On this day in 2007, I signed up for World Of Warcraft. I met some amazing people… Artisania, Slade, Liore, Shivae, Kolja, Teledriath, Iloam, Heulwen, Kharris…
Those days are gone, but I’ll always remember them, and the people that made them great.
Thinking about characters and games, and how my favourite long-term characters are mainly superheroes. Why is that? I have had fantasy characters I’ve loved, but they don’t have the longevity that superheroes do. I think there are a couple of reasons for that.
First, fantasy characters are almost always tied to a specific fantasy world. More than that, even: a specific fantasy world being GMd by a specific person. You can make up the same character more than once for different settings or different GMs, but they really aren’t the same character.
For superheroes, it’s not like that. If the game system is the same (and in my experience, most people stick with one superhero game system for years and very rarely change it), you can drop a superhero from one game into another with minimal fuss. The genre makes that a trivial exercise: the hero moves from their old campaign city to a new one, or gets recruited by a new team, or at worst, gets sucked into a vortex and arrives in a new version of Earth. For a superhero, that’s just a typical Tuesday.
Second, fantasy characters almost always exist on a “level” spectrum. A typical fantasy character changes a LOT from Day 1 to Day 100, with new powers, more potent abilities, better equipment, and so on. There are fantasy game systems that don’t have this continual power inflation, but in most cases, a fantasy character that’s been played for a year is virtually unrecognizable from how they started out.
For superheroes, it’s not like that. In most game systems, a superhero starts out more or less fully-formed. A speedster, a vigilante detective, a flying armored alcoholic… they don’t change that much, even after a decade of play. Sure, they get a bigger base, they fly a little faster, maybe pick up a new power or two, but the core of the character doesn’t really change.
That’s why I have superhero characters that I have played for *decades*, and could easily play again. Could I do that with any of my most beloved fantasy characters? No, not really. They are tied to a specific time and place in a way that superhero characters really aren’t.
Three years ago today, the cat finally escaped the bag: my “halfling” rogue character got outed as a human! I got to use every dodge and half-truth I had thought of before the whole truth finally came out. I had a lot of fun, and the other PCs were gobsmacked that Shadow the fifty-ish male halfling had been a tween-age female human the whole time I had been playing “him” (about a year and a half)….
We were in the very first town in the entire history of the campaign that had even a single halfling in residence. The dwarf barbarian, Elifonsah, who had been suspicious of my character for a while for reasons he could not quite articulate (other than Shadow (my character) “seemed to be hiding something” — which is true), could not help but notice that Shadow (at 4′ 6″) was a good foot and a half taller than any halflings we see.
Shadow: “I’m tall. So? Focus on the mission.”
Elifonsah: “You’re a giant. You’re practically as tall as I am.”
Shadow: “It was that boon that the celestial gave us. I told you it made me taller.” (In fact, the boon did increase Shadow’s Strength by 2, to 12. Each of the party members got a +2 to a random stat. Elifonsah got +2 Intelligence.)
Elifonsah: “Uh huh.”
Later, when we split up to gather information about the mystery that brought us to this town, Elifonsah took this as an opportunity to find and question the local halflings on how one could tell a halfling from a non-halfling, other than by height. He learned that halflings (in this game) have somewhat elongated heads (when compared to humans), and slightly pointed ears. Shadow, of course, wears a hood almost 24 hours a day.
When the group met up again, Elifonsah grabbed Shadow’s hood and pulled it back, revealing a ponytail of hair on a human-shaped head that had round, human-like ears.
Elifonsah: “Ah, ha!” he shouted triumphantly. “YOU ARE NO HALFLING!”
Shadow: (shrug) “Yeah, and? I never said I was a halfling. What are you even talking about?”
Elifonsah: (blinks) “… Wait. What? No! You said… I am sure we… ”
Elifonsah: (to Coenrad, the human sorcerer) “We knew he was a halfling, right? He TOLD us he was a halfling, right?”
Coenred: (puzzled) “Well, I thought he was a halfling… I.. thought he said that. Didn’t he say that?”
Elifonsah: (to Shadow) “You said you were a halfling!”
Shadow: (calmly ) “No, I didn’t. Why would I say that? Have you been drinking?” (It is well known that Elifonsah is a drunk.)
Elifonsah: “No! Yes! That doesn’t matter! You’re not a halfling!”
Shadow: “Let’s say I’m not a halfling. So what? What difference does it make?”
Elifonsah: “Then what are you!”
Shadow: (indignant) “What am I? What are you?”
Elifonsah: “What am I? I’m a dwarf!”
Shadow: (satisfied) “Well okay then.”
Elifonsah: “What? No! What are you!”
Shadow: (indignant) “What am I? What are you?”
Elifonsah: “What am I? I’m a dwarf!”
Shadow: (satisfied) “Well okay then.”
Elifonsah: “STOP THAT!”
Shadow: “Stop what?”
Elifonsah: “You’re messing with my head!”
Shadow: “I really don’t think so.”
Elifonsah: (to Coenred) “He’s trying to confuse us!”
Coenred: “I think it’s working.”
Elifonsah: (to Shadow) “You’re no halfling. I want to know what you are.”
Shadow: (exasperated sigh) “What if I was a half-halfling? A — what would that be? Quarterling? — What if I was a quarterling? Would it matter?”
Elifonsah: “I’ve never heard of a half-halfling!”
Shadow: “Delgoro is a half-orc. Leannan is a half-elf. Why not a half-halfling?”
Elifonsah: (to Coenred) “Are there half-halflings? Is that a thing?”
Coenred: “I, uh… I really don’t know. I’ve never met one.”
Shadow: “You never met a halfling before you met me, either.”
Elifonsah: “YOU ARE NO HALFLING!”
Shadow: “I never said I was. I just said you hadn’t met one.”
Elifonsah: (to Shadow’s best friend Nigel, the human cleric in his fifties, who joined the group with Shadow a year and a half ago) “Did he say he was a halfling, or not?”
Nigel: “I’m… not… sure.”
Elifonsah: (to Shadow) “I want to know what you are. How can we trust you? You’re keeping secrets!”
Shadow: “Oh, you don’t have secrets? Really?”
Elifonsah: “That’s not the point! You’ve been lying to us!”
Shadow: (offended) “I have never lied to you.” (This is a lie.)
Elifonsah: “I want to know what you are, right now.”
Shadow: (pulls down face mask, which normally covers Shadow’s face from the nose on down) “Fine: I’m a human, okay? But I am the same person I was yesterday. I am just as good at stabbing people now as I was before.”
Elifonsah: “You’ve been lying to us! How can we trust you!”
Shadow: “Pfft. I could have killed you a dozen times over if I wanted to.”
Elifonsah: “Aha!”
Shadow: “‘Aha’ what? I didn’t!”
Elifonsah: “You are sneaky!”
Shadow: “That’s my job! I go into danger first and then come back and tell you about it! I keep you safe!”
Coenred: “That is his job. He’s the scout.”
Elifonsah: “Nigel, did you know about this?”
Nigel: “Well, yeah.”
Elifonsah: “For how long?”
Nigel: “Always, ever since I met her.”
Elifonsah: (indignant) “Always!”
Elifonsah: (shocked) “WAIT, WHAT!?!”
Elifonsah: (to Shadow) “WHAT ARE YOU!?!?!?!”
Shadow: “I already said I was human.”
Elifonsah: “And female?”
Shadow: “Yeah, duh. (pulls sword) Do you have a problem with that? Because if you do, I will cut you into tiny pieces.”
Elifonsah: (to Coenred) “SEE? SEE? He… she…. she’s threatening me!”
Shadow: “Why do you even care? I do my job. I am just as good at stabbing people now as I was this morning. What difference does it make??”
Elifonsah: “You’ve been keeping secrets! How do we know you don’t have other secrets? How do we know we can trust you?”
Shadow: “I saved Coenred. I helped save Leannan. I’ve fought with you since I was this tall.” (holding up hand to her chin) “What else do you want?”
Elifonsah: (still skeptical) “I guess that makes sense.”
Shadow: “Good. Now can we get on with the mission?”
Elifonsah: “Wait. If you’re human, how old are you? You’re really small for a human.”
Shadow: (shrugs) “I dunno. Why does that matter?” (Shadow is 12, but she does not know that, or even what her birthday is. And she’s small even for a 12-year-old.)
Elifonsah: “Huh.”
Shadow: “Are we good now? Can we get on with the mission?”
Elifonsah: (sullen) “Yeah. I guess. (pause) I need a drink.”
I am leaving out some stuff where Efilonsah was asking Nigel about how he and Shadow met. Short version: Shadow was an 8 year old street orphan, Nigel was bleeding to death, and Shadow dragged Nigel to a temple. They’d been together ever since.
Last night I dreamed that I had made up a RPG character who was a male Asian-American police detective in Los Angeles, who knew karate and had expertise with motorcycle stunts. Initially, he was going to speak with a TV-stereotype accent, but then I changed my dream-mind and decided that he was from Van Nuys and spoke just like everyone else in southern California. (I’m not sure what that says about me.)
The game system was an adaptation of ZeroSpace to TV action shows (which is certainly feasible, although it’s not something I’d ever considered before now), and I had a printed character sheet that I was taking to the game. The printed character sheet was the size of a bath towel. When I got to the game (which was apparently going to be played in a fast food restaurant — brightly lit, plastic chairs, little tables), everyone else was already there, including Susan: each of them had their own huge character sheets.
Lloyd was going to to be GMing the game. When I handed him my huge character sheet, he started walking to the other side of the room, but my character sheet got stuck on something and tore. The last thing I remember in the dream was being annoyed at that and saying, “Aw, come on, man.”
The image above is Daniel Henney, an actor who resembles how I imagined the character in the dream.
Once filled with rum & coke (or some other nonmagical beverage) and a piece of ice (optional), the glass will continue to be full and the ice will not melt, no matter how many sips the holder takes from it. Additionally, as long as the holder has a firm grasp on the glass, it will remain level and the liquid will not spill regardless of what befalls the holder. Julian’s Magic Glass also has the property that the holder will be allowed to carry the glass without consequences even at times and places where it is impractical, inappropriate, or would otherwise be prohibited (in combat, on horseback, in a prison, at an audience with royalty, etc.). Observers can see the glass and its contents: it just doesn’t occur to them to object to it.
What the whole “sexism/harassment in gaming/conventions/comic shops” looks like to me…
Someone, we’ll call them Chris, says, “We need to do something about these precipices with no railings. People keep falling — or getting pushed — over the edge, and other folks are just standing around while it happens. If you see someone on the edge of a precipice, don’t just stand there: give them a hand. And maybe put some railings around these things.”
Then a handful of people show up wearing “RailingHate” t-shirts, shouting, “This is anti-precipice liberal hate speech! Precipices are not a problem!” And they start pushing people into the chasm.
Chris is horrified, and a little confused. “Seriously? You just pushed someone over that precipice!”
But the RailingHate crowd shouts, “That’s a lie! They dated a guy whose cousin worked across the street from a company that once made signs for a railing company! It’s a huge conspiracy!” And they push a couple more people over the precipice.
Chris says, “What are you doing?? Are you insane? Why are you doing that? Stop! Please stop!”
Meanwhile, the RailingHate crowd is grabbing people and tossing them into the precipice, while shouting, “There is no need for railings! No one is falling into these precipices — they just want attention! It’s all about ethics in building design!”
It’s the most weird, demented, surreal thing I have ever seen in real life.
There is a computer game called Baldur’s Gate. It’s a fantasy adventure game based on Dungeons & Dragons, along the lines of Lord Of The Rings. An expansion for the game was released recently, and in that expansion there is a minor character named “Mizhena” who, if you engage with them and repeatedly ask them questions, will eventually tell you that they are transgender. If you are unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons, you might not realize that transgender characters have been a part of that game world for 30 or 40 years. It’s not new. It is, however, new to the Baldur’s Gate game.
As a result, a small segment of the Baldur’s Gate fan base revealed themselves to be vile bigots. These bigots created a “controversy”, objecting to the inclusion of this character in the game.
This “controversy” comes at an interesting time. Today, April 8 2016, is the 48th anniversary of the broadcast of the Petula Clark Show on NBC. Petula Clark was a very popular singer at the time, having fifteen consecutive Top 40 hits in the USA, starting with “Downtown” in 1965. Clark was joined on her special by Harry Belafonte, who had made Calypso and Caribbean music popular throughout the world with his singing in the 1950s. During a duet toward the end of the show, Clark touched Belafonte briefly on the arm. Doyle Lott, a vice president from Chrysler, the show’s sponsor, was present at the taping. Lott objected to the “interracial touching”. He pressured NBC to remove the “forced” contact between Clark and Belafonte, to remove this “social justice” from the show. However, Petula Clark stuck to her guns, and the special was broadcast with the “controversial” touching. When the show aired, it received high ratings.
It’s been over 40 years, and the Doyle Lotts of the world are still manufacturing controversies to defend their bigotry. I think it is right and just that people are enjoying the music of Petula Clark and Harry Belafonte to this very day, while Doyle Lott has been reduced to a footnote in the history of civil rights.
There are many cases where people of good will can and do disagree. That is usually the case, in my opinion. However, these cretins who wail and moan and gnash their teeth any time they see someone other than themselves represented are not people of good will. They are the bartender who says, “We don’t serve their kind here.” They are the prejudiced priest who refuses to heal the half-orc in the party. They are the pig-faced sheriff that says, “We don’t take kindly to outsiders around here.” They are the craven peasant accusing a midwife of witchcraft. They’re the corrupt king who doesn’t want the adventurers to fight the dragon because it’s never his daughter that gets sacrificed to it.
These are not people of good will. They are not defenders of the sanctity of gaming. They are, by their own choice and by their own hand, villains.
I have created a chart for Trail Of Cthulhu, showing when it is a good idea to spend Stability to improve a Stability roll, and when it isn’t (note: it usually isn’t). Maybe this will be useful to someone.
For myself, I do not think I will use this mechanic as written. I think that I will use the following house rules.
That’s orders of magnitude simpler, and will always work out better for the character than the standard “spend” rules.
(* Rounded in the character’s favor. Always round in the character’s favor.)
This is the fourth and final new arcana for the Spellbinder specialization: Thought.
Thoughts are as clay to be molded.
You can perceive the presence and location of thinking entities. When you first cast the spell or as a major action during the duration, you can search for minds within 10 yards of you. The spell can penetrate barriers, but 2 feet of rock, 2 inches of metal, or a thin sheet of lead will block the spell. You can’t sense a creature with an Intelligence less than -2, one that doesn’t understand any language, or one that makes a successful Willpower (Self-Discipline) test vs. your Spellpower. If the target fails the Willpower (Self-Discipline) test, you know their precise location, but you can’t actually listen to their thoughts. This lasts for 10 minutes, and you can keep it active for 2 MP per further 10 minutes. While the spell is active, you will be able to cast spells from the Thought Arcana against the target as though you could see them.
You can silently converse with any single person or creature within 10 yards of you that you can see or that you have located through the use of the Sense Minds spell. An unwilling participant may block the communication with a successful Willpower (Self-Discipline) test vs. your Spellpower. An unwilling participant is under no obligation to respond to you if they fail this test, but they will still hear you. You can switch to converse with a different target within range as a major action. Share Thoughts lasts for 10 minutes, and you can extend it for 10 minutes for each 2 MP you spend.
You can perceive the thoughts of any single person or creature within 10 yards of you that you can see or that you have located through the use of the Sense Minds spell. You can’t perceive the thoughts of a creature with an Intelligence less than -2 or one that doesn’t understand any language. The target may attempt a Willpower (Self-Discipline) test vs. your Spellpower. If the target succeeds on this test, the spell ends, and the target becomes aware that you were attempting to pry into their mind. If the target fails this test, you learn their surface thoughts — what is uppermost on their mind at that moment. As a major action, you can either shift your attention to the thoughts of another creature within range or attempt to probe deeper into the same creature’s mind. If you probe deeper, the target may attempt another Willpower (Self-Discipline) test vs. your Spellpower. If the target succeeds on this test, the spell ends, and the target becomes aware that you were attempting to pry into their mind. If the target fails this test, you gain insight into their motivations, their emotional state, and their general intentions. Sift Thoughts lasts for a number of minutes equal to your Willpower, and you may, if you wish, monitor the thoughts of a single target this entire time.
You can insert a single clearly stated thought into the mind of any single person or creature within 10 yards of you that you can see or that you have located through the use of the Sense Minds spell. You can’t place a thought into the mind of a creature with an Intelligence less than -2 or one that doesn’t understand any language. The target may attempt a Willpower (Self-Discipline) test vs. your Spellpower. If the target succeeds on this test, they recognize the thought as not being their own, and they know that you placed it there. If the target fails this test, they believe the thought to be their own. They will treat the thought with all of the same seriousness as any other sincerely held belief, and they will act accordingly. This is not mind control: the target is not your puppet. How they respond to this new thought will depend on their existing desires, fears, and loyalties. Some examples of appropriate thoughts are:
An ability test uses three six-sided dice (3d6). Two of the dice should be one color and the third a different color. The off color die is known as the Stunt Die. The three dice are rolled and added together, and then 2 more is added if the character has an appropriate focus (3 if the character has taken the focus twice). The final number is the test result.
Test result = 3d6 + ability + focus
The test result is compared to a static target number (TN) in the case of a Basic Test or the test result of another character in an Opposed Test. A character wins a Basic Test by meeting or beating the target number and an Opposed Test by beating the opponent’s test result. The results of the Stunt Die can be used to determine the degree of success and to break ties in the case of an Opposed Test.
[…]
- Leave the dice on the table after a roll because the result of the Stunt Die may be important.
- The Stunt Die only counts for successful tests.
- In opposed tests, ties are broken by the Stunt Die, or the higher ability if those too are tied.
(Fantasy Age Basic Rulebook, “Mastering The Rules”)
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Blackmoor Vituperative