Hear me interview Shoshana Kessock

Shoshana Kessock, the writer of Dangers Untold, is Kickstarting a Dickensian-steampunk-magic roleplaying game called Smoke and Glass. Hear me interview her about the game and her other current projects. Then go check out her Kickstarter!

Diversity in Games: A Checklist

This checklist is designed to help game designers and other game facilitators to effectively identify and respond to diversity in your game. It focuses on various aspects of your game environment, including materials, teaching strategies and facilitator/player behaviors.

Game Materials

• Are contributions and perspectives of women and cultures other than Euro-Americans integrated into game books and other game aides? 
• Are women, ethnic minorities and people of diverse socioeconomic classes and religions portrayed in a non-stereotypical manner?
• Do the setting materials include appropriate information about religion when religion is integral to the context of the subject?
• Do game books or game aides focus on “famous people,” usually those of privileged class status; or are the accomplishments and hard work of poor and working-class people given equal focus and respect?
• Do the setting materials include cultures represented by families in your school and community?
• Are there setting materials available for limited-English-proficient players in their native languages?
• Are teaching materials selected that allow all players to participate and feel challenged and successful?

Facilitators as Role Model—Questions to Ask Yourself

• Am I knowledgeable about the religious, cultural, linguistic and socioeconomic backgrounds of my players and people in my community?
• In my own life, do I model respect for, and inclusion of, people who are different (religion, race, language, abilities, socioeconomic class)?
• Do players perceive me as sincerely interested in, and respectful of, contributions made by women and the ethnic, religious, racial and socioeconomic groups that make up the country?
• Do I know where to find resources regarding:

Š  multicultural studies?

Š  disabled/players/specific handicaps?

Š  religion?

Š  other languages?

Š  gender bias?

•  Do I respectfully accommodate differently abled players in my game?
•  Do I recognize and acknowledge the value of languages other than standard English?
•  Can I recognize and constructively address value conflicts based on race, religion or socioeconomic class?

Facilitator/Player Interactions

• Am I careful not to prejudge a player’s performance based on cultural differences, socioeconomic status or gender?
• Do I promote high self-esteem for everyone in my game?  Do I help each participant to feel good about who he/she is?
• Do I encourage players to understand and respect the feelings of others who are different from them?
• Do my players see me as actively confronting instances of stereotyping, bias and discrimination when they occur?
• Given what I ask players to talk and write about, do I avoid placing value on having money, spending money or major consumer products?
• Do I put myself in the place of the limited-English-proficient player and ask, “How would I feel in this game?Do I make an effort to learn some words in the home languages that my limited-English proficient players speak?
• Am I conscious of the degree and type of attention I am giving to members of each gender in game interactions? Do I have an equitable system for calling on players?
• Do I use gender-neutral language?
• Do I write and speak about religion, rather than teaching religion or ignoring religion altogether?
• When writing about religion, do I

Š      place religion within historical and cultural context?

Š      Give players opportunities to include religion?

Š      avoid making qualitative comparisons among religions?

Š      avoid demanding information about the religious affiliations or beliefs of my players?

Encourage People To Be Proactive

•  Do I encourage people to identify instances of prejudice and discrimination?
•  Do I help my players develop proper responses to instances of prejudice and discrimination?

General Strategies

• Do I involve other community members to help players develop greater understanding of the benefits and challenges of living in a culturally diverse society?
• Do I inform readers of my multicultural, anti-bias design?
• Do I support and encourage the hiring of minority facilitators and designers?
• Do I build a secure and supportive atmosphere by creating a noncompetitive game environment?
• Do I use opportunities such as current events to discuss different cultures and religions?
• Do I provide players with opportunities to problem-solve issues of inclusiveness?
• Do I use activities that demonstrate how the privilege of groups of higher economic status is directly connected to the lack of privilege of lower socioeconomic status people?
• Do I have players examine and analyze the representation of class, race, gender, ability and language differences in media and their community?
• Do I recognize that tracking reinforces “classism” and is counterproductive to player learning at all ability levels?
• Do I utilize  literature to help players understand and empathize with individuals who have experienced prejudice and discrimination and to discuss important social issues?

Based on:

Matsumoto-Grah, Karen. Diversity in the Classroom:  A Checklist. U.S. Department of Education, Eisenhower National Clearinghouse, December 6, 2002 

Photo by Viewminder. Used by permission.

Unplayed Games

 

You have a bunch of old roleplaying games collecting dust on your shelf. You have more hiding in the attic or under your bed. You love these old games. Filled with clever worlds and pretty pictures, these games probably won't make it to your gaming table any time soon, but you can't force yourself to throw them away.
What can you do with them? Could you steal character concepts, pictures, even whole worlds and insert them in your next game, using whatever system you currently want to actually play?
If you still play these original games, good for you! More power to you. But if you doubt that you'll ever play them again, despite still loving parts of them, then join me. Let's take what we want out of those old games to make something awesome and new.
I want to start repurposing concepts and art from old games for my current home games.* Even if I simply pull out my old copies of Rifter magazine in order to find character portraits, I need to stop ignoring my old books as a gaming resource. Just because I don't want to roll with punch/fall or keep track of 0th level spells, that doesn't make these books worthless. They are filled with ideas that past-me has paid big money for. There are probably character concepts in them that I never got to play, but that I could somehow port over into my current games.
So what do you want to adapt from an old book? Are your Call of Cthulhu books just begging to be turned into a Primetime Adventures season? Do you have Heroes Unlimited characters waiting to be plugged into a FAE campaign? Can you translate your old Elven Swordsinger into an Apocalypse character?
Let me know what you come up with. My Toon character looks forward to meeting your Dogboy.

*Don't post someone else's art online without permission. Don't claim credit for someone's work. Don't steal. Seriously. Or I will send my robots of justice after you.
Image by Michael Heilemann. Used by permission.

Hacking the Fiction

 

Have you ever considered hacking the fiction of a game and leaving the rules as written? For example, what if you kept the combat mechanics of a game, but used them to refer to something inside your story besides damage and death?
Let's take your favorite dungeon crawl game as an example. Rather than telling a story about adventurers in a dungeon, we're going to tell a story about a group of politicians on the campaign trail. We'll call this game Demi-Humans & Democracy. Imagine that the rules work exactly the same, but that we may rename certain terms so that they describe different events in the fiction.
Rather than hit points, our game has support points. If you reduce a target to 0 support points, you don't kill it, you turn it into a contributor to your campaign. The treasure that you would normally receive from killing a monster instead represents money they donate to you.
Rather than ranged and melee attacks, our game has speeches and conversations. Speeches take place over a distance, and conversations happen within about 5 feet. NPCs respond with objections (ranged) and complaints (melee) that function just like speeches and conversations. Use whichever term makes more sense in the fiction.
Rather than bows and swords, you use megaphones and wristwatches. Depending upon the dungeon crawl game you use as your base, you may end up with a +1 Mighty megaphone or a dragonbane wristwatch. Likewise, you don't use armor, but there a variety of business suits that are statistically identical.
Do you get where I'm going with this? There are some other things we would have to rename, like stats, saving throws, and some spells. But we could probably leave skills nearly unchanged, assuming your political game happens in a fantasy Mideival setting.
You may initially think that there would be some problems separating Charisma skills and combat rules, but as long as you are clear that charisma gives you volunteers and speeches and conversations give you financial contributions to your campaign, I don't really think there will be a problem with the fictional balance of the game.
So what do you think? Do you like this sample of hacking the fiction but leaving rules as written? What better example would you like to try? Let me know. You can find me on Google+ or on Twitter as @joshtjordan.

Image by vintagedept. Used by permission.

Meet Me at GenCon

My wife and I will both be at GenCon in Indianapolis this year. Whether or not I've met you in person before, please don't be shy. My wife and I love meeting new people! (And I'll probably have copies of all my games to sell, though you can also find them at the Indie Press Revolution booth.)

If you see either of these two goofy people at GenCon, come on up and say hi. Or reach out to me on Google+ or on Twitter, so we can try to find a time to meet.

Good News plus My Mistake

Good News! Dangers Untold is now available as a pdf at DriveThruRPG. It will be available in print very soon from Indie Press Revolution. I'm proud to be able to publish this book. Shoshana Kessock has a beautiful gem of a game here.
Now, my mistake...
I made a mistake on the credits page of Dangers Untold, and I feel terrible. I forgot to list Lillian Cohen-Moore as copy editor. We hired Ms. Cohen-Moore late in the project, and she made serious contributions to the clarity of the final text, especially in the examples of play.
We are fixing my mistake as soon as possible, so that future copies of the game will list her as copy editor. In the meanwhile, I'm asking you to do two things.
First, if you own a physical copy of Dangers Untold, please take out a pen, turn to the credits page and write in "Copy Editor Lillian Cohen-Moore"
Second, if you see Lillian (or Shoshana or JR or anyone else involved in this book) in person, thank them for me for creating such a lovely girl-positive, beginner-friendly game. I truly believe that the world needs more games like this and that the people who create them deserve some time in the spotlight.

10 Ways to Get into Character

I believe that different kinds of storytellers have a lot to learn from each other. Novelists can help preachers. Comedians can help songwriters. And I think we should all be willing to ask each other for advice.
My sister Jo Jordan is an experienced stage actress and occasional gamer. I've asked her for advice about getting into character. She sent me a top ten list that I believe tabletop and live-action roleplayers should adapt to their games. [Comments in brackets below are my editorial.]

10 Ways to Get Into Character

By Jo Jordan

1.      Read the whole play. Twice.

This is the most important advice I can give. A successful show is one where the actors completely live in the world they create during the rehearsal process. Whether you’re the lead or an extra, your scenes are not the only important scenes or lines in the show. Every person involved in the show needs to know the whole shape of the show. Otherwise it can be a square peg round/round hole situation. No matter how well you know your lines or understand your scene, it will stick out like a sore thumb if it doesn’t fit with the rest of the show. [We may not have a script, but we have a game book and the other players' character sheets.]

2.      Write down every single fact mentioned about your character

This is the baseline of your character. Everything you have to know should be written within the pages of the script. It’s a little like solving a mystery. You have to find all the clues to your character and then put them together as a whole. [Do you know how your character and her background fit into the fiction of the game?]

 

3.      Write down facts implied about your character. Read between the lines

While everything you have to know about your character is written in the script, everything you want to know is written in-between the lines. Sometimes this can be the way another character reacts to yours. Other times it can be how your character reacts to someone else. Another way to extrapolate is to make decisions about the written facts. For example, is your character eating eggs and bacon this morning? Okay, now take it further. Does your character eat eggs and bacon every morning? Or is it a special breakfast? Does your character hate eggs and bacon and that’s what put her in a bad mood for the scene? All of these are plausible, acceptable inferences to make. The coolest thing is that you get to make those little decisions, even if they’re never addressed during the course of the show. [What has happened with other players during character creation or previous game sessions? What does that tell you about your character's normal, daily life?]

4.      Make choices about the subtext of your character's actions

This is another way of reading between the lines. This is one of your best tools. Your line might be, “No, thank you.” However, your subtext might be, “In what world could you possibly think that I would ever want to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on Tuesday?!” Subtext is a way to say what you want within the constraint of your lines. A single line can have the meaning and power of a monologue if you take the time to discover and explore all the subtext of your lines.

 

5.     Recognize similarities between you and your character

One great way to get into character is to make a list of all the ways you and your character are alike. Similarities can become the subconscious of your character because once you figure them out you don’t have to focus on them so much. For example, if you are right-handed, and so is your character, you can accept and disregard it. It isn’t a facet of your character that you have to learn; it is just something you know.

6.      Recognize differences, too

On the opposite side, differences can help you get into character, too. These are the conscious side of your character. Especially if your character has a limp or a stutter and you don’t. Becoming you character can take a considerable amount of work until you master that limp or stutter, but it can also be the most important characteristic to portray.

7.      Your character is always right

Villain or hero, your character always believes in themselves and believes what they are doing is justified. Take Loki in the Avengers. He absolutely believes his actions are justified. If you were to play him in such a way that shows you personally disagree with his actions, the character wouldn’t come across as honest or could come across as weak. Believe in your character more than your character believes in himself.

 

8.      Behave honestly under unreal circumstances

Let’s face it; the world of acting is not particularly real. That’s why it is called a play! But to truly get into character, it is extremely important to accept the unreal circumstances as reality and behave as honestly as possible within those conditions. This includes being madly in love with that gross boy from your history class or acting like a murderous drug dealer when nothing could be further from the truth. While the world of the play may not be the truth of reality, it is the truth of reality to your character.

9.      Anger is the weakest choice

Characters are emotional beings. You typically get to decide what emotions are brewing. A common directive is (she says angrily). In my opinion, this is a terrible directive. However, it can give you some leeway. Anger is a cover for a lot of emotions such as fear, loneliness, sadness, hurt, shame…the list goes on. My favorite choice for an angry directive is to choose two or three other emotions that could be driving the anger and play those instead. It still comes across as anger, but it is nuanced and subtle and much more honest.

10. Take your character for a spin in the real world

Once you’ve become comfortable with your character, take her out in the real world for a spin. Try your accent on a barista. Use your limp at the grocery store. See how a complete stranger treats you when they don’t know it’s a character. This can be extremely informative to you. All of those real life experiences can inform and shape how you play your character within the context of the play, adding depth and breadth to her.