The Real Point of Crescendo

I close my eyes. And remember. The first time. Didier, dark elf, had finally killed Aliana the Succubus. He filled her with arrows. When her body didn’t vanish back to the Nine Hells like it should have, Didier cut her open. 

A blue flash. A sonic boom way above. The others murmured in concern. What omen was this?

Didier didn’t care. 

You see, Didier’s wife, Ilia, was dead. Aliana had killed her. And now that Ilia was dead Didier had nothing left. He pulled the burning rubble together to make a pyre. He dragged the desecrated corpse atop it. Called his bear companion to him. Stroked it. Leaned into its nuzzles. 

And then cut its throat. 

The bear fell upon the pyre without a sound. Blood poured. Iron steam streamed to the heavens. Sparks followed. 

Didier knelt in his friend’s corpse. He added his howl to the smoke, steam, and sparks. He screamed to the Nameless Raven Queen, in her frozen castle. He demanded the soul of Aliana never rest. That her myriad schemes bear no fruit. Didier thrust his knife to the spark and smoke-choked darkness above, feet driven like stilts into the bloody depths of his bear, and demanded that he be heard. Now!

Silence. 

Everyone looked at me. 

 “Well, Mr. Dungeon Master?” Jedd’s voice was soft. But unyielding. I realized I had to talk. What do you say to such a thing?

“Lightning. It comes down. Engulfs your blade. The pyre is destroyed in a roar. No bodies are ever recovered.”

A silence enveloped the eight people around the table. We ended the session. 

I painted that scene. It still hangs on my wall.

Not too long after, I ran my first campaign of Burning Wheel. The first session revolved a young princess discovering her fairy godmother, a tall and black-haired beauty, had an evil twin sister, who had angered the forest gods. Slighted them. Stolen from them. 

And the gods demanded recompense. 

The evil twin couldn’t be found. The princess  and some of her retinue searched and searched, but they couldn’t find her. She had escaped. The gods would not be mocked. They wanted blood and suffering. So the fairy godmother offered herself in her wicked sister’s stead. 

What followed I can’t adequately describe to you. I will try. But forgive me, I failed before I started. 

The princess begged the gods for more time. She was refused. She pleaded. And pleaded. This was more than her friend. The fairy was closer to her than her own mother! Surely something could be done! The gods said there was no more time. The princess offered herself. The gods told her she wasn’t worthy without a second thought. And so, ever so patiently, the fairy godmother talked the princess into letting her go. The princess’s voice never rose. It never broke. But the confusion. Oh, the confusion! The fairy godmother had done nothing wrong! Why should she pay for her sister’s evil? There was no answer. Eventually the princess gave in. With one last smile and a lingering squeeze of her hand, the fairy godmother walked into the dark forest. And she vanished. Without a sound. She just winked out. 

I can’t tell you what that room felt like. I can tell you eyes were wiped. A few got up hurriedly for a smoke break. Two of the players were Marine infantrymen, whose feet had trod Afghanistan. And they wept louder than the rest of us. They had absolutely no issue with grieving the bravery of the princess as her innocence died. 

A few years later, and I played in a game of Torchbearer. A rarity, to find me playing! I wound up playing… surprise!  A paladin! 

… who was on the lamb for killing his parents. He claimed they drank from some cup, and when they did their eyes… changed. Something uncanny went into them. And when they talked their voices weren’t their own. He slew them on the spot. And then ran. He had killed the king and queen, you see. 

In one of the dungeons he was captured by a band of snakemen. They had never met him before. So, when they declared Sir Charlemagne was to undergo trial by combat for murdering his parents, there was a bit a shock. 

Out Sir Charlemagne strode into the ring, sword in hand. He lunged. And got smacked in the face with the flat of his own sword. The snake man said if the paladin could land even one blow, he would be acquitted. Again Charlemagne lunged. This time he was pricked with the snake man’s sword. I got frustrated. Kyle kept changing the difficulties of the moves! He announced that he was! 

“Why did you kill your parents, paladin?”

“They weren’t themselves! They were evil!”

“Oh? And how did they show you?” The flat of the blade almost broke Charlemagne’s nose with a SLAP. 

“They… they were different!”

“So what?”

And I felt it. This moment where Charlemagne’s confusion and mine fused. I realized Kyle was trying to tell me something. Something important. Vital. This creeping feeling of gravity overcame me. The next few words would be a turning point for me, as a person. I don’t know why they were, but everything funneled into this one moment. 

“Do you think you made a mistake?”

“Wouldn’t that make me evil?”

“Are you not still a paladin? Do the gods not still hold your vows? Are your prayers, even now, answered?”

I laughed. Charlemagne lunged. And this time he cut his target. The snake man gave Charlemagne his own sword as a gift and released him, a justified man. Later, Sir Charlemagne would drink the same draught his parents had. His eyes were opened. And he sacrificed himself to make Ragnorak a beginning, not just an end. 

These are all the kinds of moments that become myths and fairy tales. There’s so much not said here! How Didier and Ilia had helped steal Aliana’s cambion child, and how Aliana had sworn revenge. How the princess and her soldiers found the evil twin and offered her to the gods, who gave back the good fairy godmother. How Sir Charlemagne had danced with the Eve of the new world before he died, unknowingly opening her womb so life could continue. And so much more! 

These were journeys that took years. The weight of unspoken time is so thick and loud that it almost eclipses these words. 

Oh, you want a story I got from Crescendo! You noticed! 

There was a young man named Sorin. He was a forester, and he realized the soil was impoverished. There were trees with fruit which gave magic energy when consumed. And they were dying. So was the planet. So Sorin went on a quest to find out how to save the world. 

Along the way Sorin rescued his one and true love, Andrea. She had been captured by satyrs. They couldn’t get Andrea back to her husband, Marius. Sorin knew Andrea loved him still. And he didn’t make a single move on her. They would get her home. He promised. 

And then one day they watched helplessly as Marius was strapped to a rocket and launched at their home city, leveling it. Andrea swore revenge. Sorin comforted her. And didn’t make a move on her. Andrea wanted him to. But Sorin knew she grieved more than she knew. Eventually, Marius came stumbling out of the woods. One of the dark gods had rescued him off the missile. Andrea was beyond relieved! They reunited, finally! Very soon, she was pregnant. 

And Sorin… Sorin tried not to think about it. He was King Sorin now, you see. He had talked a mountain elemental down from destroying the people who had killed his own city, and they made him king! King Sorin tried to bury himself in his work. To help those he could in an increasingly dark and awful world. But then things started happening. A rebellion was beginning to form around Marius, who wanted nothing to do with it! But some force was twisting his every word and gesture. If Marius so much as stubbed his toe, the people took it as a demand for revolution. 

Another mountain elemental and a mysterious meteor-man attacked King Sorin’s city. He went out, axe gifted him by the shield-maiden of war in hand, and this time he slew the mountain. And the meteor man. In succession. Sorin began to return home as a hero. 

Only to find his city burning. See, somehow Andrea had gotten infected. Possessed. It had gestated within her. And she had begun infecting others with her curse.They were taking over. King Sorin begged the creature he still hoped was Andrea to come back to him. To Marius! But the thing laughed at him. Andrea was gone! Marius told Sorin that thing wasn’t his wife, and if he didn’t act then all she had fought for would perish. 

So King Sorin, Mountain-Fighter, slew the Dark Queen, who was piloting the meat-sack that was Andrea. His magical axe, which could make mountains bleeed, was more than sufficient. Those under the Dark Queen's spell were freed. The people rejoiced in their brave king… who stood over the corpse of the only woman he ever loved. 

During the celebratory feast, Sorin saw Marius slip off. When caught up with, Marius admitted he couldn’t do it anymore. His every word was twisted into an act against his best friend. And now Andrea was gone. He wished he had died on the rocket, and he was going to go do what should have been done a while ago. 

Sorin asked Marius if he was really going to destroy yet another surviving part of Andrea. He promised that they would break the curse on Marius. They would rebuild. Andrea’s memory would be honored. And with that, they sat and looked at the quiet sunset. Their rebuilt city sat behind them, celebrating the life they had been given, whether they deserved it or not.

That’s a dramatically condensed version of 38 sessions. But there. That’s King Sorin, Mountain-Fighter. 

There's a Point to All This, Right?

I guess?

I don’t share these stories terribly often. Other RPGers talk about their grand goofiness, and I generally let them talk and laugh with them. Their stories are fun! I like hearing them! But I’m rarely in the mood to talk about how little Celeste, the cambion Didier and the others rescued became a vibrant and loving young woman. She’s wasaaaaay down there in my soul. She still lives. And she’s gotten me through some times! Or how, when Sorin was sitting with Marius, I could almost see the sunset the two of them were looking at. And that I saw it through Marius's eyes, in the moment. These aren't just... shared.

If you like the sound of that, I got good news: there’s a game made specifically to make these kinds of moments! Just show up moderately conscious. And you will get that and so much more. I will teach you how to run it. 

So. 

Um. 

The text isn’t done. 

But the rules are, and together we can make this game, which already means so much to me, mean something to a lot more people! Come on over to the Discord! We got regular games running, a sorta shambly-but-functional text, and a lot of passion! 

Thanks for reading, either way!

Design Journal: Conflicts and Pitches

I don't remember the Burning Wheel campaign Suihkulahde terribly fondly. On the one hand, it has some of the best world building I've ever done for The Wanderers' Psalms. On the other hand, the kind of  worldbuilding I did was completely outside the scope of Burning Wheel. Burning Wheel is entirely about the players' Beliefs. That's the GM's job. And when I want to play in that style, Burning Wheel is absolutely the best at it. But Gene Wolfe had added a new element: the world was its own thing. When the characters weren't looking, the world was having its own adventures. Reading a Gene Wolfe book was like walking on top of an iceberg. It was vital you kept your feet and it was cold and those things mattered... but you were still on an iceberg. 90% of the darn thing was unknown to you. Pretending that the unknown parts of the structure (i.e., currents and whatever behemoths swimming around the iceberg) were unimportant was an absurdity.

I could honestly write forever on the philosophical and ideological differences between Crescendo and Burning Wheel. But that would be criticizing the giant whose shoulders I stand on. I am where I am because of Luke Crane, after all.

And besides, I want to tell the story of how I came up with my solution, which is now in Crescendo.

The Tarot Map

I started by considering system-neutral house rules. I decided to lay out the Major Arcana of the Tarot in a randomized order. The players were always in the middle of this map, with that Arcana being "the current problem". The cards in the ring closes to the center, four in all, were situations that benefited from "the current problem". If things got hot enough "the current problem" would be cycled out to the edge, and one in the immediate ring would move in closer.

I hated this. It was too cumbersome. I didn't like having to come up with twenty some odd conflicts, only about five of them really mattering. And, frankly, I could barely keep track of more than three. So, obviously, this was not the answer.  I wanted to be able to walk, play, and then walk back out. I wanted a game, not another job on top of my job on top of my wife and kids.

Maybe, at some point, a few years after the fact, I'll revisit this idea. But it sure isn't now.

The Chronicle and the Drunk Rule

I decided to only have three Conflicts going on. It was the most I could keep track of at the table. I decided I would focus on "just" these three things, and  then journal between sessions about what was going on in the background. Simpler, for sure, and I like working on some stuff between sessions and all that.

It was during this time Kyle and I came up with the Drunk/Tired Rule: if you cannot play a game while drunk or tired and feel better for it afterwards, it is a bad game. Games are supposed to rejuvenating. Not just distracting, rejuvenating! This proved to be a turning point in my design, and what would eventually lead to Crescendo itself.

And this chronicling nonsense wasn't it.

Maybe if I was single, or without children, I'd have time to really write it all down between sessions. Focus, you know? But by this point I didn't want to do that. If I wanted to write fiction I'd write fiction! And I didn't want to do that, I wanted to play a game that had a story that came out of it! It was too much work for what I wanted to do.

Hitting the Books

At this point I figured that writing something down was the way to go. I needed a mechanic that would help generate unexpected results, results that could indicate that 90% the players weren't interacting with while they were on the iceberg. That's when I remembered the process of searching random passages in Virgil. For thos that don't know, if you want an answer to something, it was said that you could find your answers by opening a book of Virgil's, closing your eyes, and putting your finger down. Whatever your finger lands upon is the answer.

So why not do this with a book while playing? And make a journal, where you can control what goes into it, and thus make it a genuine mechanic?

So everyone opens their journals to where they know there's writing, closes their eyes, puts their finger down, and then reads whatever their finger landed upon. The GM then free associates all these prompts into whatever information they require.

The OSR does this with tables all the time, why not do it with journals or books? Not only does this make players write things down, but it provides an avenue of gameplay that is qualitative, which is what TTRPGs are all about! And this allows an incredible kind of player agency, one which subtle, but powerful: the ability to tweak the GM's subconscious. You get to program your GM! How is this not

Testing has not been completely free of problems. It was necessary to codify the rules for Hitting the Books a bit. But the tone, the feel, is exactly what I was going for. There's an odd coherency that increases as time goes on. The story has a rhythm and tone that are unexpected, but not overly so. And frankly, writing the story out is fun!

Conflicts and Pitch

Hitting the Books, however, was not the end of it. Hitting the Books is a mechanic, a means, not the goal itself. Fortunately, KISS is king. There's three Conflicts, which are future tense statements:

Mother is learning how to exist.

The wolves will invade Serpent.

The Guild will change how the city Serpent exists.

Notice that what these statements mean is up for debate. It's flexible. Open. 

But when do the Conflicts shift? That's what Pitch is for. Pitch is a counter attached to each Conflict. Pitch increases whenever it's addressed in a scene, (by 1-3) and all Conflict Pitches increase by 1 at the end of every session.

Whenever a scene ends, the Conflict that the GM used is rolled against with a D20. If the GM rolls equal to or lower than the Pitch, an Opportunity comes up to end the Conflict. Whether they do or not, given the Opportunity, is up to the table. After the Opportunity is addressed, the GM either modifies the Conflict or writes a new one, and resets its Pitch to zero.

Conflicts and Pitch, combined with Hitting the Books, eliminates prep while creating a mysterious narrative. You write your three Conflicts. The Pitch tells you the chances of that Conflict blowing up at any time, and it constantly builds. You just engage the players where they're at, and overarching setting stuff gets injected randomly via Hitting the Books, forcing everyone to make meaning for themselves.

People like doing this.

It's good for them.

And isn't that kinda the point?

 Crescendo is a truly amazing experience. I can't wait to share it with y'all.

Design Journal: Crescendo's Beliefs

There is no mechanic I love more than Beliefs. Pioneered by Luke Crane's Burning Wheel, Beliefs are a subjective statement made entirely by the players. They're used to determine scenarios in the game, making the story tailor-made to what the players want it to be about. The sheer utility of this mechanic can't be understated. Players get to write what they want. The GM gets a statement they get to interpret. Inherently creative, Beliefs give back far more than what are put into them.

There is no mechanic that is even close to a Belief. 

Period.

This is a blog post about how I almost gave up on Beliefs for my game, Crescendo.

Two (Necessary?) Asides

As a quick aside, there's a saying in the art world: don't make portraits of those you love. I love the works of Gene Wolfe. I am trying to capture the feeling I get when I read his books. This is objectively not a good idea at any point. It's a harder project for my emotional attachment. Things that should be obvious can't be. More time is spent is because I can't have an objective view of this design.

As an additional aside, there's a large elephant in the room: Burning Wheel. Anyone who reads more than a few posts of this blog is going to discover that Burning Wheel is my favorite game. Beliefs are my favorite mechanic in gaming. A lot of my thoughts on designing Crescendo are, inevitably, going to be about taking Beliefs and adapting it to my vision. Which means that Burning Wheel is going to come up a lot.  Crescendo isn't a hack of Burning Wheel, but it would be stupid to pretend that Crescendo doesn't owe a lot to it. A great deal of time has been spent repurposing Beliefs from the ground up, (usually) to the confusion and (sometimes) delight of my playtesters.

What is Crescendo?

Crescendo's central conceit isn’t a simple one: as character changes so should setting and vice versa. The game is principally based on the works of Gene Wolfe, which are intensely subjective, mythological, and cosmic. If you're going to do a Gene Wolfe game you have to have an intense subjectivity and soaring scale, which form each other. This is Crescnedo's by-line, its mission statement, is:

Belief Has Consequences

Okay, that's nice, but what does it feel like to play Crescendo? That's all very pie in the sky, but what am I going for?

Excellent question! Crescendo feels like this:

One movement causes a series of ripples in a pattern that nobody understands... until they pull back and see the full implications. Players each create a Hero whose Beliefs create consequences and the Lore Weaver (LW) creates a Setting for the Heroes' consequences to play out upon. These consequences are unknown even to the LW beforehand. Nobody knows where the ship is going. All you can do is ask "Well, what do you believe? And should that change?"

Heroes have Beliefs, Traits, and Scruples. Beliefs are what drive the Hero, Traits are how the Hero acts, and Scruples are hidden doubts/obligations that mess them up. The Setting has NPCs with simpler Beliefs, Locales and Histories that chronicle recent events, and Conflicts which rage across the Setting. 

The Journal

All participants have a journal, where they log their history and events of the session. The journals are used in a mechanic called Hitting the Books: everyone opens to a random line in their journals, closes their eyes, puts their finger down, and reads aloud their selection. The LW interprets these randomly picked prompts into whatever piece of information that's needed, primarily plot twists. And then everyone writes their interpretation of whatever the LW just said into their journals.

I cannot understate how much Hitting the Books impacts play. No one is driving. The Lore Weaver isn't called a Game Master because he's not in control of where things are going. He's given prompts and says "Well, this seems like a good idea right now". Nobody is driving. If there is a single way that Crescendo has genuinely changed the face of roleplaying games, Hitting the Books is it. 

There's various triggers throughout the game to record more lines in your journal. Once you record enough lines you can advance, gaining/ improving a skill or a relationship with an NPC.

The only thing even comparable are FFG's narrative dice, except Hitting the Books is cheaper and more creative. The dice are only marginally faster. Hitting the Books is also qualitative: success and failure aren't really a part of it, but bring in completely unexpected elements from past recordings. The more you play, the more eerily coherent the experience becomes, as past events factor into the present, creating more lines to choose from in the future. Hitting the Books sets up play loops that can last for tens of sessions before closing with a snap... creating a new loop.

Or, as one of the playtesters commented: "Reintegration is one hell of a drug".

Beliefs

The first thing I tried to do was to provide incentives for interacting with Beliefs, Burning Wheel style. And that would be reasonable for me to try! I'm a Burning Wheel vet! People will do what they're rewarded for. Right? Well, hold up. Burning Wheel's by-line and mission statement is

Fight For What You Believe

So, if you cause trouble for what you believe, you will be rewarded. This change at the core has been the hardest thing for me to navigate. Crescendo, if it's to stand on its own two legs, has to be its own thing from the ground up. Beliefs in Crescendo have to be fundamentally different from what they are in Burning Wheel.

Two and a half years have been spent trying a lot of different things with Beliefs, to the point where I was advised by some to just torch the Beliefs, outright!

Well, I did that, Robby, and that game's called Brick!, which I'll release as well. Probably first. We'll see. 

The problem, of course, is that Crescendo is about Belief and Setting in the style of Gene Wolfe. And I am going to see that through.  NPC Beliefs are based off the players'. 

But is that really enough? Heck no.

Belief is Perception

But that wasn't enough for me. It didn't feel Wolfe enough. And I really was about to just pitch them. Robby could be right. It hurt my pride, but I had to admit he might be right. Humility's good! It's fine! Fine...

Ironically enough Herbert came to my rescue.

In Children of Dune Herbert writes that information comes in two parts: Trivia and Message. Trivia was the base information that was in the world. The Message was what the recipient interpretated the Trivia into.

The lightning flash that lit up the interior darkness can't be understated.

What Herbert stated, Wolfe does. Most of his works feature this translation of Trivia into Message, using their preconceptions. Anyone who has read even a page of Wolfe knows this to be true. But Wolfe doesn't stop there. Wolfe doesn't just transmit Trivia to Message. Wolfe Shades. When the Message is assembled, the assembler discovers additional Trivia that doesn't fit what they believe.  It sticks there, an unknown that can't be quantified. Sometimes that Shade is an aspect of the Problem they hadn't anticipated.

And sometimes it's the Lord God Himself, wanting to have a word.

Suddenly, I knew how it had to go. Two and a half years, going on three, and suddenly it clicked: Beliefs were a Player tool for helping create Problems with the LW. The LW could present Trivia, pieces of information that might imply a context, but that's it. The Players then use their Beliefs to turn the Trivia into Messages. And then the LW adds a Shade to each Message. The Player then gets to write this modified Message down as a Bullet Point in their Journal. The Players must make at least one Message, and may make up to three, one for each of their Beliefs.

Putting it Together

All that's well and good, but what does it look like?

Hey everyone, meet Sir Mal, one of the example characters in Crescendo! He's the bastard street rat of a noble, found and restored to his place as a knight. Here's what you need to know about Sir Mal to understand what I'm writing:

Sir Mal

Beliefs

Beliefs are what Sir Mal uses to help construct Problems and are so used by the LW  to further complicate Sir Mal's life. Beliefs are what Sir Mal is willing to burn the whole world down for.

 

1. My father knighted me as he lay injured on the battlefield. I didn’t need his recognition to known honor and bravery are their own reward.

2. Once I came into manhood, I realized that no woman, even the queen, could resist me long. If she lifts her skirts, she’s fair game.

3. One day a knight, Sir Alain, came into the slums where I picked pockets, and told me that he was my father. To this day I’ve never met a kinder man.

 

Scruple

A Scruple is a hidden reservation or taboo a character has which holds them back. They're used to add Shades to Problems and to trip up Heroes during play.

You cannot trust the other nobles to do the right thing.

Traits

Traits are aspects of a Hero that either make you more powerful for acting on them or which make you weaker for ignoring them.

Charming, Nihilistic, Impulsive

Climbing a Tower to Get Royally Laid

Sir Mal has decided to deflower Princess Genevieve, for a multitude of reasons. He's climbed the tower where she lives and finally gotten in through the open window.

Paul the LW tells Alex, Sir Mal's player, that the Trivia for the current Problem are the soft candlelight in Princess Genevieve's room, Princess Genevieve just pulling a shift over her head, offering the briefest glimpse of perfection etched in flesh, and the open window Sir Mal just crawled through.

Alex's first Message is that Princess Genevieve has seen him before, as she was there for his formal knighting, from his first Belief! She's a bit shocked to find that he's climbed into her window, but she's not scared. Paul adds that Princess Genevieve isn't just not scared, she's calm, her pulse doesn't look like it's budged even a little bit. Alex writes "Princess Genevieve isn't even shocked to see me. This will be a fun night!" as a Bullet Point in his journal.

Alex's second Message is that his charming smile has never not made a woman weak in the knees, and that's definitely what's happening right now. Paul adds that Princess Genevieve lightly brushes a pendant of Elpida, The Most Holy Flame (wait did it glow slightly? Gotta be a trick of the light), but she doesn't break eye contact with Sir Mal. But yes, she looks very happy to see him. Alex writes "Princess Genevieve has one of those purity necklaces. But I can tell from just a glance she's mine."

Alex's third Message is that he leaves the window open, and in fact he doesn't really get off the windowsill, causing Princess Genevieve to relax even further. Paul adds that there's the sound of King Julian ranting and raving just outside Princess Genevieve's door... which she locks, factoring in Sir Mal's Scruple. Alex writes "King Julian really has lost his mind, and Princess Genevieve seems to think it's more sane to be locked in with me than out there with him. Excellent."

Remember...

All those Bullet Points can now come up again. There's always going to be fallout from constructing this Problem, regardless of how it's resolved. It might be next session, it might be forty sessions from now, but these Bullet Points always have a chance on forming the current situation.

Here's the Rope

Someone is going to point out that, even if Crescendo is just for one to three Players, things can get overcomplicated quickly! If three Players do this once per Belief  that's nine Bullet Points that everyone has to record. Not only could that take forever but that would be a very thorny, if not outright unwieldable, Problem.

And you're right.

So what?

If Players want to go overboard, whose fault is that? The designer? Or the player? I can't stop people from doing stupid stuff. I've found that people stop when they want to stop. If you approach the game in the way intended it's not a problem. Pretending that I can make someone approach the game in a healthy way is.. well.. laughable.  It would take so much work to construct a Problem in an unhealthy manner that I don't particularly feel that I need to safeguard it much. Journaling takes a bit of work. If you're playing the game, it's because you want to. So you'll automatically know when to stop.

In Conclusion

It's been a journey, but I finally got the Beliefs done! You use Beliefs to construct Problems with the Lore Weaver. The LW uses them to further challenge the Players by putting them in ethical trolley problems. And when the Players change their Beliefs, it sends ripples across The Setting, causing truly unexpected changes to the story. There's this amazing interplay between the subjective nature of the Beliefs and the incredibly bonkers changes in the world and the plot. You say what you are willing to burn the world down for and the world just convulses in response, mashing the incredibly person and epic together.

If any of this sounds amazing to you, come and join us the Die Young Games Discord Server! Crescendo is in its last stages of editing. There's sessions of it running. The people are great. So come on over!

Pokemon Masters (TCG Hack)

I Want to Like the Official Rules

I grew up with the Pokemon TCG, when it was this enormous juggernaut. I played with my friends constantly, and enjoyed every second of it. There was something so great about buying booster packs, opening them up, and using the weird things you found to make quirky decks.

Wait, there's a Pokemon League? COOOOOOOOOL LET'S GO!!!

Wait, why is my really enjoyable deck getting creamed? Oh, there's a meta that ignores all these great cards and just focuses on the least interesting but numerically most potent cards? You're telling me that I need to rethink from wonder and interesting play to ruthlessly monotonous grind-fests?

Sure!

I junked my interesting decks and went full-on Beatdown, which was the most cookie-cutter and boring deck of the time. It was relentlessly efficient. I gloried in the dopamine of Numbers Go Up Fast, I Get My Cards Out Quickly, and Things Seem to Happen. I did that for years. And years.

And then one day the dopamine stopped. And I realized just how much of an idiot I had been. Did I realize that there were systemic problems, and that nobody could stop me from just.. making up something different and doing that instead? Nope. Not at all. I just put my cards in a box, bitterly, and moved on to Magic. And had fun! That is, until I met players who valued efficiency over fun... and saw a type of degeneracy that made the Pokemon League look principled in comparison. This time I thought it was the people who were the problem. I wanted nothing to do with such degeneracy. So I just stopped playing at all.

Enter my brother-in-law, Kyle. Kyle has an allergy to bullshit that is almost absolute, without being too much of a misanthrope. I say this, because he somehow maintained the wisdom to know the difference between the masses being wrong and whether or not the thing they're wrong about is redeemable. I have no idea how he maintained this wisdom, but it has saved me many a time.

And Kyle had refused to give up on the Pokemon TCG.

I smiled, politely accepted gifts of cards, and tried it again with my kids. Nope, it still did what it did. I would play with my kids out of some sense of duty. The cards were bright and colorful, with interesting tricks... that couldn't stand up to my Charizard EX. I, of course, hadn't really thought it through. And it wrecked deckbuilding for me and my kids. They became obsessed with just trying to beat this one card. I wasn't able to get myself to give up the only good Charizard card I knew of. It was an impasse.

This was something I was pretty vocal about with Kyle. I knew my own degeneracy, my own addiction to the dopamine, and knew I had passed it on to my kids. I wanted a way out. I knew there was another way, and couldn't think it through, and said as much.

Kyle, being Kyle, listened to my rants and ravings. He did nothing more than chuckle and agreed that the Pokemon TCG had foundational problems.

About a year later, Kyle would come over for a visit. Standard stuff and all that. Nothing special... until he mentioned, casually, that he had come up with a new casual format for the Pokemon TCG. He hadn't playtested it yet, and he wanted me to try it out with him. Kyle has an eye for systemic patterns that is unparalled. I immediately said yes.

Kyle, my kids, and I played easily two dozen games in 72 hours. We tweaked a few things. Played some more. Had even more of a blast. Tweaked some more. It just got better and better and better.

General Rules of Pokemon Masters

This is intended for casual play. Kyle won't be running tournaments, and no one affiliated with us and Die Young Games will ever run tournaments. Anyone claiming to represent us to run a tournament doesn't. This will never be for sale, and is not intended to compete with the official structure.

This has been playtested, but it is assumed we missed things. If you find loopholes or feel that something is incoherent to the experience, comment on this blog post or come onto the Die Young Games Discord server and put your concerns up there!

The rules below are meant to replace specific parts of the Official Rules. If something isn't mentioned here, refer to the Official Rules!

Deck Construction

Your Deck is 40 Cards.

Only one copy of any non-Basic Energy Card is allowed.

Select six Basic Pokemon Cards. They must be different colors. 

• If your Basic Pokemon have Evolution forms, you must include one copy of each evolution, to the best of your ability.
• If there are multiple Evolutions of a Pokemon (like Evee evolutions) or multiple versions of an evolved Pokemon (Charizard, Charizard EX/GX), you only need to include one variant.
• If you do not own all the Evolutions on the chain (say, you want to play Charmander, but you only one a Charmeleon, no Charizards) you may include the Pokemon you do have (so you'd include Charmander and Charmeleon).
• You get three Basic Energy per Basic Pokemon. They must be of the same color.
• If one of your Basic Pokemon is Colorless, you must select three Basic Energy of another color from the other five.
• You may include as many additional Energy as you like, in addition to the Energy above.

You may only have one Trainer Supporter Card. This Card must be announced before the game starts.

No non-Supporter Trainer Cards or Energy Cards that search any Deck are allowed.

Only one Rule Box Pokemon Card is allowed. If your Rule Box Pokemon is Knocked Out, you lose the game. 

• If you wish to use a V MAX, V STAR, or any Rule Box Pokemon Card that evolves from a Basic Rule Box Pokemon, it uses your Supporter slot, and must be declared as if it was a Supporter Card.

Playing One on One

Set Up

Basic Pokemon

All Basic Pokemon are placed in Play: one in the Active Area and the other five on the Bench.

• You may not start with a Basic Colorless Pokemon in the Active Area.
• You may not start with a Basic Rule Box Pokemon in the Active Area.

Benched Basic Pokemon are played face down, and do not flip face up unless Evolved or moved into the Active Area.

Opening Hand

Draw four Cards. Do not show them to your Opponent.

Prize Cards

Draw one Card, and place it face up to the left of the Play Area. Take four Cards, and place them, face up, on top of the bottom Prize Card, as shown in the picture. 

Whenever your Opponent knocks out one of your Pokemon, you draw one of your Prize Cards. You must take all the top Prize Cards before you grab the fifth Prize, on the bottom.

If you can't take a Prize Card, you lose the match. Whenever a Card refers to your Prize Cards, check the number of your Opponent's Prize Cards instead.

Playing

The First Turn

The player who goes first may Attack and/or play a Supporter Card, but not Draw.

Drawing

At the start of every turn after the first, Draw one Card. 

• If it's an Energy, continue your turn.
• If it's not an Energy, you may show it to your Opponent(s). If you do, draw another Card. Do not show this Card to your Opponent.

Energy

Once during your Turn, you may either Attach an Energy from your hand, or Move an Energy from one of your Pokemon to another.

Gameplay for Three Players

As One on One play, with the following modifications.

Two Fronts

Each Player has two Active Areas,  one for the Player on their right and on their left. You still can only Attach or Move one Energy a turn.

The Law of Aggression

A Player must Attach or Move an Energy, if able. A Player must Attack all eligible targets, if able.

What Do These Rules Do?

Pokemon Masters feels like an Elite Four battle in card game form. Every game has been a tactical head-to-head. I've had to think more in one match of Pokemon Masters than I've ever had to think in any TCG I've personally played. I've also had to consider what my opponent is up to in a way that I didn't know most TCGs could do. And I think that's worth sharing with people.

You have to weigh the health of your Pokemon against the unknown nature of your deck. Do you sacrifice one of your Basics so you can get your big guy charged? Once your big guy is out, how are you developing your backup? All your Pokemon are going to fight, almost certainly. What order are you going to try to send them out? How flexible are they in the inevitability of the deck not cooperating? These are the kinds of decisions you're making in a Pokemon match. You are playing with time and chance. And it is a blast.

The Pokemon TCG has always had interesting cards, especially their Pokemon cards... and usually you don't look at them twice. Why would you? The Rule Box Pokemon hit your lizard brain in the worst way possible. You don't particularly want to look at them twice. The numbers hit your lizard brain. Those are the things that matter in the standard format. Once you make Rules Box Pokemon rare, you have to figure out these weirdo abilities on the normal Pokemon, of which you have to have an epic spread. Given that you can't control the deck all that much, this means you have these wild abilities with a deck that can't be controlled without using Pokemon attacks. So gameplay automatically becomes more varied, as a lot of the heavy lifting has to go through Pokemon attacks.

Adding the "you lose if your Rule Box Pokemon dies" rule does... things. Very very worrisome things. I can come out with my lovely Charizard EX, swinging with tons of damage... and then all of a sudden have to protect my flying lizard boi, because as it turns out normal Pokemon can do quite a bit of damage, if you're under the right kinds of pressure. So, after a kill or two, my lovely flying lizard boi has to go back to the bench, because he has about 60 HP. And now I have to worry about whether or not someone is going to pull out a Boss's Orders, or a Pokemon Catcher that flips heads, or someone has a Pokemon that will drag him back out. Using a Rule Box Pokemon is now a choice. You have to do it on purpose, and find ways to keep your Pokemon from dying. It's a type of tension that is your choice.

What These Rules Won't Do

Pokemon TCG is a broken game. Not all the cards are going to be useful in this format. I miss some of those cards. Some cards that "should" be usable (like those that reward having multiple copies of a card) aren't.  It's not particularly fair.  But this format isn't about making everything usable. It's about taking what's really a large mess and doing something fun with it. And I think it succeeds admirably well. You go from not even glancing at 90% of the cards to having about 75% of them being a viable option.

And that's pretty dang awesome.

This Isn't the End

I do not labor under the delusion that this is the last word on this format. If we can get people to try it, there will be a lot of questions and possible issues that we do not foresee. I welcome this. This is a genuinely exciting format, providing some of the most varied gameplay I've ever seen in a TCG.

Please try it. Go over to the Die Young Games Discord or comment here. Let's make this a thing. 

Reflections on The Menu

 

“When you painted on earth—at least in your earlier days—it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too. But here you are having the thing itself. It is from here that the messages came..."

-C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce 

All art, all true art, is always prophecy. Always. And prophecy helps you see the world as it truly is... which may include some element of being able to see the future. The function of prophecy is that the future may help you see the whole picture.

Art of any kind is soul-crushingly difficult. Through some remarkably fallible sense perception you stumble across something. Something good, pure, beautiful, untouchable, incorruptible. It is hard to communicate the experience if you haven't had it. Something explodes in your heart, quietly devasting. Light gently breaks in, and you realize you've been in the dark your whole life and in fact you never saw anything before this moment. And, so long as you keep doing your art, really do it, you can bathe in that light.

But there's a trick. The material you have to work with is fallen. The people who interact with your art are even more fallen than the materials you work with. Some level of mastery of people and your materials is required. The media is a pain, but the people. The people are the worst part. People aren't just fallen passively, but have actively lied to themselves all their lives, to the point of actual blindness of soul. So when they look at your work are they going to see what you tried to put there?

By default the answer is no. At best you'll typically get indifference or a mild reaction. It didn't touch them because they weren't looking. That's to be expected. Humans don't look at the world around them, and those that claim they do are very good at self-deception.

You want to know how I know?

Because to perceive, to truly perceive, is to be changed. 

So if someone goes "Oh cool! That's neat." By default they couldn't have actually looked. And yes, that's demoralizing.

The second worst is a sycophant. "Oh I love your work!" Instead, they made the mistake of seeing you as a necessary part of The Vision. The vision is what matters. Can you develop a predilection of engaging with a specific artist's way of channeling The Vision? Absolutely! We do this all the time! I love Ivanka Demchuk's iconography. I see this icon of Christ being betrayed to Pontius Pilate and I can feel The Vision of it. She saw something about this scene with the eyes of her heart, and was faithful to that vision. I love her craft so much I am going to learn how to do it for myself. Ivanka's work has inspired me to do something for myself. I want to learn for myself.

So, I am not talking about a fondness. I am talking about obsession with the artist. You are not on this planet to turn off your own spiritual vision and worship someone, but to find your way Home. That's hard enough without degenerating into fandom. And it is degeneration. There's a reason why the "fan" hangs himself in this movie. He has made nothing of himself and has become such a bootlicker that death really may be the most merciful option. Certainly not the soul-crushing that happens in the film.

That's not the worst reaction to your work, however.

The worst reaction is one of the fully neutered expert. Remember how I said that the materials of this world, whether they be paint or a damnably thick tome on theology, are inherently rotten, if not actively rotting? What could be grosser than someone who wants to get into that mess? To get covered in the rotting feces that is this world and go "I am very familiar with the smell and viscosity of feces, and so therefore I know you didn't use it right"?

All of this world, at best, is straw.

This isn't to say that technical mastery can't help you point people back to The Vision more reliably. But there is a difference between saying "This is what I think got in the way of helping me escape the fallen world for a minute" and "You failed the fallen materials you were working with", when in reality the materials failed you.

The sycophant and the neutered expert can kill an artist's soul so quickly. Listening to the sycophants will get you pride. Listening to the neutered expert will kill your ability to see The Vision at all. And once those two things happen, you're stuck. You either burn out and collapse in on yourself or take it out on everyone else.

And if you're especially dramatic you'll take all those idiots and kill them all in especially earnestly vulnerable, if not sometimes predictable, movie. And yeah, the movie isn't perfect. I saw the twist coming a mile away. But you know what? So what? it showed me something I needed to see, helped me reflect, and helped me process something that I've been unable to work out for myself for years. The movie did its job. It got me to see something I needed to. I changed, watching it. I saw it.

And isn't that the point of art?

The True Narrative

“There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.” 

GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy

It's been a really rough year. Some really nasty stuff went down with my old landlord. It kept going on and on and on into what felt like an infinity of a stupidity so incredibly overwrought that its difference from malice was impossible to determine. Laws were broken and there was very little I could do about it at the time. It. Didn't. Stop. And then other stuff came up, some of it really good, some of it really bad, but it was all intense. I do not hold up under that kind of stress well. I can do one incident. Maybe five. But if it's just thing after thing a ding a ling ring ring, I get more than pessimistic. Nihilistic.

There's an interesting piece of advice that I've read across the Church Fathers. I can't really pinpoint which one said it right now. But I've seen it across the centuries and places compressed into pages between multiple softcovers. Enough for it to stick in my head. To burrow in. To marinate.

"Learn your own story of salvation, of how God is saving you."

And they all give the same broad explanation. God is acting in your life. He reaches across the eons and pushes Old Father Time out of the way. It doesn't look like it does for others, because He knows you. It is the only truly unique experience you'll ever have. And yet, if you share it with others, you'll notice the least important parts match up. 

The Quiet. 

The Peace. 

Sometimes The Terror. 

Everyone has these little moments, even if they only last a millisecond. The advice from between the softcovers is to let these moments and the moments between them form a narrative-- The True Narrative -- of your life.  Once The True Narrative is constructed, it's yours. You are meant to hold it in your heart. Think on it. Come back to it. Prioritize it over the massive absurdity that is your life. You're supposed to say "I know the rest of this doesn't make sense but this is what God has done for me so far."  The True Narrative isn't going to answer the absurdities. The questions. The pain. Faith is not the pillow placed on your face so you don't feel pain anymore. Your doubts are a part of you, and any attempt to shut those things down is a quiet suicide.

The thing is that, when under stress, it's easy to forget that the light that's inside of you is of paramount importance. This light gives you an ability to find ways and paths that would be otherwise impossible. Without this light there is no hope in the human soul.  And without hope all is lost. This light is arational. It can use rationality, but it is not rational itself. Its job isn't to argue, but to shine. Humans are supposed to navigate by the light that shines from within them.

The human, under stress, tries to figure out why they aren't comfortable. This is a rational process. Stress pushes you to find a solution quickly. And if you can't find a solution to a problem quickly? You just stay under stress! And you keep trying to figure out why. And this is good. You should try to figure out why you're in pain, or under stress, or whatever else is going on. Humans don't just have pure light, but an ability and duty to relate to the world in a coherent manner. 

But what if you can't right now? What if you can't figure it out... for a long time? The stress doesn't stop. It piles up on top of other stresses atop more stresses and before you know it... when was the last time you were relaxed? You're just exhausted now. How do you come back to normal? Is there a normal? 

And then the thought comes. That light was what put you here. Maybe you're better off without it. 

There's the endgame.

That thought is the deadly one. This one thought will kill everything within you. And it is so quiet, you may not even hear it on a conscious level.

The problem is, of course, by now you're tired. And you really need to focus on something else. Which takes energy, right? You have to construct an argument, right then and there. I hope you can argue well, because the type of wretchedness I'm talking about is so thoroughly exhausting, so overwhelming, that it would take a miracle to come up with something convincing to yourself.

This is where The True Narrative is meant to intervene. You pull up this history of mercy, of grace, and try to sit in these memories as strongly as you can. It is literally only yours. No one else has it. Go back to those moments, drink in their particularity.

Bask.

If you're still being asked to betray yourself, just go back. And wait. Throwing out that spot of life within yourself is never the answer. I'm not saying there's any good answers. I'm not claiming to solve the problem that put you there in the first place. I am claiming that a better solution will present itself if you bide your time and hold onto hope.

But that ambiguity is pure Hell, isn't it? It's not something humans do very well. We want to be able to relate to everything. Ambiguity doesn't relate to us in a way that we like. We want to be able to control it. To put our power over it. Ambiguity refuses that kind of relationship. It gives pain and darkness, and humanity's form of relationship to it is to endure it until it leaves. But your mind doesn't like doing that. 

So give it something to chew on in the interim.

The mark of a mature person is the ability to endure ambiguity by embracing what one knows. Give it something to chew on while enduring. Give it a True Narrative.

Examining Fandoms through Spider-Man and Luke Skywalker

I had written an introduction for this piece... and then deleted it. And then rewrote it. And then deleted it again.

Look, folks, at the above image. I know it's kinda painful to look at, because the art's mostly cringe, but read that dialogue. Peter, badly done hair and all, is saying something that is so basic, so fundamental, that only low art could pull it off: perfect love drives out all fear. No, I don't know the rest of the context of this comic. I've not read it before. I don't really need to, and frankly I'm not sure I want to! Love and fear cannot coexist. This a basic fact of the universe. Love makes us less and less like animals, and more and more people. A person who has love will see the way of the animal, the way of instinct, know it is an option, but ultimately reject it... because they are not an animal. And cannot be. Now, the trick is that no one's love is perfect. There is always a line all human beings have. And that line is unique to them. But even in failure that person is still far more noble than someone who never had love to begin with.

Let us examine two things the fandoms hate and critique them with this lens, shall we? We'll do One More Day and The Last Jedi.

For those of you who are blessed to not know what One More Day is... well, I'm sorry. You're going to find out if you keep reading. I almost recommend you not read on. For the rest of you who are cursed with the knowledge that is One More Day.. well I'm sorry. For those blissfully ignorant, who wish to lose their innocence: One More Day is the story where Peter Parker and Mary-Jane sell their marriage to Mephisto, a second-rate demonic figure in Marvel lore, because he claims he can save Aunt May, when somehow no one else in the Marvel Universe can.

No, I'm not making that up.

Yes, that's stupid. Just at its base, that may be one of the dumbest things a mortal mind can conceive.

But it happened.

How did that happen? Well, in order to start, I have to introduce you to the beginning of the end of Marvel: the Civil War event. See, One More Day really starts there. The story of Civil War begins when a villain by the name of Nitro blows up an entire school of kids. In the wake of a tragedy that has assuredly never happened in Marvel history before, the mob supposedly screams out for the registration, training, and subjugation of all super-powered beings.

Let us stop, for just one second, and think about how stupid an idea this is.

You are trying to tell people who are smarter, faster, stronger, better than the normal population that somehow, some strange way hitherto not done, they're going to be contained? And that somehow it doesn't go dystopian from there? Look, we've been seeing this sorta thing talked about in X-Men comics for decades. We know where this goes. All the Marvel heroes knows where this goes. This shouldn't be a line any Marvel hero crosses, just to begin with. But somehow Iron Man, the one guy who doesn't do governmental overreach, is the one who decides that he's going to step up and be the bad guy? I could go on about Civil War and how it's actually the character assassination of every single Marvel hero, ever, particularly Bishop, who somehow is pro-registration??? That one really made no sense.

But we're not here for Iron Man and Bishop, are we? We're here for Spider-Man. See, Spider-Man went pro-registration at first. Which is a... weird... move for the guy who historically has wanted to live in the shadows and not really be noticed by anyone, if he can help it. In the main Civil War event Spider-Man publicly unmasked in support of the new totalitarian regime. It's this sudden shock move that has no substantial explanation and is barely talked about in the event itself, until suddenly Spider-Man changes his mind mid-way through with the most paper thin of explanations.

However, in the Spidey comics themselves, I personally think this move was built up to really well. J. Michael Straczynski, the writer of Amazing Spider-Man, really took his time here. He first showed Spider-Man transitioning to becoming a team player, an Avenger. Then Tony Stark helps Peter out when his house is destroyed. He takes him in. Gives him a new suit. Helps the Parkers get through the... wretchedness... that is The Other storyline. A lot of people complain/ed that Peter throwing in with Tony came out of nowhere. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tony Stark was stepping up as a mentor in Peter's life. I actually really liked it. This was actually a really good match, one that I wish Marvel had allowed Straczynski to take years to explore more. Iron Man and Spider-Man's books could have bled together a bit, with Peter having a real impact on Tony's life. It's actually a really cool idea. 

So, when Tony Stark decides to become a totalitarian asshole, it is in Peter's character to at least consider it. Peter's actually a pretty simple character in this regard. He has always wanted to support his family and friends, and Tony had more than earned that much from Peter. So, Peter unmasking was an evolution of the concept of Spider-Man. Peter Parker resolved to stop hiding from people. Encouraged by Aunt May and Mary-Jane that he, himself, is someone worthy of being loved, Peter Parker takes the final step. The fundamental formula of Peter Parker as Spider-Man had changed. And it should have. While this isn't a perfect writing decision but pretending that Peter wasn't coming from a place of love, something that Straczynski had taken most of his arc to build, is just raging stupidity. And pretending that this wasn't a part of Peter Parker becoming the Uncle Ben of the Marvel Universe is just as stupid.

Well, this had predictable results, once Spider-Man decided that totalitarianism, surprise of surprises, wasn't something to back.

Peter handles that well.

Yes, he's throwing a Jeep at the sniper. A whole Jeep. Man, I miss competent Spider-Man writing that's not the current Ultimate Spider-Man run.

Peter goes on a rampage. Sure, this part makes sense. Putting on the black costume is stupid, sure, but the concept of Peter Parker having enough and burning the whole world down because Aunt May was shot is... well... yes. Peter, like all of us, gets tired and eventually the animal is going to win out. Fine with that. So far Peter is acting like someone for whom love has transformed, but not all the way. Because nobody ever is totally transformed by love, not in this life.

And then One More Day. Where somehow in a land of mysticism and tech that's so advanced that it is magic, no one can save Aunt May. Except Mephisto, a second-rate demon that has been knocked around by more than a few heroes in the Marvel Universe. Somehow this dude is able to save Aunt May... if Peter Parker and Mary Jane sell their marriage. Suddenly, the man who has been slowly transformed by the love of his wife and aunt is afraid. Going on a revenge tour for Aunt May getting shot is one thing, but to undo the thing that she created because of her love?  There's a whole host of problems with this decision, but the biggest one is simply that it wouldn't occur to Peter or Mary-Jane as an option. It's almost like there's a totally different writer here!

Oh wait!

See, Quesada, the editor-in-chief of Marvel at the time, basically wrote this issue, using Straczynski's far greater talent to at least attempt profundity. But... I mean... the shift is so profound that everyone caught it. Immediately. Because low art has only one thing going for it: heart. That's what makes it work. It's not technically proficient the way high art is, but it hits something so true so fervently and honestly that you can't help but love it anyways. And One More Day reeks of a total lack of sincerity, in only the way an editor-in-chief hijacking and crapping on a writer's story can stink.

Now, here's where we get to where it gets complicated. Because the public, the mob, is always wrong. Always. The mob doesn't think in terms of truth, but in terms of comfort and power, which are the eternal enemies of truth. Even when they are right, they are right for the worst reasons. In fact, one of the best ways to see if your own thoughts are wrong is to ask what the popular opinion is. And if your opinion matches up to what seems to be popularly said you are in deep trouble and need to change your mind as quickly as possible. The quickest way to figure out if someone who is popular is a charlatan or not is to ask if they repeat the mob's lines back at them and profit from it. 

So, folks who hated One More Day (and there are still a lot of them) couldn't articulate it well, for the most part. Most of the outcry at the time was "Peter wouldn't do that!" or "Mephisto couldn't even provide that sort of thing!" and all sorts of things that are correct but are not right. One More Day's storyline was deeply uncomfortable, so the mob was never going to like it. That's not a guarantee of the story's worth or lack of worth. The mob was ruffled and had some good scapegoats for why it was ruffled. Quesada had invalidated the fundamental law of love, which is that it drives out fear. But mobs don't think, they react. 

Now we're going to get to the really offensive spot: The Last Jedi.

See, Lucasfilm had made a fundamental mistake, way back in the day: they allowed books to be published in the Star Wars universe that could be construed as being in the same continuity as the movies. Nevermind that some of the media released was pure excrement and shouldn't be anywhere near Star Wars. Some of it was more than good enough to be considered in the same canon as the movies. Lucasfilm then made another mistake: they kept doing it. Even though some of it is outright character assassination. Then George Lucas made another mistake: he decided he wanted to make the sequel trilogy. And we know, from the plans that have been discussed, that he had every intention on throwing out pretty much all the previously established work in the books, comics, and videogames. Lucas, realizing that his rabid mob of a fandom would eat him alive, but still wanting the sequels made, sold Lucasfilm to Disney.

So now Disney is facing the same problem Lucas did: most of the EU is crap. The good does not outweigh the bad. They don't want to be weighed down by something that's the definition of a mixed bag. Nothing Disney was ever going to do was going to placate the mob, not if they wanted Lucasfilm to actually make something of some notable quality. And, regardless of how cutthroat Disney is, some of them do actually care about making good content, if not art. So, they wiped the EU out, definitively and openly. It had already been done, more or less, by Lucas, but Disney did what Lucas didn't have the courage to do and openly pulled the plug. They then released the safest thing they could in the form of The Force Awakens. And sure, this kept the mob off them for a little while.

But eventually Lucasfilm had to actually do something fully consonant with what Star Wars has always been about. Which meant something doing something both child-like in its fantasy and uncompromising in its examination of human nature. And they found the director to do it, Rian Johnson. They handed him the reigns, and it went about as well as one could expect: the backlash of the mob, who were still clutching their pearls, wasn't actually as hard as it could have been.

Because, surprise of surprises, Johnson actually made a really good movie!

See, the thing is that Johnson had correctly identified who Luke was. Luke, at his core, has always been a man who wants to run away. From the Tosche station joke, to running away from Obi-Wan to find the burning corpses of his aunt and uncle, to just up and leaving to go find Yoda, to running away from Yoda to help his friends, to isolating Jabba so he could take him out more easily, to leaving his friends in the middle of a freaking stealth infiltration mission so he could face Vader (and then giving up midway in the mission and just resolving to die while taking out the Emperor as quickly as possible)...  just that there's a pattern here, folks. Luke is also deeply concerned about the welfare of others. Luke is also easily prone to rage. 

All three of these are true. 

So, Johnson had Luke do the one thing an older Luke would do: almost fly off the handle at his nephew but then stop himself. Luke almost went back from person to animal, stopped himself, and resolved to try better. And he did it much more quickly than he did as a younger man. That's because Luke has grown as a person, but the line back to animal never goes away. It's just something you learn how to handle. And Luke handled it as well as anyone could.

And then his thirteen foster-children were either burned alive or betrayed him.

Now, I don't know if any of you have had the misfortune of watching a woman go through a miscarriage. Something inside the mother dies with the child. But what most people do not track is that the same thing happens to the father too. When the child dies something happens in both parents. Something in them dries up. They can't quite summon the same energy they did before. A great weight is placed on their shoulders. It never leaves. 

Ever. 

And if this senseless tragedy happens multiple times, you get the exquisitely awful "privilege" of watching someone basically collapse under their own weight. No matter what happens afterwards, no matter how happy they get, their smile is dulled. It will never come back, and you will have the wonderfully terrible experience of remembering that their smile used to be so much brighter before all this. Each of these deaths can take months, years, maybe decades, to accept. It takes everything to do this. I have watched it five times. Each of them piled up on top of the last, until the person was almost unrecognizable due to a back log of the worst tragedy imaginable: the death of five little microcosms that you wanted to protect with all your might but couldn't.

Now imagine if over a dozen of those happens to you, at once, and it was your fault. Directly. How far away from suicide are you? Answer honestly now.

That is a deeply uncomfortable scenario. Anyone who thinks that the mob is going to react to such a thing with compassion has never met people. Or they forgot about 2020. Or they just didn't pay attention. Everyone's going to go "That doesn't make me feel good!" And they shouldn't feel good. But because they're a part of a mob, they're not going to reflect on why they may actually feel badly. They're just going to find the cheapest and quickest explanation to justify why they don't feel good.

Oh, wait, Lucasfilm finally disavowed the EU? Where Luke somehow gets married and has a kid, in the most unlikely and idiotic series of events ever written?

Yup, let's pin it on that.

It's certainly easier than realizing that the death of multiple children under your charge would break you too, isn't it? That requires thinking for yourself. And trying to actually think through things, which means automatically rejecting whatever the mob says, while trying to figure out why the mob is wrong.

Or, you know, you could be one of these charlatans that just feeds whatever the mob spews back at them and call it "reporting" or "commentary".

There are so many ways I could close out this blog that would be less messy. I don't claim, and I don't hope I have never claimed, to be correct in anything. I do claim to be some level of genuine. One could argue that my misanthropy is all that's on display in my blog. As of late I've wondered about that myself. I have never not claimed to be a misanthrope. But, as I continue to go along in my life, I have begun to notice that whatever you may mistake for misanthropy is rooted in something actually quite sane. I have made very wrong decisions with those thoughts. But I am not wrong.

I don't know if anyone reading this agrees or not. I know barely anyone does read. But if you are reading and still see something, thank you.

Eating Crow: FFG Star Wars

 

I have never pretended that any opinion of mine is correct. I have considered writing things that will get more than a dozen reads on this blog and experimented with branding. I have always decided not to, coz I ultimately don’t want this blog to be a brand. I just want people to find someone saying exactly what he thinks, no matter how flawed and sometimes outright outrageous it is. Over the years I’ve occasionally written Eating Crow posts coz I changed my mind on something and think it’s good people read about that on the internet, where everyone is right all the time!

I was wrong about FFG Star Wars. Here's why.

The basics of the game revolve around a set of six dice: the ability, proficiency, boost, difficulty, challenge, and setback dice, pictured below:

Each of these dice share a number of symbols on them that help generate differing types of results. There's a lot of openness in interpretation. While there's a general slowdown from having to sort through the dice, I've found that the amount of richness that can come out of a single roll more than makes up for it. Could you go and have normal dice do this? You can! The core books actually include a conversion chart... and it's a nightmare to use. I wouldn't do it.

The problem?

The dice are about 20 bucks for a package, and in typical FFG fashion there's not enough. You'll need at least two sets of these at the beginning, and you will probably want to just keep getting them until you've got six or seven packs. That's 140 bucks, all told. On just dice.

The core books are also a bit of a money sink. There's three of them, covering the three "types" of Star Wars stories: criminals, military, and Jedi. There's a lot of overlap between them of course, but there's just as much that's unique to that particular book. And they're fun to read! They really are! The FFG folks did a good job making them coffee table books.

About ten years ago I bought all the core books and two sets of dice, over the course of about a year or two, and then went on deployment, got a group together… and hated the game. I was playing with former DnD min maxers in a game that resembled DnD in format… and didn’t play anything like it. Please understand I’d sunk quite a bit of money into this game, was in a place where adapting to a new system was a bad idea (and I didn't really know that) and was criminally short on sleep. I was pretty bummed out, came home, put the books up on my shelf, lost the dice... and then forgot about the game.

The years went by, and then a buddy of mine told me that he really liked the Genesys system and was more than willing to defend it against detractors. I just sorta sat and watched as people came at him about the absurd cost of the system and even its practicality. My buddy went and defended the practicality of the system but made no efforts to defend its cost. I jurst sorta filed it away, while making my own complaints about a system I'd seen not work too terribly well. I respected him for standing up for his beliefs, and resolved to eventually give the games another chance.

Yanno.

Whenever that was gonna be!

And then my kids watched The Skywalker Saga. 

And found those books. And started begging to play. I shrugged, told them sure, and made characters with them. They went acrost the three books, grabbing options and gear relatively evenly. I've not really thought about gear lists in a long time, but boy did I get a new appreciation for them as I watched my kids. For them the gear lists were a direct portal into the setting of Star Wars itself, one that they did everything they could to leverage for their own enjoyment. They just wanted me to read every last item and asked how it worked. And the long prose really helped there, let me tell you! It was actually a lot more fun than I expected, overriding my experiences with the former DnD-heads bitching about they wanted more gear, coz they wanted more options to blow people up with.

But character creation being fun is a nice bonus. I want the game to be good. So I got a set of dice and we went to planet Ord Mantell, where a gigantic kaiju had dropped from the orbiting moon to attack the Imperial base there. And every. Single. Second. Of that session was sheer gold. The kids leaned into the dice, oohing and ahhing over them, asking how they could get more yellows and blues, changing narration accordingly. They understood what the dice were for: crafting an exciting narrative. And they leveraged them as thoroughly as they could.

You really need more than one set of dice to run this game. I'm sorry, but you do. That's about 35 to 40 bucks, just right there. Buy yourself a book and that's a hundred bucks. That. Is. A. Problem. And it's pretty ubiquitous to FFG's money decisions. So, if you don't like FFG, this isn't going to change your mind, and I can hardly blame you.

But.

But.

These two sets of dice solve more problems than most RPG books of the same price. They just do. I'm not gonna pretend to you they don't. And if I can just pick up a set of dice instead of reading yet another blowhard telling me how to fix RPGs I'm gonna do it. Maybe you won't. That's cool. That's on you.The book is really secondary to the dice. All the systems they present work, and they work well, and the books themselves are worth the money you spend on them. 

Together?

Yeah, that smarts.

But honestly, folks have spent hundreds of dollars trying to do what FFG is offering for a fraction of that. And I find that worth my time. And cash.