[5] This point applies to improv theater or other form of collaborative expression.

I don’t have a lot of time, so this will be somewhat impressionistic.

Yay! Sweet Agatha came in the mail!

Ooh…pretty envelope.

Open…carefully.

Hmm. Yeah, okay.

But it’s so pretty! I don’t want to cut that up. But, what new images will appear when I do?

Wow. That’s emotionally heavy.

This is so totally my kind of game.

Um, that looks like the beginnings of the key to that code. Maybe I’ll be able to figure out that cipher!

Uh oh. I think I’m hooked. And I haven’t even started playing yet.

Or have I? Hmm….

(Note: I’m writing this on my Blackberry. Hopefully, this won’t impact the quality of my writing….)

Last night, Crystal and I went on a PretendDate. This is the second time we’ve done this, and it was a fun time. But, what is a PretendDate? I’m glad you asked.

It all started one evening when Crystal and I were out and about. We were driving randomly and ended up near the home of some friends of ours. Crystal really wanted to ring their doorbell and run away slowly to pretend to prank them. She was quite pregnant at the time, and she thought this would be funny. We dithered about it for a bit and decided that we could just pretend that we did it and then tweet that we had done it. Then, maybe our friends would see it and we’d all laugh. So, that’s what we did.

Things got a little out of hand after that. We drove around the city to different places. Then we’d decide what we were going to pretend to do there. Then we’d tweet it (with the #pretenddate hashtag) and move on. So, all we actually did was drive around the city to different places. But, in our minds, we did all kinds of things.

So, last night, we really did get egg rolls…from Egg Roll Express on Sterling and Gale. Then we ate them in the parking lot of Westlake Plaza near a security guard in a car that looked a lot like a cop car. Then we poked around one of the Halloween stores that was there. Then we headed towards Spotted Cow, took a wrong turn, discovered that Spotted Cow was closed, then headed to Dairy Queen. Once there, we bought onion rings and ice cream sundaes. We ate them, drove a little longer, then headed home. Along the way, though, we tweeted our PretendDate adventures, because it’s fun.

(After we got home, I beat Crystal at Dominion and then we watched an episode of The Wire, but that wasn’t part of the PretendDate.)

So, while this PretendDate cost money, it didn’t have to. All you really need is the time to be away and the willingness to pretend together. It’s something between a roleplaying game and an alternate reality game. And, tweeting about it let’s others play along.

So, that’s a PretendDate. Please do steal the concept, if you like it. If you do, be sure to tweet about it with the #pretenddate hashtag. That way we can all play along.

Last night, Hope wasn’t settling. So Crystal and I fired up Season 1 of The Wire. I hadn’t realized exactly how much I was looking forward to watching this show again.

So, once again, through the dirty streets of a broken city. And this time, I’m taking notes for Major Crimes.

Mike Miller (not to be confused with Michael S. Miller) interviewed me for his new interview blog 3 (or so) questions. My answers were long, so they are going up in installments. The first one is here.

Offered without comment.

Colin Creitz saith:

A fortiori, then, Seth Ben-Ezra’s forthcoming game Showdown must be understood as a very postmodern deconstruction of sociopathic violence tropes in traditional games. “Rendering problematic the relationship between the act of playing and the fiction” is what it does best. Not only does it undermine the “heroic” traits of the protagonists in the fiction as we experience it, it undermines those same traits in the characters’ self-images. In the best games, we’re left with the hollow husks of the characters we thought we created, losers who resort to deadly violence because they have nothing left. It’s like playing D&D and Power Kill at the exact same time.

I don’t feel like I’ve written here much recently. So, to remedy that, I’m going to mention another game that I’ve started poking at.

First Responders is going to be my game about uniformed patrol cops. Yeah, it’s another “crime” game. This one I’m seeing as something of a cross between Dogs in the Vineyard and my hypothetical Collateral hack for Breaking the Ice with a general flow to gameplay inspired by Bliss Stage and the game structure from my first Unknown Armies campaign.

Did I drop enough names there?

I figure that this will probably be a three-player game, featuring two players as the cops and one player as Dispatch (the GM). There’s part of me that would like the game to be playable as a two-player game, but I think I’m going to need a GM for this one.

A couple weeks ago, Gabrielle and Raquel played Showdown, my current game-in-development. They were so taken with the story they created that Gabrielle actually wrote it up and posted it on her blog. It’s in several parts, which you can find here:

Showdown Intro
Showdown Part 1
Showdown Part 2
Showdown Part 3
Showdown Part 4
Showdown Part 5
Showdown Part 6
Showdown Part 7
Showdown Part 8

The story doesn’t show the actual game mechanics in use, but it does give a sense of the kind of story that the game produces.

I still need beta testers. If you’re interested, leave a comment!

In this comment, Barb asked a question:

This comment has nothing to do with role-playing games. I just noticed your interest in The Wire, Crash, Traffic, et al and want to know – what about these shows/movies interests/attracts you?

PS – I’m intrigued by these movies myself. I hesitate to say “enjoy” because what’s to enjoy about viewing a degraded society…but I’m drawn to these movies. In fact, Crash is one of my favorites.

It’s been a while since she asked the question. In fact, I started writing this post on January 6, 2009. I’m only posting it now. That’s a long time. So long that I’ve changed the name of the game to

Major Crimes. But I digress. The question still deserves an answer.

So, yeah, why would I do this to myself?

First, for the uninitiated, here are some links:

The Wire Season 1 opening credits

Traffic trailer

Crash trailer

I really like the Crash trailer, by the way. The bit at the end where the guy laughs about “people”…it just seems to sum up the movie so well.

And hey, while we’re here, a few clips from The Wire, so as you can get a feel for the show. FYI, these clips do including the use of language, so You Have Been Warned.

Who shot Snots Boogie–the opening scene of Season 1, Episode 1

D’Angelo explains McNuggets

And, one of the conflicted, tragic characters of the show…Bodie. Yeah, spoilers and such:

D’Angelo explains chess to Bodie and Wallace

Bodie and Poot kill Wallace

Bodie and Poot discover that their friend is dead

Bodie’s final moments

Of course, the last two clips are from Season 4, when you’ve almost forgotten that Bodie killed Wallace. Almost….

But hey, this isn’t supposed to be a fanboy post about The Wire. Or Traffic or Crash, for that matter. Rather, I’m supposed to answer the question, “Why are you a fan of these stories?” And, for that matter, why make a game about making these kinds of stories?

First off, these stories are about specific social issues of our day. Traffic is about the effects of the drug war on society, Crash is about the impact of racism on society, and The Wire…well, The Wire is about the failure of social institutions.

In other words, these stories are trying to show the human cost and individual impact of social issues. So, we’re not just talking about “drug addiction” in Traffic; we’re talking about Caroline Wakefield, the daughter of a rich and powerful man who ends up prostituting herself for another high. We’re not just talking about “gang violence” in The Wire; we’re talking about Bodie, a generally motivated kid who fights a losing battle, long after his gang has abandoned him. We’re not talking about “institutional racism”; we’re talking about Officer John Ryan, who first sexually harasses a black woman and then later ends up saving her.

Beyond that, these stories all share a basic philosophy: we are all connected. The choices that we make don’t just affect ourselves. They affect everyone, rippling out from us like waves in a pond.

Yet we rarely consider this simple fact. We are so self-absorbed that we don’t even care about how we are hurting others.

These issues matter to me quite a bit. I am tired of the rhetoric that surrounds these issues. Everyone seems to have a solution, but few care about the human cost of their choices. So, I want people to stop long enough to consider the consequences of their choices. Rather than chanting “Just say no to drugs!” and voting for more police and harsher jail sentences for drug trafficking, I want people to consider the causes that lead someone to become a drug dealer. Why would someone choose that life? Maybe if you understood that, you’d have a different solution.

Along the way, I’d love to deconstruct the American myth of the police. We somehow believe that the police can simultaneously protect us from all harm while preserving our rights. Or, you know, at least the “important” ones. (Yeah, I’ve written about this elsewhere.) As I watched The Wire, I was constantly impressed with the fact that the police officers were just regular guys. They got up and went to work. Sometimes they had a good day; sometimes they had a bad day. Ever make a mistake at work? Yeah, so did they.

And now I’m watching The Shield, which is based on a simple premise: it is impossible to erase crime without becoming a criminal. Depressing, eh? But this is the result of our expectations of the police. We want them to be all-powerful, but then we complain when they take the necessary steps to accomplish the unachievable goal that we set before them. I find myself veering between anger at the police for their actions and sympathy for the impossible expectations that we have established for them.

Maybe more people should watch The Wire and The Shield instead of the quasi-magical CSI.

Once again, I digress.

I make games about issues that I think are important. I enjoy playing games that are just for fun, but I design games that express my concerns. I think that our world would be improved by more people stopping and thinking about these issues. Why do we continue to fund the drug war? What’s so bad about crack? Is the security that we have gained from new police techniques worth the freedom that we have lost?

I have my own answers. But I’m not writing Major Crimes to force my opinions on you. I’m writing Major Crimes, because I want you to have to answer these questions.

(Barb, you might also find “Why I Hate Fun” an interesting read. The author defends the idea of emotionally tumultuous stories being “fun”. Sorry for taking so long to write this for you.)

First, watch this video. Go ahead.

Kinda pretty, isn’t it? Yeah, I like that.

Funny thing is that, before yesterday, I had no idea that there was formal glowstick dancing. You know, beyond just jumping around at a rave with a glowstick. But as a form of expression? Not even a little bit.

Also, I’ll bet that none of the people in that video are roleplayers. And that’s the point right there.

The world is full of wonderful human activities. People do the most amazing things, which are beautiful and delightful, which will be ignored by most people in the world. Glowsticking. Street luge (with a hat tip to Ben Lehman’s XXXXtreme Street Luge). Roleplaying.

And yet roleplayers persist in trying to claw for the mainstream, waiting for that one game which will come along and give us mainstream cred. Because, somehow, when that happens, we’ll all feel like we have permission to enjoy this quirky activity that we call roleplaying.

Glowsticking will never be mainstream, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the dancers in that video. Instead, they are simply embracing that which they love; whoever shows up will be included.

Maybe roleplayers should just focus on embracing that which they love, not on demanding recognition from the mainstream.

I think I’m going to watch that video again.