Why we should aim higher in our games...
There’s call for a number of different games at Expo, from the dark
corporate nihilism of SLA Industries to the Honour and duty of Legend of the
Five Rings, but all of them have one thing in common.
They’re something we can’t do at home...
I get asked the question of why we do what we do quite a lot, and it’s
mainly because most people can’t understand the idea of doing things in a world
that’s not the real world (even
though these people may spend hours and hours watching TV programs such as
Coronation Street and Eastenders), so I try to explain that it’s not about
playing make believe, it’s about the time you spend around the table with other
people, it’s about the stories you build with them. Most people who’ve played
will remember something that happened, whether it was comedic or serious,
whether it was an instant or it took all night.
Whether six people spent hours in near darkness to better capture the
atmosphere, or two people after the game had officially finished, sat in a room
alone as their characters trying to find a way that they didn’t have to kill
each other after the events of that day...
These are the things that make the games that we play interesting,
these are the points at which we are completely in that world, and who is to
say that these worlds are any less real than the ones that we live in every
day. There is no way for us to do the
things that we do in these worlds, we’re not spellcasters or knights, and
whatever we do in our day jobs, it’s not likely to be as much fun as what we do
every time we play, and therein perhaps lies the point.
Not all of us get to be the people we were meant to be...
It starts out well, and then life invariably finds a way to get in the
way, whether it’s the day job, illness, having to look after your kids, or the
pressures of the real world to
conform to what it needs us to be, very few of us get to live the life we
dreamed of. There’ll always need to be
people to take out the trash, and people to work the fields so that everyone
else can eat. In very few cases are
those jobs the ones that those people wanted when they were young. Some choose
to dull the pain of the world with drink or drugs, some go walking amongst
nature, some swim...
We play...
And that brings the question of what we play, there are games to cover
everything, from storming the pillars of heaven to having an argument around
the family table. I personally prefer
Epic over Everyday, if I can do it in the real world, I’ll just go do it in the
real world. When I take the time out of
life to go adventuring, I want it to be something that I’m not going to find in
the centre of Barnsley, and don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of monsters and
mayhem in the centre of Barnsley, but it’s nowhere near as interesting as the
things I find around the table, even if the denizens of Barnsley are scarier
than anything found in a monster manual.
There’s an innate need in people to be more than they are, to live a
better life than the one they were given, to strive and seek for something
more, the games we play allow us to do that and more, they allow us to imagine
a world where we are what we were supposed to be, and given the successes that
we have in those worlds, we can redouble our efforts to be better every day
when we get up in the morning.
And that’s why I don’t like so called Murderhobo scenarios, when the
players turn up, kill everything, and then take its gold and consider that to
be a victory.
Just go play Diablo instead, play Torchlight, play any one of a number
of games where violence and valuables are the currency of victory, don’t go to
a table with other people and spend the time rolling dice to kill things, then
try to justify it as roleplaying. If
you’re going to do that, you’re not roleplaying, you’re wargaming, and there’s
a big difference.
To be sure, some of the bigger scenarios do require that something
(usually the big bad) gets beaten down, but the best games I’ve ever played
have been the ones where not a single die was picked up, not a roll was made,
the whole thing was driven by the players and I as GM got to sit back and watch
the game unfold, only giving them the briefest points when they needed to know
what the world was doing.
And that brings me to the other side of wanting a better world, there’s
a lot of discussion going on in the industry at the moment about the greater
inclusion of women (in roles other than eyecandy) and minorities (in roles
other than expendable) in roleplaying games, both in the artwork presented and
in the nature of games that are being run and the scenarios that are offered
for people to play. Many of the larger
gaming companies are making active efforts towards Inclusivity, with the
gender, ethnicity, and orientation of the characters being made apparent within
the scenarios, where previously all there was in the character profile was
Male, Human, Fighter 12
Now there’s two sides to every story, and quite a few are in the
position that I’m in, being White (well, sort of pale blue, this is England),
Hetero, middle aged (I’m really not in my head...), and married with kid, and
having played the game forever, the question being asked is...
What’s the fuss about...?
Why do we need to include things that were never in there before, why
do we need to have Lesbian Barbarians (beyond the exploitation films of the
seventies), why are ethnicities and orientation so important? In with the question is the answer, and that
is that for them...
It isn’t...
And for a hobby that gets its fun by playing something that we’re
really not, by being something that we’re never going to be, there’s a whole
lot of disharmony regarding this, and when I look at the arguments being
posted, the straw men that are dragged out to support points of view (on both
sides I might add), and on the whole, general lack of listening from the rabid
proponents on either side, it just suggests that we’ve forgot why the war
started, but by golly, we’re determined to see the end of it...
Here’s how I see it...
The inclusion of characters of different gender or sexual bias makes no
difference to me, but that’s because I’m in the most populous of the
demographics, so funny thing, I already see me
everywhere and that’s why I’m not asking for me to be more represented in
roleplaying products and shows everywhere.
However...
I’ve also been in the minority on things, I’ve lived in places where I
was one of only a few white guys in the area, I got the stares every morning, I
got people looking surprised that someone like me was walking around there. The
primary thing I took away from that is that while I was feeling isolated and
marginalised, everyone else who lived there was having a fine time, and they
weren’t being deliberately nasty towards me, I was just different and humanity
in general has a problem with different.
All I wanted to see were more people like me every day...
And that’s all this is...
I have no problem with all races, genders, and orientations being
accounted for in games, in fact, I think it’d go a long way towards making
things better for humanity in general to remember that it’s not the game of any
one of us, it’s the game of all of us, and we need to remember that.
So here’s my word on the matter and here’s where I’m resting it...
To all the dudes like me, Friar Tuck (with Dice), Hetero (on the
occasions we actually get laid), and as pale as Crown Mill writing paper (Yes,
the blue one), who don’t understand what all the fuss is about and are shouting
about why can’t things be the way they used to be, consider this...
When First edition came out, everything was literally black and white
because those were the only two colours that they had for any internal artwork,
Thirty years later, everything’s full colour and most people look down on the
old fashioned line art of years ago...
When First edition came out, there were seven character classes, and
two of those were different races, Thirty years later, there’s hundreds of
classes and every one of them requires that you have a race as well as a
class...
When First edition came out, it was the only thing to be played, so
everyone played it, Thirty years later, there’s hundreds of system and the one
that gets to call itself D&D isn’t the D&D that was...
But at least we can see it for
what it is now...
The inclusion of LGBT characters, of real ethnicities, not just the
token characters, and of women being strong role models rather than just strong
playboy models, of complex storylines that mirror real world issues rather than
wandering down a dark hole looking for treasure (wonder if there wasn’t a
hidden metaphor in there somewhere...) will happen. No matter how much people try to stop these
things, to maintain the status quo, there’s one simple truth, and here’s the cheerful
thing.
It can’t be stopped...
Because the world isn’t the same as it was thirty years ago, we all
grew up, the world grew with us, and look at all the toys we have to play with
now. Change is inevitable, and as I had the choice all those years back, we
either embrace the change or we run from it, because nothing you or I or
anybody else does will stop it.
And to everyone else who’s not Friar Tuck with dice, I ask this...
Give us a hand...
Most gamers I know don’t have any particular aversion to any type of character in a game, most of
us have played the other gender at one point or another, we probably got it
wrong, but roleplaying is all about trying out new things and that’s a part of
it. If we get it wrong, don’t shout at
us, point out that there’s other things out there, show us the brighter world that’s waiting, because there’s a whole
bunch of people out there who don’t
see that they’ve got it wrong and telling them they’re wrong or shouting at
them won’t convince them of anything except that they were right...
Everyone can see the world is
changing, so when you see someone saying that there shouldn’t be LGBT
characters in something, that women should only be eyecandy, what do they know
of anything? Are they still sitting
there wishing for the glory days when Thatcher was in power and Reagan was
steering the herd of America on to its righteous future?
My thought?
Let them...