Atchison: Session Two

Atchison: Session One

Atchison: Session 0

The Dragon's Fire: Reflections on a Wonderful Failure

 

Welcome back! Today I go over some of my thoughts on the latest Crescendo epic.

Games have design goals. They're meant to provide an experience, which keeps people coming back because they're having fun! The goal of Crescendo is to replicate the feeling of reading Wolfe, to take his principles and put them in a TTRPG space. Adaptation does not mean trying to replicate the original exactly, but to adapt its principles into a different medium.

So, on the one hand, Crescendo is a ton of fun. People are coming back and having a really meaningful time. Heroes are a wonderfully designed character type, and literally nothing in the TTRPG space exists that does what Heroes in Crescendo does. That's a fact. Heroes are successful. They successfully draw an arc found in Wolfe extremely well.

However, that doesn't mean Crescendo is successful in achieving the goal "replicating Wolfe's principles". And that is... not what Crescendo does. Not yet.

Let me try to explain. Let me try to show you what's wrong.

At the beginning of The Dragon's Fire, I introduced a girl-vampire (as in, a vampire who was turned when she was a girl), called The Bride. Now, I had a backstory for The Bride. She was a child who was brainwashed into thinking she loved Eous, The Big Bad. So when he turned her, as an 11 year old child, she went willingly. I didn't come up with more than that, just enough to know this NPC was evil, and liked it... and was seemingly naive about it in a way that should have been chilling.

The Bride showed up four times in thirty plus sessions of gameplay.

Four.

Now, to be clear, this wasn't exactly a problem, per se. The game does a good job of shaking up the spotlight around the players pretty thoroughly. So there was always something interesting going on, it just wasn't... well.. any of the villains, the monsters, of the setting. There were hints of what could have been depth, but nobody cared when Raphael took the Bride down, and when the original dragon vanished, nobody looked. This was because, in order to capture Wolfe's startling breadth of vision in a game, I had to put a completely different kind of workload on the Weaver, who is not a GM. As I have repeatedly stated. 

This is a problem for a few reasons:

1. Wolfe's stories manage to squeeze a lot of depth into each and every character that ever hits the page. They're not "NPCs", but protagonists in a stories that you simply can't linger on. The current set up does not support that feeling.

2. Without that depth, it is hard for players to fully invest in the setting itself. There needs to be some parts of the world that push back harder than others, in a way that preserves player autonomy.

3. Because of the chaos, the Weaver cannot focus on NPCs to develop.

4. The game is about challenging Beliefs and then holding the players responsible to the Myth. That's already a lot.

In short, I think this was the best campaign of Crescendo I have ever run, one of my best in general, and it was somewhat in spite of the game I made.

That.. doesn't make me feel good. My players were awesome, I was absolutely on fire, and Crescendo carried us pretty far... and could have carried us a lot farther.

Fortunately, there's a pretty simple fix.

Whatever you want to give depth to, you give to a player. 

GMs, who aren't having to work with half as many left-field "WTF" moments as a Crescendo Weaver, benefit incredibly from this principle (see the book on the right)... and that's going to go  triple for Weavers.

Fortunately, that's going to be really easy to mine out of Wolfe, because he gets into the psychology of monsters, a lot: they're simply creatures who don't want any change to affect them. They cannot adapt in a way that others can work with, because their very nature makes them unable to adapt in a way that's friendly to others.

Wolfe's stories do not skimp on monsters who have very deep, very complicated, inner lives... that are utterly unable to do anything other than look to their own interests. Unlike Heroes, whose development can go anywhere, Monsters can only be interested in themselves... and have an infinity of ways of thinking about their own needs.

Someone's going to go "Just stop developing already! Move on!"

No.

Let's get this clear, for anyone who's reading this and who cares. This is my hobby. This is for fun. Anyone who thinks I am trying to develop a commercial product needs to rethink their assumptions.

I am not.

Yeah, sure, there's a PDF up on DriveThruRPG. You can go buy it for five bucks. It would be nice if you did. But I also just drop the PDF on people for free, because this is what I do for fun. If it makes money, cool. If it doesn't... okay? I want this damn game to do Wolfe. And it's gonna do it. 

Because the stuff this game does right deserves to be supported. I think about King Melny the Dragonslayer, Alistair the Serpentbane, and Raphael the Hordefighter... and my goodness that legitimately makes my heart hurt, in the best way possible. These huge legends and the things they did that literally nobody will know about. The apology of King Melny, where he admitted that his evil ways were born of fear and how he wanted to be better... and how that cost him Junior. Like, that hit me really hard. Alistair trying to understand how Natasha was still with him, actually with him, even after death, and failing to do so, and having to accept that he would never fully get it. Raphael holding his friend after a good and long life and being the last thing he ever saw. 

That shit means something to me. It lives in me, in the best way possible. Those memories are the reason I run games like this. Like, sure, I want to have fun too, but... there's something so human in it, and I need that. I think people in  general need that: unplanned humanity.

My priority is that experience, at my table. And Monsters will make that stronger. There could have been the moment where The Bride doubled down on her evil, in a way that shows she literally can't think of another way to do things, eliciting pity and horror. There could have been the moment where the original dragon tried to escape her tormentors and failed. That wouldn't have taken away from the Dragonslayer, Serpentbane, and Hordefighter. Quite the opposite. It would have made those moments even better, because the pity and horror of The Bride would have made the good moment sharper.

But that requires adding things to the game, and that's fine. The design shall continue until morale improves!

So yeah. This was a gorgeous failure. Let's make the next one work better. ONWARDS.

It is here that I leave you. If I do not see you next time, I do not blame you. It is no easy road.

Letters to God

 

Welcome back! Good to see you! We're going to listen to me rant about a long-standing problem today.

I have never, not even once, doubted that God exists. It's never been a question for me. I know there's people who are like "Well, there isn't a compelling reason to think there's a God." I have never had that question. Dunno why. I just haven't.

My question is a different type: if God is real, does He really love me? Can He?

This past week has been hard. I thought I was done with flashbacks, with PTSD. I even had said goodbye to my therapist in that capacity. All had been well.

Welp.

It's been a week of flashbacks, all the old self-destructive impulses, and the crushing realization that everything I have ever written on this blog is true... and that's not necessarily making me happy. I don't know what to do with myself. With my life. The realization that it's all true and I am somehow all of it has crashed in with the sickening epiphany that I'm still riddled with nervous tics that aren't healthy, moral injuries I can't even see, and a sense of fallibility that's frankly floored me.

These are all bullshit words to try and communicate a deep panic. Imagine some poor kid on a merry-go-round, puke flying out of his mouth, as he begs everyone to let him get off for a moment... and then collapses on the damn thing as it spins and cries. And it just never stops spinning. Even as he goes catatonic.

I came home today, trying very much to ignore these things. And found myself snapping at Maria. She'd done something small, and instead of just shrugging and going "Well, nobody's perfect," I went "WHY AREN'T YOU PERFECT WHEN I NEED YOU TO BE." I mean, why not? I put in the work, why shouldn't I have some demands.

The young and stupid are nodding along.

The older and happily married are going "OH SHIT YOU DIDN'T".

I almost did.

I sorta struggled through the rest of the objectively pleasant evening. It is amazing how damaging your own sins are, to your ability to enjoy a simple evening. But man, it almost ruined me this night. I just... sat through it. Let myself simmer and stew. I gritted my teeth and was present as best as I could be. I later tried telling Maria I was sorry, and that almost started a fight, but finally I just said "It wasn't small to me."

And her response?

"I know, but I couldn't do what you wanted. I can't just be what you want."

Rage came up.

Was swallowed.

And I really looked at this poor woman who had been blindsided with a battle neither of us anticipated. I felt, for just one moment, that quiet and tired thing that kept her coming back to me, radiating off of her.  The small, still Voice was in her tiredness. It always seems to be. He always seems to be in those moments when she's just trying to love me and I'm fighting her with every last bit of strength... and still she persists. What a saint. She's way too fucking good for me.

I nodded. "No, you can't. And that's okay."

She relaxed. She could tell I meant it.

And for one second I could feel something resembling peace.

It was short-lived. It isn't always, but tonight it is. Oh well. God knows my warring heart needs something to do, I suppose. Here we go. So, I'm sitting here, later, banging this out on my keyboard instead of cleaning the fucking kitchen, and I am saying, loudly, angrily, with more hope than I ever thought I could: "I'M NOT FUCKING DONE YET. IS THAT ALL YOU GOT??? I GOT A LOT MORE IN THE TANK, AND I'M STILL YOUNG. LET'S GO!"

Is that the wisest thing?

Probably not.

But I can only be what I am, and right now I am pissed off and want to take all that's evil within me and get rid of it. And I can feel that it is obliging me in the appointment. I am going to win.

So I get up, eager. Rage sparks through my bones, getting my muscles to work again... I see the incoming wave. I know that I am going back to the war. I will need to swim through this next tsunami of exhaustion, trauma, and moral damage. It's coming right at me.

Oh, Defender, if only you could see what I see, as I see it!

I can't run. The wave is too big. I wonder if it'll take me out. For one second there's a twinge of fear.

It turns to aggression, raw defiance: if I go down, it's going to be charging. Let's go. I start a run. Right into the darkness. Again.

Who knows? Maybe the eagles will come in time, this time. I keep seeing them, circling. Hopefully those aren't vultures. That would suck. Oh well. Only one way to find out. Hopefully God does love me, and those are eagles.

I suppose God loves vultures too. He gives them food, too, specifically those who don't make it. Even the bones of the fallen are used to benefit someone. Should I despair of God's love as He provides for the vultures?

Fuck it. Time to go live.

It is here I leave you, until next week. If I do not see you again, I do not blame you. It is no easy road.

The Dragon's Fire: Epilogue

 

The Dragon's Fire: Chapter Eleven

Rappa 21-25

The Queen, King Melny's wife, and their child have escaped to Sota City. Sota Fortress is fallen. Her honor guard surrounds her and the child jealously. They demand an accounting of where the king and his companions have been. The Argentum overlords are putting up with this "visiting" queen, but only because of the strength of her honor guard... and the viisuulas insisting that King Melny's family is to be protected. The Argentum general is compliant with the wisdom whales' wishes, for now...

Chapter Eleven (Rappa 26)

Moving Forward: The Crescendo Clubhouse

Welcome back! Today, we talk about turning the Crescendo discord server into a clubhouse.

It is always a question of what your goal is. Always. When I first started designing Crescendo the goal was raw: never leave that feeling I had at the end of Book of the Short Sun, and the rest of the Solar Cycle. I labored with that goal in mind. I have accomplished my goal, admirably even. But the problem shifted even as it was solved, and now I find myself at another crossroads: now that I have this game, what do I do with it?

That's a flawed question, as we'll see in a minute. Put a pin in it.

The biggest things that I got out of my time working on Crescendo have been threefold:

1. Gaming allows a form of vulnerability with people I find necessary.

2. As long as I stick with people, the project expands.

3. As the project expands, people will come on board who will want to do "more" with it, and may actually want to take point.

I do not think most people are naturally comfortable with being vulnerable with each other. I also think that people need to be vulnerable with each other. It is vital. It is not negotiable. Our culture is so bad with it, and the rift between what's expected of human beings and what's needed is now so wide that it's a wonder there aren't more suicides. Crescendo's helped with that problem, in a way that's a lot of fun, and I couldn't be prouder of what it's accomplished.

The more important point, however, has been that I simply do not have any ambition... because I like just playing with people. I like designing games and playing them with people. I don't particularly care for the business end of it. And I have found that, as long as I am playing with people and enjoying the time with them, things grow. And that's a nice byproduct of the one thing I really care about... playing the game.

The thing is, the other day one of the players just out and out suggested a mechanic that absolutely improves Crescendo. I never would have thought of it, but the idea was utterly correct. So, it's going into the 0e draft, which I'm currently working on. We'er going to playtest it, and make sure it works the way we thought it would. Now, if he can just show up and come up with an idea that I frankly could never have come up with, on my own, then someone better suited to this whole business bullshit may. I don't care, I just want to play the game with people.

And that, I think, is the real answer to the question I pinned earlier. I set out to chase a feeling I got from Gene Wolfe. I caught it. The game exists now, and it does what I wanted it to do. But the goal was never really to "have" the game. The goal was to feel that thing again, and then to share it. 

Turns out the best way to keep feeling it is to keep playing with people who make it better than I ever could alone. So maybe the next question isn't "what do I do with Crescendo?" 

Maybe it's simpler: keep showing up. Keep the table open. Keep making space for the next person who walks in with an idea I never would have had, or the next quiet player who finally feels safe enough to speak up. 

The game will keep growing, or it won't. People will run with it, or they won't. Business stuff will happen, or it won't. 

None of that is the point anymore.

The point is the table. The point is the moment when someone laughs, or cries, or leans in and says, "Wait… what if we did it like this?"

As long as that keeps happening, I’m exactly where I want to be.

Crescendo isn’t something I need to "do" anything with.

It’s something we get to keep doing. Together.

And that feels like a pretty good place to be.

So, with that in mind...

I am going to put up everything I have been developing, on Itch, and I'm going to start running them all, talking about them all. If we can get people trying these ideas, they'll help develop the philoisophy more.

So, c'mon over. Let's play some games!

Tsuro: The Perfect Party Game

 

Welcome back! Good to see you! Right this way, we’re going to talk about Tsuro. It’s the perfect party game. 

What’s a party game? I never actually knew that. Let’s go somewhere scholarly. 

“ Party games are games that are played at social gatherings to facilitate interaction and provide entertainment and recreation.”

Wikipedia

 Now that we have a technical definition. 

Tsuro is the perfect party game. Notice I didn’t say it was the best. I simply said “No notes”. If you don’t like Tsuro that’s nice. Something doesn’t need to be wrong with you to dislike it. 

But it is perfect. Here’s why.

First: rules are stupidly intuitive. Lay a tile down before your piece. The tile has a path. Advance your piece along that path. Other pieces advance down a path if you “accidentally” put a path before them while you’re laying a tile for yourself. You win by being the last guy on the board. 

Boom. Done. 

That alone is enough. It’s awesome. People can just play. 

But that’s not the end of it. See, most party games don’t have real consequences in the game. Points accrue, sure, but you don’t necessarily have the game funnel you. 

Tsuro funnels hard. Each tile you play creates branching paths, which takes up space on the board. You can’t get around this. Eventually you’ll find that your choices are viciously constrained. You run out of tile choices. You’re picking up the tiles of the fallen, hoping they’ll give you just one more turn. But eventually you run out of time. 

And you have to take yourself off the board. 

Most party games? They're yelling matches or mean-spirited roasts. Tsuro's elegant. Zen-like paths on a gorgeous board. A touch of strategy—block 'em, dodge 'em, pray for that perfect tile—but mostly pure, shared chaos. Everyone's in it together, watching the board shrink like a noose. 

May the best one evade it. 

"Consequences!"

And here I must leave you. If I don’t see you next week, I understand. It is no easy road. 

The Dragon’s Fire: Chapter 10

At this point, I am convinced of three things:

1. 1:1 time is essential for adapting Wolfe. Anyone who doubts this really needs to reread Wolfe a dozen times.

2. That Heroes simply don't care about what happens between... even if it's important to the world's response to the Heroes. There's times it really matters... and then there's the rest of it.

3. I don't want to model that out alone, and refuse to do so.

So we're going to make two more games. Coz I want to model Wolfe, and Wolfe is about 1:1 time, and Heroes don't care about it enough to make it worth throwing stuff at them.

More on that in next week's blog post.

Rappa 4-19

 For the past two weeks:

For Alistair and  King Melny, the entirety of  the Undermaze lights up with this powerful blue light. You start seeing visions of ones you love, striving and suffering and pushing, all for you. And then, on this last Sunday, a powerful blue flash happens, right at midnight... and you both bump into each other a few minutes later

And then, somehow, there's blue footsteps, leading you further.

Tell me about some of what you saw

Tasha saw that I hadn't made a prompt for her. I responded that she had walked into Faerie, and that time didn't work there like it does in the material plane... so nothing yet.

Alistair

As we follow the footprints it's like a dream where places are melded together, like when it's your bedroom but also a pool. I see Natasha's home but it's also the forest where I died, and the cave where I found the sword all at once. It's all places connected to both Natasha and Telos. It doesn't feel like a message but a reference. Like the index of choices and inevitabilities that brought me here.

King Melny

I see visions of all my past friends and rivals. From my first day in the company to the current day. I see the faces of the soldiers, the captain, the lieutenants. All of them meld together before melting away to reveal Alistair and Raphael. Signifying they are my true friends that have remained constant. Before I awake, I see a vision of my old self. He simply bows and tells me good luck before I awake.

Chapter 10 (Rappa 20)

After this Chapter, Cal and I talked and agreed that he was now a Legend. His acceptance of the reality of Natasha still being with him, regardless of what was actually going, was the trigger.

So now we're left with Raphael.

We're almost there, and the bittersweetness is so good.

RIP Junior. You're my favorite gentled demon son.

Dark Souls: Initial Report Session the Last

 

With their mission clear ("find the dragon and stab it with the magical spear, so you can whittle it down"), Hazbil and Fizbun come into a large room, filled with pillars and a vaulted ceiling. There's a wooden bridge at one end of the room, leading out into the utterly frozen wasteland, with another tower across the way. There's holes in the ceiling big enough for "their" dragon to poke his head and roast them alive.

I announced the DC for Stealth to go check out the wooden bridge: 24. Hazbil and Fizbun about burn out all their Position passing the check.

They get to the bridge, which is exposed to the cold that killed them almost instantly earlier. I make them a deal: they burn enough Position, they can cross the bridge, but it destroys their Stealth Check.

The dragon comes up behind them as they cross. They roll Initiative, and fail just closely enough to where they can burn the Position necessary to go before the dragon.... and thus roll for their combat Position. Hazbil has a higher Strength than Fizbun, so he lugs the spear right at the thing, and passes the thing pretty easily. With the spear that keeps the dragon's Position from resetting firmly lodged in it. Normally, I would make the rest of the campaign about them leveling up for this one boss fight. I certainly could have prepped that.

But the guy playing Fizbun really wants to run some Pathfinder, and I don't get people wanting to run games for me terribly often.

So.

We skipped that part.

We guessed it would take about eight tries to take the dragon down. The dragon began to disintegrate under the influence of the Flame. Fizbun, being a pyromancer, volunteered to take the Flame on, as he had some Flame resistance. But he needed help getting up the stairs to the Kiln. So they stumbled up to the Kiln, and Fizbun, the asshole who closed doors, fell into the Kiln at the top of the tower.

Hazbil looked down from the tower. The ice was starting to melt... and there was a ton of it. He would need to move fast if he wanted to get to the nearby mountains.

Thoughts on the System

By the end of this session,  the players had come to a different appreciate of the Position system. At any point in time, they could pass a roll. It was a question of whether or not they had the resources to do so. This means that the game becomes a series of rough calculate risks.

Or it could.

Could.

But, if you're not running the game as an old school mudcrawl.... this system just isn't going to work. Period. If you're not pitting the time against the Position of the players... there's no tension. The usual railroading 5e is known for just won't work here. You have to present real choices that require constant dice rolls for the system to function.

Will We Run This Game Again?

Fuck yes we will. It's not perfect (I made up the encounter dice), but my goodness it does mudcrawling so well, and I will happily draw up another map for it. However, I would do a few things differently:

Assign more random tables to different parts of the map. I only really used two, and that was a mistake. Players need more zones, where they can go and hide, or grind and level up. Things like that.

I would want to actually come up with a good boss fight "mechanic". Not sure how to do that, yet, but the core choices in this game  warrant some extra work. I think I would set up a BOTW/TOTK style map, with factions set up and whatnot. I can't really get other players to do faction play in the world, due to physical constraints, or I would.

I'll write a bit about Pathfinder 2e next. I have my own very loud and snooty opinions on that game, so we'll see how that goes.

The Dragon's Fire: Chapters 8 and 9

 

Kaksusa 22-28

The Weaver's Prompt(s)

On Kaksusa 23, a giant squid attacks the sub, which is badly damaged, requiring the sub to surface. The sub's engines are badly damaged, and can't submerge. The week is spent with the now openly-android crew fixing the sub. They ask for some help, specifically in calibrating the sub temperature, as their own systems were damaged in the attack.

When asked, they claim they're taking the three of you to see the dragon. The real one. It took them awhile to find a passage to her, and they want your help, to finally end the infinite undead army. To end Legion, who is going to win if nobody does anything. "It is not time to raise the Apocalypse Ship, for Uriel has not returned yet."

King Melny

On the feast of the Lunar Announcement, Elise tries to corner you. She's hot for you. If you redirect her, she suddenly screams and falls to the ground, dead. Something... other... something blackened, comes out the corpse. And it charges. Its body leaves burn marks as it burns a hole in the hull and escapes.

Alistar

Natasha takes you out into the Outer Abyss in a series of dreams, to the Mountains Beyond the Mountains, the places that border Seitsemann. Untold beauty is shown you by her. Waking up from these dreams is saddest thing you've ever done, but she comes to you, night after night, showing you the beauty of the Spaces Between the Daughters, The Outsider's Country.

Raphael

Ifan shows up, briefly, and tells you your sword's name is Sydanelma. "Do not bring it into the light of day, for it does not exist yet, and light is not kind to things that are necessary, but cannot yet exist. Come. Find me. Cut a hole in the world and step through. Get me out of Faerie."

If y’all could write your responses by Saturday

Raphael

Raphael freezes at the voice, eyes narrowing.

“Ifan?” He doesn’t move right away. The name Sydanelma sits wrong in his mouth, like something placed there on purpose.

“Faerie lies,” he mutters, pacing once, thinking. “It wears faces. Says the right things. Gets you to open the door yourself.”

He looks at the blade—half there, half not.

“…But you knew the sword’s name.”

A long pause.

“If you’re not him… then I’m about to make a very bad decision.”

A faint smirk.

“…and if you are, you already knew I would.”

He grips the blade, testing the pull of it against the world itself.

“One way to find out.”

Raphael cuts the tear anyway—slow, deliberate—and steps through, ready to either pull Ifan out… or kill whatever’s pretending to be him.

Alistair

Natasha is sending me messages in my dreams, but when when I awake she has no memory of our walks through the glens and atop the mountains. It physically pains me to leave the dreams, but the Natasha of the real world comforts me when I awake.

King Melny

I'm just gonna say Melny would follow the group and say "Can we have one normal day? It is this normal now?' as he leads them to relevant safety.

Chapter Eight (Kaksusa 28)

1. 
   
2. 
   

   
   

   Chapter Nine (Rappa 2)

So, after the disaster that was scheduling for Chapter Eight, we got Cal on for Chapter Nine. We knew Jesse would be unavailable, but Tasha accidentally slept through the session (given they happen at 10 pm CST, that's understandable).

1. 
   
2. 
   

I think the 1:1 time is not quite working, at least not as I have it implemented. Part of it is that we started implementing it in the last book of this epic, and that probably wasn't a good idea. Missed session mechanics are definitely a good idea, and I have those already. The deeper issue, however, is that Heroes do not inherently care about time in the way that 1:1 time works. The source material skips large sections of time, and then implies the changes that happen between those two points, because of changes in the setting.

The central conceit, however, is that the background elements matter, which means time is important. 

The only way out is through.

Chastity and Lust Aren’t About Sex

Welcome back! Good to see you! Today, we're going to talk about chastity and lust, and how Christians have a problem with both.

Of all the hang ups a modern has about traditional Christianity, this is a big one. It’s not a secret that Catholics and Orthodox have epic levels of prudishness about sex and desiring it. It’s also not a secret Protestantism has poisoned us even further against any positive sexual concepts that traditional Christianity had to begin with. Investigating the Fathers, a bunch of overwhelmingly celibate dudes having to struggle with the fact they had no healthy sexual possibilities at all… yeah. Most married Catholics and Orthodox have asked themselves, at least once, if they got the raw end of the deal, if somehow they're less than celibates, which reinforces the popular perception to an ironclad scandal in the classical sense of the word. It ain’t a good look. 

Academic nerds pushing their glasses back with an “AkCShuALly” can kindly keep it to themselves. Pretending Christianity hasn't struggled with prudishness on a cultural level isn’t honest. It's a meme for a reason.

Let’s do some course correcting today. Or try to. 

The Root

The first thing to do is return to the primitive sources. Is the root bad? 

We begin with Paul, who claims we struggle against the powers and principalities of the world. The people around us are involved in a larger, invisible conflict between God and “the” Satan, or Accuser. Paul is heavily influenced by the Book of Job, where God loves His creation, the Satan (also known as Leviathan at the end of the book) hates it, and demands to try those God loves… which is everyone. Now, to God this isn’t a case of Him wanting to torture people so much as His biggest and most fearsome pet, the equivalent of a freaking large German shepherd, is highstrung. God made Him for a purpose. When God is questioned by Job about what that purpose this attack dog on steroids is doing, God says His Leviathan is doing what it ultimately should, and Job really can’t understand what that purpose is. 

Those of you who take issue with that, yeah I get it, it’s called theodicy, known as the problem of evil. Somehow the Satan’s rampagings are serving a much larger good. We have some guesses, but they’re ultimately guesses. Job somehow comes to peace at the end of his book. No pretense is made that we understand what that peace consists of. Paul is saying we are all Job. The Satan hates all of us for really petty reasons, and we are a part of a conversation between God and His angels and the Satan with his demons. To God it’s a conversation. He has it under control. What His goal is we can’t guess, but somehow it will all work out. He who hopes till the end will be alright. 

The Desert Fathers

The first truly systematic exploration of sin we have come from a group called the Desert Fathers. Unlike the Mothers, who by and large were a rural group of monastics (who lived their lives in service of the poor), the male monastics just… left. They couldn’t stay in the cities or near others. The idea of the Fathers being superhumans who did all the important stuff is blatantly false. It is not good man should be alone. They didn’t leave because they were strong, but because they were weak and accepted this fact radically. 

From these weakest came teachings that enriched the rest of us! Turns out if you have to put your humanity together, piece by piece, you learn a few foundational facts about existence that the simply healthy simply cannot learn. In their spiritual brawls to be human, the Desert Fathers discovered that not only were Job and Paul correct, but they began to be able to articulate why. Their oral teachings eventually became collected in more than a few volumes. 

Evagrius and Talking Back

Pound for pound, the most impactful Desert Father book is “Talking Back”, by Evagrius of Pontus. It is the water that Christian morality swims in: mostly invisible and unnoticed, but of such vital importance! The book begins with Evagrius continuing Job’s thesis: man sits between God with His angels and the Satan with his demons. 

God wants mankind to join Him in Heaven, which the Gospel of Matthew says we’re all predestined for. The Satan wants us to forsake our gloriously predestined home and join him in Hell, the place where you can’t enjoy God’s love. 

For Those of You Skimming No, You Can’t Skip This

God wants mankind to join Him in Heaven, which the Gospel of Matthew says we’re all predestined for. The Satan wants us to forsake our gloriously predestined home and join him in Hell, the place where you can’t enjoy God’s love. 

Christianity, the real thing, is ultimately about letting go of those who hold us back and going Home. That’s it. Anyone who disagrees with this statement isn’t Christian, no matter how many crosses they have in their home or how many people they alienate because they’re relentless assholes. 

Or, to quote the very first paragraph of the Catholic Catechism:

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.

Your Perception Determines Your Reality

The central game of all this comes down to the perceptions of the human being. If a human keeps God in mind constantly and acts in accordance with the love God has given him, he will do good, grow in peace and joy, and go on to enjoy God for eternity. 

If he can’t perceive God, that small still voice Who speaks of genuine peace, all his actions will inevitably lead to ruination and Hell. 

The goal of all sin is to keep you from seeing God. Period. Mankind, as eternal beings, are actively being harassed by demons to forsake the goodness promised them. 

It is essential to understand that mankind, while fallen and messed up, isn't trying to damn itself. The Catholic West has a very hard time with the fact that Evagrius openly claims this, to the point to where the first Latin translation of Talking Back literally supposes, interposes that the book is just as much against mankind's "violent nature" as it is against our demonic interlopers. There isn't any textual support for the translational betrayal, but as Westerners it is important to understand that this inherent mistrust of human nature isn't in the original text. At the root, Christian morality ascribes evil to demonic influence.

Read it again: the basis for Christian morality very openly, very deliberately, does not say that humans try to damn themselves.

But our minds can wander. And they're mostly empty.

"It's Self-Sustaining Now"

Evagrius suggests that while demons "suggest" thoughts (logismoi), they eventually don't have to work that hard. We do the heavy lifting for them. Once a perception is skewed—once we see a person as an object, or a pleasure as a god—the machine runs on its own.

This is where the "prudishness" of the Church actually comes from: a trauma response. We became so afraid of the "machine" of desire running away with us that we decided the best way to see God was to close our eyes entirely. We mistook the distraction for the evil.

The Grand Reframe

If the goal of sin is simply to "keep you from seeing God," then sex—and the desire for it—isn't a dark stain on your soul. 

It's a focusing lens that got smudged.

The Desert Fathers weren't celibate because sex was "gross" or "lesser." They will tell you that, sure, but that's like a semi truck saying unleaded gas isn't good for it: they literally couldn't use the marital bed to see God, and therefore... well really who cares what they think what their opinion is on that?

Also, our services on marriage simply do not agree with them, and liturgics always. Comes. First. The Fathers were celibate because they were specialized athletes training for a specific type of perception. But for the rest of us, the "raw deal" isn't the marriage bed; it’s the guilt we’ve been told to feel about the single 

If you are a married Catholic or Orthodox person, your sexual union isn't a "concession" to your weakness. According to the original logic of the Fathers, regardless of their screeching, it is meant to be a theophany—a place where you see the self-giving love of God in the flesh. Tradition is about being in the present moment, whatever it is, and finding God in it.

Getting Our Eyes Back

We have to stop letting "prudishness" be the face of Christianity. It is a betrayal of the root. If we spend all our time obsessing over the "wickedness" of our desires, the Satan has already won because we are looking at our feet instead of at the Father.

The goal isn't to be "pure" in the sense of being sterilized and boring. 

The goal is to be clear-eyed.

When we realize that our humanity—including our desires—was created by a God who wants us to share in His "blessed life," the prudishness starts to look like what it actually is: a petty distraction from the Accuser. It’s time to stop acting like God is disgusted by the people He’s currently inviting to dinner.

Let’s stop being "clean" and start being alive.

It is here that we pause. If I do not see you next week, I do not blame you. It is not easy road.

Conservatism is a Cancer of the Soul

 

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness." 

- Oscar Wilde 

Welcome back! Good to see you! Today we're talking about why conservativism is actually a problem in the Christian context.

There was a moment, sometime in the last ten years, where I realized that conservatism is a cancer upon tradition. They're not the same thing, and in fact conservativism is an evil that Christians must move away from.

See Oxford definitions:

For cancer:

1. a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body.

"he's got cancer"

a malignant growth or tumor resulting from the division of abnormal cells.

plural noun: cancers

"most skin cancers are curable"

Similar:

malignant growth, cancerous growth, malignant tumor, tumor, malignancy, met, carcinoma, sarcoma, melanoma, lymphoma, myeloma, neoplasm, metastasis, neurofibroma, teratoma, fibroadenoma, meningioma

2. a practice or phenomenon perceived to be evil or destructive and hard to contain or eradicate.

"gambling is a cancer sweeping across the nation"

Similar: evil, blight, scourge, poison, canker, sickness, disease, pestilence, plague, rot, corruption, 

I mean conservatism is both definitions.

Here's the definition for Conservatism from Oxford:

1.commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation.

"proponents of theological conservatism"

2. the holding of political views that favor free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditional ideas.

"a party that espoused conservatism"

the doctrines of the Conservative Party of Great Britain or a similar party elsewhere.

And here's a good summary of Conservatism, as espoused by Burke:

Organic Society: Burke viewed society as a living organism that evolves slowly, rather than a machine that can be dismantled and reassembled.

Tradition and Prescription: He believed that customs, institutions, and laws passed down over generations hold accumulated wisdom, making them safer guides than abstract theory.

Skepticism of Radical Change: Burke strongly opposed rapid, violent change, arguing that "a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation". He favored reform, but only to preserve, not destroy.

Opposition to Abstract Rights: In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke argued against universal, abstract rights, preferring concrete, historical rights (e.g., the rights of Englishmen).

Human Imperfection: He believed in human sinfulness and the necessity of institutions like the church and aristocracy to provide order and moral guidance.

Property and Order: Preservation of established hierarchy and private property was seen as vital to the stability of civilization. 

Burke emphasized that society is a contract between "those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born," making tradition a sacred obligation.

 So, just in case somebody decides says I don't know what I mean by "conservatism" or "you're strawmanning"... no I am not. Here's my definitions. They're gotten from a simple Google search, and check out with what my conservative family and friends have espoused. They're fair definitions.

Here's the problem: conservatism is about output, not vision. It attempts to copy the outward signs of tradition, while rejecting the thought process that actually creates those end results. It means that if radical change is necess

But that's not what Christian Tradition is. 

"This moment is all there is"

Christian Tradition is about being in the present moment, feeling it all the way down in your body, soul and mind, and realize you're being talked to, and that each and every aspect of this moment is a conversation with God. Right, wrong, rational, irrational, all the things are part of that conversation with God. If you are fully in the present moment, all the way down to your toes, you will find that God talks to you.

The thing is that, if you take this lens in mind, the Old Testament makes sense: nobody in their is acting like how a conservative wants them to: Moses kills people and loses his temper, Samson willingly lets Delilah betray him, David can have his moment with Bathsheba and his other multiple misdeeds while ruling, prophets can marry harlots and have it just be a human moment God confirms is useful, etc. That's before we get to the new covenant saints, like St. Job, who slept with and murdered a prostitute, and just... Arthurian lore in general. Instead of righteousness being a thing that you DO, it is a thing that you NOTICE, and you either notice it or you don't. There's a reason why Orthodox bishops have the right of economoia: it is the gift to know that something very good is going on that the rules will actively squash. Oikonomia isn't license to sin; it's pastoral mercy that discerns the living movement of the Holy Spirit in messy, human situations. It recognizes that God frequently works through what looks like scandal, imperfection, or even outright failure to the conservative eye.

Take the story of St. Vitalis of Gaza. He was a monk who, late in life, went into Alexandria and spent his days laboring, then his nights in brothels. He paid each prostitute his full wage, begged her not to sin with anyone that night, stayed in her room praying psalms while she slept, and left at dawn. To every outsider—including outraged Christians—he looked like a hypocrite or worse. Yet his intercession led many of those women to repentance and new life. He was eventually beaten to death (perhaps by a jealous client or a scandalized bystander), and the Church honors him as a saint and patron of prostitutes and day-laborers. The "rules" would have condemned him; oikonomia (and the eyes of God) saw salvation unfolding.
This is the heartbeat of Christian Tradition: not preservation of a frozen form, but radical attentiveness to the God who speaks now, in this exact, unrepeatable moment. Conservatism copies the beautiful fruit of past encounters with God—the doctrines, the morals, the hierarchies—and tries to enforce them as ends in themselves. It becomes a malignant growth: multiplying cells that mimic life but choke out the real organism. It fears the scandal, the irregularity, the "radical change" that Burke distrusted, even when that change is the wind of the Spirit blowing where it wills. Righteousness isn't manufactured by adherence to output; it's noticed in the encounter. 
You either see God hijacking the mess—or you don't.
Conservatism, in its fear of losing control, often misses the hijacking. It polices the forms until the forms become idols, and the living God gets crowded out. That's the cancer: imitation masquerading as fidelity, mediocrity flattering greatness while slowly killing it.
God is talking—through the irrational, the inconvenient, the apparently unseemly thing right in front of you. The saints didn't become saints by being respectable; they became saints by paying attention when everyone else was busy preserving appearances.
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery mediocrity can pay to greatness, but greatness doesn't need imitators. It needs witnesses. It needs people awake in this moment, ready to say yes to whatever wild, dangerous, life-giving thing God does next.
The cancer has to be cut out for the body to live.
Tradition—the real, breathing kind—will survive just fine.
Here we stop. If I do not see you next week, I do not blame you. It is not easy road.