The Fiction

This is adapted from the introduction to a game I'm writing.

Imagine you’re watching a group of mimes, performing for you. There’s three or four of them, and they’re doing some ordinary thing, like cooking a meal or cleaning the house, except that all the things they interact with are imaginary. They’re very skilled. When one of them picks up a bucket full of water, we see him strain against its weight, even though we don’t see the bucket itself. He sets it down. Another mime picks it up. We still don’t see the bucket, it’s imaginary, but when the mime goes to pick it up, she picks it up from exactly where the last mime put it down. The mimes pass each other things, open and close doors, trip over objects someone else left lying on the floor, and so on. Even though all the things they interact with are imaginary and invisible, as we watch them we feel we can almost see the bucket, or the doorway, or whatever it is. The rigourous discipline of the mimes, treating every object as if it were real, remembering where things are, their weight, their size, creates the illusion of reality. That’s what makes the mime show compelling (and creepy).

In roleplaying games, we’re doing the same thing as those mimes, except that instead of acting out a scene ourselves, we talk about a scene, describing imaginary characters and things. We each take responsibility for describing the actions of an imaginary person, and talking about how they interact with the world around them. Just like the mimes, when one person describes putting something down, the other players can describe their character picking that thing up. The characters pass each other things, open and close doors, trip over things, and they also explore dungeons and fight monsters.

Just like the mimes, the illusion of reality is important. We know the things we describe aren’t real, but we treat them as if they are, in the game. The sword your character wields has a particular weight and length, the weather is a certain way. Your character dodges like so when the strange subterranean horror lurches in her direction. We remember these things, and they form part of the ongoing narrative of play. They take on an illusion of reality.

In roleplaying games, that narrative, the things we’ve said, the weight of your sword, the slavering fangs of the monster, is called the “fiction”.

The rules of the game will sometimes refer you to the fiction of play. They’ll ask you “what is happening now?” and say “when this happens, do this”. You’ll know what rules to use by looking to the fiction of the game. You make a decision about whether the rules apply, but you make that decision based on the things people have said and that everyone has agreed to. It's not the same as looking at a number someone rolled on a die, or the card they drew, or the position of a miniature on a map. But it's not the same as someone making an arbitrary ruling either. You make your decision based on maintaining that illusion of reality. Just like a mime can't walk through the imaginary wall they've created without shattering the illusion, when you look to the fiction in a roleplaying game, you're making a judgement that's constrained by that illusion of reality, the fiction.

A Thing I Noticed

Recently I've been interested in how players make decisions during play - how they decide what to say next. I made a diagram of it, and posted in in some places. Here it is again:


The things around the outside are what influence the things on the inside, if you see what I mean. Maybe it's interesting to some people? There's no space for "What would my character do?" I'm not sure if that's a mistake, or the whole point of the thing.

Abandoned Games

Vincent was saying on a podcast somewhere about how folks could talk more about abandoned games - that it's dangerous to think you've gotta publish every idea you have.

Since apparently I do everything Vincent says, let's talk about that!

I'm a really productive writer. Or at least, recently I have been. I can crank out pages and pages of notes for games, polished game-text, layouts, designs and such. I think part of what fuels this is that I absolutely do not edit myself in terms of what I produce. I work on whatever I'm excited about, for as long as I'm excited about it, and then I stop. Recently I've been pushing myself a bit more with On Mighty Thews, but what I find is that I actually do more work on difficult projects like that when I give myself the time to also work on fun, exciting ideas that may never see the light of day.

I used to be worried about being a chronic non-finisher, always starting new projects and never bringing anything to completion. I think what I decided was that this is my hobby, not my job, so there's no reason I shouldn't work on stuff that's fun, even if it might not become something one day. It's valuable for practice and for the joy of it.

Where I do make more of a commitment to finish things is as soon as other people have commited their time to a project. I find it much harder to abandon playtested games, especially when they've been externally playtested. Other people's enthusiasm is a valuable resource, and I'm loath to waste it. It's a conundrum though, because often it's only after playtesting that you really realise that a game isn't going anywhere.

So, with the above in mind, here are two games I wrote just for the fun of it, and for practice. They've never been played, and they maybe never will be:

Beneath the Honeysuckle

Beneath the Honeysuckle is a game I'd been thinking over and stewing in my mind for a couple of years, and then Ben Lehman had a contest to write a game about love, so I banged it all out in a week (the first game contest I've ever entered). It's about Arthurian Knights and Ladies in love, jousting, going on quests, casting spells and doing embroidery. Ben described it as "surprisingly gay", and still owes me a review. I hereby let him off the hook for it though.

There are things I like about the game, and definitely some fun ideas in there. I think the main thing holding me back from finishing it is that I'd never be able to playtest it enough with the players around my town, and the game would need a lot of playtesting to get right. It's got a kind of economy, which I know would need careful balancing and I can't really see myself doing all that work. I'm still kind of in love with the concept though and the art makes me think it would make a really pretty object.

Shadow of the Ninja: Everything you've ever heard about ninjas is true

Shadow of the Ninja I actually kind of sweated over. It took me a few months. It's a game about Ninjas sneaking into fortresses, and the horrible life they lead between missions. It's kind of "My Life with the Master Ninja". I wrote it mostly to get to grips with some of the stuff Vincent was talking about with judgements of the fiction and such. I still like how in the game mostly all the mechanical information you need about a thing is embedded in the description of it.

I guess I think the world doesn't need another game about ninjas? I don't have much insight into the genre, I suppose. There's some stuff in the game about bullying and power, but it's mostly the same stuff that My Life with Master did with more subtlety and power, so I don't feel a pressing need for it to be in he world.

Of course, I'm working on a bunch of other things at the same time. A thing about medieval fantasy war stories, a thing about what if David Cronenberg wrote D&D, and of course On Mighty Thews, which is actually going pretty well at the moment!

The distant future... ...the year 2000

I thought the world would be better if more people saw this:

Conan and Racism

In my continuing project to talk about On Mighty Thews until everyone is sick of hearing about it, here are some things I've been thinking about as I delve into the source material. I've been doing a lot of critical thinking about the pulp fantasy genre, especially Howard's Conan stories, which are my first and greatest love in the genre.

Loving Conan puts me in a pretty difficult position though, given the incredible racism of the stories. How racist are we talking? Pretty damn racist:

The blonde Achaians, Gauls and Britons, for instance, were descendants of pure-blooded AEsir... ...and from pure-blooded Shemites, or Shemites mixed with Hyborian or Nordic blood, were descended the Arabs, the Israelites, and other straighter-featured Semites. - in "The Hyborian Age"

People try to dismiss the racism of the stories by comparing them to other sources from the time, saying Howard was just echoing views popular at the time the stories were written. I'm not convinced. It doesn't make it less racist just because everyone else was doing it too. If you want to make an argument about whether this makes REH a bad person or just someone who lived in a less enlightened time, then go ahead. That's not my issue. I don't care about REH the person, and whether I'd have him over for dinner or whatever. What was going on in his head doesn't matter. What matters is what he wrote, and what he wrote is unambiguously racist:

The hut door opened, and a black woman entered - a lithe pantherish creature, whose supple body gleamed like polished ebony, adorned only by a wisp of silk twisted about her strutting loins. The white of her eyeballs reflected the firelight outside, as she rolled them with wicked meaning. - in "Vale of Lost Women"

So I used to say that I liked Conan despite the racism, that I "read around it", enjoying the action stories and glossing over the racism. But that never quite sat right with me. It felt like a cop out. Racism is so central to what the books are about. The whole theme of the stories is about the difference between civilisation and savagery. Ignoring the racial politics of the stories seems like missing the point. And besides, when I thought about it, I didn't "read around" the racism. I actually enjoyed reading those parts.

Now, maybe it's just the thrill of the forbidden. A guilty pleasure, indulging in the taboo. Maybe it's the seductive simplicity of it, shrugging off the weight of history and enjoying the power and priviledge of being white. That's a pretty ugly thought, and I'd like to think it's completely untrue. But if I'm being honest, there's probably a bit of that going on.

But there's also something else. It was reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan of the Apes" that threw it into relief for me. Tarzan was a big influence on Howard, I'm sure (Burroughs' description of the "Cimmerian darkness" of the jungle seems like an irresistible clue for a possible Conan origin). Burroughs' racisim shares some traits with Howard's:

Presently they reached the center of the village. There D'Arnot was bound securely to the great post from which no live man had ever been released.

A number of the women scattered to their several huts to fetch pots and water, while others built a row of fires on which portions of the feast were to be boiled while the balance would be slowly dried in strips for future use, as they expected the other warriors to return with many prisoners. The festivities were delayed awaiting the return of the warriors who had remained to engage in the skirmish with the white men, so that it was quite late when all were in the village, and the dance of death commenced to circle around the doomed officer.

Half fainting from pain and exhaustion, D'Arnot watched from beneath half-closed lids what seemed but the vagary of delirium, or some horrid nightmare from which he must soon awake.

The bestial faces, daubed with color—the huge mouths and flabby hanging lips—the yellow teeth, sharp filed—the rolling, demon eyes—the shining naked bodies—the cruel spears. Surely no such creatures really existed upon earth—he must indeed be dreaming.

The savage, whirling bodies circled nearer. Now a spear sprang forth and touched his arm. The sharp pain and the feel of hot, trickling blood assured him of the awful reality of his hopeless position.

Another spear and then another touched him. He closed his eyes and held his teeth firm set—he would not cry out.

He was a soldier of France, and he would teach these beasts how an officer and a gentleman died. - in "Tarzan of the Apes"

But then there is also this characiture of a black servant, Esmerelda:

Esmeralda opened her eyes. The first object they encountered was the dripping fangs of the hungry lioness.
With a horrified scream the poor woman rose to her hands and knees, and in this position scurried across the room, shrieking: "O Gaberelle! O Gaberelle!" at the top of her lungs.
Esmeralda weighed some two hundred and eighty pounds, and her extreme haste, added to her extreme corpulency, produced a most amazing result when Esmeralda elected to travel on all fours.
For a moment the lioness remained quiet with intense gaze directed upon the flitting Esmeralda, whose goal appeared to be the cupboard, into which she attempted to propel her huge bulk; but as the shelves were but nine or ten inches apart, she only succeeded in getting her head in; whereupon, with a final screech, which paled the jungle noises into insignificance, she fainted once again. - in "Tarzan of the Apes"

That was really hard to read for me. It was ugly. It felt like an insult, unneccesary hatred sitting in the book like a turd on a tablecloth.

So what's the difference? Why am I cool with reading about "naked savages" and "primitives", but not with Burroughs' caricature?

Here's what I think it is:

I don't believe that an author's intent matters when you're interpreting that work. I don't think Howard's personal racism matters to how we interpret his work. I don't like Farenheit 451 any less knowing that Ray Bradbury thinks it's all about the evils of television. He's wrong. What matters is the words on the page, and how we interpret them in this, modern context. So how do I interpret Howard's Conan stories?

I think the Conan stories, taken as a whole, are about the position of "Man" in the universe, between poles of civilisation and savagery, between the cultured world of cities and technology and sophistication, and the howling wilderness. On the one hand, there is the corruption of civilisation, the filth and the lies and the weakness. Howard has a strong vein of homophobia running through his depiction of civilisation. It is a weakening influence. It makes men soft.

On the other hand, there is the throbbing, black, remorseless jungle. Here, strength prevails, but it is an awful strength, devoid of reason. The primitives are strong but ultimately disgusting, stupid, bent to the will of a stronger white man.

What I see in Howard's Conan is the confrontation of white supremacy with the undeniable humanity of black people. It's an attempt to reconcile the position of white people in a world of increasing social change. It reveals the concurrent fascination with and horror of blackness in our society. The savage is both more powerfully masculine, and yet less fully human, stronger, more vital, and yet more cowed to a stronger will. I think Conan himself is an embodiment of the fantasy of the white man to be fully master of both the savage and the civilised, and yet it's an uneasy fantasy. Conan is a monster. We love him, and yet we are repelled by him.

What if, when we ignore Howard's obviously racist intent in writing the stories, we can see his Conan works not as racist texts, but as texts about racism?

I think that reading Conan today, it reads as a perfect parody of every fear white people have about black people, as an examination of the paradox of the myth of the savage Other. I think Conan shows the natural conclusion of our peverse constructions of the meaning of whiteness and blackness, hysterical masculinty, the peverse fetishisation of purity, justifications for colonialism and slavery, and the continuing opression of people of colour.

On Mighty Thews - The Grind

I'm working now on layout and design for On Mighty Thews. It's coming along, but it's a long hard process where I'm having to teach myself how to do everything before I even get to the step of making design decisions and implimenting them. I'm getting pretty handy with Photoshop and my layout program now.

I've had some invaluable assistance from Joshua Newman and others at Joshua's design studio. Seriously I don't think this thing would have come together at all without that forum.

On the publishing front, I'm in discussions with Malcolm Craig about a deal to get the game printed with Contested Ground's help. Living in New Zealand makes it punishingly expensive and monumentally difficult to publish overseas, and I think Malcolm's help is gonna make publication possible.

At this stage the whole thing is pure grind. Enthusiasm and love of the game will only get you so far, and I think that dried up for me a while ago. Now I'm running on determination and guilt. I've spent money on this thing, so I'm gonna at least recoup those costs, or break myself trying. I still have faith that it's a good game, a great game even, and much better than it was when I started the publishing process. But the step between "game that's fun for me and my friends and that works fine when I run it" and "game that's reliably fun for people running the game straight out of the book, and that consistently contributes to fun play" was larger than I ever imagined.

I was always an advocate of publishing free games, and I think that worked well for me in the early stages of this design. The ability for the game to be done, and then to come back to it with fresh eyes having received some great external playtesting was invaluable. But I think for me at least the hurdle of taking this game from free on the internet to a thing people spend actual money on has driven me to make the game better than I ever thought it could be. It started as a thing I banged out in five minutes to give me and a friend something to do, and now I think it's a provocative, fun, and sometimes challenging game, with a few genuine innovations.

I think what gives me the drive to actually finish this thing is not my own enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm of others. I'm a productive writer. I've written maybe four or five games since the first draft of On Mighty Thews, but they're all mouldering in my hard drive. They've all helped me to improve as a designer, and been interesting experiments, but I doubt any of them will go firther than they already have. On Mighty Thews is the game I'm taking to completion, and that's fuelled by the enthusiastic contributions of the people who have played the game.

On Mighty Thews

A while ago on his blog Vincent posted a thing about the "Three Insights" that go into creating an RPG. He says:

First, you're saying something about the subject matter or genre of your game: something you think about adventure fiction, or swords & sorcery, or transhumanist sf, or whatever. Second, you're saying something about roleplaying as a practice, taking a position on how real people should collaborate under these circumstances. Third, you're sying something about real live human nature.

Here's the insights of my game "On Mighty Thews", which will be published this year.

1) Pulp fantasy like Conan, Tarzan, and all the derivative stuff like Jongor and Throngor and so on is basically about "Man's" position between civilisation and nature. Leiber, and then later Moorcock, were more about the tension between predestination and free will. What these things have in common is that the philosophical contradictions exist within the protagonist (Tarzan is a white man raised in the jungle, Conan is a savage mastering the ways of civilisation) but are never resolved within the protagonist. Tarzan never chooses the jungle or civilisation. Conan remains unchanged by his adventures in the civilised world. Elric never meets his fate. Instead, the protagonists inflict their contradictions on the world around them. The adventures are a lens for examining the contradiction at the core of the protagonist.

2) Creativity is kind of a product of the friction between freedom and constraint. Everyone contributing a small, obvious step can create a big, unexpected whole. The tension between protagonists trying to get what they want, and the world standing in their way creates a canvas for players to create a story.

3) I think people are the sum of their actions. We don't have an "inherant nature", and there isn't a "true" self. We exist as competing narratives and the expressions of such. We are what other people think of us.

Until recently, I think I struggled to realise these three insights well in the context of the game. Especially the first. The game was functioning well at producing interesting characters, and good plot. It flows well, with the creative burden passing around the table. But the story of most games never really exceeded pastiche. It was an imitation of a sword-and-sorcery story, rather than an original composition.

But a small change in the rules has, I think, changed all that.

In "On Mighty Thews" you start play by making a map of the world in which the game will take place. Everyone draws a couple of things on the map, and you end up with an exciting world of adventure and mystery. But it always felt a little flat. Sometimes there'd be original and compelling additions, but often they were kind of uninteresting. What was missing was the symbolic import of the locations on the map - their meaning in the world.

I've always been fascinated by old maps of the world - the way the geography was organised into a culturally-specific structure. Roads radiating from Rome. The Vatican as the center of the know world. Christian nations surrounded by the infidel. I wanted some of that symbolic meaning for my maps in "On Mighty Thews".

Characters in On Mighty Thews have a "d20 trait" which is the theme their character exposits. A character with the trait "Violent" will get a small advantage for every scene in which they are violent, and a large bonus for individual actions in which they are non-violent. Through play we see a picture of a person halfway between violence and non-violence. They are neither one nor the other.

My new rule for On Mighty Thews is that before you start drawing your map of the world, you mark "poles" on the map, and write your characters' d20 traits next to those poles. Things on the map near the poles take on the nature of that trait. People who live near the pole of Violence have a culture steeped in violence, while people grow more peaceful as you travel away from it. In this way, the themes of the characters are writ large in the world around them. Their tension becomes not just an internal tension , but a literal struggle between forces in the world. The characters are outsiders, not fitting into any part of the world with ease. They live on borders, they travel, they are wanderers and adventurers, bearing with them the inevitable contradictions of the world around them.