Greetings from March 9, 1911
Currently I find myself hiding in Sturmhalten. If I am not at my mailing address then my Birthday cannot find me and if it cannot find me then I do not have to turn 138. You pursue immortality your way and I will pursue it my way, thank you very much. So, I am camping out here at a lovely hotel, waiting to attend a local film festival while Acererak (my new roommate) has the run of my chateau. I hope he does not burn the place to the ground.
Anyway, as I age, despite my best efforts not to, I reflect upon many things. As this is a gaming blog and a gaming column, I will keep the observations pertinent to the matter at hand. These observations include a need to exercise caution when discussing your gaming hobby with anyone you do not know to be also involved in the hobby. Avoid wasting time with a bad group of players and avoid wasting time on a bad game. While gaming has progressed since its inception in the 1970s it has not progressed far enough. Lastly, gaming allows you to do things for yourself, though this means you are also responsible for your successes and your failures.
The world has moved pass the 1980s and the anti-gaming backlash of that decade. Groups such as Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons have essentially collapsed under the weight of their own unfocused rancor or simply faded away. Few people believe any RPGs, be it Dungeons and Dragons or the World of Darkness, are a mechanism for turning good children into serial killers. For one thing time has proven this to be demonstrably false, for another we know such transformations are largely due to the chemicals in whatever the hell that orange stuff is on Cheetos. (Yeah, I said it – what are you gonna do about it?) (Ahem) However, even if gaming carries little of a criminal stigma, it still carries a significant social stigma. To many, admitting to engaging in RPGs is tantamount to admitting that after work you go home and play mock battles with your action figures. People do not regard it as frightening so much as a bit sad and pathetic. The world is a feral place home to a great many social predators and you should exercise extreme caution in discussing any aspect of your personal life which can be used against you, from your sexuality to your drinking habits to your recreational hobbies. Here’s a useful technique, develop an acceptable fake hobby or interest, something you study and learn just enough about to maintain a functional and workplace safe conversation about, such as basketball.
By comparison, homosexuality is not shameful, but there are often prudent reasons for being discrete about the subject – the same is true of gaming.
Things you should feel bad about are remaining in a bad group or playing a bad game. As I stated in my first column of the year, leave a bad group. Likewise, you should avoid a bad game, or even games you simply do not enjoy. Not all RPGs are equal; some are simply bad and others, though possibly objectively good, cannot have a universal appeal because nothing does. Here is a blunt statement and one that forms a corner stone of my life philosophy – I am going to die some day and so are you. Given that fact, why should we waste time on bad game or in bad group? Any hour spent doing anything is lost forever. We spend many joyless hours out-and-about doing what needs to be done to ensure our survival. Why should our hobby time be joyless? Unless the job or social position depends on burning hours of life on something painful and boring, don’t do it that way. There are others groups, other games and other opportunities for a little fun before we die.
In terms of an area where RPGS do fail to measure up is the overall treatment of not-white-males. This is the subject of an entire column itself, and something I will revisit in the future, but while gaming has made progress since its development in the 1970s it has not made enough progress. Not white races are still largely absent, female characters are still depicted like mentally ill hookers and most of the fantasy table RPGS are still deeply moored in a western European framework. It is frequently the most transgressive games that are also the most progressive games, such as White Wolf. Compare the development of TT RPGs to the development of other media formats over the last 30 years, such as music, movies, computer games, comics and the like and TT RPGs are sadly lagging behind.
This is not an intractable problem. Gaming, more than almost any hobby aside from home distilling, is a do-it-yourself operation. If some aspect of any game in which you are engaged strikes you as needing adjustment, then adjust it (This is with the corollary of doing it with you GMs approval, assuming the bit you wish to fiddle with is in someone else’s game). At this point, the issue can appear to become tricky because you when take matters into your own hands, you are also taking responsibility for making the changes and any consequences that result. This point is also deceptive, however, because as the songs says, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Even when you accept the status quo, be it failings of a game or failings of a group, then the responsibility for accepting those failures rests with you, every bit as much as the responsibility for any changes you make to the game. This is because the game, as a pure exercise in fantasy, lives and dies in how it is played. This is why you should pursue good games with good groups.
Also, if you fuck something up related to a game, be an adult and admit it. Just not to your coworkers.
Games and gaming groups come and go, and it is up to you to find good games and good groups. Where you can, try to fix parts of a game that do not satisfy you. This is a freedom and a responsibility and the only way the game will actually achieve any real progress. Lastly, though, remain discrete about your hobbies as this will save you a lot of grief out in the real world.
Edit: I think avoiding the anthropomorphic personification of your birthday, like avoiding a process server, would an interesting way to avoid getting older, albeit in a Pratchett/Discworld kind of way.
Edited by Cassey Toi
