My First (Half) Braunstein

 

I've done a lot

of reading about Braunsteins, which aren't an entirely new concept; us "theatre kids" just call 'em LARPs. Which, granted, I've not done, but there's some pretty extensive stuff on them. They're well-known. But anyone who is worth their salt knows knowing about a thing is pretty worthless if you haven't played it.

And I hadn't.

And I really wanted to.

So when Ross invited 

me to a Traveller Braunstein, I jumped at the chance! Ross and I have been talking and playing together for awhile now, so I figured he wouldn't mind the stupid questions I inevitably came up with. I have a pretty packed schedule, so I knew I couldn't do anything regular, but it was a one time thing. I figured that I could get in, learn, and then get out.  C'est la vie et la guerre.

Ross sent me a card with all the character information: a lonely princess whose marriage was delayed. She wanted a husband. There was some mechanical information on the card, for 1979 Traveller. I didn't really look it over at the time. I thought I'd do it later. Ross had the Traveller rules available, so I thought "Well, I'll just ask about this later."

This was a mistake. 

An honest mistake. But a mistake.

This week at work was pure, unmitigated Hell.  Not one, but two crises. All the time I would have normally even glanced at the rules was spent up to my neck in two totally different emergencies. I would go home and just want to stare at a wall. I would come home, find that everyone at home was crawling up the walls, and one evening I barely even got any dinner, it got that nuts. One of these would have been... well okay, not normal, but doable.

All three together? Nope.

So I walked into 

the Braunstein with absolutely no brain function. No research. No forethought, whatsoever. Saying that I was woefully unprepared would have been an insult to the woefully unprepared. It took me a second to even remember that Traveller uses a 2d6 system.

I resolved to walk in and look like a total idiot. It was all I had.

Ross announced the 

rules: he would leave us on the Discord server channels to ourselves, to plot and figure things out. Each of us got three secret meetings with him, which would constitute three rounds. And then Ross was gone, and my dumb exhaused brain went "WAIT WHAT DO I DO". This was such an obviously absurd question that I almost started laughing, right there on the server. I didn't know any of these people, not really. 

DMRaptor and I were acquaintances, and he was just going at it like a freaking champ. It occurred to me that I needed to get a read on these people. The princess needed a husband, after all.

I resolved to simply go for my goal of marrying one of these dudes. And if I was outmaneuvered, as I was almost certain to be, I would have (at the very least) had fun playing a bitter and jaded young socialite. I could get a better experience than Diplomacy, at least, by playing my princess well.

And I succeeded!

I simply sat 

in the bar of the sinking ship, drinking bottles of alcohol in front of the ship's owner, and going on about how my fiancé, who had already screwed my best friend, was away at war, and how the war was a frightful inconvenience to living, but this crashed ship was a lovely little adventure, wasn't it? We certainly couldn't get this normally through paying money. I went on about how the world was going to hell in a handbasket, because democracy let total idiots run things and get the credit for doing it. I held bitter and jaded conversations that sounded very sophisticated for someone twenty-two.

Suddenly I was talking to a Countess in another room, who wanted me to be her heiress, or at least independent enough, and I decided I was going to use my... abilities... to help the Countess out. Did I expect actual help? No, but independence was what was desired, and marriage was a means to that end. So I cleared that with Ross, helped out the Countess with some of her own problems... I went-

And then suddenly 

my phone is buzzing.

Because a kid's up, the wife needs help.

Shit.

Off I go.

What a week.

I have absolutely no idea how it went down. If the ship went down. Or if the Countess figured out if it was an inside job. Or if DMRaptor's used car-salesman persona was actually living up to the hype he brought.

But I had a really good time!

I have some

initial thoughts, of course. Holy hell, that was a culture shock and a half, in the best way possible. I had some experiences in RPGs that were kind of like this (see my post about the Clandestine Turn), but nothing on this scale. And I really enjoyed it.

The structure is 

so freaking simple: mingle and scheme, go for three secret turns with the GM, and then the GM makes sure to keep the fog of war up so that way people do their thing without tipping each other off. I used mechanics once that entire time, and that was to adjudicate an action using one of my powers. I didn't particularly miss the mechanics, truth be told. That part I definitely didn't expect. But oh well, this is why you play things.

I really wish

I had had more ability to prep this time. This feels like something I'd want to take time on, like a month in advance or something like that. Really flesh the character out, really think on it. There wasn't a lot of lore that I could think to look for at the time. That's not Ross's fault, just for the record. I didn't know what questions to ask, and Ross can't anticipate my gaps in knowledge and expectations.

But suddenly I get why David Wesley supposed did a half-hour lore dump at the front of his Braunsteins. Suddenly that makes a lot of sense to me. Because, yes, that temptation would be strong, and even possibly necessary, on some level.

I have a lot 

of questions, which I don't necessarily know how to ask, at least yet. The fact that I was so fried and still had such a great time is a pretty high compliment to Ross and the crew on the server. They were pretty patient, and I appreciate it a lot.

Here's to next time, when I can actually do a good job! And, you know, actually get through the whole freaking session. That would be nice.

Responding to Beauty: Beautiful Games are Done on Purpose

 

This overlong and overwrought series 

is a long and strange response to Lex's article, which was amazing to read and got me thinking. This may generate a few different blog posts from me, but for the moment, let's start here.

Let's be complete here: a militant atheist, Randian Objectivist whose father was the pastor of a Baptist church, mother was the bookkeeper, sister was (and still is) the organist. Grew up in the South and still lives there.
Just so I'm positioned in the fiction here properly, because I'm really curious about what's about to happen.

This produced an interesting conundrum. Philosophy creates mechanics. A Randian Objectivist will create a different game than an Orthodox Christian.

Wait. I am Orthodox. What might that kind of thing look like? If philosophy generates mechanics, no matter how unintentionally, what might an Orthodox Christian philosophy generate, on purpose?

And therein lies the question.

So here we go.

I have been in the Byzantine liturgical cycle since I was 13. I am now 38. I made it through my adolescence in no small part because of this liturgical cycle. That is not a boast. It is simply a fact. Whatever else you may conclude from this series, that is an objective fact. Somehow it soothed me. Later, I would learn that Orthodox theology's explicitly teach is that their liturgics are the primary way to experience truth. I kept finding this to be true, because I could not just think it, I could feel it. 

To paraphrase the Buddha: if it doesn’t comfort, heal, and invigorate while being correct, it’s not truth. 

Years later, while in therapy, I would find this to not just be "correct", but vital. Your affective self must be in agreement with your more abstract self. And if your abstract self is oriented towards something wrong, it will destroy you.

Over the years, I learned another lesson: enjoyment with a clear head is the best. Whatever it is: food, drink, games, sex, the full human enjoyment is when the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of your person are engaged, at their proper proportions.

In other words, you encounter Truth because you encountered Beauty and then Goodness, together

as St Dionysius the Aeropagite says, and yes you should read this:

From this Beauty comes the existence of everything each being exhibiting its own way of beauty.
For Beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy
and of community:
Beauty unites all things and is the source of all thing»
Beauty is the great creating cause which bestirs the world and holds all things in existence by the longing inside
them to have Beauty.
And there it is ahead of all as Goal, as the Beloved, as the Cause toward which all things move, since it is the longing for Beauty which actually brings them into being.
Beauty is a model to which they conform...
From the One, the Good, the Beautiful - the interrelationship of all things in accordance with capacity.
From the One, the Good, the Beautiful - the harmony and the love which are formed between them but which do not obliterate identity.
From the One, the Good, the Beautiful - the innate togetherness of everything.
From the One, the Good, the Beautiful, also - the intermingling of everything, the persistence of things, the unceasing emergence of things...
- St. Dionysios the Areopagite, Divine Names

This experience is coherent. Completely coherent. It creates something so coherent that literally entire philosophies come from it, some of the greatest ever conceived.

Sounds great! Where’s the tabletop roleplaying games that do this?

Before someone points to the innumerable and insufferable “Christian” games made: stop. Memorizing Scripture for gameplay doesn’t count.  Saying something is based off of older stories doesn't mean anything, because unless you're actually talking in ludonarrative, you're just blowing smoke.

Before you say "Yeah I know a game that does that," you need to ask yourself, and you have to answer it honestly:

Did that beautiful experience at the table happen to you because everyone was pushing for it, or did the mechanics make it so easy it was almost inevitable?

 And before you go "That's not how that works"

it literally doesn't work any other way.

Why else do you think people use incense when they pray, or use particular positions to meditate? Why use repetitive phrases, like mantras, the Rosary, or the Jesus Prayer? Human. Psychology. Must. Be. Hacked. That is a fact of history. Denying this denies... literally every bit of psychological advice, ever.

And anyone who knows anything about the 20th century should know it's possible to engineer environments to break people. If you don't... your history is bad. Really really really bad. Go get an education. That's literally what brainwashing is: the weaponization of our ability to bypass our brains and get into our nervous systems.

This is all verified. Over. And over. And over. And over. History and thousands of years of multiple traditions of asceticism leave you without room to argue.

And videogames have been using these tricks of basic human psychology for years, and if you think on it, you'll find that you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Let's take Breath of the Wild. Seriously. Watch this video from Game Maker's Toolkit, which is exactly the kind of trick I'm talking about. It's not long. Watch it.

Oh, and the design of the Dark Souls map alone should have damned the argument that mechanics (aka mental design) cannot condition people into doing a particular thing.

Yes, it's an hour and a half long, this dude makes it worth it. Go watch. Get an education. Great games hack brains and psychology. It is not a question. It is an established fact.

Meeting beauty and goodness to receive truth is the work of any sane human being. And we have those methods.

So why the hell aren't we doing it???

Don't pretend. By and large we are not.

The OSR is based, historically, 

on Prussian wargaming. You know, military stuff. Again, this should not be controversial to say, and if you're balking... go get an education. Please.

The thing I have to say that is controversial, although obvious, is that anyone who has ever touched anything molested by any military can tell you it's not for beauty. Or goodness. 

It's for death. Killing. And in order to kill, your soul must be destroyed first.

Modern militaries are, by design, ugly and horrifying and utilitarian. So what do you think a military will design? Something that kills. Anyone part of a military should be revolting in disgust, because we know what a rot the military has been on our souls.

And most of our games are designed around it. Openly. I should not have to spell it out, but people sometimes need to: if you are playing something that is, at its heart, ugly and utilitarian, do you think you're going to run into anything beautiful without a good deal of effort?

Notice I didn't say you couldn't do it. Notice exactly what I said.

"without a good deal of effort"

Think on it. Actually think.

That answer should be obvious, if you're willing to accept basic human psychology and spirituality. I am not claiming that beauty and goodness can't be found while using a Prussian design. One of the most important moments in my life happened under live fire, which is a horrificall ugly thing. Something cohered in a way that was unexpected, and I met Truth.

But let's not pretend that that moment was easy to get at, and there's a world somewhere where I didn't make it that far, because the ugliness and utilitarian nature of the military choked me out. Total ugliness can make you find the beauty and goodness within. But it's not likely to happen.

The mere existence of Notre Dame should tell you how good idea it is to bank everything on someone finding the beauty within via ugliness without.

Don't get uppity, storygamers

you're not any better. Most storygame design is reactionary against the ugly Prussian design that is at the heart of the OSR. And most of the people who are designing these games are, to be kind, damn fool idiot Marxists. And they don't believe in beauty, just power, by obviously. So instead of saying the obvious:

This game's mechanics are ugly. I should go for beauty.

They instead say:

This game's mechanics don't play with power in a way I like. 

And this mistake is damning. Without a telos for beauty, you can't design something that actually stands out. That requires an actual end point that you think is good, desirable, wholesome. That has nothing to do with power. Power is meant to protect those things. It is not a substitute.

Most storygamers never learn this, so their designs are incoherent garbage.

Picture coincidental, I assure you. Totally doesn't mangle the themes of the show it's based on.

The pursuit of beauty and goodness for truth

is the foundation of all human activities. That should be especially trust of gaming, especially TTRPGs. However, we've gotten caught up in the legacy of one of the most awful parts of the 20th century (ask yourself what the people making those wargames were a part of, and ask yourself if you're really any stronger than them), and ask:

 "Do my methods of gaming match the proven methods of finding the beautiful, the good, and the true? And, if not, can we somehow make something that does?"

Obviously, if you don't believe in the beautiful to begin with, you'll scoff.

But the rest of us with common sense should walk away thoughtful. 

Home: Session Two

 

Suddenly I have the Dark Souls players I always wanted, and they want a campaign now. Yes, life can work like this is if you're a dad. So, I sat down and looked over my tools for the next session.

Encounter and Summon Dice

I didn't have my rules for the encounter and summon dice for the first session. I went to work, looked at them again, and realized that I was still doing "every other turn" for rolling, which I hate. So, I modified the chances, because I really hate having to remember. 

Childish?

Maybe?

Too much work?

Eh? I don't care. Here it is.

Roll a d20 and a d30 every turn.

d20

1-3: monster

4-5: trap

6-7: soul

8: item

9: bonfire chance (roll d6, on a 1 there's a bonfire)

10-11: NPC (generate from core book)

12-20: nothing

d30

1: Purple Summon Sign

2: Red Summon Sign

3: Golden Summon Sign

4: White Summon Sign

5: merchant!

6-30: Nothing

We wound up

going to the library to play, this time. Marcus and Jackson had just walked through the hollow and three skeletons from the first area, and decided to explore a different route. They went right, when they had previously gone left. They found a long hallway, with a corpse at the end. Remembering the hollow from before, they ignored it, taking a door to the right. They found two chests, on at each side of a room. 

They opened the chest on the left to find a corpse in it. They flinched, expecting it to stand up. It did not. So they cautiously poked it with a sword. It did nothing. There was an odd glow coming from it. They flinched again. I had them roll a Wisdom check. Jackson passed, Marcus didn't. I told Jackson that the glow felt really nice and wholesome. Against Marcus's better judgment, they touched the corpse.

And got a flood 

of memories. This man had been a part of the castle they were now in, before it had been overrun. He had died alone, scared, in this chest. He couldn't get out, otherwise he would have been killed, and starved to death. The resulting souls the corpse had gathered in the interim years passed into Marcus and Jackson. Marcus now had enough souls to level up. So they went back to the bonfire, got Marcus leveled up, and then went back out and dealt with the hollows and skeletons from before. Marcus rolling 2d10+4 and Jackson rolling 2d8+4 was a whole order of magnitude different than before! They gleefully hacked through the undead that had given them such a scare before.

With both of

them now at level two, Jackson suggested they try taking those nine hollows in the long hallway. They practically blitzed through them in seconds, using their increased Temporary Position to tear into the nine hollows incredibly quickly. They now had three options: go and check out that corpse that they had happened across and run from (a timely Wisdom roll told them it had the same soft glow as the corpse they'd gotten a bunch of souls from), go to the door at the end of the hallway, or take a small door they had found in that same hallway.

They went back, got some more souls from the corpse, and then went back to try the door at the end of the hall.

And then they

ran into this guy.

He had heard them coming, and had the surprise round.

SMASH. 

Shockwave from his hammer. Surprise round over, and oh, what's this? He always goes first? He smashed them both and then swung his hammer right at Jackson. And I rolled utter dog crap. Minimum damage each time, and the third strike against Jackson missed, outright.

They got the hell out of there, having to dodge an opportunity attack from the demon that should have sent Jackson straight to the bonfire. They could see there was an exit just past the Asylum Demon, and then there was what looked like might become a bonfire... if they could just kill the stupid thing.

The library trip was over. 

We went home.

It's pretty incredible

how the system creates this power fantasy when the opponents are too low of level... only to create this nightmare of a game when the opponents are of equal or greater strength. The players have so much explosive power... and they can fold by origami if they're not careful. They got lucky.

This time.

The Fall of the King of Sota: Chapter Sixteen

 

I swear that this game runs itself sometimes. And then there's times when I realize I want to push. So I do. And then this beauty came out.

November 8th- Chapter Sixteen

This one ends on a major cliffhanger, and makes the upcoming Interlude Play really dangerous. I think it's interesting that the actual fight with the ensivalo isn't the center of the character work, but everything leading up to it.

Kredo and I talked after the session, and we agreed that it was remarkable. By the end of the last campaign, we had been really nostalgic for book one play, where things are slower, the consequences not as steep. But now? We've had a few months and we're so happy we did it... but it's time to go to book two. It's really cool, to be playing a game where you can feel when it's time to change things.

Home: Session One

 

I had been

prepping a map for a new Dark Souls campaign. It wasn't ready, but I was really excited to get it done. I'd just been thinking through it and deciding what to put on the map. You know, the usual overthinking.

And then, suddenly, we had the opportunity to do an Omega Rangers session... until we didn't. The character sheets couldn't be found. The kids were heartbroken. I was... disappointed, for them. I am not a fan of running trad games, even something as fun as Power Rangers.

Suddenly, I was asked: "Hey, can you run Dark Souls?"

Wait, what?

"My map's not done."

"Is that a problem?"

No, not it is not. I turn around, grab my Dungeon Map 5e book,  photocopy a small map, pull out my core Dark Souls book and grab a low-level location with its random table. Boom. Ready. My more detailed map can wait.

They hadn't made characters. Also not a problem: Dark Souls character generation is not quite as fast as Wight Box, but it's pretty damn close. I helped them make characters: Marcus the Brute Knight and Jackson the Fencer Assassin. Boom. Done.

Five minutes for a map and twenty for character creation.

"What exactly are we?

"Undead."

"Like zombies?"

"Yes."

"Why are we back?"

"You don't know. That's part of the point."

"Oh, okay!"

I then described

the opening room: "You awaken in a mostly empty room with an altar, bonfire atop it, and a locked door. The light is dim but warm."

I then turn on the music.

"What's this?" I was asked. Oh, right, they've never actually played Dark Souls. I explain it's The Music of Dark Souls. It was a really cool moment.

They pick the lock, round the corner, round another corner... to a dead end. I get The Look. "We just started!"

"Yeah, funny ain't it?"

"There's gotta be a secret door!"

There is! They 

find the secret door quickly, with a good roll. They walk through the secret passage, come out into a larger room with another altar... and then there's a hiss as the corpse next to them stands up. Marcus kills it in one shot. Three skeletons come running from another room. Marcus and Jackson kill them, but get roughed up doing so. They loot the bodies for their scimitars and short bows, and then keep going.

They go down a hallway, only to find themselves face to face with nine Hollows. Jackson hangs back with his bow to shoot down a few, but Marcus gets absolutely slaughtered by the onslaught, one of which was a critical. Marcus lost all his souls. That moment when they realized that death erased their XP/money... a light went on in their heads.

Suddenly they realized they shouldn't be so stingy with their Position/HP. The amount they lost by spending was a lot lower than being hit.

So Jackson beat a hasty retreat back to the bonfire, brought Marcus back. Marcus lost 2 Charisma as a consequence of being brought back. He flinched, as he realized that dying could really hurt.

Marcus and Jackson

then went back out, found the Hollows and skeletons were they had been before, and killed them again. They did a little more exploring and realized they could get the drop on the nine Hollows that had wiped them out before. Jackson did a Stealth roll, and was able to take out two Hollows almost immediately, Marcus ran down and killed another. 

And that was just the surprise round.

They spent Position hard and fast, turning their misses into hits and their grazes into insta-kills. The nine Hollows went down extremely quickly.

Jackson had enough 

souls to level up! But that meant going back to  a bonfire. Marcus wanted to push on to find another bonfire, not wanting to repeat the ground again. Jackson pointed out if they died, they'd lose everything, and they didn't have enough power to get away with that kind of thing.

After thinking it over, Marcus agreed.

They went back, and Jackson the Assassin leveled up. From 1d8+4 to 2d8+4 for Position during combat is a huge change! They went back, took on the one Hollow and three skeletons again, and Jackson almost knocked out all four by himself.

There were more

passages. The two decided that they would go try one of the other passages next time. Maybe they' d find another bonfire and not repeat the fights!

But by then Maria and everyone else came home.

Next time!

Storygaming as Mechanical Sandbox

 

The Fall of the King of Sota: Chapter Fifteen

 

I have a real problem with smarmy bullshit. so it was a kind of interesting week to follow up on, with this gigantic butterfly. So, I did what I could. And I think it worked!

October 30th through November 5th

The people flock around the giant butterfly, which talks in their minds with a calm, gentle voice: Maalijna, the ground listener. She is gentle, and kind. Children quickly learn to trust her, climbing atop her with no fear whatsoever. When asked to give rides in the sky, Maalijina always chuckles in a high-pitched mental trill: "Your mothers would never forgive me if I did".

The mothers agree. And realize they love her for it.

The "plague" ends immediately. Everyone attributes it to Maalijina.

Around Newport's northern farms, however, things are far from calm. King Lucian collapses all the remaining tunnels between Newport and Montport, and heads back up to Montport, cooperating with Lady Marie's forces.

Doing so results in not one, not two, but three violent deaths, the third one done by Seren, the Bearer of the Blade of Uriel. They were all confused, rushed, and thoroughly strange.

A few animals in the northern farms die, with their heads crushed.

The water in Montport is discovered to be poisoned. Maalijina promises to go there and purify the water there, too, when she's done purifying the ground around Newport.

November 6th- Chapter Fifteen

One of the things that Ross, who finally came back to play with us, said later really stuck with me. There's an interesting kind of loneliness that happens with Crescendo, Ross told me. All these players having these private stories between sessions. They're doing serious emotional buy-in between the sessions, and then suddenly that story is put on public display, full-blast. Without the context.

It's an iceberg of story and emotion and tragedy and comedy, all at once.

Sorta like a Gene Wolfe story. Oops.