🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦 @ ZDL @ttrpg.network

My Dearest Sinophobes:

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Come see the violence inherent in the system!

Feel free to do a post in !WomensStuff@lazysoci.al we’re a woman only community that loves hearing about strong women

I kinda suck at starting conversations. If I just did a post every so often with a strong historical or folkloric woman would that be enough?

Historians are mostly men? 😉

Pharaoh Hatshepsut of the 18th Dynasty New Kingdom Egypt (~1479–1458 BCE).

She was the first female pharaoh (full deal, not regent), she reshaped governance away from strength of arms and ad-hoc decision-making toward merit-driven bureaucracy, and through this prioritized commerce over conquest, drastically enriching Egypt in the process by building up massive trading networks. She was responsible for some of the greatest monumental construction of the New Kingdom era. (Tragically these monuments were systematically erased by her successor, Thutmose III, because he was butt-hurt that a woman had ruled over men—but he did keep her trading networks even as he moved back toward the conquest model.)

Oh and she wore men's clothing. Fake beard and all. To cement her legitimacy as pharaoh.

As an alternative I might choose Zenobia of the Palmyrene Empire (267-272 CE). She broke free from the Roman Empire in a big "fuck you" battle to carve out one of her own, conquered Egypt, ousting the Roman provost in the process, setting it up as a client state, and by 271 she controlled Syria, Palestine, Arabia Petraea, and parts of Mesopotamia (and thus the trade routes of Asia Minor). All the while she was pitching Palmyria as a safe haven for scholars of all kinds.

She was such a problem that she became THE major enemy of Rome and they committed an enormous number of troops to take her out. She finally lost, and was caught while fleeing to Persia, ending her reign. She'd spent only five years ruling Palmyria, but they were an extraordinarily productive half-decade that had lasting impact in the region as people realize you could, in fact, stand up to Rome.

Oh wow. That sounds like a terrible state to be in!

McDonald's isn't food¹ either, but you can eat it.

¹ Except under the very broad definition "that which is eaten as food".

Champions was amazing, but it was also effectively a derivation (and improvement) of the earlier Supergame. (Yes, I know. Stupid title.) Supergame used d% and d6, not just d6, but let's see if any of this rings a bell: (😁)

• you build a character with 250 points¹
• you get a number of actions based upon a prime statistic (Dexterity or Intelligence, depending on the type of actions)
• two different types of damage (Physical and Agony), one of which is very slow to recover, the other very rapid
• a collection of powers that are more descriptions of effects, rather than specific instances (what, not how or why)
• a specific form of attack for Charisma (like, you know, Presence...)
• ... and a cast of dozens.

Champions' creators have always said they were inspired by Superhero:2044 and Villains & Vigilantes and have never even mentioned Supergame, but I find that a bit sus myself:

1. Superhero:2044 is a super-rare book. It was not very common to see it at all, ever. (The earlier pre-Zocci edition Superhero:44 was even rarer.)
2. Neither Superhero:2044 nor Villains & Vigilantes are in any way like Champions (aside from attempted genre).
3. Supergame wasn't super-rare. It was never a huge seller, but it was in most decent gaming shops in 1980-1981.
4. There's a good mechanical overlap of at least 50% between Supergame and Champions.
5. The game designer community of the late '70s and early '80s was very close-knit and there was a lot of cross-pollination.

Don't get me wrong: Champions was the better game. Being inspired by Supergame and making a better game is emphatically not a negative. I just think it's a bit weird that they refuse to acknowledge the influence.

And in the context of an RPG design essential reading, Supergame needs to be there to show the dramatic change in ideas that were beginning to pop up around that time.

¹ "Prime Statistics, super powers, devices, trainings, and abilities are all purchased using the same character construction points. The points are allocated according to relative effectiveness and usefulness. In other words, one power that costs 20 points is as useful in a variety of situations as any other power, ability, or device that also costs 20 points. Therefore, what is bought with these points is not the how or why of a power, but only the what."

Not the point. 😉

The point is that out of nowhere a guy who started off seeming nice enough turned out to be an assaulter. I'm mega-suspicious of everybody so I didn't get taken by (much) surprise. Most people aren't as paranoid as I am. To them that would have come from nowhere and they would have had no chance to stop it.

That's the issue. If I meet a bear in the forest, I know roughly what to expect. I know to avoid it, not to irritate it, not to get between it and its children if they're around. A bear is a known quantity. (A dangerous known quantity, but known.)

If I meet a random man in the forest, I don't know what to expect. There's a good chance he's a perfectly fine, sweet, gentle, decent human being.

Or he could be a Hans.

There's no way to know, and if it is a Hans, the lack of any possible witnesses in the forest plays doubly against me.

Yes. instead they learned that violence is how "adults" solve problems.

Not sure that's such a great return lesson.

Oh GOD no! If that had turned into a fight I would have lost, unequivocally. The only reason I "won" is because I circumvented his planned script and had a knife. (Knives are the Great Equalizer in enclosed spaces for weaker parties.)

The fact I had to literally threaten with deadly force, though … Remember that "bear or man" thing?

This is why "bear".

First I'll double up on this one:

Amber Diceless Roleplay

Pair it with Theatrix so you can see two completely different approaches to diceless, non-stochastic games. Amber and Theatrix make a fascinating "compare and contrast" study.

To your list I'm going to add (or at points replace with):

• Chivalry & Sorcery (1st edition)

The first game designed from the ground up as a social simulation where your character's place in society is far more important than grubbing through dungeons, killing things, and looting their bodies. (Indeed for some characters that would negatively impact their experience and growth!) I might put it alongside Traveller to show the difference between a game having a setting and a game being the setting. Also the grandfather of later "mega-mechanics" game systems.

• Bunnies & Burrows

To my knowledge the first attempt at making a game (and a pretty CRUNCHY game at that!) that is 100% based on non-human protagonists.

• Runequest (1st or 2nd edition)

First non-class-and-level game. Second game that came with a detailed, very non-European fantasy setting. Maybe put it alongside 1974 D&D to show how early people started breaking off from the D&D style.

• Maelstrom Storytelling

I'd actually replace Apocalypse World with this because it is the very first game, to my knowledge, that broke completely free of even the vestigial wargames roots of RPGs, complete with traditional story structuring being part of the game mechanisms, no fixed attributes (and no numerical ones), scene-level resolution (you roll once for an entire scene, not turn by turn). It's innovative enough that it's of interest. It's good enough that it's worth studying. And it has enough mis-steps and flaws that it's worth discussing. Pretty much any "storygame" owes a debt to this game.

Thanks. I'm sorry you're going through all that shit you're going through right now Down South™. 😥

Ayup. And once you learn to decode that behaviour it makes life a lot easier.

Horror stories that turn into "happily ever after" stories are a personal fav, truth be told!

Oh ugh. I want to excoriate you for dumping her because of a disability, but … how do you have a relationship with someone who will never grow up?

The poor girl. But … also, you dodged a bullet.

That's always fun. It's like going on a date with Andy and heading off back home with Bert.

(Side note: if he hadn't been such a creep and asshole during the dinner he'd have been repaid for "the expense". He was a looker.)

Yeah. Dad wanted a son. He didn't get one. So he made one. 🤣

I'm being unfair. He never once treated me like a son he didn't have. But he cared about me his idiosyncratic way. His way of saying "I love you" was "here's a knife; this Sunday we'll start practicing".

Thankfully I was brought up in a time before online dating services, etc. "Computer dating" was this awkward thing that was difficult to use, so I did it the old-fashioned way: meeting people in person.

(As a side note that I promise is entirely unrelated to the rest of this post, I was brought up by what Brits would call an RSM, but in Canada is a Chief Warrant Officer. One from the infantry. Don't file that away for later. It's entirely unrelated.)

So I met Hans after having him introduced to me by some mutual acquaintances. Not friends, just people I knew, and who he also knew. He seemed nice enough in the club, so when he asked for dinner later, that seemed fine by me. A few alarm bells started to happen over dinner however, chief among which were:

1. He treated service staff like shit. That's a HUGE red flag for me and pretty much tanked the "future dates" option forever.
2. He mentioned several times how much he really likes "Asian women". (Yikes! Yes, Hans. What every woman wants to hear is that you've just reduced them to an ethnicity and a resulting fetish object.) That's another huge red flag for me (this one from previous experience).
3. He ordered for me. Not on behalf of me after I'd told him what I wanted. He'd decided what I wanted to eat.
4. Now I'm not exactly above a bit of drinking (like the sea is not exactly above the clouds) but something in the almost strategic way he kept instantly refilling my glass when I'd taken a mouthful was not sitting right with me.

(Another side note for people not experienced in dating: if someone is trying to subtly intoxicate you more than you want to be intoxicated, GET THE FUCK OUT RIGHT AWAY! This ain't goin' anywhere nice. Don't be polite. Don't give them another chance. Your physical safety is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more important than their fee fees. And maybe you won't have to pull a blade. Oopsie! I accidentally foreshadowed!)

So after the increasingly alarm-raising meal, he drove me to where he thought my home was. (I never reveal that on the first date for reasons which should be obvious by now. There was another three-block walk home.) We then had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: Goodnight. Thanks for the meal.

Hans: You're not going to invite me in?

M: It's late and I have to get up early tomorrow.

H: I spent

<number>

That's when he reached for me, clearly angry, clearly making a grab. And that's where the completely unrelated fact about my father comes into the picture. (I lied, see.)

He was bigger than me, stronger than me, and I was in a pretty tight car (Opel). I wasn't going to be getting out before he had a hold of me. So I didn't. I moved in toward him. Specifically I head-butted him in the face. By the time he'd registered what had happened I had the knife out and pointed ... well, where he wanted me to show attention obviously. See, Dad taught me a few things, one of those being "do not escalate: bypass it all and go straight for blood" (paired with unconventional attacks that will get past people playing the escalation game). He grabbed for me so I eschewed the usual process of protesting, struggling, trying to escape, screaming for help, etc. while he would have escalated to a tighter grab, maybe over mouth, and further violence. I went straight for the violence and initiated it, wrecking his script.

The other thing Dad taught me was to a) always carry a knife, b) make sure the knife is easily pulled out, and c) how to use it. So poor Hans had to live with the fact that the woman he was almost certainly about to assault now had a wickedly sharp blade at his junk and a face that said she not only could, but was a hairsbreadth away from "would", use it.

Me: Goodnight. Hans. Get your hands off me. Put your hands on the steering wheel.

Hans: <A long stream of local dialect I couldn't follow. It didn't sound nice.>

And after that I took the long way home to make sure he didn't somehow follow me.

Yeah, it seems you need a baseline instilled into you at critical junctures of your upbringing to have it at all. After that it can be trained, in effect, but only if you have it to begin with.