Tabletop RPGs Are A Poor Environment For Immersion

Immersion comes up a lot when discussing RPGs, typically in response to this style of game making it more difficult or easier for one person or the other to experience it.

The thing is, RPGs are a really poor choice for an immersive experience. I know that we've been told that this is something that's at least a byproduct of role playing, and it's desirable, and for a lot of people is a goal. And it's not a bad goal, either, and it's no reason that if your intent is immersion to not at least try. But at the very least, one has to recognize the odds are stacked against someone who wants to minimize breaking immersion.

Now, before people get out their pitchforks and torches, give me a chance to explain. Most immersive experiences that non-gamers are familiar with - say a movie or a book or a video game - are relatively solitary and internalized affairs. You get so wrapped up in the experience that you feel you're really there and forget about being yourself for a little bit. Sure, there might be things that bump you out of it - phone rings, the kids get too loud, the computer/console crashes - but overall the number of things that you have to interact with to sustain immersion are minimized.

Also, this is not a diatribe against immersion, nor in any way meant to invalidate, belittle, or otherwise tell people for whom its important that it's a pipe dream, doesn't exist, or anything else. It's just a short examination as to why rpgs actually wind up not being the perfect environment for it - in spite of most common thought that immersion is a natural outgrowth of playing rpgs. You have to work at it, in large part because of the activity's format. In some ways, perhaps more, this may be more commentary on why you can't get away from metagaming.

First, we have the game part. You need to interface with the rules in order to play the game. Granted,when  game systems "fade into the background" - often as much through familiarity as elegant design - it makes immersion easier. Some people can get immersed even when the system is front and center. But rules and game systems are still artificial, and require bringing an internal process (the immersion) out into an artificial framework. While mechanics can certainly help in certain ways, they can cause a disconnect much more often. I still strongly believe that you actually can't design a system to support immersion - you can accomplish any number of other goals that might help support it, but it's a corollary instead of the primary result. Compare this with, for example, a PC game. While you still have to wrangle with controls, they tend to get out of the way a lot faster than rpg mechanics do - and they're easier to manipulate if you have the money and inclination to go with nonstandard control schemes that can be reconfigured to support playing the game better (i.e., any number of input devices from Razer).

Next, you have the inherently social activity of RPGs. I think that this has a bigger impact on creating a flawed environment for immersion than the rules do. In order to interact with a group of people, you again have to externalize a purely internal process. So now we have two external filters - the rules and the expression of character - to deal with. Again, the social group can do a lot to build up immersion but there are just as many ways (if not more) that someone can do something that pulls you out of "the zone" (for whatever measure of "the zone" that there is for you).

Finally, we have the environment. You can turn down the lights and sit down with headphones for a movie or a video game or a book. You can get yourself in a comfortable and quiet place. Not so with a group activity like an rpg. I mean, everyone could be in really comfy spots in a space with lots of atmosphere to play an rpg (and this is totally a good idea), but the environment is still a shared one and not a private one. That's another ding against an rpg being an ideal place to bring the immersion.

Does that mean that immersion doesn't exist or isn't important? Nope on both counts. But those things that are working against it don't necessarily affect other elements of play. You can enjoy all of the other elements as they are even if the mechanics are wonky or the players or environment are distracting. The traditional structure and mode of playing RPGs simply wasn't designed with immersion in mind and this goes a long way toward explaining explains why it can be so difficult.

A Complete An Utter Lack of Motivation

I have been struck with a lack of wanting to pretty much do anything. It's an unshakable ennui regarding virtually everything. It's infested pretty much everything, from work to other projects that I know I want to do or activities I enjoy. I started replaying Thief: Deadly Shadows after finishing the first two, and found that I really couldn't get into it. It crashes whenever I try to move into one of the areas I need to get into...and I have zero interest in trying to fix it. I have a Tribe 8 game that I'm trying to prepare for, and which I want to start regardless, but I can't bring myself to finish the prep work. There's a ton of personal matters I need to attend to, but I'm just not getting around to them. I already know some of those things are contributing to my listlessness. I'm kind of slouching toward a time in the near future that a lot of things hanging over my head will be resolved, and hopefully that will help me break out of this.

In the meantime, I'm not sure how exactly to shake it aside from forcing myself to work on various things - which knowing me will backfire. So, I figured I'd list the things that I really wanted to do but just can't give two shits about right now:

• Fate Core (but possibly FAE) Thief-inspired fantasy world.  Seeing a lot of similarities between what I was planning in Will Hindmarch's excellent looking Project: Dark doesn't help motivate me, even though I know that it's not going to kill my project.
• The science-fiction setting I pitched for ADX.
• A Silhouette-like retroclone system, possibly for a re-imagining of a Solar System-based setting with mecha.
• A Fate Core adaptation of The Laundry.
• Coming up with something for Onyx Path's writer's submissions.

Maybe I just need to take a couple mental health days, sleep a lot, reinstall Dishonored, and find some inspiration somewhere.

Metagaming Is Good (There I Said It)

Or, at least, it can be good and is often not only unavoidable but desirable. It just has to be handled correctly.

When discussing issues of "metagaming" I think sometimes people lose sight of the fact that playing role playing games is always, to some degree, about the metagame. Regardless of how hard any particular player tries to avoid it - and I don't see why anyone would - it's still there. It kind of comes with the territory and the reality is that you are a human being portraying a character in a game. At the end of the day, every decision is a player decision no matter how much the player wants to wrap it in "character decision" wrapping paper and put a bow on it.

In the scope of Fate Core, it definitely requires a little more "meta" thought than many other games, at least from the perspective that some of the rules the player is engaging (namely, Fate Points and aspects) aren't directly tied to the character's attributes, abilities, etc. Yet a lot of the complaints I hear about this are tied to a play style that I honestly can't figure out why anybody would engage. In essence, that the players only ever engage the aspects and Fate Points at a purely mechanical level, apparently void of the context that they are being used in. They apparently place them front and center of what the game is about, instead of...well, what the game is actually about. When I see this, I begin to wonder, "Is that actually how they are playing it? Instructions are just being issued with absolutely nothing hooking in to what is going on within the game, with the GM and players just pulling things out of their collective asses with only regard for the mechanical benefits and not what actually makes sense?" Because, even if that's not how they're playing the game, it's the way that most people I've seen who complain describe it.

For me, the flow of any roleplaying game has always been about what makes sense, what would follow from doing this or having that event happen. The system has always been slaved to the imaginary space in our heads, not the other way around. Fate's no different. So in the case of just engaging aspects at a mechanical level and pushing the "Fate point economy" to the forefront of the game, yes it does strike me as "bad" metagaming. I can see why anyone would be put off by it. I'm put off by it - regardless of what game we're talking about. It's detrimental to the game and the story. And to be clear, when I say "story" I am talking about (to use +Robert Hanz's words) "the stuff that the characters do, and how the world changes and reacts" rather than "the preplanned story the GM wants to tell". To me, while it is jarring to hear someone say, "I make a Fight roll" instead of "I punch the guy in his face" - it's not nearly as bad as only ever saying, "I invoke aspect X to get a +2".

Part of the reason for this is because aspects naturally flow with the language of what is happening within the game. To me, they demand to be used as seamlessly as possible. Their influence on the game is about what the characters are actually doing with them, and not how they can be manipulated from a mechanical perspective to do things. From that perspective, that's the good kind of metagaming.

Unified Fate of Gaming

This is an expansion on a response to +Teo Tayobobayo's probably somewhat hyperbolic post on the Google+ Fate Core community, where he said he thought Fate Core was the Grand Unified Theory of Gaming. At least in spirit I tend to agree with him.

I'm not particularly fond of game systems for their own sake. This doesn't mean that I don't like fiddling around with mechanics, but I don't have the energy or patience to deal with game systems that require too much work. The systems that are actively uncooperative and fight against what I want to do are straight out. That leaves a large swathe of game systems that I just don't care if I never see again (Exalted, every flavor of d20, GURPS, HERO), and a small gray area of games that work just okay (Silhouette, Interlock, BRP, earlier versions of Storyteller, Synergy) and I could either take or leave.

What makes Fate Core a huge deal (for me) it it makes want to roll up my sleeves, dig in up to my elbows, and do something with it. That's what a game should do...make you want to play it. t's like getting that first real Lego set for Christmas, that has a bunch of different shaped pieces and spinny thingies and rounded pieces and not just primary colored bricks. Fate Core sparks my creativity and makes me want to see what I can build with it. Tribe 8 was the last setting to really do that for me, and honestly Basic D&D was the last game.

In between those two, I've trudged a fine line between being in love with the idea of gaming but not being super enthusiastic about the process. At no point while I was completely in awe of Exalted's setting did I feel the same about the system - it was, "Do I have to use this?". Even as much as I love Tribe 8's setting, the system was more of, "Meh, I already know it so I might as well use it."

Just that get-me-out-of-my-seat reaction to Fate Core is enough of  a game changer for me. But it's also unified my thinking toward roleplaying games in general. The headspace that Fate Core resides in for me carries across to any game I can imagine myself participating in. A lot of Fate's underlying principles are so broadly applicable that it has become a game that I think nearly everyone should read if only for the experience. It's turned me somewhat evangelical about the whole thing  - which might be good or bad, because I'm sure some people are getting sick of hearing nothing but "Fate Fate Fate Fate" out of me.

Abstraction Is The New Realistic

I've decided that abstract systems - like Fate Core - have more potential to be more realistic (at least to me) than more complex systems that give more detailed results. The reason is that the "realism" in roleplaying games is an illusion, and is dependent on the players around the table to play the game "realistically". The system simply constrains the results, and the more constraint the more likely that a given system will produce an unrealistic result. I've talked about this before,  but not with respect to how the system constrains results.

Roleplaying games can be simple or complex. They can be detailed, consistent, constraining, "crunchy", abstract, you name it. But for realism, they have a ceiling that can't be breached - and those are the limitations of trying to resolve events with a couple of die rolls and maybe a table lookup. The heavy lifting with regards to realism comes from the players, not the system. This is because the graph of "realism" in roleplaying games is pretty much a flat line with a few bumps and dips here or there.

Plus, there are some things that should never be realistic

Now, I'm sure I will get at least one response of, "But [insert system here] is obviously very realistic because it [includes such and such]." My contention is that the system is just constraining the possible results to a subjective measure that the game designer deemed realistic, and isn't actually intrinsically realistic. It's just a level of abstraction. And my experience has been that the more constrained that abstraction is, the more likely it is the system will produce unrealistic results. So for the trouble of having to learn a system - like, say, GURPS - I'd rather just go with a more abstract rules set and draw upon the people playing the game set the level of realism that they want.

Realizing this has completely changed my view of game systems, away from whether or not they handle this or that realistically and toward how they support the level of abstraction and style of game that I want to play. It's caused me to reevaluate - and in some cases, reaffirm - this level of abstraction as being fairly high. An example is for many years I've favored general wound systems, such as found in Dream Pod 9's Silhouette or Blue Planet's Synergy systems, over hit location systems. Fate's Consequences are just the next step of abstraction by going from ever-increasing negative modifiers to having descriptors attached. To me, I'm better able at handling the severity and nature of injuries than a random die roll. The same goes for adjudicating the exact nature of actions - I'd moved to subjective measures of success rather than a chart of success levels (for example, critical hit charts) quite a number of years ago. There's just too many variables, and too much going on, to distill important things down to a single die roll.

Pure Roleplaying

I just recently read a post from someone who runs and plays games using "pure roleplaying." They try to make no references to anything mechanical - specifically the players, but the GM is supposed to keep mechanical talk to a minimum. They only refer to things that happen in the game narrative. The idea is that it is the "purest form of role playing." Now, I don't think this kind of play is elitist hippy, New Age crap (well, the thought crossed my mind but I'm not a complete jerkstore) - reducing mechanical talk is a pretty good goal in my opinion. But the wording of "pure roleplaying" makes the needle on my elitism meter jump a bit. I freely admit I'm a bit overly sensitive on this front, and it's worth examining why there's a few issues with taking this goal too far.

The first thing is the whole "roleplaying vs. roll playing" thing, which has hammered itself in my brain as a code word for "someone I don't really want to talk to." But there is a new generation of gamers who have come into the hobby by way of free form message boards, unstructured roleplaying sites, etc. and they have slightly different expectations that don't derive from the same place as the typical "rollplaying vs. roleplaying" argument. My own impression of those communities is that there is a lot of hen-pecking and jostling for status, and I can understand the appeal of more structured roleplaying games. It's one of the most tried and true solutions to the "cops and robbers" problem portrayed in the introduction to roleplaying games a lot of books include.

The mechanics in roleplaying games provide a shared language that is used to communicate what's in the imaginary space happening within our heads. That's it. I'm totally on board with mechanics "getting out of the way" and being unintrusive, but if they served no purpose and could be ignored we wouldn't have found a use for them. So, I don't see them as a necessary evil - I see mechanics as something that actually help. They are a tool, used to communicate vital information that keeps everyone on the same page. Doing away with mechanics completely basically makes the experience improv.

Second, from a personal perspective, I don't play roleplaying games because I want the purest roleplaying experience possible. If I wanted that, I'd do improv theater. I do it because I like games. I may not have a high tolerance for overly fiddly games, but I do enjoy rolling dice and figuring out how to work things out within the constraints of the mechanics.  If that means having to use mechanical terms during play, as long as they aren't completely jarring and mesh well with the game it's a compromise that I think yields tangible benefits. Otherwise, using the mechanics while not talking mechanics just sweeps the thing that's making everything work under the rug. And this isn't even getting into the question of what is a mechanic anyway? If you've devised a system where you give hand signals every time your character uses a skill in order to avoid mechanics, you've just invented a mechanic.

In short, trying to not talk about the mechanics while using the mechanics is like roleplaying Fight Club (or saying that you don't need programmers for Salesforce).

Ludonarrative Dissonance

So I've found a new term that describes a problem that pretty much every gamer has ever encountered, anywhere: ludonarrative dissonance. It satisfies my logophile tendencies (I mean, my blog's name is Aggregate Cognizance) and it pretty much hits the phenomenon on the head.

In short, as you can see from the TV Tropes entry, it describes those moments when the game doesn't really fit the narrative. Most everyone who have played video games know this phenomenon well. It happens a lot in tabletop rpgs too, which I'm sure isn't a big surprise to anyone. Whether it's from a character build that doesn't perform as advertised, or a die roll that contradicts what's going on in the narrative, or when the rules actively get in the way and stop the action, it's like the game hits a speed bump that launches it into a brick wall. It stops. Hard.

It looks like a problem without an easy solution. But while I was poking around the Internet, I came across this blog post discussing the combat example from Basic D&D - an example I remember really well. The first thing I take from actual example is how different the designers show the game being played from how I remember the DMs in my area actually running it. Even me (especially me). Our games didn't flow anywhere near as naturally as the combat described there.

The blogger does a good job of doing a play by play of the combat example. Of interest to me in terms of ludonarrative dissonance is how the archer fires her bow out of initiative order. I may be wrong, but I chalk it up to the DM trying to avoid a situation that doesn't make sense given the unfolding situation. If the archer already has her bow readied, there's no reason she can't just fire an arrow regardless of the timing. Classic DM call, considering that there appear to be no rules in BD&D that specifically cover it.

In the end, the interface between what's going on in the player's imaginations and the rules system is highly imperfect. Strict adherence to the rules in spite of what's going on around the table is always going to create those hard stop moments - resulting in ludonarrative dissonance. The best that we can do, as GMs and players, is recognize when we need to disconnect from strict by-the-book interpretations wing it a little bit in the name of keeping the game going.

Club Metro retrospective

This was a response to an article that the Inland Empire Weekly ran on a nightclub reunion that I organized last year. I want to preserve it outside of Facebook, so I'm reposting it here as one of my fairly rare non-gaming posts. Even so, I think that for many people in my gaming circles this post will be somewhat relevant.

Treasure, what is it good for?

I've seen a couple of discussions about dealing with treasure in Fate Core, particularly in terms of D&D-style hacks.

I remember when I was a kid playing Basic D&D and later AD&D, by the time our characters reached 10th level they would have mountains of treasure. This isn't including magic items or other artifacts - I'm just talking about a tally of gp, sp, cp, etc. on the character sheet. We never actually really spent any of it on much of anything. I mean, sure, there was potential expenditures of hirelings, buying new equipment and maybe later on building a castle or something. Regardless, it amounted to mounds of treasure.

Which got me thinking:

What is all of this treasure actually used for, anyway?

So what do you actually use treasure for? How much is too much treasure? How much is too little (from a player's perspective)? How do you handle the massive economic collapse that happens when adventurers come back from looting sites of historical cultural importance with more wealth than most villages will see in their entire lifetime? Am I just some kind of dirty story gamer for not seeing the appeal in having a huge haul of gold?

The Non-Gaming Household

It seems like a lot of people in my social media circles have spouses, kids, family members, etc. that are also into all manner of gaming and nerdery. I really enjoy reading their posts, seeing the pictures of the cool things their kids do, and generally basking in the glow of gaming goodness.

My own situation isn't quite that way. Now, I'm not writing about it in any kind of  "Woe is me" way, or to bemoan how I want it to be different, or invite any kind of criticism or advice on how to change it. I just want to discuss the factors involved and the reality it creates, because I know not every gamer out there has the perfect geek significant other or kids who like to play rpgs.

"You Know Nothing, Jon Snow"

If Jonnie boy had reacted to Ygritte the way that some people reacted to my last blog post, she'd be in a ditch somewhere. You'd think I assaulted someone's mom and peed in their Cheerios.

Gaming Has Taught You Very Little Useful

I recently saw a post on G+ that got me thinking. Why do some gamers have a drive to justify their hobby? I've heard or read claims that gaming promotes math skills, reading, writing, organization, critical thinking, teamwork, social skills, nearly any positive you can think of. Almost every time, it comes across as an attempt to try to legitimize a hobby that's basically about imaginary shit.

On Occasion, People Truly Amaze Me

I don't make many non-gaming related posts. Tonight is one of those times.

Marsha (or Marcia, I'm not sure), there isn't enough thanks in the world for what you did tonight in the grocery store. I had taken my step-daughter to Ralphs to go shopping, the first real grocery trip we'd made since moving into our new place. We had intentionally not gone shopping before moving, and after moving we were waiting until a new stove the landlord bought was delivered. It was finally installed yesterday, so this evening we went out for groceries. It was a really big shopping trip - the cart was overfull and near the end getting harder to push. When I got up to the register, my debit card wouldn't authorize. Over $330 in groceries, no checkbook, and the only card that I could use wouldn't work when it should have.

Completely taken off guard, I asked the checker to suspend the order so I could figure out what was going on and he could get on with ringing the people up behind me in line. At the very least I would have called my girlfriend so she could come pay for it.

Marsha, who was behind me in line, offered to pay our bill. I was shocked. I insisted that we didn't need someone to pay for it, I just needed to figure out why my card wasn't being authorized. She insisted, firmly, and clearly was not going to take no for an answer. She told me simply to "pay it forward". I couldn't thank her enough, and after we had loaded the groceries into the car and driven away I felt like crying.

I did not get her number, or her email address. She was not concerned in any way with being paid back. But Marsha, on the odd chance that you stumble upon this little corner of the Internet, I want you to know that what you did tonight was the pinnacle of what it means to be a human being. I'm not going to lie - after moving, having to buy new furniture and a host of other expenses things were going to be tight this month. Your generosity helped us out tremendously, and I have every intention of paying it forward.

I'm going out on a limb here

There's been a lot going around about +Indie+'s interview with +James Desborough.  As a privileged, middle class, white male of a certain age (too young to be old, too old to be young) I've only started to seriously consider and think about issues regarding diversity, sexism and even racism in the past couple of years. And I consider myself a progressive, inclusive person.

As a relative newcomer/outsider to these debates I went back and looked at the history between Desborough and - well, the Internet. I got a good start with this blog post by Jon Kim. After looking over his links I came to much the same conclusion as Jon did (at least regarding the controversy he was writing about). Then I brought myself current on the Indie+ interview and the current responses.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I feel Desborough's perspective is reasonable to a degree, consistent and he is very articulate. I don't agree with everything he has to say. I think coming from the position of having been the subject of a lot of vitriol, his experience is relevant and important to understand. I feel there is a portion of his body of work that is in bad taste, and might be offensive to some (particularly women). I do agree with him in that individuals are responsible for the harassment that occurs at conventions. I've seen it first hand. I don't agree that it is only the individuals - there is definitely a "culture" that at some level tolerates odious behavior among its members. Hell, 20 years ago I went with a large mixed gender group to Gateway in L.A. We came up with our own safety guidelines for the women (some of whom were not yet 18) in the group because we were already aware of how women were treated at cons. I would like to assume it has gotten better since then, for whatever measure of "better". I disagree that harassment policies are not needed. Just like the argument, "Nobody needs a firearm, they can just call the police" is ridiculous, the contention that there is no need for a policy because of the ability to call law enforcement is ridiculous for the same reason. I do agree that any policy needs to be vetted and carefully constructed in order to prevent abuse. I apologize if any of this disappoints any of a number of people whom I respect that take opposing viewpoints.

But where I'm going to start to lose respect for people, and one of the reasons for this post, is that the level of vitriol, mischaracterization, outright twisting of words and blatant disrespect I've seen - present and past -is shameful. It's on both sides, typically not the principals at the center of the debates, but I see a lot more of it from people who are "anti-Desborough" than pro. It's disheartening to say the least.

That's pretty much all I have to say on the matter. Any further discussion is, as always, welcome in the comments.

Owning Your Shit (Yes...Again)

When someone swipes content from someone else - whether it be art, or an audio sample, or a paragraph, or a map, or even a very specific idea/implementation - most people's initial intent in pointing out the source is not to try to serve as tattletales to the original IP owner. We know policing IP is the job of the creator. The purpose is to point out that something seems to be amiss. Much of the time the person in question is approached discreetly with a helpful tip. "Hey, I think you might have copied the Turd Monster from Toilets and Tourette's. You might want to do something about that."  Sure, you get douchebags that will jump straight to shouting it from the rooftops but those are the same people that yelled, "Mom, Bobby's playing with himself again!" at the top of their lungs when they were kids.

It's when the other party denies it, gives excuses, acts like they don't care, etc. that people get pissy. That's when IP owners get notified, and angry blog posts are hammered out like Stephen J. Cannell at his typewriter. All too often, it turns into a complete clusterfuck because the person at the center of attention gets hot under the collar and somehow screws up. They might say something they regret, reveal how ill-informed they are about the situation at hand, or otherwise get people more riled up by doing things like threatening defamation lawsuits or claiming there is a conspiracy to steal their ideas. But all it does is getting everyone else even more pissed off.

I'm so mad I popped my collar

Sidebar: no shit regarding conspiracy claims. This has happened twice now in two different incidents. Trust me, if your stuff was that good, WotC/Onyx Path/whoever would hire you or buy it from you. They wouldn't steal it. Yes, that means your shit isn't even good enough to steal.

To the Lakims and Alleys of the world, there is only one solution and it's the same one that has been repeated over and over: OWN YOUR SHIT. If you fucked up and accidentally reproduced an entire chapter from someone's fanfic and there are people right there who know what they are talking about just fucking own up to it, fix it, move on and don't do it again. No excuse. No explanations. No arguments. No "But it's perfectly leeeeegallllll". Don't put "ego’s sociopathic cousin, hubris" (as Patton Oswalt put it) in charge. You're not going to win, ever.

Not because there are Internet mobs and we just have to live with it or because you're a horrible person. Just because you need to own your shit.

Mid-Year Retrospective

I started out this year with a few goals. The first was to get back into gaming. The second was to start blogging about gaming, because I felt I had things to say. Because of other things taking up my thoughts and time - looking for a new home and working on getting my son out here from Indiana - I think it's a good idea to kind of look at where I started from and where I'm likely to be going.

After backing the Fate Core Kickstarter in January I wanted to do a couple things. The first was my Tribe 8 conversion to Fate, which turned out really well. There are still a few things that I want to do to polish it up, and I haven't actually started a game like I wanted. I'm kind of glad though because the Fate System Toolkit just came out and I haven't had a chance to look at it in detail - but there seem to be things that I'm going to want to change.

I also started cooking up a Thief-inspired setting. I want to revisit it and flesh some things out, because I have some other ideas where to go with it. The same goes for the setting I pitched for Apotheosis Drive X. I left a lot out of what I had written, and for the time being it's just sitting in my Google Docs folder.

Speaking of ADX, one unexpected turn for me was finding way more Kickstarters that I was interested in than I expected. I kind of went overboard - Fate Core, ADX, the Spark RPG, two Fate Dice Kickstarters, Exalted and Mekton Zero. That's more game spending than I've done in a long time. I don't regret any of it, but in the upcoming months I need to curb that kind of spending.

Finally, I have some other things I wanted to do. I have a review I promised and I wanted to finish reading the Laundry RPG. There are bound to be other things that catch my interest as well, and I'm sure once I'm not so preoccupied with moving. Who knows, if my son decides to continue playing RPGs maybe I'll have a guest author on occasion.

Rare Non-Gaming Blog Post

Given that I've been going over the same post for nearly the past week, I'm going to jot down a very rare non-gaming post.

In August my 16 year old son Aiden is coming from Indiana to California to live with my 7-year old daughter, my girlfriend, her 6-year old daughter, and I. He's had a rough road after seven years in Indiana. When things started to go south several years ago, Aiden and his younger brother (and my second child) were actually in California with me for almost a year as I fought unsuccessfully to keep them here. Their return to Indiana was on a legal technicality.

Since their return Aiden has had a very hard time - new stepfather, increasing friction with his mom as he's grown into a young man, and eventually a couple of poor choices. Some of them are the same poor decisions that virtually every teenage boy makes, but others were driven by some very extenuating circumstances. Aiden's carried the burden of those choices, taken responsibility, done everything asked of him and grown and matured considerably. In return he's been effectively shut out by his mother, as have I for having the temerity to support Aiden's growth and believe in him.

Over the past year and a half I've been able to rebuild my relationship with Aiden. It's bittersweet because being shut out by his mother myself, I've been cut off from my other son. Luckily I have wonderful assistance in various agencies in  Indiana that are enabling me to continue to communicate with Aiden, enable his move to California, and also eventually correct the situation with being estranged from his younger brother.

So, last week and this week have been spent communicating with the proper individuals in Indiana, as well as my girlfriend and I searching for a new home here in California. Tomorrow I'm going to look at a very good prospect. Once we secure that, we'll move on to the next phase of turning it into a home for all of us. Last but not least, come August Aiden will be able to come home.

I Can't Start A Game

I'm sorry, this doesn't usually happen. It's just I'm nervous, and it's been a while. So I'm having a little problem... starting a game.

I have all of the things I need. I have a game. I have potential players. I have a place to play. I've done prep work. I have every tool I need - digital, non-digital, you name it. I understand the rules. I have experience. I just can't seem to take that final step for some reason. It's like there's a barrier there. I'm not sure if it's uncertainty that it won't go well or if I subconsciously just don't want to for some reason. Maybe it will finally make the game real. Maybe it's procrastination. I don't know.

The worst part is there are lot of reasons to delay the game starting.  We do still have to decide on a schedule (in this case we'll be playing at lunch at work). It's easy to say people are busy, or put off checking to see if a meeting room is available. Or tell myself I didn't prepare this or that so we can't do it today. It's easy to get distracted with reading other games, or blogs, or discussions (ironically, typically by people who are playing). I had momentum last month, and I let it peter out.

There are other areas I'm lacking motivation in. Maybe I'm depressed. Or I have mono. Either way,

I'm In A Different Hobby Than Most Gamers

At least, that's how I'm starting to feel. I don't want to feel that way. It's just that the more I begin to look at various gaming forums again, the more I start to feel a disconnect from the attitudes and philosophies of many gamers. It reminds me of  reading Facebook and one of my friends or family posts something intolerant and ignorant. I start to feel like "the other" among people who, by all rights, I should feel open and comfortable around.  It's statements like "story games aren't roleplaying games", or "I just want to play a character and not see anything metagame, so that game's not an rpg", or any One True Scotsman-type statement, It's feeling like I can't enter certain discussions and offer input without someone crapping all over any ideas that involve player authorial control.  It's notions that anything that is beyond the character's abilities is "metagaming and not roleplaying." It's narrative mechanics always being lumped into "You can just make it up and automatically win". It's blatant, outright dismissals of entire segments of games based on a label, and a completely fabricated one at that.

If it makes me uncomfortable to see intolerance like that in my friends and family, when I see it in the gaming community it makes me sad. Even if the bile and vitriol launched by some segments of the gaming community against anything that deviates from a "traditional" roleplaying game is from a very small, vocal, abrasive minority - it still serves to drive wedges between people who, ostensibly, all want the same thing. To play some games, without someone trying to judge whether or not it meets some mythical standard of "roleplaying".

Disagreements are fine, and debate is essential in helping us refine things that we enjoy or don't enjoy about gaming - and even discover new (or even old) points of view. But for fuck's sake, some people just need to stop trying to exclude people because they don't roll their dice a certain way. Who knows, maybe you might learn something from the "swine".

KIckstarter (Or What Happened To My Self Control)

Apparently I'm exactly the kind of sucker people who Kickstart rpg projects want to have. I typically can't back at a really high level, but I get swept up in the hype and excitement of watching the project break through it's funding goals and skyrocket past them. I like stretch goals, I like backer updates, I like previews and draft versions. It makes me feel involved in the process of getting the games published.

Since January, I've backed Kickstarters at higher levels than my entertainment budget for the entire previous yaer. My entertainment budget is typically for books, video games, movies, rpgs, and music. So far, I've only backed Kickstarters. The Fate Core Kickstarter was already grown up and ready to go to college by the time I got involved, but the Apotheosis Drive X Kickstarter was a blast. I felt like I was actively contributing, no matter how small of a contribution it may have been. The same for the Spark rpg Kickstarter. And there were still more that I would have backed, like Short Order Heroes, and I want to (if I can) back Trigger Happy.

And I just bumped up my pledge for the Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition Kickstarter. I think I need help.