Games, Grinches, and Good Ideas...

As we enter the holiday season, yours truly can't help but remember what was doubtless the most important (and consequential) Christmas gift to ever grace the bottom of a tree. This wondrous delivery was Holmes Basic with Keep on the Borderlands. Toys break or get lost in the dustbin of our collective childhoods, along with everything else we wrongly believe we possess. But Homes was basically an idea. And ideas are powerful things in the right hands, and quite possibly the only lasting things our hands have made... 

Case in point: having read the rulebook and enclosed module, the whole thing could go up in a house fire and we'd probably still have enough to reconstruct a playable fascimile from scratch. A homebrew creation all the funner for the sense of ownership. Of course, that never happened, and I went from Holmes to AD&D thereafter; still, it underscores how exposure alone arms a creative person. Simply understanding the division of labor between the players and referee is 90% of what happens, setting Holmes above that year's gifts.

Now I've talked about this before, making it the equivalent of holiday leftovers. But it bears repeating, especially given the commercialization of the hobby. At best, we publishers offer convenience and the chance to explore another's vision. It's an optional service no one really needs, which counsels humility and appreciation. But every referee keeps a game designer somewhere inside of them, making WotC's overreach ultimately futile. It's the idea behind our hobby that truly matters, a thing more precious than any rulebook...

I know; there's content. Monsters, spells, the works. But knowledge of the division of labor, something akin to hit points, and the need to roll for actions is probably enough to get started with a men vs. monsters type affair, with everything else developing during preparation and gameplay (arguably, where it belongs). This is what I got for Christmas, 1980, and it gave me a lifelong pursuit. People are more important than anything, and ideas more important than mere things, so here's wishing everyone a season full of everything that matters.

Bitterblossom: The Small-Press Supremecy...

Our hobby has always been a small-press thing. Even now, with modern, corporate D&D, the pastime remains in the capable hands of the hobbyist, empowered as they are to add or otherwise change anything. Tabletop roleplaying games are a set of written rules where the action, from battle to negotiation, takes place inside the participan't heads. And what can houseruling tell us the about small press? Everything, or so it appears, because the referee, so commisioned, carries a game designer's power in their dice bags...  

Why buy Second Edition when you can house rule the first? And even if we published the slickest game known to man, it still wouldn't be 100% of what gets played at the table, meaning the actual participants are always, and necesarily, closer to the action than the rules being utilized. Bonus point: since these players can self publish original content, to include original rulesets, small press is likewise (again, necesarily) closer to the action than anything the big names could possibly achieve. Small press rules the tabletop roost.

And, of course, the hobby began as small press (by the gamers, for the gamers) and, barring a few notable exceptions, remained so. Nothing embodies this ethos more than fanzines, where house rules (by the fans, for the players) rise to the forefront. A perfect example of this is Bitterblossom, a fanzine for Mydwandr. This digital volume contains...

1) New kindreds, bound to specific regions of the setting. From mechanical dwarven bottle gnomes to lizard folk from the swamplands around Cornyth, these races deliver! 

2) Added abilities. Speak with the recently dead or wield a whip Indiana Jones style, with several lending a real strategic element to the right campaign, maybe yours.

3) Original guilds and gods. Famous taverns and house rules galore from Biz, Tim Fox, Serra Marbol Mordan, Jon Salway, and James Hook, ready to incorporate into your game!

4) Stylish illustrations (by Luke Ryan Herbert), with an easy to access layout.

5) Tools for referees in a pinch, including sample parties and hirelings to get the party going in convenient and seamless fashion. It's a fanzine that doubles as a supplement...

Like any fanzine, this one puts power in the hands of the players, offering a buffet of content to pile high on their plates. Mydwandr itself is an eponymous setting fully customizable by whoever's at the proverbial helm. Our Mydwandr is different from Jon Salway's, different from yours, but no less valid, because gaming means power to the players. But publication, like parenting, means inevitably surrendering our creations, however beloved or deeply personal, to the people actually playing the game, underscoring small-press supremecy.

Players (read: fans) put the fan in fanzine. And no one's closer to the games being played than the participants. Rulebooks aren't games. Rulebooks are tools. Raw materials for others to bring their worlds to recreational life. And next up from these actual participants are the small press publishers, because while gaming doesn't (necesarily) need a cash economy, if economies have to exist, they're absolutely best kept closest to the bottom, no offense to Wizards. Anyway, we recomend Bitterblossom to the fans, and zines to everyone...

Old School Enabled (While Disabled)...

Yours truly is disabled. Not by birth, but by war. I had to rebuild my self image from the ground up after decades of able-bodied existence, which wasn't easy. And it was around this time I began to notice disabled characters in tabletop, complete with miniatures and the online notoriety that goes with them. At the time I shrugged. Magic can clear that nonsense up pronto, right? It turns out that I was wrong. Some are born to disability, while others acquire it elsewhere. Regardless, reconcilation is a necessary thing. 

Despite the reasonable distance we hope exists between ourselves and our favorite characters, these pen-and-paper personalities are avatars. A living extension of that part of out innermost selves wishing to become heroes fantastically equipped for adventures in narrative cause and effect. We fashion these characters in our own image and hope to live up to our best selves. Now it's easy, and probably honest enough, to admit we'd magicically eradicate our disabilities given an accomodating universe...

But that was never the point. Ever. Not for the young (especially not for them), and not for the older (and oftentimes newly disabled) either. Those born to disability enter adolescence, already a hard enough time to be different, in constant awareness of the fact and seeking to understand where they fit in the world. Supernatural aid can mend their characters; but it almost certainly won't help them formulate a positive self image as a disabled person, which is arguably what superior roleplaying (you pick the system) should fascilitate.

And what are we telling these kids? You can be elves. Or wizards. But not disabled because disability is a bridge too far? And because disability is a stain to be washed clean in any respectable universe as though it's bad enough in real life? This (misguided) assumption fails to grasp the many benefits of roleplaying. The same goes for acquired disabilities later on, because aren't these players seeking a similar reconciliation? It's better to accomodate their wishes in its name because play's always been somewhat therapeutic...

And because we're all drawn to roleplay as a means of exploring ourselves and finding our  place by way of imaginary worlds, complete with disabled characters who risk everything, heroically, and master the considerable odds against them. If this can't help people reconcile with who they are, nothing will. And maybe they recognize their inherent worth as persons, resourceful and with awesome ideas to contribute. Nothing is more old school than that, and who knows? The friendships made at the gaming table might be good for everyone.

The Seven Seals of Sword & Sorcery...

So Gregorius 21778 released Rescue From the Temple of the Revealing Flame, an adventure for our Blood of Pangea game. This one's a nice mixture of classic Howard and Lieber's darker brand; but while fantasy (writ large) remains a welcoming landscape, the sovereignty of sword & sorcery is less flexible. High fantasy can incorporate its elements; but not the other way around beyond the purely incidental owing to its defining attributes, the Seven Seals (or traits) of the genre given below as follows:

1) Men (and women) using physical strength and cleverness to survive...

2) Hedonism; gold, sex, and other earthly pleasures, as a motivator...

3) Sorcery disdained (if not outright denounced) as questionable at best...

4) Living day by day, and coin by coin, with no thought for tomorrow*...

5) Barbarians more virtuous than the so-called civilized people around them...

6) Banditry (and/or piracy) practiced with a concern for the innocent...

7) A prehistoric setting inspired by real-world civilizations, suitably exotic**...

Basically, no demi-humans or friendly magic as an impersonal force; sensual pleasures as the primary motivator; an amoral world of amoral heroes who nonetheless hold to a primitive code of honor, all in an exotic setting drawn from our ancient world. As fantastic genres go, sword & sorcery remains the most humanistic of them all. Tolkien delivered a hopeful missive of men made perfect, while pulp provided the unvarnished truth, even if it came with primal, often prehistoric, terrors. It's a genre that works best when properly understood...  

*With notable exceptions; still, Conan wore his crown on a troubled brow.

**Leiber and Moorcock imagined other worlds altogether, but with a historic bent.