Ugly Cry Reading the Sandman (SPOILERS)

Hello.  It's been a while but sometimes I depserately need my voice here, other times not so much.  Things have been busy with my family and the LARP to the point where I haven't had a chance to write.

Back in my 20's there was a comic called The Sandman, which is now being made into a Netflix series. I loved that comic.Neil Gaiman has become my favorite author, though I mostly appreciate his comics or his short stories.

My favorite story in The Sandman was called "A Game of You" where a person named Barbie has to travel to her childhood imaginary land to save it. It's very violent and a lot of characters die, though I want to talk about one in particular and how it made me feel.

I want to talk about Wanda. She was transgender and she heroically dies protecting Barbie's body from a collapsing building while Barbie's consciousness was in her imaginary realm. Then Wanda's family (Wanda and Barbie lived in New York) got a hold of her. They buried her in a suit, cur her hair, and used her dead name. Even as a 20-something in the 90's I felt the violation of this act so acutely. I couldn't stop crying over what they did to her. It was horrible.

Then Barbie uses her lipstick to write Wanda on the tombstone, an act of defiance I tearfully cheered on. 

I do hope the series is successful and other people get to see that scene, because I want to have that shared.  I want other people to see things that still happen in this world.

Wanda was a woman.

Trans women are women.

That is all.

Fear

 My father was a violent drunk.

I remember waiting for him to come home. If he was late you knew he went to the bar. As the minutes late increased, the higher anxiety would get.

He never disappointed when he was late. One time I stood up to him. We were arguing on opposite sides of the kitchen table when he threw the table aside to come after me.

I didn't handle the situation well, actually.  I turned to alcohol myself (and pot) and let myself be taken away in a dream world of my own making.

Self hatred came out of that experience.  So much wasted potential, even now.

Yes, I hate myself.

Star Wars

 I love West End Games' D6 Star Wars RPG. I will not deny this love may be irrational, but at the same time it is the best Star Wars RPG out there. The D20 version - there shouldn't be levels in a Star Wars RPG. As for the Fantasy Flight Games version, it is like reading sheep entrails to get used to those dice. It's idiotic.

However, D6 Star Wars is a product of its time. Being a character with ability in the Force is HARD. For munchkins too the game can be unbalanced as hell, but considering I prefer to play with people who are not "optimizing" but actually role-playing I don't run into that problem a lot.

Some of my earlier groups had such classic PCs: Justin Time, the ex-Imperial stormtrooper who wanted to whip the rest of the PCs into a fighting force against the Empire; Moser Neeley, a smuggler who was usually drunk (his ship had a fully stocked bar) who eventually admitted his ship was the brains of the outfit; the ewok with no neck; the Jawa Jedi; Captain Morgan, who often thought, much like Han Solo, that he was far more brilliant than he actually was. There was also Dah'Mien, who was basically a Force using Minotaur whose battle cry was, "I am eight foot five and the Force is with me!" (The player, when asked about character creation, showed off a slayer patch with a sword wielding Minotaur and said "That with a lightsaber.")

We even had a Gungan based on Paris Hilton, who had a protocol droid following her spritzing her with water to keep her moist. She adventures with a Sullustan ex-Reality Show Contestant.

I have run this game on and off since 1987 when it came out for Star Wars' 10th anniversary, and I am about to run it again.

Due to my one player's illness, we are putting the Vaesen game on hold until he is well enough to join us. In the meantime, we are going to be playing D6 Star Wars with the remaining 4 players. I have considered adding another player but I don't want to seem like I am replacing the sick player.

They are going to be smugglers. The one player wants to play an Ewok, which I love, because all games should have aliens like Ewoks, Jawas, and Gungans.

The plan right now is to combine 3 sourcebooks into one gigantic sandbox. The players with have their characters placed within moral quandaries. 

Hopefully it will be fun.

Masks

 I wanted to have a change of pace today, and it has been about a month since writing, about RPGs I enjoy. To qualify for this list I actually have to have played it.

I tend to run shorter campaigns because damn it I am an RPG player and not a collector. I plan on playing through my collection until I have gotten use out of the RPGs I have.

The first one I want to talk about is Masks, which is a teen superhero game. It was the first Powered by the Apocalypse game that I really understood. Admittedly, that understanding was severely helped by the actual play "Just Us Heroes" from Happy Jacks. I recommend Happy Jacks for lightly produced Actual Plays that sound like your friends around a table playing a game. Their advice show it top notch too.

Masks is powered by the apocalypse, so it is 2d6 + a positive or negative attribute. A 7-9 is a success with consequences and a 10+ is a success.  Instead of hit points or anything else there are conditions like "Angry" which cause the player to be -2 to certain rolls.

The game is about being a teen where everyone wants you to be something different: your parents, the government, your peers, mentor superheroes, etc.. Your character evolves based on these expectations. The game really is about how you change in relationship to yourself, others, and the world at large.

The city itself is painted with such broad strokes that a GM can add their own flair to it. I had fae wackiness ensue based on the history of a PC or two. They had a crime computer that used a magical mirror as a screen (words and images would appear there), and it turned out the processor was a group of gnomes led by one named Larry. The gnomes liked alcohol which led to quandaries about underage kids getting liquor for the gnomes (they decided against it).  Then they had an airship that was manned by gremlins (think Bugs Bunny rather than Gizmo). All in all, it was a fun if silly campaign.

My games for that particular group of players has gotten darker over time, going from monster hunter to now doing 19th Century Nordic Horror, but that will be for another time.

If anyone actually reads this, please feel free to share the blog with others. In the meantime, take care of yourselves and be safe.

Michael

In regards to my friend who has cancer, normally I would run immediately to another friend of mine for how to respond to the current situation.

Problem is that friend has been dead from cancer for about four and one half years.

Mike was amazing. He was my GM for a long running D&D campaign.  We ended up fighting Demogorgon at the end of that campaign, and it involved turning our monk into a Titan to do MEGA DAMAGE to anything she punched. I played a dwarven wizard because no one plays a dwarven wizard in D&D.

Mike was amazing. He was the type of friend you said "I love you" to without it feeling weird. Since his passing I try (and admittedly sometimes fail) to say "I love you" not just to my family but my friends as well.

Mike was also known for playing two different characters in the LARP we played in. His second character and my character HATED each other, which was fun because after game we would joke around about what level of trust you needed to play characters who had that sort of relationship. There's a group of friends I have purely because 

I miss Mike every single day.

Love Your PCs

Love Your PCs.

Love Your PCs.

Love Your PCs.

I cannot say this enough as both a Tabletop and LARP GM.  If you hate the PCs (or even worse the players) or just like being a cruel jerk that believes "they get what they deserve," you have no business being a GM of anything.

We challenge the PCs to see them overcome the situations.  Will they fail at times? Yes, and that is fine. I am not advocating making things all sunshine and rainbows for them, just that no matter how hard the challenge, you should be rooting for the PCs to overcome it.

Admittedly, I have needed my PCs, especially my LARP ones, as heroes for my own sanity. Sandy Hook left a negative imprint on my psyche for a long time, I ended up creating a similar NPC in game just so the adventurers could pass judgement and kill him. The fact that it also served as a dark mirror to one of the PCs was completely a bonus.

I am writing a story right now where the player is eating ALL THE ANGST BISCUITS. She is having an enjoyable time of it. I just gave her a challenge of sending her to what basically amounts to Hell in our LARP to retrieve her 3yo son's soul. Nothing major.  ;)  It is a challenge that I root for the character to succeed in, though success is not guaranteed. I will still root for her, though

Always Love Your PCs.

Vaesen

We started a new monthly tabletop campaign called Vasesen, which is 19th Century Nordic Horror.  It's made by Free League Publishing, the same people who make RPGs such as Forbidden Lands and Tales from the Loop.

My one player Casey likes to mention that the system is brutal. You roll Attribute plus skill and any sixes you get are considered a success. You can push a roll to generate success but it doesn't guarantee success, just a reroll.

So far we have the following characters:

An Academic

A Private Investigator

A Lutheran Minister

A Military Officer

A Rich Doctor

(I am sorry but I don't have access to their names where I am right now. All I remember is that the private detective is named after one of Sherlock Holmes' disguised identities (which I believe is Ulf Sigerson)

We have done half an adventure so far, and the Military Officer has shot at monsters, gone a bit batty, and ended up screaming uncontrollably at the sight of a hanged man. There was haunted shadow puppet theater going on. People fainted,  The Doctor and the Private Investigator are the only ones who kept their heads on straight so far but we shall see what happens when more stuff goes on.

It's a lot like seeing a Call of Cthulhu group lose it's collective mind in a way.  An interesting event to say the least but it'really can throw a wrench in the story.

I know some people prefer the fear mechanic in things like Legend of the Five Rings, where you just get penalized on rolls to the point where running is probably a good idea. I have found this doesn't work as well with groups that mainly play D&D because instead of embracing the fear they just get frustrated at the penalties. Then again, it's tough without getting the proper buy in from players in L5R without it turning into D&D with Samurai. When the GM tries to describe zombies without saying it and really give a good horror to the situation and the players are all like, "YAY!! ZOMBIES!!!" it really can take the wind out of the GM's sails.

Back to Vasesen. I find the game fun.  Hopefully other people do too, since they are playing in it. Hopefully everyone survives. As the GM, I root for my players, but that is another post for another time.