Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

That a person exerts his will over another is instinct, but how he structures the act is technology, and his justifications? Magic. Therein lie the roots of the Hegemony: a network of Awakened who uphold modernist values – including those the great Masses, its protectorate, rarely speak of but firmly believe. The Hegemony is the Consensus’ guardian and shepherd, devoted to a Great Work that would whip and bribe Sleepers to the cusp of Ascension as clients, not creators. They guard the Pure Forms of ultimate truth from assault by anarchists, unearthly beings and other threats to the Great Chain of Being.

Part of the Hegemony is truly ancient. This Kyriarchy claims descent from ancient priest-kings and culture heroes: the first lords of fire, agriculture and medicine. They learned that true power lay not in discovering wonders, but capturing them within a structure of control. The enlightened deserved undiluted access to the source of power – everyone else lived to serve. Over centuries, lord and sacral officiant drifted into two distinct roles and the Kyriarchs diversified into numerous factions. By the Middle Ages their secret orders (In Europe, the Cabal of Pure Thought and the Sangreal) dominated the world in secret, acting through kings and bishops, soldiers and scholars. Serfs toiled, nations went to war and it was good.

As long as inventions and spiritual studies reinforced the Great Chain of Being, the Kyriarchy had no quarrel with them. If they challenged the order of things they deserved death or exile. Most renegade Awakened chose the latter, and why not? The world was vast, mostly unexplored and filled with spaces where sorcerers could study in academic covenants. Where magi and philosopher scientists could not physically relocate they hid among the people, fearful of exercising too much influence lest Kyriarcy warriors respond.

As the late Middle Ages bloomed into the Renaissance Europe brimmed with wild ideas and rebellions, challenges to sacral authority and rule by oath. The opportunity wasn’t lost on the exile wonder-worker, who plotted to expand long-constrained dominions. Behind a crusade against heresy, the Cabal of Pure Thought raised armies at Languedoc against Mistridge and Carcassone – an error, for the resident Hermetics and Artificers gave no thought to an alliance until a common enemy battered at both their doors.

The seed bloomed, attracting other covenants until a truly dangerous idea took hold: that a world without aristocrats and serfs could exist. At the Alliance of the Ivory Tower, dreams coalesced into worldwide ambitions.

This wasn’t the first time the Kyriarchy had faced this kind of challenge, so it used a practiced response: It bought half of the rebellion. In truth, it had long since seduced some of the newer mysteries – those of the merchants and explorers – to its side. It was easy enough to bring the majority of Artificers across with the promise of wealth, influence and the freedom to pursue their most ambitious projects. The life-scholar Cosians were already strongly associated with the Church, and were offered indulgences against all sins in perpetuity, and freedom against the earthly punishments they would normally demand.

Never numerous, the Solificati alchemists were offered nothing more than the opportunity to survive behind the promise that win or lose, the Kyriarchs would take pains to extinguish them utterly.  Philosopher scientists from all factions switched sides, but the Solificati pretended to stay with the alliance until they opened the Ivory Tower to invaders, on the day of the Great Betrayal.

The Kyriarchy made concessions. It incorporated the technologists as equals and aligned certain occult ideas to match the newcomers’ obsessions. It didn’t matter. From the dawn of their order the Kyriarchs knew that bringing fire to the people was nothing without the power to deny it, to ration the merest sparks as rewards for obedience.

The Hegemony changed greatly in the intervening centuries, but it still reflects the unity of two former enemies that uneasily manage the world. The modern Kyriarchy and Technocracy are more ideologies than factions now, and adherents of both systems inhabit every Convention.

Conventions

The 21st Century Hegemony consists of:

The Cartel: They’re masters of economics down to its purest form, where value is relative, finite, manipulable and beholden to desire, not moral principle. The Pragmatists employ formulae that reduce everything to a unified abstraction and manipulates it to serve their wills. Cartel prodigies use Platonic-mathematic rites, economic power blocs and the social structures of sanguine utility made manifest.

The Curia: Descended from the Cabal of Pure Thought, the Curia applies moral absolutes in the name of a remote God, creating taxonomies of sin drive obedient behavior. The Exarchs rarely believe every value they insinuate into the populace – one law applies to the common Sleeper but another rules the Elect. Their theurgy, though subtle, still disturbs atheist allies.

The Illuminati: The  Administrators overthrew the aristocratic Sangreal, replacing divine right with applied science and political theory. Still, many of their techniques are simply rituals and biases inherited from a world that believes in reason but doesn’t practice it, from cult-like managerial techniques to applied “evolutionary psychology.” Their Men in Black are some of the most feared operatives in the Hegemony.

The Ingenium: The Engineers concentrate apply physical science the problems of power. The Hegemony needs AI to monitor its possessions, machines to measure, move and work, and weapons to kill their enemies. Some “engineers” devote themselves to pure research, but the Convention’s primary focus is application in the service of the Hegemony’s agenda. The Ingenium possess some of the purest Technocrats: mean and women who believe that human destiny is best entrusted to scientific principles – and the fact that they create and interpret them is merely the advantage of superior knowledge.

The Progenitors: Despite reductionist efforts, living things continue to hinder the dream of a unified Enlightened Science, to the Progenitors maintain their place. They apply their particular expertise to drugs, genetic engineering and surgery to everything from human enhancement to agriculture, defining subjects by the most obvious potential in their genotypes. Deviation is disease. The Physicians will cure it.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Transhuman Adepts

We Are All Beautiful Information

Immortality is a dream as old as Gilgamesh. Scholars have hungered for transcendental knowledge from the most ancient days, and didn’t separate numinous enlightenment from their pragmatic studies. The Transhuman Adepts may be a new movement but they partake of that most ancient impulse – the same felt by Plato, Pythagoras and William of Ockham.

The Enhanced know their legacy but they don’t look back; archaic memes are for the archives. In the here and now, science and technology prune away the most egregious mistakes in human thought. The Tradition’s efforts rest on dozens of pragmatic technologies, but take their unifying principles from a smaller number of powerful ideas. First, there’s the idea of a computational cosmos. There’s no difference between a sufficiently accurate mathematical model and the object it represents.

Subordinate to this grand idea are others: universal evolution via mathematical replicators, the denial of a “mind essence” so that consciousness can be limitlessly expanded, and the body-as-information’s mutability via genetic engineering, practical nanotechnology and more. All of these tools focus on overcoming physical, mental and political barriers to human development. Abandoning the natural, evolved state is essential; the Enhanced believe the Ascension War is a battle between memes stuck in the Darwinian game, lashed to the human mind’s limits. Victory relies on becoming more than human, thereby developing a vision greater than the rest.

History

It’s easy to forget that Great Betrayal grew out of virtuous motives. With the Kyriarchy’s help, the Order of Reason turned away political collapse, total war and threats from Beyond. They prepared Sleepers for the coming Utopia – an age of peace and plenty that the Hegemonic Time Table delayed again and again. A few scientists of conscience became dissatisfied with the status quo’s glacial pace.

Many members of this faction belonged to groups that the Kyriarchy discriminated against. The Hegemony’s elders told female, homosexual, Jewish, and non-European members of the Order of Reason that policies repressing their Sleeping counterparts served the greater goal of cultural unity. It was supposedly no statement on their personal abilities, but it was more telling that scientists from these groups never rose to a position where they could change the policy.

The Æther Society’s defection did little to inspire the discontents. Ætherians were eccentrics who lacked a constructive vision for the world. Still, they demonstrated that there was room for Awakened Science outside of the Technocratic fold. The Utopians developed into a semi-formal faction that the Hegemony was forced to tolerate – it couldn’t stand another defection.

The Second World War was the Utopians’ watershed moment. Every state had its sins, but the Axis was a study in unalloyed evil – and the Hegemony supported it. Officially, it was a purely pragmatic decision that had nothing to do with the Axis’ foul ideologies. It would just be easier to guide a few totalitarian regimes than a shifting political mosaic. The Utopians not only believed that no rationale could justify the choice, but knew that true Fascist sympathizers populated the upper ranks. The Utopians abandoned the Technocracy, supported the Allies and at the war’s end, negotiated an alliance with the Traditions.

The Utopians kept their name until 1979, when cultural and scientific changes prompted the Tradition to debate its purpose and reassemble on the basis of the rising belief that members could create a better world by attacking human limitations over any specific political goal, but a significant faction believes this was less of a constructive development than appeasement designed to snatch talent away from the Technocracy. The remaining Utopian Engineers continue to be the Tradition’s conscience.

Appearance

Some Transhuman Adepts are moderately fit and rail thin – calorie restriction is a proven life-extension method and they hope to survive long enough to attain Consensus-accepted immortality. Others don’t care about a future where they might live forever with Sleeper-friendly technology. Some neglect their bodies, caring more about life on the plane of abstract information. Another group uses drugs and genetic therapy to gain superhuman abilities, but the benefits are usually short-lived or exact a penalty in medical and psychological complications.

Homemade surgery is an initiation rite for some, who carry scars and other obvious signs of the results: strange ports and studs erupting through their skin, or wires visible just beneath the flesh. Smart Transhuman Adepts learn to hide any sign that can’t be explained away as radical body art, and many camouflage their efforts with ordinary body modification. Meat is a mutable decoration.

Style-wise, Transhuman Adepts are all over the map. Older members cling to the punk fashions that were in vogue during the 1980s, but the majority either care nothing for fashion or accent a mainstream look with oblique references to cutting edge technology.

Paradigm

The Tellurian is a computational medium: a cosmic bestiary of equations that range from galaxies to atoms. Conventional science sits on the verge of seeing reality’s basic unit of representation, but even then can’t view the computational states beneath – much less alter them without the crudest of tools. A Sleeper scientist or engineer is like a blind watchmaker adjusting his creation with blacksmith’s tongs. The goal of science is to behold the cosmos’ pure mathematical forms. The ethos of science is to apply the results to humanity, freeing it from the savage evolutionary games that prevent it from transcending its boundaries.

Sleepers lack a certain degree of . . . inspiration. They might want to improve the species or have the capacity to view their own consciousness as an objective target for study, but they don’t combine both desires with a signature spark of genius. Theoretically, anyone could study science and technology while cultivating an objective view of consciousness but in practice, few attain the refinement to become mages. Sleepers can become experts in a narrow, static field, but psychological barriers prevent them from truly Awakening.

Magic? There are only technologies: methods that manipulate the universe’s mathematical forms by affecting their external manifestations. There’s little need to exert one’s will on the pure Telluric substructure when enlightened applications of biology, chemistry and physics will do. There are a few numinous operations that break down the divide between individual consciousness and the rest of the cosmos, but these are so rare that some Transhuman Adepts doubt they truly exist.

Nevertheless, there are crude ways to hack reality through direct psychic command and proto-science. That’s what other mages do. They manipulate symbols that happen to be effective memes or accurate models of an object, and catalogue these correspondences in their own traditions. They’ll never attain the breadth and efficacy of true technologies, but they serve and occasionally even inspire.

The computational cosmos’ one flaw is that it can accept multiple models – and some models have more potential to improve the human condition than others. Limited paradigms leave much to the dumb operation of cosmic forces by appealing to a great mystery or incompleteness principle. Once confirmed by observation, these models gain standing in the meta-Darwinian competition between cosmological models. That’s why the Consensus exists, and why less desirable models still dog Enhanced efforts to go farther, unlock the fundamentals, and give all humanity the power to master them.

Foci

Computers, scientific instruments, synthetic drugs and other chemicals, surgery, laboratories

Spheres

Correspondence or Mind

Sects

The Enhanced’s factions are political, with each accepting scientists and engineers of any specialty, though each group attracts specialists in particular fields. Transhuman Adepts routinely drift from one faction to another as their opinions shift.

Posthuman Front: A direct action cadre of the physically enhanced, the Posthuman Front serves two vital roles. Members recognize the importance of the human body. They “upgrade” their own with a variety of technologies and apply the results to research that may help Sleepers overcome disease, aging and disability. They’re also the Tradition’s most effective soldiers, strong and fast enough to counter comparably augmented enemies. The Posthuman Front’s members are the most likely to carry serious Paradox backlashes, since they apply radical experiments to themselves.

Reality Hackers: Peerless computer scientists and programmers, the Reality Hackers are the most devoted to the Tradition’s metaphysics over its numerous applications. They wish nothing less than to make the universe programmable by everyone, breaking down the division between physicality and information. In practice, many show disdain for “meat” issues. Matter is just a particularly obstinate form of data, and it might be better to disdain it entirely by creating a new universe with more tractable “permissions.” They develop better ways for people to interact with computers, improving the number of “digital natives” able to transcend the physical world.

Utopian Engineers: Utopians carry the Tradition’s original torch, urging it to pursue its efforts in a socially responsible context. The global majority is more concerned with daily survival than novel technologies. Without political activism, the Enhanced will only benefit the already-privileged, making them nothing more than a Hegemonic tool with delusions of independence. Utopian memeticists, anthropologists and economists focus on how to make scientific development relevant to the needs and values of all cultures, instead of the elites most able to skip to the head of the line when it comes to reaping the rewards.

Concepts

Hacker, scientist, backstreet engineer, information broker, technology smuggler, doctor, designer drug merchant, social scientist, Web activist

Stereotypes

Æther Society: Science isn’t a set of personal preferences, but you have to admit that their obsessions bear the odd fascinating fruit.

Eumenides: I like my justice without porn. Reincarnation is strangely plausible – replicators are everywhere – but I doubt it goes that far.

Order of Hermes: It’s failed science, but they make up for it with pure attitude. Sometimes the math even works.

Templars: If we’re living in a simulation, there is a God. If it’s all about randomly spawned replicators, there isn’t one. In CERN We Trust.

Vajrapani: They stretch the potential of unimproved minds and bodies to their very limits, but they won’t take the obvious next step: Improve the potential!

Verbenae: There is no memeplex so silly that someone won’t sacrifice a goat over it. Just saying.

Hollow Underground: RTFM.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Today’s been an interesting one for White Wolf, CCP’s tabletop imprint. At ICC it announced that it was “freeing” (and dismantling much of) the Camarilla, developing new community and game management tools, and kinda sorta maybe not printing game books as we know them any more. Ryan Dancey was quite a bit firmer in a Gamasutra interview where he declared the whole thing a “legacy business.”

I’ve been aware of what was coming for a while and suspected it since 2008, when I heard some serious shifting of the tabletop release schedule, ranging from the EVE RPG being shelved to some other developments which were leaked to the tabletop gamer public, but as I found the rest out in confidence I’m not going to repeat them here.

Can I tell you exactly what’s going on? This is difficult as there are some things I know which I think give me a somewhat informed opinion, but which even couching in weasel words would make for a breach of ethics. But I can use it as a way to comment on trends I think apply to the situation and are relevant to a wider audience.

Tabletop RPG Producers Are the Best Open-Ended IP Developers in the World

Is this a hubris-ridden statement? Maybe — but it ain’t braggin’ if it’s true. There are multiple occasions where RPGs have had a drastically positive influence on intellectual properties. Star Wars is the best known example. As an open-ended property, Star Wars essentially owes its chops to West End Games, which managed the thing while it lay fallow and turned what was a closed, small story into a possibility-laden narrative field. Oh, and you know how Enterprise turned from a lousy series into something passable by the end? You can in part thank Paramount sending an intern to the Merril Collection to photocopy its Trek RPG archives. They didn’t keep them around at Paramount.

(That last bit of info comes from the collection’s curator, by the way, when I toured with Justin Mohareb a while back.)

Also, about ARGs? You’re welcome.

Now aside from these examples (which I’m sure will spark their own special nerd war) this particular skillset has managed to earn me a fair chunk of change for clients outside the tabletop gaming field. Fans tend to believe that this kind of work is at its best when done by the IP management team with the most money. These fans are wrong.

Unfortunately, well-heeled IP management teams tend to believe this too — and so do tabletop RPG developers who would really like to have as much money and prestige as folks in mainstream media and games. So with the exception of some visionaries, this kind of thing isn’t well known. On the Big IP side you get closed concepts without backbones. (Terminator, anyone? Yes, I am really saying that a Justin Achilli or Matt Forbeck could make it a bajillion more dollars.) On the RPG side you get creators learning the wrong lessons because they mistake a fat wad of cash for an applicable creative style.

(This is one reason why licensed games often under-perform. Game designers and developers are at the mercy of people who really do know less about how to transform their IP into an enduring success than they do.)

What does this mean vis a vis CCP? They’re pretty smart guys who seem to know the kind of talent they acquired. Do they know how to fit it into their own culture? The folks who were on the White Wolf side seem to be doing okay and I trust them. But this is a fragile situation. When you’re trying to show how a process that moves thousands of copies is legitimate in a culture used to a few orders of magnitude more, you have to be really goddamn convincing. And if you do convince them, why would they want you earning them beer and toilet paper money from tabletop RPGs? Even if you win, tabletop gaming doesn’t.

Converged, Mashable, Hackable Content — and Confusion

Think of DDI. It sucks — and it looks successful. It’s an underwhelming set of tools and resources but it still meets a need. We feel the need because familiar technology has primed us to do so. We’re reaching a convergence point right now where cheap ebook readers, mobile applications, netbooks and PoD technology are poised to radically change tabletop gaming. I currently have the rules for all of my go-to games on a tiny touchscreen MID that cost 150 bucks. Want a book? High quality PoD is simple and cheap; OneBookShelf nearly has the option ready for its merchants. It’s already easy to hack together exactly the game book you want, use it in multiple forms and share it if you’re an early adopter of the necessary tech. By 2011-2012 a physical RPG book may well be an affectation and right now, it’s only a marginal convenience.

(And let’s not forget about piracy. It matters. The tabletop RPG business isn’t the music business, folks, and it’s not the work of Cory Doctorow either.)

Here’s the rub: Nobody really knows what this means yet. My feeling isn’t that this isn’t a new way to play tabletop games but a new type of game — a “third way” of gaming that isn’t a managed electronic property or traditional RPGs, but draws a lot from self-organized social networking — something that White Wolf fandom adopted early.

(You know those chat games everybody craps on? Rough and tumble stuff like that is called “innovation.”)

The community is primed for a new type of game, and letting loose the reins on fans will help CCP understand what that is as long as management doesn’t listen to attractive, high level prognostication that tries to force it all from the top down. That’s always that danger when there’s a big difference in the monetized accomplishments of one group (CCP) compared to another (the nerds running a zillion chat games and fandom RPs).

And if you can’t get into this new game there’s always PDF and PoD. With piracy rampant, CCP probably has to emphasize the convenience of their own option by building better fulfillment and exerting some fearsome downward pressure on pricing. The price of an OBS-hosted game is already approaching bottom-tier smartphone app levels and CCP already has plenty of content in the system. Adding new content that lacks additional features isn’t cost effective unless it exploits fan contributions (always risky) or uses a new scheme to draw them into the sales funnel gracefully.

I don’t think anybody really knows what the next step is here, but let’s make one thing clear: LARPing with an iPhone or Droid isn’t going to bring back the earthshaking Mind’s Eye Theatre hordes of the 90s any more than a slide rule App is going to replace your calculator App. But is CCP going to give it a serious shot? Making money off of this sort of thing isn’t easy, and social media-based schemes are vulnerable to fads and fan refusal to participate in the moneymaking side. (Most Facebook ads and apps have a shitty most desired action rate, for example). Plus, some successes are bad example from a creative point of view, a la Mafia Wars.

Come on: We all know Mafia Wars blows. But it sure makes bank.

Ehm-Ehm-Oh

Yeah, a lot if it probably is about that — after all, it’s probably coming next year. The question is whether CCP will use its assets properly, or kill off what made White Wolf’s in-house style special. This is not to say the rest of CCP should just learn, since from what I’ve read, the tabletop staff seems to be get real inspiration out of their current roles.

The Unsolicited Advice

What do I think CCP should do? Aside from finding some excuse to pay me significant sums (which I am qualified to receive — email me!) I think they should stick to some form of traditional gaming as a form of rapid IP prototyping. Tabletop RPG design is an ideal technology for developing and testing intellectual property with a minimal budget in a short time frame. It’s inherently social and provides a way for quick, meaningful feedback. Plus, you’ll build fans and anticipation cheaply, and might even get a new idea or two about game design.

But about that feedback: Let’s filter the online RPG community. If we map by fan/non-fan and player/non-player we get a nice set of quadrants we can use to figure out what matters. I can’t help but suspect that the New World of Darkness reacted to the wrong quadrants — guys who want to fantasize about certain structures in games (5×5 splatitude!) instead of having a vivid participatory experience. We all know that there are very vocal folks out there whose opinions don’t really have bottom-line relevance. You want to make retired gamers happy, but you want to see what compels people to play more. On the fan/non-fan axis . . . that’s tricky. Some fandoms are toxic and closed, but some are open, and draw people from the non-fan category. The boundary between the two types isn’t fixed. Open fans identify with closed fans. The Games Workshop approach is to fire fans likely be in the closed category by demographic (defined as “boys with hair where there wasn’t hair before”). Use RPGs to fine tune an IP for an open fandom, but see if you can grab the odd grognard.

I’m not saying this as a stuck in the mud tabletop guy. I love that medium, but I’m working on my third electronic games/media project now and it’s awesome. There are substantial differences in presentation and practical role. Still, I think the tabletop (or wired post-tabletop) medium can enrich every stratum of IP development. Use it intelligently, respect its assets and keep its budget sane, and it won’t steer you wrong.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

It’s a toss up between the eye socket and nostril. The nose is safer, but the eye’s quicker, more direct. Luc doesn’t want to go blind but part of him thinks that if the Wire goes down wrong he’ll toss something steel in there – a few LEDs, a half-petabyte SSD – something that proves he’s ready to drop the meat.

Still, Luc cut himself a mix of modafinil, phenobarbital, and pinkie nail’s worth of Manila Shabu dipped in slow-release caplets, just to keep his hands steady. Maybe he’s not quite ready to heap contempt upon his unimproved flesh. He wipes drool from the left side of his mouth – it’s slackened by the nerve block – and clamps back his eyelids on the same side.

The Wire’s smart enough to find its way home but too weak to make it through the first few layers of protective tissue. Luc calls up the manual again; it calls for an “assertive push.”

So Luc stabs himself in the eye socket.

Tremendous pressure. The sensation of weeping on half-numb skin (Luc knows it’s watery blood and wipes it away like the drool – another messy flaw in the meat). He knows the brain feels nothing, once you get past the guardian nerves, but he imagines the sensation of something slithering along bloody paths to clutch his left parietal lobe.

It’ll branch out from there, ruthlessly pruning unused connections: a second wave of neural Darwinism for a parallel mind. But even now, at its simplest, the Wire hums with potentiality. It sings to the world’s currents, and Luc answers.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

I recently put my homebrew SF game on hold to get back to our previous Star Wars Saga campaign. Now I like Saga in a lot of respects, but all in all I think it has too many rules, requires too many “build” style decisions and limits my ability to improvise while drawing from the full rules set. I was hoping to gradually migrate my game back to something as light as Microlite20 or my own Quick20 (which is sort of my “fork” of Microlite, since I was around during the original ENWorld discussions). I told them I’d gradually introduce stuff. I explained I wanted more stunts, looser Force powers.

So I put it to the group. I didn’t do a great job of explaining what exactly I wanted in some respects. Some of my players read a rules change as learning a new system (I want to stick to the D20 base) and maybe more complexity (obviously, I want less!) but I got the basic idea across. They had . . . mixed feelings about switching.

(Incidentally, I hope my players who read the blog click the Microlite link so they can see the kind of thing I’m talking about – maybe that’ll make it clearer.)

Aside from the aforementioned adaptation issues, the main concern was niche protection. We have two Jedi, and the rules are good at letting them develop in different directions. And y’know what? It was a fair point. I could design some loose systems to develop this sort of thing but it might take some time (though I do think I would do it.

So I think some things are definitely going to get axed (some skills, the injury track), but the Saga system is going to stay more or less intact. I’m pretty happy with the way the discussion went even though I didn’t get my way. I’ve often talked about the importance of listening and cooperation, though I have privately wondered if it has really come down to the fact that we’re all friends who have developed complementary interests. Now I’ve had the first chance in a while to put that to the test. We didn’t agree, and that’s okay. A better game will come of it.

(Though I must say, really guys, wouldn’t rules-light be snazzy? I have plenty of other ideas . . .)

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

I think the RPG scene is plagued with two tendencies that feed from each other, blocking gamers’ ability to get regular games off the ground, but these disguise a bigger social problem.

Gamers describe games in terms of problems, not opportunities. After all, there’s more to talk about when something bugs you. This isn’t the issue by itself though. It’s normal to let off a bit of steam. The proposed solutions end up being the real time wasters. Gamers love to describe things they have no intention of playing. How many people do you think really play RPGNet’s gazillion game/setting hacks?

The other issue? Games. Lots of games. RPG fans own many more games than they’ll ever play. They read them, imagine games they’ll play . . . then get back to D&D. Maybe they play these games at conventions or over Skype, (with months and months of lead time per session) then spend their downtime asserting that extended play sucks.

(I’ve been critical of the “Old School” movement before, but I do think it’s great that they’re playing regularly without a set of online or event-based crutches. )

As a result we have a community spinning its wheels, writing epic preps and hacks for games, yet doing next to no gaming. This is why actual play is so atrophied that it needs to be isolated as a category to survive (before the rise of “Actual Play” gamers actually played — it was not an exceptional activity). And in that category, online APs feature lies, creative editing and bloated preparation. Play’s on life support, but reasons to not play have a cancer’s durability. Games don’t realistically deal with what hidden elves or shotguns would really be like.  Games are “incoherent” or “illusionist.” Gamers are sons of bitches who aren’t worth hanging out with. Besides, you don’t have time.

What you have to understand, however is that these are coping mechanisms: ego defenses in the face of a larger social malaise: the decline of friendship.

Think about it. The issues I brought up here boil down to a mix of self-centeredness and contempt for others: signs of a culture whose basic platonic relationships are ailing. This problem infects the whole social discourse of RPGs and even shapes their commercial development. American friendships have been degenerating since 1985. When you think about the difference between gaming then (long term social contact, negotiation over loose rules) and now (brief or online contact, rigid rules that make cover even informal speech and story interpretation) you can see how they’ve adapted to serve people who don’t know each other well, don’t trust each other as much and have lost the will or skill to get close to other human beings.

They say 25% of Americans have no close friends at all. Think of the scene’s tendency to accept people with socialization problems, our aging, more family-focused base and that means gamers might rate at what — 30%? 50%? More? This isn’t just our problem, but we might have it worse than most. The community has certainly flocked to excuses not to make friends or pretend that the superficial online relationships they have are just as good. This is why gamers love the Five Geek Social Fallacies essay — it exaggerates normal problems with friendships into full-blown pathologies, justifying why they don’t bother with close personal connections at all.

Am I applying my own values against a transforming society? Yes, and that’s a fair basis for criticism. I have to admit I’m not comfortable with the expected, widely cast net of shallow contacts that others thrive on. At conventions I prefer to spend an extended period of time getting to know a few people. I don’t take pictures to document my handshakes. If a meeting is important, my memory is enough. But I’ll go out on a limb and say I honestly try to make up for it with intensity and sincerity. So if you meet me, have a seat and take some time to talk. Making contact is okay. Making friends is better.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

As I said in the last part of this leg of GM as God, settings are bullshit. There are no vampires and elves. Even in grounded settings, real human beings are interested in a whole bunch of ordinary things I doubt you have any interest in playing.

I don’t just mean the love and friendship themes groups often have trouble getting comfortable with (though to be clear, I’m not excluding them – these are huge). I’m talking about times when what you eat or the particulars of going to the bathroom temporarily consume you. I may sound picky here, but the combined effect boots you out of any pretence of simulation (which is why the identification of “simulation” in RPG theory never worked to begin with, and is still treated as a dust heap for things people have trouble with).

RPG settings can’t provide a simulation of what an authentic narrative would be like in a speculative world, but that doesn’t mean they can’t feel authentic. Suspension of disbelief enters the picture here, because despite everything I’ve said, the players need to be able to commit to sincere participation. It’s your job to work with your resources and the game’s, producing an end result your friends can jump into with gusto.

The two basic ways to do this are by either changing the setting (and sometimes the rules, where players believe they represent game “reality” – they don’t, but this semiotic shorthand is pervasive and often even useful) or by identifying implausible points, explaining why they exist and moving on. Aeternal Legends features the latter method in action, as we explained that the supernatural is hidden but pervasive just because that’s really cool.

(Let’s be clear, however, that players are expected to make a good faith commitment to getting into the game. You don’t have to constantly appease unreasonable players.)

Beyond suspension of disbelief, authenticity comes from setting up the rules as a point of tension against traditional narrative structures. We all know how traditional stories work because we’ve been educated to anticipate their structures. We expect writers to build stories with a certain rhythm and economy. Instead of looking at a rules set’s defiance of these as a flaw, we should see it as an opportunity – the opportunity that makes tabletop RPGs worth playing.

It’s not easy. It means that sometimes a failure is just a failure. It means that sometimes an NPC upstages the PCs. Looking at these events as RPG failure modes is a huge mistake, but an understandable one, because these are hard situations. They represent an encounter with the kind of anti-story situations that appear in real life. It’s the GM’s responsibility to help players make the most out of these difficult but powerful creative opportunities.

Emphasize that player characters are important because they get the most attention, not because of some in-world power play. There was an RPGNet thread recently where folks complained about Divis Mal being central to Aberrant. This is only true if the GM goes on an on about Divis Mal as if he’s being played at the table. It doesn’t matter if they don’t beat the bad guy or if anything procedurally interesting happens. The characters sitting and chatting is inherently more important than what some NPC is doing, no matter how impressive it is. Instead of using in-world events as a crutch to demonstrate to players that you like them and are interested in their characters, get genuinely interested. Use your omniscience to ask probing questions and help them apply the results to their portrayals.

It’s like being in love. You don’t make artificial demonstrations every day, but you’re interested. No word is wasted, even when the talk isn’t about poetry or storming the castle.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Hi folks! I’ve been really busy lately. Actually, I’ve had a really bad cold and then I’ve been busy writing. I’ve made it over the hump though and I should be updating with new articles and such soon. That means more Mage: The Dirty Version, more GM as God and a bunch of other stuff about RPGs and related narrative/social games. No lack of inspiration — just time.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

I did an enormous podcast interview — almost three hours — with the folks at the Darker Days podcast. Check it out! I think the important bit is where I answer why I like RPGs, but there’s lots of bits and bobs about the Mages and many other things. Kudos to both interviewers, who did a great job.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Phantasm is my local convention. It’s a great get together: a small convention in one room, focused on roleplaying games. There are other games there, but RPGs, rather than being the sideshow, are the main dish. I’m not a big fan of game conventions, but I’ve warmed up to them mostly because I get to see (and sometimes game with) good folks I know, creating the progressive vibe I value in the hobby. I also meet new people, observe other folks game and try to stretch myself by doing something challenging.

This year I ran a 4 hour modified World of Darkness game with pretty much no preparation. This wasn’t an intentional challenge; I’d just been really busy and didn’t have a chance to throw a scenario together. But as a challenge it worked remarkably well. It helped that I took some systems from the Mage Chronicler’s Guide that allow fast character creation, some mods from World of Darkness: Mirrors to tune the action ad made up a few systems on the spot. The players (five of them, all younger than me — the WoD fan demographic was teens and twenties compared to 30 to 40+ for everything else) had fun. They all played psychics fleeing the Cheiron Group, who were planning to harvest their central nervous systems to make implants and drugs and things.

I played Knights of the Hidden Sun, which was awesome. Yeah, I’m biased, but getting a full adventure in with Chris Challice helped reinforce some of the charms of the game, since I’ve been getting a bit of writer/developer fatigue lately. The game was positively rejuvenating. Chris will start posting about the game here himself, and I hope to get more of Jenny’s art up for everyone to see.

Ed Greenwood is a tradition at the convention. He runs a game and busts out a short lecture over dinner. This time around he did something very interesting. You may remember the “20 minutes of fun in four hours of play” design problem, where doing stuff just takes too damn long. Ed turned it around into something that wasn’t a design issue, but a demographic one, since he argued that this slow pace of older games versus the sorta-faster pace of them now really reflects upbringings that evolved from a more relaxed, self-directed pace to instant, externally-driven entertainment. Ed gave examples from wargaming when he was young: a hobby where 70s RPGs’ 20 in four pace was considered far, far too hasty.

It was a shy crowd this year, so I think, looking for something to say when nobody asked questions, Ed managed to really open himself up with some of his more considered thoughts about the hobby. It was refreshing too, because if you think the Realms is getting long in the tooth in your neck of the woods, try it living in the region the Dales are actually modeled on, from the drumlin-festooned terrain to the bizarre mix of promiscuity and rustic grumpiness. All respect to Ed and the Realms, though.

I asked Ed what he thought could be common ground between different eras and styles, suggesting it was the narrative. He agreed and elaborated that he thought meaningful narrative experiences (victories, turning points) in the moment of play did it, creating memories worth holding on to (and he said that this memory made in the moment is why hearing about somebody else’s character is pretty boring). This fits pretty closely with my thoughts on what RPGs are really good at. Plus, regardless of pace, it seems that those big memory-generating moments don’t come any faster if you tweak the game — not even for “narrative” games that try to hit that stuff hard. It really does throw things back at player skill.

I met a number of great people, but I wanted to keep this post focused. I think Ed really hit a home run talking this time around, and it was a pity I was so exhausted I didn’t have a chance to talk to him later.

Great convention. You should all go next year.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Eumenides

Love, Death and Justice Until the End of the World

Death is a lover and a lesson, walking with us all our lives, teaching the value of every moment – and when life ends, Death gives us a chance to explore the universe again, atone and learn. Still, this incarnation is critical. As a human you have the best chance to Ascend. Pursue ecstasy fearlessly, ferociously; every blissful second is a spark in the darkness of Sleep, illuminating a greater world.

And, if anyone wards the gates of ecstasy with oppression or abuse? Kill them.

This is what the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, the Left Handed believe. The body and mind are instruments they tune with sensations: pain, starvation, sex, drugs and other acts that arouse extraordinary states of consciousness. Ecstasy harmonizes a mage with other spiritual states: the souls of the gods, the earth, visible and invisible powers. Every entity plays its role in the Wheel of Creation, but the Kindly Ones have the occult tools to play them all – as do we all.

Enlightenment has enemies: abusers, moral tyrants. The Tradition fights them in the cultural sphere and through direct action. The Eumenides ethos holds that any consensual act between adults is permitted (though some are not necessarily wise) and that to bar any of them is an offense against the spirit. Foolish taboos and abuse make it difficult to pursue every suitable path to enlightenment.

People who cannot find their bliss have one option left: The Good Death. The Eumenides reserve this for psychopaths (who will never find bliss through pleasure, but only the base domination of others) and people so damaged in mind or body that nothing can renew the capacity for ecstasy. The Left Handed kill influential preachers and other leaders who advocate immoral positions like homophobia but this – along with the murder of Hegemony agents – is simply pragmatic assassination.

History

In almost every large civilization, some men and women reject arbitrary moral codes. They look for truth in experience: hallucination, orgasm, carefully inflicted pain-turned-pleasure. These outcasts found gods in moments of bliss and developed supernatural gifts.

Since the proto-Eumenides rejected moral orthodoxy, people asked them for help to circumvent tradition. Sleepers deserved revenge, but the target was a lord or priest. They wanted prosperity but came from a despised caste. The early Left Handed made a new moral code, where mainstream religious and political concerns meant nothing. All that mattered was how an act shaped the capacity for ecstasy.

Many cults foresaw that unless they took the initiative in enforcing the new law, their parent cultures would forever persecute them. They became killers and disaster bearers, shapers of civilizations, though always hidden in fear of the reprisals that would surely come if anyone discovered the great work. Sleepers attributed these deaths and curses to divine punishment, and it was at this point that certain mages claimed the titles of Fury or Kindly One from the gods that bore them.

Not every sect followed the code, but those that did formed alliances against enemies, from Kyriarchs to rival Traditions. In 400 BCE, disastrous contact with the Vajrapani led to countless conflicts in the so-called “Wheel War” across incarnations. Tensions still exist between the Traditions, though most members now acknowledge that both are valid paths to Ascension.

The Eumenides were still not a fully formed Tradition by the time of the Aurora Tribunal. Other mages still distrusted them, thought them as insane or depraved – but after the Great Betrayal, these mages sought them out nonetheless, desperate to find allies against the rising Hegemony. Bound by similar beliefs and a common, degraded social state in comparison to the great magi of the Grand Convocation, they stepped forward as one Tradition at last, with a name that reminded all of their purpose.

Appearance

Unless they use Life magic to alter themselves, Eumenides bear the marks of their practices, such as whip scars, tattoos, piercings or signs of habitual drug use. It all depends on the mage’s journey. Left Handed mages rarely become addicts or suffer prolonged illness and injury from what they do, but one does not become skilled in the Art without making a few mistakes along the way. Some of these signs are only transitional, representing a particular ecstatic focus. Eumenides can turn from being skeletal from intense fasting or heavy from gorging themselves in a matter of weeks.

The Tradition’s devotions manifest in members’ styles. Many gravitate toward rave or fetish clothing, or wear signs of affiliation with certain artistic scenes or sexual subcultures. The mage usually keeps elements of her favoured mythology on hand for ritual purposes, but these can be very subtle tokens – the real signs of divinity are found in one’s soul. A large number of Left Handed mages pursue aesthetic pleasure by following fashion. They blend in but have an air of the deviant about them.

Virtually all Eumenides keep knives at hand as foci, tools and weapons, with mages split evenly between special ritual implements and purely practical blades. Most own a handgun because it’s an efficient way to inflict the Good Death – or ordinary profane death, when necessary.

Paradigm

The Tellurian is the Wheel of Creation. Driven by inescapable karma, the Wheel determines the nature and fate of all beings, even gods and natural forces. But the Wheel is more than its edge; it’s a complex design whose depths correspond to natural forces and forms of spiritual awareness. Fire is a god, a chemical reaction and a refined spiritual state, all at the same time. Fate sets it all in motion, and transforms entities to take their proper place – but humans find it easiest to be many places at once.

Human beings could access these states of being to master supernatural, elemental forces but they’re afraid of losing a sense of self-identity, afraid of censure from their families and societies – even afraid of themselves. That’s the Consensus, favouring the fetishes and rules of a few over the full, wild garden of moral human desires. The Hegemony intensifies these fears and forces people to rely on external tools – especially those they cannot reproduce without the structures it put in place.

Magic is a state of being where one assumes the consciousness of a divine power. The mage actually becomes a god – but the god is no different from a specific human spiritual state. Focused ecstatic experience creates the divine mind. It’s best attained through real ecstasy: pleasure, pain and other consciousness-manipulating acts at the moment of spellcasting and beforehand or to recall through, meditation and symbolism when desired.

Other mages perform this type of magic but most of them don’t recognize it – they focus on tools, tricks, and other ways to keep from taking responsibility for their actions. If they acknowledged that magic was a passion within, they might have to confront truths within themselves they’re unwilling to admit: secret appetites perhaps, or long-buried insecurities.

All things reincarnate according to their karma, changing in each cycle according to previous acts, but death and rebirth always contain a chance to reach Ascension, the state of eternal bliss that encompasses all states of being, forever beyond the limitations of one mind and body.

Foci

Art, bones, ascetic practices, dance, drugs, knives, mantras, meditation, music, sex, yoga (and similar disciplines)

Spheres

Destiny or Life

Sects

The Tradition’s synthetic history means it accepts a great deal of variation within its ranks. Groups draw upon religion and myths from virtually every part of the world. The following groups are prominent but don’t contain the majority of Eumenides mages. Many do not even follow a particular cult – a choice that is more common in recent times.

In India, the Chakrasarpa are often confused for Aghori: ascetics who live in poverty and reputedly eat the flesh of corpses. The Wheel Serpents swing between sensual worldly lives and the extremes of the burial ground to enact the cycle life and death within their own bodies. Thus, their lives flow through every part of the Wheel. As ash-covered renunciates they confront ghosts and the energies of Death; as wealthy decadents they master their own sexuality and manipulate social relationships. Chakrasarpa mages focus on the Tradition’s belief in reincarnation more than most, and are said to drive individuals toward particular future births by influencing their lives and deaths, even to the point of staging ritual Good Deaths.

The Golden Chalice is the Tradition’s premiere league of assassins. They’re responsible for the (false) legends that during the Crusades, Nizari Ismaili warriors ate hashish and dwelled in a secret paradise. The drugs and the garden are real, but the attribution is wrong; the proto-Chalice used the Nizari as a cover to give important targets the Good Death and protect its temporal interests, but members are not orthodox Muslims.

By the late 14^th Century the conspiracy moved to Venice, using its mix of ascetic discipline and Islamic alchemy to dispatch enemies and enrich itself. It aims to create Paradise on Earth through political murder, manipulating society to dismantle unnecessary taboos. Any Eumenides can join the Chalice if they prove themselves loyal and survive its gruelling training.

The Knights of Rhamnous’ name comes from a medieval disguise; they’re the latest manifestation of an ancient Greek cult devoted to punishing moral offenses and protecting those promised to a certain destiny. Knights honour Nemesis, the Furies and chthonic deities with orgiastic rites: mysteries where they actually become these gods and earn the authority to act on their behalf.

As divine servants, Knights act in situations that demand the gods’ attention. In ancient times, the list of offenses against the gods included familial killings, breaking an oath and violating the laws of hospitality. Modern Knights enforce extreme violations of the Tradition’s code.

Concepts

Artist, assassin, cult leader, drug dealer, globe-trotting aesthete, musician, sex worker, yogi

Stereotypes

Æther Society: We like their toys. Oh yes. But where does their spirituality enter into it?

Order of Hermes: Their fetish for tools and formulae isn’t bad in of itself (Who are we to criticize a fetish?) but they mistake it for ultimate truth.

Templars: If I kneel and tremble before God, it shall be as a lover does – and no code will stop me from taking Him or Her into my embrace.

Transhuman Adepts: It’s foolish to escape humanity when you haven’t sampled its true pleasures, and futile to run from death.

Vajrapani: Let them approach enlightenment in fear and moderation, as long as they stay out of our way.

Verbenae: They take their legends at face value, crippling their potential to become gods instead of worshiping them.

Hollow Underground: Magic is bliss, not fashion.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Folks who buy Aeternal Legends at IPR have been able to get the PDF for free. We got a great response when we had the special and we’ve noticed a lot of folks landing on the Aeternal Legends Pitch article, so now’s the time to officially announce that we’ve dropped the price on both the PDF on RPGNow and the print version on Lulu to be competitive with the IPR deal — and to make either version more attractive.

So: Aeternal Legends in print was $26.95 — and it’s now $21.00! Grab it at Lulu.

Aeternal Legends in PDF was $11.95 — and it’s now $5.95! Grab it at Lulu or RPGNow.

Plus, you can always grab both for $26.95 at IPR. But let’s say you have the print version and want that PDF. We’d be happy to send it to you. Just email a picture of you holding the book (you don’t have to show your face if you’re shy) to m AT mobunited DOT com along with an email address RPGNow likes and we’ll send you a free download from RPGNow.

The game’s getting a bit more buzz, but naturally we’d like to get more. So we encourage you to talk about it online. Let us know about your impressions, games, hacks — we want to know about it. It was never our intention to build an urban fantasy RPG that was excessively “gimmicky,” but one where we fit playability and depth into a small, accessible package — something we hope is greater than the sum of its parts.  Continued support is coming. Fight Like a Legend is going to be joined by the Spheres expansion as soon as the art’s done and we find time to get it ready.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

This post is all about plugs. Here’s where you should go on the Web.

• This coming week I’ll be interviewed for the Darker Days Podcast. You can ask me questions at this link. The podcast should be posted shortly after – I’ll let you know when that happens.
• I drop by Chuck Wendig’s Terrible Minds pretty regularly. It’s a miscellany that covers fiction, games, pop culture and whatever else Chuck wants to talk about.
• Also, give Eddy Webb’s Whitechapel Project a go. The Project is episodic weird fiction in podcast and blog formats. I tend to check it out in binges.
• David A. Hill’s Machine Age Productions is currently full of development notes for his Terminus Est RPG project. It uses a d4 as its basic resolution die, which is a brave choice out of the gate.

Now there are tons of other great things out there – enough that I should really work out formatting quirks with my blog to get a proper blogroll in (I’ve tried, but the theme acts odd.) This is just the stuff I wanted to talk about this week.  There’s Jess Hartley and Jet Pack and Shadowstories and more: a real wave of creativity coming from a community that I kinda sorta know. I say this to accurately describe my relationship with these folks, not to be clever. I don’t have much more than a “fellow freelancer” tie to them, but I do like their efforts a lot.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Or, “You’re Magic, You Are”

I have to admit something. I really love games that blur the lines a bit. If you’re of an age, you’ll remember Over the Edge. That game had a suggested scenario that involved the characters finding out that they were the protagonists in an imagined fictional world. It then had them meeting first the GM, then the other players. Lots of people pointed out how this required the right players to be a lot of fun. I’m pretty much the textbook example of a “right player”. It jumps straight to what I want: a way to become invested in the game as a player on the meta-level of being a player, in addition to the actions of my character. I want my expectations, and the expectations of everyone at the table, to help shape the world.

This is not a revolutionary idea per se. FATE-based games like Spirit of the Century, Starblazer Adventures, and Diaspora use Aspects, player-defined traits that describe both characters and setting elements. Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies has the players working together to build the setting. Any game with freeform traits—such as Unknown Armies—allows a player to say to the GM “This is what I want to see” simply by naming those traits. Just about every section of GM advice worth it’s salt includes a section pointing out that it’s not just the GM’s game; it belongs to everyone.

That’s not to say that the GM must constantly bow to the whims of the other players, or that the characters can never fail. This is a fallacy that Malcolm’s been happily tearing to shreds in his GM as God entries here. The GM is God, but God must listen to his clergy occasionally.

Few games—in fact, I’m hard-pressed to name any, though I’m sure I’m wrong—have an in-setting explanation for why two groups’ stories can be entirely different in tone and theme and yet take place in the same game. If you’re running a World of Darkness game inspired by the works of Kelly Armstrong it’s going to look a lot different to one that’s Raymond Chandler with wizards. Both games are World of Darkness games, but neither has a reason for the other also being possible.

I like the idea of a group’s shared expectations having some impact on the game-world. It’s a powerful thing, and a resource that more groups should tap. So in Æternal Legends, we have the all-pervading magic. It suffuses the world. In theory, magic shapes the world—and magic is in turn shaped by those Legends who have ascended to the Source.

In practice, the tides of magic are shaped by the players. Magic is the in-setting way of saying: “It’s something that the group finds cool, so stop worrying and enjoy the ride.” Every game, without exception, has bits that make no sense. They exist purely to further the type of game that the writers want to write, and that players want to play. In Æternal Legends, that’s an explicit facet of the setting.

And because I’ve been thinking about Spheres again on and off, this leads me to a slight realisation. A Legend who reaches the Crown can sublime into magic rather than turning back; effectively becoming part of the magical field. Now, for groups who find this sort of meta-hacking interesting, that effectively gives the old character as much direct authorial control over the story as the players. And now that he’s on the meta-level, the character’s desires may not mesh with those of his player any more…

In this way, a long-running (or high-powered) Æternal Legends game may well take the route first outlined in Over the Edge, perhaps following a similar path to the hero in Grant Morrison’s Animal Man. It’s an interesting thought-experiment, if nothing else.

-Stew

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

I normally don’t talk about my house game here, but on my personal journal. Indigo uses a heavily hacked version of Adventure! set on a Dyson Sphere.  The protagonists are posthuman members of the Fleet Syndicate: the exploration branch of an anarcho-syndicalist culture heavily influenced by mid-21st Century South Asia (as explored in its prequel, a cyberpunk-genre homebrew). It’s a sandbox game where I emphasize the characters’ freedom not only on the metagame level, but in the world. Ships are even run as collectives where people can come and go as they please. They’re free to fail too – fail utterly. They’ve done it before.

Tonight’s game was special enough to bring to Mobunited.com because it ended in a peculiar triumph: Four of the five PCs committed suicide, and the fifth was murdered due the the machinations of one of those suicides.

It was a matter of principle, you see. The characters were on a mission to either steal or suppress force field technology that belonged to their culture’s rival, the hypercapitalist Universal States. Tough job; the research lab was in an Exthreat Facility, designed to contain experiments that might draw the ire of the Transapient AIs who built the Sphere. The facility was a tetraneutron bottle suspended by virtual particle switching, which made it indestructible and in emergencies, collapsible, whereupon it would release lethal radiation and sink into the Sphere medium.

Our heroes wanted to avoid the deathtrap and steal its data from an overhead dirigible that contained hard storage of the US’ research. They bluffed their way in but were eventually forced to kill a number of surgically engineered warrior “debtors” (the US underclass) and officer-interns, until a chase speckled with brain/network hacking got their asses lasered and stunned.

I woke them up on the USS Manifest Destiny, an local enemy destroyer under the supervision of intelligence officers. Their enhancements were gone and their “brane” neural implants had been hacked to hit them with epileptic seizures if they tried anything violent. Their host Major Yamazaki told them their ship had been captured and that unless they answered her questions now (before their thoughts were converted to data – not an easy thing to do fast in this setting) she’d kill 10 of the crew (a lie – the Antipodean was safely hidden underwater).

Now I expected the PCs to hatch an escape plan by using their common culture and wits, or shift things forward to leave them on a prison colony in US territory, able to escape (or lead a revolt) and deal with the reshaped politics that came about due to their actions.

Instead, they chose to die. They viewed the situation as an abomination, against everything they stood for, and three of the five believed that any future duplicates would be them, even if they were out of date, memory-wise. One more believed she’d die, but her double would be “good enough” for the cause of total liberty.

Let me emphasize one thing: This wasn’t their reluctant last choice. They started killing each other after about three minutes of discussion, and were happy to do it. And another: It wasn’t a fit of pique, an expression of anger on the meta-game level.

Steve’s character Buck thought that was bull, but he didn’t interfere as Kearsley’s Mikhail, our anarcho-Kirk, rapidly broke three of his comrades’ necks and stomped on their skulls to ensure data recovery would be impossible, even as he shuddered through an oncoming seizure.  Major Yamazaki ran in with guards and dragged the three bodies away (Sita, Aviva, Anton – the medic, XO and helm, respectively) in a futile attempt to suck some information out.

Yamazaki was going to salute Mikhail for his iron will, but Mikhail and Buck mocked her (a good thing – it was her gambit to get them to calm down, stun them while making them think she was killing them, and just suck the data out) but they mocked her and with the last of his strength, Mikhail threw her across the room. The insults cut so deep she put the brig in private mode and vaporized them.

They won. Holy fuck.

See, I had a certain vision about their culture and values, but I was gloriously wrong – I couldn’t have been right, because I set up an atmosphere where individuality was sacred and bound in a common hatred of bondage. They saw the debtors. They didn’t want that. After the session they talked to me about influenced ranging from historical anarchism to the Ramayana and were supremely satisfied with their decisions, from giving their necks to barehanded death to the sarcastic barbs they hurled at Yamazaki, where they disarmed even the notion of dignified last words.

Their successors – clones with out of date memories, half-compiled from public records and spun into a fragile algorithm of consciousness – are ordinary crew now, their own legal heirs, preparing as the Antipodean joins the Fifth Battle Collective to answer for the decisions of their forebears.

Freedom. Grim, incredible freedom.

We’re taking a break, watching a movie next week. Then Star Wars to lighten things up, while I figure out how we can possibly top what happened tonight.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Kira’s rough kiss had put a ragged mark on the inside left of Markus’ mouth last night, but he regained some sickening symmetry when Jude’s fist snapped out a tooth on the right, ripping its root straight through the gum. Jude picked it out of his glove; Markus spat out a thin line of bloody drool. Red pain.

Markus twitched and shifted so Jude’s partner (T-something or other – some fake-ass Midwest gangster handle) tightened his full nelson up, but that was a misunderstanding. It wasn’t the hit. Markus just hated it when his cock scratched right up against the denim like that. He grunted and wiggled his hips.

“Say again?” Jude smiled and bunched a fist again; the stomach punch hit like a mallet on a taut drum. The force bounced down to Markus’ perineum and up sweetly to his crown, bursting into the outline of a flower on his skull. “Where’s my product?”

The hot flower in his mind bloomed and Kira was with him, crowned as well, tipping a skull of wine down his throat while she straddled him.

“Well I tried your shit, J,” said Markus, giggling in the rush, “But it was so pure. My heart stopped. That’s what happened to those kids, right? You barely cut it. Heh. I flushed the rest.”

“A very, very wrong answer. I’m gonna feed your fuckin’ heart to my dogs.” Out came the cleaver. “You’re one ignorant bitch, son, ‘cause yours won’t be the first one they ate.”

“Not big,” said Markus, then he barked out laughter. He was drowning in the wine now and her tusks cut his cheek.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jude slapped the flat of the cleaver against his palm.

“You play big, think the people you fuck up carry an indelible mark, like you own them, right? But they’ll get better. You’re little.”

“So? You’re dead.”

“Yes? Yes.” Markus didn’t struggle with the man holding him but dislocated both shoulders around the other way. He popped the wet bone knives and entered the Goddess in his memory and death, death death stained the sweet air of one long, orgasmic exhalation.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

One of the things I’m playing with in Mage: The Dirty Version is a partial rebellion against highly structured RPG settings. Setting design took its lumps this decade, driven partly by genuine changes in what gamers want, and partly by non-playing hobbyists’ desire for easy meta-discussion that doesn’t have much to do with play. (Should you really give a shit about hidden supernatural population when you’ll only interact with a few small group yourself? Unless you’re playing in a big networked game, probably not.)

Evocative settings are pretty messy. In the case of licensed games, this is due to the effort required to open them up for RPG play (and beyond RPGs, books, comics and video games). Star Wars is gloriously disorganized now. A lot of it’s pretty bad, but some of it’s great — and that’s largely thanks to the work you need to do to get away from the Skywalker family drama. Purpose-build RPG settings like the old World of Darkness and the Forgotten realms gathered all kinds of strangeness to escape the strictures of their original designs. You’ve got to do all kinds of crazy shit to make three-eyed anime vampires work with the Cain(e) myth.

Why do you get good stuff out of this? It feels truthful because the original structure gets obscured enough that it’s up to you to draw the material into coherent threads — just like real life, which is notoriously plotless and bad at sticking to themes. Character types lose their firm connections to base ideas, because somewhere along the way somebody wrote about the Badass Wing of the Debating Society, and the Righteous Demagogues of the Badass Tribe.

But there’s more to it than creating a setting and waiting for material to build up. You need to loosen your grip on structure from the ground up. You’ve got to introduce certain imbalances. For example, in The Dirty Version some Spheres are more prevalent than others. Some folks got the niche, some folks didn’t. I did this on purpose, because it will encourage some specific behaviors in play (people are more likely to stack efforts with common Spheres) and imply that some types of magic are more common than others. It also lets me relax and go with what feels right for a character type instead of strictly worrying about niche. We’ve all seen classes or splats that feel half-assed because they needed a place to put the Bling power or whatever.

You can get some creative traction out of following a structure too (Vampire: The Requiem has a few clans that probably never would have been there under a looser regime, such as the Mekhet, and its Discipline breakdown gave us Nightmare and cooler Nosferatu) but working under a firm model right from the start can get stifling. Ultimately, your only refuge under a strict structure is to relegate anything off-kilter to toolkits. These can be good, but all too often they make the game as a whole feel weak and unfinished, or surrender the possibility of deep development. For example, Requiem’s VII book is fantastic. It’s full of evocative options. It also made it nigh-impossible to do anything else with VII in the line without alienating somebody. Bye bye, VII. Unfortunately, if you define VII you just stave off the problem until you’ve covered it in detail, hacked out some metaplot and run it into the ground.

Structure now, or a closed, “finished” game later? It’s tricky. But I think there’s room to maneuver in the middle . . . and sideways. Add ambiguities, imbalanced coverage and you’ll stuff a game full of messy ideas. For instance, I think the current World of Darkness got a hell of a lot more interesting with two Arcadias and a mysterious Hell floating around. Before that point, the cosmology was a bit too cut and dried. Fans have come up with a lot of cool ideas by groping for structure in the dark. I want to add weird, clashing, imbalanced structures to inspire that sort of thing. The Dirty Version is a no-risk lab for the idea. After that, who knows where I’ll take it?

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

I know y’all really want this information, so here it is:

Traditions of the Council of Eight

Æther Society: Scientists and adventurers devoted to forgotten, “obsolete” and fringe theories who are convinced that True Science has limitless scope. Metascientists are famous for their eccentricity — as obsessives who master one field, or polymaths who make bizarre connections between disciplines. Spheres: Forces or Matter

Eumenides: Accused of decadence and immorality, the Left Handed believe they follow the shortest path to spiritual power through ascetic extremes, drugs and refined sexuality. Without arbitrary taboos, they behold fundamental justice, acting as its executors. Spheres: Destiny or Life

Order of Hermes: Originating in the Western Magical Tradition, the Thaumaturges embrace high ritual from a number of cultures now, to make up for declining numbers and renew their organizational vigor. The Tradition’s factions are its Houses. Some claim a legacy beyond the limits of precognition, but a few are decades old, if that. Spheres: Forces or Mind

Templars: Born of medieval heresies that put God beyond all mortal creeds, the Apostles preach radical tolerance, but often find themselves tangled in dogmatic zeal. Factions honor particular theological traditions, but believe these are mere reflections of an ultimate truth. Spheres: Correspondence or Spirit

Transhuman Adepts: Cutting edge scientists and engineers that make themselves the subjects or radical experiments, the Enhanced look forward to a world where immortality is commonplace and the barriers between the biological mind and sea of information dissolve. Spheres: Correspondence or Mind

Vajrapani: The Brothers and Sisters practice deep meditation, arduous yoga and punishing martial arts to hone their psychic facilities. To them, magic is a manifestation of enlightenment, not its object — in theory, at least. The Tradition contains a mix or psychics, devotees of physical disciplines and monastic isolation. Spheres: Life or Mind

Verbenae: The Sacred Branches hold to traditional religions and a few reconstructions that stay true to the principles of ancient faiths, were there’s no divide between sorcery and worship. They are called shamans and priests, but their militant tendencies earn them the title of Witch and they don’t shy away from that name’s power. Spheres: Life or Spirit

. . . and the Hollow Underground: a sect born of the detritus of the Victorian occult revival, postmodern magic and streetwise superstitions. The Hollowers are unreliable allies, but at least they aren’t traitors — the Traditions have felt that sting before, and value even casual loyalty.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

So for those of you at home, let me tell you what I plan on doing with this thing. I have a few guidelines in mind that should hint at what I’m going to do.

For the Medium

The Dirty Version explores Mage through the tabletop RPG medium as I see it: one with its own voice to offer, instead of something emulating a book, film or other medium. I have pretty strong opinions about this and think that many RPGs nowadays are the product of envy directed at more popular or arty media. That’s why we now have dozens of games that let you play a story as structured by somebody with a halfassed recollection of 100 year old literary theory that happened to get dumped in their heads during high school. Fuck that. This is an RPG; it’s about unstable categories, insecure power relations and multiple narratives springing from the same event. In other words, it’s perfect for Mage.

Fuzzy Logic

Drawing from the above and looking at the old World of Darkness, I’m going to bust up neat little boxes where I can. Splats are a mix of in-world history and game function, and I’ll leave a heavy load on readers and players to negotiate the intersection between them. I think this is interesting and ads verisimilitude, since real organizations rarely stick to a set function. The current World of Darkness tends to be excessively structured at the core, but comes to life in expansion, but keep in mind that the old World of Darkness wasn’t much different — you just got up to three editions to write the expansions back into the core. The same thing applies to game traits, though Spheres will mostly stay functional because they have to be.

Not a Vehicle for Awakening Criticism

I mean, are you fucking crazy? I worked on lots and lots of that line and like it a lot. They’re different games — though honestly, not so different as many people think.

Like Ascension, but Not Ascension

I’m not going to rebuild Mage: The Ascension faithfully. It’s old and there’s a ton of stuff wrong with it. Your favorite thing may not appear. It will have at ideas from the old game I think are interesting or powerful. It will probably feel a lot like Ascension. It will also chop and staple a hell of a lot of stuff. So far, around half of the Traditions are pretty different and I’ve cut two Spheres. Say goodbye to Entropy and Prime, and I might kill Time, too.

Nonlinear and Compressed

This is coming in blog form so don’t expect a big-ass full RPG. Don’t expect a neat order, either. Honestly, You and I would both be bored doing it the linear way, slogging through potato-peeling systems. Lots of things will be presented as references, excerpts from big stuff that doesn’t really exist and so on.

Not New or Old World of Darkness Systems

I ultimately ran Mage: The Ascension with a variant of the Aeonverse/Exalted 1e system very successfully. This is not going to be your NWoD Ascension adaptation. It’s not going to be your OWoD 4th Edition. It may not even be an Aeonverse like thing by the time I’m done, since I’m running a game with that system and have already hacked it six ways to Sunday. Hell, I may even float a card-based character system that’s been floating around in my head.

Auteur Style

This is solidly about my ideas. Feel free to comment on what you want, but as this is totally unpaid, my reward, aside from attention (heh!) is exploring things my way. For example, if you think the Technocracy were good guys, you’ll probably be disappointed. Also, you may be a fucking idiot. See what I did there? That’s the difference between writing for you, and writing for me. This is aimed at being playable, but it’s more something for me that I think you’ll like. So let’s give this a shot.

Originally published at Mobunited.com. Please leave any comments there.

Haggard morning video blogging! Couldn’t sleep! Here I talk about engaging a setting through its premises instead of rejecting it, using that to invent cool stuff, and how Libertarians in space are irrelevant.