Dear Gamers, We had better be doing better

I want to direct your attention to Anita Sarkeesian.  She is a blogger.
You can finder her blog here, http://www.feministfrequency.com/

She writes about a lot of things, but what got my attention is she wants to talk about games, video game specifically, but a lot can apply to Table Top games.

Well Anita had this idea.  The idea was she wanted to talk about depictions of women in video games versus various tropes.  Mind you there was initial indication on what she was going to say.  She wanted to talk about it. She set up a Kickstarter to be used to buy video games to play and to do the videos.  Perfectly reasonable if you ask me.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games

That is until the bottom feeders on 4Chan found out about it.
Now complaining about 4Chan is like complaining that shit smells bad. Yes, it does, but it's shit.

Well read what happened after that.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/internet/2012/06/dear-internet-why-you-cant-have-anything-nice

So after the most despicable display of human behavior where Ms. Sarkeesian was called ugly, a man hater, threatened with violence, rape and death.  Her project is now 20x over her goal of $6,000.00 ($126,550 as of this writing).
I pledged, and I hope you do as well.

But I am not here to get you do that.  She is doing fine thanks to press coverage.
I am here to talk about what happened here.

The issue was she was going to talk about it.  The mere idea of this sent the lowest form of internet mouth breather into a fit of rage.  The fact that many of them were gamers or at least self-identified themselves as gamers is bad for all of us.  And frankly if you can't see why then it only illustrates how pervasive this problem is.

The problem is of course not just one of rampant sexism in games, both Video and Table Top, but how we treat and welcome (or fail to) the female gamer.

I don't pretend for a moment that we, the larger community of self-identified gamers, can fix all the issues we have here.  And I would also like to think that the reader of this Blog looks at this a problem.

But what can we do?  Well the best I think we can strive for is make gaming a more enlightened place. Yes, were are here to have fun, but I also think back to all the things I have learned over my years as a gamer.
I feel we can use this as a learning tool as something more than just pushing dice and papers around.  There is a solid social aspect here that Video Games can't touch and we, because of that, can and should be better.

Right now my game group consists of all guys. Boys, actually since they are my sons.  But I'll soon be adding one of my son's friends to the mix. But what I can do with them, and I feel I have some success, is point out that Role-Playing is some EVERYONE can do.  Girls like Harry Potter too (remember who my audience is) and if Hermonie can kick ass, so can they.

I think this needs to be the frontier RPGS need to move too.  Get us out of the basements and into the family rooms! Get different people involved.  IF the larger video game community is unwilling to welcome more gamer girls (and women) I say we do.  Make the games that people want to play with their families.

I am not talking watering down the games (At all!).  S&W, LL, BF, OSRIC and S&S are all perfect as they are right now, plus 100s of others, but make the space more inviting.

Table Top Gamers lament that we are loosing ground to video games.  The sales numbers certainly attest to this.  There is a place though where we can always do better than the video games, IF we choose to do and choose to make it better.

The Dark Druid

Something different today for the YAM Magazine LBGT Blogathon.  Today, not a character so much as characters  and an adventure.  I wanted to repost a link to the first ever Buffy adventure I ever wrote; updated to feature Willow & Tara more prominently.  Also updated with a new download link.
Originally posted here in 2010.


The Dark Druid: The Director's Cut

- Download here -

A bit of history.  Back in 2002 Eden was getting ready to release their newest game, The Buffy the Vampire Slayer game.  As you may know, I had already been playing a Willow/Tara focused WitchCraft game for about a year, so I was pretty excited by this.  Well I got asked by Eden to write the first Buffy adventure that would appear in "Games Unplugged" along with an interview with C.J. Carella talking about the game.

I took an idea I had been working on for my other game (tentatively called "All Soul's Night") and thus the Dark Druid was born.

I had been reading a ton of Irish myths then.  Among those were the stories of Fionn MacCumhaill ("Finn MacCool") and his foster mothers Bodhmal and Liath.  It occurred to me that Liath and Bodhmal were lovers, and to tie it more directly to my work in Buffy, they were reincarnated later on into the form of Willow and Tara.   Since that time anytime I read a story about Fionn MacCumhaill I can't help but read Bodhmal and Liath as lovers.

The original featured, rather prominently, Willow and Tara, as to be expected.  I had to make some changes to make it playable for others and to make it an "intro" or season opener type episode.  The plot dealt with an enemy from the Cast's past as a portent to greater evil in the future.  It was designed to be a opening episode of the season, but one that may or may not be directly related to the seasonal arc.  We were going to use this i n part of the great "Djinn" story, but that never happened.

Fast forward a few years and I was finishing up work on Ghosts of Albion and another adventure that sprang from "All Soul's Night" called "Blight" (which I have played at Gen Con before).  I felt it was time to bring back the Dark Druid and restore it to the mythology that I had created in my games.  Now you can have it too.  So it became a Prequel or an Episode 0 for my huge Willow & Tara series, The Dragon and the Phoenix.  This adventure and the Dragon adventures were designed to feature Willow and Tara.  My players were extremely pissed off at Tara being killed, so this was our way of getting our own way.

I updated it not only to fit better with my world-myths, and with some of the work I did on Ghosts of Albion and the adventure Blight.  In fact you can run Blight and The Dark Druid as co-adventures, separated by time.

The story is rather direct and linear.  This was partly due to the nature of the story and what is was supposed to do (introduce new players to the game) and part of just me writing for the Buffy game for the first time.  I have opted not to change that here, despite nearly 10 years of Cinematic Unisystem adventure writing since then.  It is supposed to be a quick, fun little adventure dealing with past lives.

The episode was well received and even has a bit on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffyverse_role-playing_games#Adventures

It was the first. The start of a series of adventures that led me personally down a crazy path.  It's hard to gauge the effect it has had, it was so fundamental.  From this point my writing increased maybe a 100 or 500 fold.  Hard to say really.

White Dwarf Wednesday #20

August/September 1980.
We get six pages of ads to start with.   This month's Editorial on Alignments and how they play out.  It's a fluff piece that doesn't really go anywhere,  other than to get the reader thinking.

The big article here is the famous Dungeons & ...Dragoons one on historical troops in D&D. This 4-page article by Philip Masters attempts to bring authentic troop types to D&D.  I am not sure how well it succeeds historically, but as a bit of game writing it is fantastic. Again, this is the kind of thing we could and should be seeing from the OSR.

Andy Slack gives us Star Patrol, scout services in Traveller.

A new feature, Character Conjuring, looks into various variant NPC character classes.  This issue has the Alchemist by Tony Chamberlain.  Since it is an NPC class there is no XP advancement table.  I am sure there were a few PC Alchemists though in the late summer of 1980.

Open Box has a few new reviews.  Dark Nebula from GDW gets a 9/10.  TSR's The Awful Green Things from Outer Space only fares a 7/10.  In a case of don't judge a game by it's box cover art, The Mystic Wood gets a 9/10 for play even if the art is bad.  We also have some new Traveller books from GDW, Book 5 High Guard (8/10), The (infamous) Spinward Marches (9/10) and Citizens of the Imperium (8/10).

With all this going over old Traveller books and games I really want to play some old school Traveller.

We get an AD&D Adventure from Will Stephenson, Grakt's Crag. 7-8 characters of 3rd level are suggested.

Fiend Facotry is back and we have a Creeper, which looks like a Roper mixed with a Shambling Mound.  The Water Leaper, which is a cross between a frog, a bat and a snake. The Slime Beast and the Frog Folk, which if I am not mistaken, became the Bullywugs.  The Cauldron-Born walked off the screen of the Black Cauldron and into White Dwarf.  And finally the Melodemon.
They are holding their first ever competition to come up with some monsters.  The monsters are all fly-related, Flyman, Flymage, Sandfly and so on.  No Fly-girls though.  Submit your stats and background and the best submission will get the Illustrated Inventorum Natura by Una Woodruff.  Add that one to your Appendix Ns.

A new regular column premiers this issue.  Star Base will discuss Traveller and other Sci-Fi games specifically.  This entry has setting up your Traveller campaign.

Treasure Chest has a bunch of Odd Items such as a Windbag and Lotion of Undead Repulsion.

A new clerical ability is covered, Conversion.  We would later see similar ideas in Dragon.
We end with a few more pages of adds and the first look at the cover of the Games Workshop Doctor Who game.  I wanted that so bad.

Quite a bit seems to have been tidied up in this issue.  While there are no big sweeping changes, other than the introduction of two new features,  one has the feeling of a bunch of smaller changes.

Batwoman: Marvel Heroic Role-Playing

Note: Here is my next post for the YAM Magazine LBGT Blogathon.  I am going to go over some of my favorite characters from TV, Books, and Movies and talk about how to use them in various games.

In some cases I'll also talk about why I picked the characters I did and why I paired them with the game I did.

Today I want to focus on a character I absolutely adore, but have not devoted many posts too.  The Kate Kane Batwoman.

Batwoman: Marvel Heroic Role-Playing

Batwoman is one of the more interesting characters to come out of DC's 52 comic from a few years back.  52 is also notable for giving us a new Question, Black Adam kind of sympathetic, and making Booster Gold actually kinda cool.  But it was Batwoman that made her debut here and the character has been crazy popular ever since.

This is not the old, original Bat-woman, set up only as a romance interest for Batman.  No. Not this one.

Kate Kane, is a rich heiress. A socialite. A member of the family that "owns everything else in Gotham that Bruce Wayne doesn't". But all of that is a façade.  Kate Kane is a lot of things. She is a daughter, once was a sister. She is soldier, she is openly gay and she it the Batwoman.

As an openly gay character in the comics Kate received a ton of publicity, and not just because of that, but because she was a "Bat".  The Batman family is royalty in the comics biz.  Do anything that close to the Batman and no matter what it is, it will be noticed.

While Kate of "52" seemed to be a somewhat closeted "lipstick" lesbian, Kate of the "Batwoman" series (one of DC's best selling female lead books) isn't.  She is openly out, she has tattoos, she is a former Army cadet with a promising career ahead of her till "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".  I talked about her backgroud a lot in my review of Elegy a while back.

One of the things I enjoy about this book is that her sexuality is part of person, not there to attract or tantalize readers. Look at the cover for the upcoming Batwoman #0.  Yes, she is very attractive, and yes you about about to get a boot to your face.  Kate is a soldier, first and always.

I choose to stat her up in Marvel Heroic Role-Playing for the same reasons I often choose this game. It is because it is a great comic-book game and a great tool for role-playing interpersonal drama.  Kate is great character and there is a lot going on in her life.  Her new relationship with Maggie Sawyer and her old relationship with Renee Montoya. Her strained relationship with her father.  Her significance to the Cult of Crime (who alternately want to worship her or sacrifice her).  Her relationships with the rest of the Bat family and here working with the D.E.O.  All of this stuff combines to make great character driven drama.  You could not for example simply replace Batwoman with Batman or Batgirl in these stories.   The are different stories.  In many cases Batgirl is too smart to get mixed up in same sort of cases and the Batman would punch out the bad guys and threaten everyone else.  Kate is not as strong as Bruce, or as smart as Barbara.  So she has to be more dedicated and more tenacious.

Here she is, in her Marvel Heroic Role-Playing format.

The Batwoman

"The bat they shine in the sky... civilians think it's a call for help. The bad guys think it's warning. But it's more than that. It's something higher. It's a call to arms... I've found my way to serve."

Name: Batwoman
ID: Katherine "Kate" Kane (secret)
Affiliations: Solo d10, Buddy d8, Team d6 (Currently she is solo, she has worked with father and Flamebird before. She is best though when she has someone to work with, even if she prefers to be alone)

Distinctions:
Found my Way to Serve - Kate sees herself as a soldier in a war against crime. She applies all her discipline and training to this service.
Out Lesbian - while not out as Batwoman, this does affect her mental attitude. She had to stay true to herself, even if it meant costing her everything she had worked for.
Rich Heiress - what Kate does costs a lot of money. Also her "role" as the rich heiress is a good cover.

Power Sets
Next Level Training d8
Kate sees herself as soldier still, this is the next level of training for her.
Enhanced Senses d8
Enhanced Reflexes d8
Enhanced Stamina d8
Speed d6

SFX: Effort.  Spend 1pp to up a die in NLT power.
SFX: Second Wind. Before using a NLT Power move physical stress to Doom Pool and step Power up +1
SFX: Immunity. Spend 1 pp to ignore stress, trauma or complications of a physical nature.
Limit: Exhausted.

Uniform of the Bat d8

This is not a costume for Kate. It is her uniform, the ideals she believes in.  And the boots do not have heals on them!
Gadgets/Utility Belt d8
Body Armor d8
Batarangs (attack) d8
Swingline d8

SFX: Focus
SFX: Area Attack. Target multiple opponents
Limit: Gear


Specialties 
Acrobatics Expert d8
Crime Expert d8
Military Expert d8
Menace Expert d8
Combat Master d10

Milestones
"I'm a Goddamned Solider!"
1xp when you first enter a mission.
3xp when your loyalties to those you serve with are called into question
10xp when you must abandon your loyalties for the sake of the mission or visa-versa.

My Past Haunts Me
1xp when you first interact with your Father, Cousin Bette/Flamebird or something to do with your sister.
3xp when a member of the Cult of Crime recognizes you as the Twice Named Daughter of Caine
10 xp  when you have to defeat Alice to accomplish the mission, or abandon the mission to save your Father or Cousin.

Compared to my Unisystem build I think this is rather nice.
I have done other builds for MHRP as well:

• Astra Kal-El/Justice
• Willow & Tara
• Zatanna

Xena & Gabrielle: Spellcraft & Swordplay

Note: This is my first (albeit late) post for the YAM Magazine LBGT Blogathon.  I am going to go over some of my favorite characters from TV, Books, and Movies and talk about how to use them in various games.

In some cases I'll also talk about why I picked the characters I did and why I paired them with the game I did.

Xena & Gabrielle: Spellcraft & Swordplay

I make no excuses of my enjoyment of Xena: Warrior Princess.  The show was silly, irreverent and always a fun time. Frankly, with it's mix of comedy, drama, memorable characters and a mis-mash of historical and mythological events, it really was the perfect D&D TV show.

I have discussed Xena in the past, with both M&M3/DCA stats and Ghosts of Albion/Army of Darkness. The unisystem versions has been one of my most popular posts. Xena certainly has earned a place in many game worlds, but in particular mine.  So here are some more stats.

This is Xena and her anamchara Gabrielle for the Spellcraft & Swordplay RPG.  Unlike my other stats, these assume that Xena and Gabrielle are still together and travelling the world.

Xena, Warrior Princess of Amphipolis
Warrior (Fighting Woman): 9th Level

Strength: 18
Dexterity: 18
Constitution: 17
Intelligence: 11
Wisdom: 12
Charisma: 15

Attacks: 7+5 (7 attacks per round, +5 to any one attack)
Hit Points: 40
Alignment: Neutral (Unaligned)
AC: 5
Sword: 1d6+3
Chakram 1d6+1, decapitates on "box cars" (double 6s), on any double that hits can knock out instead of doing damage.

+2 to Con-based Saves

Gabrielle, The Battling Bard of Potidaea
Bard: 7th Level (Bards are found in Monstrous Mayhem)

Strength: 14
Dexterity: 15
Constitution: 15
Intelligence: 15
Wisdom: 14
Charisma: 16

Attacks: 4+3
Hit Points: 25
Alignment: Neutral (mostly Good)
AC: 7
Sword: 1d6+3
Favored: Charisma, Intelligence
Oration: Gabrielle is a teller of tales, in particular the tales of Xena.  She is the author of the so called "Xena Scrolls" which could be a fabled magical tome in your game.

Staff: 1d6
Sais: 1d6 can attack with both hands (used later in the series)

Why Xena?
There is one thing that Xena does better than any RPG.  It attracted a huge female audience and kept them.  Granted, one could argue that "Friend in Need" might have killed that, but up until then.  I think Xena works for the same reason that other successful shows do.  Great characterizations and great characters.  You know all about Xena and Gabrielle, but they are still great to watch.  Adding them to your game might just be that spice you didn't know you were missing.

Adding Xena and Gabrielle to your Game
Given their wanderings across the world it should actually be only a matter of time before the characters would run into her.  Maybe they know of her infamy as a conqueress.  Maybe they know of her turn and desire to do good to atone.  Or maybe it is just one of those things where the PCs and Xena arrive in the same place at the same time.  Fate is funny that way.

Plus they are kick-ass characters that bring a lot of fun to the game.

Tiamat on my Mind

Been doing some research on the end game of my kids D&D 3.x game and I have been thinking a lot about Tiamat.  The kids are going to fight her in the end, but I wanted something more than the big five-head dragon of the AD&D Monster Manual, and not exactly like the Takhisis of Dragonlance.

So I hit the "books".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiamat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiamat_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takhisis
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Tiamat (for the Forgotten Realms info)
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/tiamat.html

And inspirational posts:
http://gorgonmilk.blogspot.com/2012/01/tiamat.html
http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2012/05/percentile-systems-girl-voices-and.html
http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2011/09/divinity-of-dragons.html


http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/03/drow-should-be-lawful-evil-among-other.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/01/going-up-to-hell-cosmology.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011/05/post-666.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/11/sohave-you-ever-killed-god.html


Well I also hit the real books too.

One thing I recall thinking up years ago was that Tiamat in the old myths was the personification of Chaos.  This idea was reaffirmed with me when I, like many others, dabbled in Chaos Math and Science (it was the 90s, all the cool grad students were doing it).   Tiamat is primordial chaos.   Well what is that in D&D?  Simple, the Abyss.  So I have placed Tiamat in the Abyss, but it is not-quite-the-Abyss.  Her realm is Tehom, the Hebrew word for abyss or deep.  It is also related to the Kabbalah, being one of the Qliphoth.  Tiamat and Tehom also are have etymological relations.

Zak even talks a bit about fighting Tiamat and the mytho-historical Tiamat near the end of his interview over at Penny Red. (1:20:00 or around there).

Tiamat and Lolth
In my games Tiamat and Lolth are strong allies (no, not like this). Mostly because I have effectively had them swap places; Lolth becoming LE and in Hell, Tiamat CE and in the Abyss.  But also because they have similar backstories.  Both were (are) gods. Both were cast out by male Gods to establish some new order.  I can see each seeing something of herself in the other, and not in a self-loathing way (Lolth in my world is full of self-loathing, no pun intended) but rather as solidarity.  Their views are radically different, but their plans for conquest do not conflict really.  So they see each other as an ally.  Not best friends or anything like that, but there is mutual trust built up over centuries.  They are evil, not stupid.   If I were to play this out then I would have an alliance between the Drow and a group of dragons.  Most likely the red dragons, like what the Githyanki do.  I might even revise that a bit and say it was a select group Drow that went to serve Tiamat and she in return had some dragons serve Lolth.  Of course they are spies, but everyone knows this.

Here is an odd entry, attributed to the Demonomicon that Lolth is the offspring of Tiamat and Alrunes, the Queen of Sorcery.   Not quite sure about that one really.  But I have conjectured that Orcus is the offspring of Tiamat.  That would give me a hook too.

Of course I had this evil thought of using  the Scales of War material for the last few adventures.

Just a little late night research.

Anything cool about Tiamat or Lolth I should know?

Zatannurday: Gillykins Cosplay

I stumbled upon this cosplayer Gillian aka Gillykins a while back while looking for some Red Sonja pics on Deviantart.
I thought these would be worth sharing!

You can see more at her DeviantArt page, her Facebook page and at her Geek X Girls photo shoot.



Sentinel of Magic by ~gillykins on deviantART


Show Time by ~gillykins on deviantART


Zatanna by ~gillykins on deviantART


Cue the Lights by ~gillykins on deviantART


Illusion by ~gillykins on deviantART


Cards of Fortune by ~gillykins on deviantART


Magic Act by ~gillykins on deviantART


Do you belive in magic by ~gillykins on deviantART


SUCOP SUCOH by ~gillykins on deviantART


Magical Mistress by ~gillykins on deviantART

And one I found laying around.