5 Geeks, One Roundish Table. This session of Geeky Topics Round Table, we talk about the Levar Burton Kickstarter, questioning roleplayer sanity, our issues with some rules lite games, and roleplaying the other.
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Reading Rainbow, I’m not sure how high it will end up getting but I still wish it all the best. I’m not much for just throwing numbers out for the most part, any little bit is an addition to a project I support.
Meanwhile the sanity of others I’ve never been forced to question in my long long years of internet roleplaying. I think because I’ve personally kept a very healthy distance from the people I’ve roleplayed with, even now while I consider a couple to be my friends it is just not something I break from easily. Myself though, I suffer from a lot of Jesus where I find that playing characters that seem to augment and explore terrible aspects to be incredibly amusing. Further though I enjoy trying to make other people love them too, everyone who has been able to play with my mad Psyker Alastor has enjoyed him because he seems to drag you into his own madness and catapult you with his ecstasy of power.
I think a pretty serious detriment in two parts to you guys liking Dungeon World was making the choice to be almost Dis related and watching the gently growing FUCK THAT SHIT levels from Angela and Billy. The other part is because ya’ll were Fandibling it. Monster Hearts had a lot of power to it because you guys were being GM’d by people who already had a very solid firm grasp of the game and how to GM it. Because all the *Worldhacks and *World itself is so totally fucking weird by comparison to a lot of other games.
Because D Vincent Baker is insane. But also pretty clever. It doesn’t help that the adaptation wasn’t perfect, and they’ve tried to clear the rules up more since it began. Also Angela hates fantasy. A *World game worries me if ya’ll were to hit it for just that reason. Letting your fandi-selves run free would do really well in it, but I either think Jesus will have to suffer the task of crawling into D Vincent Baker’s mind and reading through blog posts and other shit to very clearly know how the game works. The players honestly don’t even need to know jack, the less they know the better, as long as the GM just asks them to react accordingly.
It is the “Say yes or roll the dice.” method of storytelling the DVB is big on, until someone says something you just keep roleplaying.
I’m rambling.
Dread is still the best thing ever though I’ll agree.
Finally I’m glad to hear your response to my question. I’ll admit it is probably good thing you cut the BarshaBarber scene, it also shows you have a relative understanding of when you’ve maybe pushed a bit too far. Which happens honestly, we’re all a little ignorant and it is being able to express that and respond in kind that lets us figure out each other on a cultural level, and indeed cause cultural change.
I too never play women on the part of not being sure how not to just play a dude who has girl parts. Any connection to my feminine side seems pretty absent in the idea, I just don’t see what makes women any different from me despite what everyone keeps saying aside from the cultural mistakes that humanity has made in the past that continue to poison the water today.
What I do know though is my roleplaying group definitely doesn’t feel the way you do David about SR being totally mercenary. Racisim has had a big part in our games, from Japanese jingoism when working with the Japancorps or Yakuza. Anti-SURGE mutant terrorism, and attempting to cause another Night of Rage. Orc citizenship in Seattle. Hell we have a couple fully sentient Ghouls, my human character is in a relationship with one, so when you guys start capping off Ghouls left and right and consider turning in their scalps for a bounty there isn’t anything that my Doctor Frank wouldn’t see there that he couldn’t compare to hunting down Native Americans in the old west. Shadowrun is rife with the potential for hate, it is just new hate, which doesn’t differ that much from the old hate.
Women rights are much improved though.
I think you misunderstood part of my question. I was counting Dungeon world as crunchy. It really is even without a ton of numbers to play it right you need like a dozen cheat sheets. That’s practically Gygaxian in my book.
Yay for internet friends!
I so want the “LeVar Burton reads you a story” reward, but I can’t even watch the thank you videos because it’s too close to talking directly to me. Troy Barnes gets it.
Thanks to Billy for mentioning that people sometimes take to MMO roleplay to work their shit out and that it’s not always a bad thing. I’m quick to say I’m a robot and don’t do emotions, so besides being a good story outlet, getting in characters’ heads through RP is an oddly useful way of identifying my own emotions by trying to figure out what they’re feeling.
I have run across people who take RP-as-coping too far, and I’ve booted one from a group for making it a hostile place for other members and being either unwilling to admit or somehow persistently unaware that he had any responsibility for his or his characters’ actions. I hope he found something more effective.
More than questioning people’s sanity (and I hate that phrase anyway), I’ve questioned whether actions they’re fine with their character taking or joking about taking meant that I wasn’t safe around the player. For example, joking about slipping my character roofies so they could make out. Nopenopenope.
And to Syren: Probably the easiest starting point for playing women is to play a character exactly the same way you would a man but with different pronouns and whatever name/description changes you think are appropriate. People WILL react differently if they read the character as female, and they’ll often read in more stereotypically feminine traits than you actually include. If you don’t see inherent personality differences between you and women outside RP, why would you try to force differences for RP?
A very good point Peripheral. I guess it is for the same reason I have difficulty grasping why there is still a variety of gaps in society when it comes to things related to women. I ultimately trust that nobody in my regular roleplaying group is going to make things weird for me since we all have a mutual respect, but for those moments I step out into the real terrible world of random chance you get to deal with real and terrible people. Makes me feel like I’m leaving myself open to be shot at, but I guess to expand my own horizons that is a necessity.
@Syren While Shadowrun does have elements of racism within it’s setting, my point was that it is primarily relegated to fictional groups (trolls, elves, etc.) Gender identity, sexuality, skin color, ethnicity and religion are all much more accepted in Sixth World Seattle than they are in present-day. With the exception of the ethnocentric Yakuza and Triads within the setting, the world is one where the only quality that matters in the shadows as well as the Megacorps (and everything in-between) is if you can get the job done. You can call a character in the game “a damn trog,” but no one is going to feel uncomfortable out-of-game because they’re actually half troll.
And look, I’m warming up to the idea of voting rights for ghouls, but who’s speaking out for the Hydras of the world? This injustice has to end. #manyheadsonevoice
@Lucek Looks like I did misunderstand your question, and you’re right that Dungeon World is crunchy with it’s necessary sheets. It’s just crunchy in a very unique way. It seems to give the illusion that it’s very open-system (Just declare what you do!) but really the list of what mechanically is allowed to you is limited.
You know I never bought the “I don’t care what color skin you have as long as it isn’t green” line I hear in reference to things like this. If racism is tolerated against trolls and ghouls then when do people draw the line. Probably why I’ve never played Shadow Run where the racism was isolated to the subspecies level.