I have a problem with games set in Cyberpunk settings.

I have a problem with world of bleakness settings.

I have a problem with zombie apocalypse, total apocalypse, bleak darkity-dark-da-dark-dark fantasy games and so on.

The problem is, I play them ‘wrong.’

If you drop a character of mine in the existential bleakness of a setting in which ‘everything sucks’ all I want to do is break it and fix ‘everything.’

Is the Prince King of Discord on the Forever Throne of Depression which he uses to oppress the people and keep the sun from shining? Yeah, I don’t want any victory but the one where I kick Princy-poo in the anus and dismantle his whole society of suffering.

Is ArzTecConTec Co so completely in control of it’s work force that they’ve totally lost free will and thinking is basically outlawed? Yeah, my buddies want to game the system and be rich mercs on the outskirts and in the shadows. *cough, heh cough.* Me? I want to shake ArzTecConTec Co to it’s foundation and liberate it’s literal wage-slaves! Hell, I want to undo the whole system!

Does your setting say I have to end up evil, miserable, and alone? I’m going to fight it. I’m going to sift through all your material for evidence that there’s a light in that dimness and that’s what I’ll focus on and play.

My first D&D character was a pacifist. A complete pacifist. I forced the DM to find other methods to give us EX because we weren’t going to do much by way of ‘killin’ things’ thanks to my pain in the ass character.

Sometimes, people like this. Often times, setting ‘purists’ get mad. Pissed. Because ‘that’s not what’s in the books.’ Though I suspect more often it’s that ‘that’s not what I signed up for.’ That doesn’t make them wrong. Follow your gaming bliss. This may be my issue, but it lends itself to the sort of game I want to make down the road.

I want games where ‘kill the monster, take the treasure’ is not the default. I want a game where killing someone, anyone, is a big fucking deal, (much as I love the Wolf and will keep playing it no matter what, the Humanity system, in any denomination, doesn’t work for me.) I don’t mean in a ‘you’re SCREWED’ so much as, you kill someone, it’s felt. It’s a big decision. It matters.

Leverage keeps coming to mind, because the source material is SO optimistic, and so very much about ‘making things better’ but it leaves off the ‘fall out and repair’ part of things.

I’ve mentioned in several places, my want for a game that involves rebuilding. Act Raiser. Minecraft in some ways. Simcity. But with plot and setting and character development that goes along with soscital rebuilding. I imagine this want comes out of my above problem. My want to fix things over killing things. That’s a ‘progressive’ game to me in the most literal sense. Is it possible to do with standard games? Totally. I could see a D&D game (of any edition) bent and broken into line until it satisfied my desires. WoD. Heck, you could do it with RIFTS if you forced it. But I guess I’m looking for a game that has that carrot-and-stick already in it.

Is it out there? Probably. There’s shades of it in Apocolypes World, isn’t there?

So yeah, if I screw up your Darkity Dark game, this is why and I’m sorry. I’m slowly working on the game that will satisfy my need so I can stop bringing it to your setting. Sorry folks!

This is a How-To to help you when you’re constructing your own Guestbook characters should you have the drive to do so. (Remember, if you do, let us know so you can be an ‘Official Bootleg’ like all the cool kids.)

So I’m working from a Word template because that’s the program on this machine. We’ll also have a InDesign ‘blank’ I think we’re disributing when we get it finalized, so I guess I’ll be working in that when we have it. But basically here’s what it looks like:

(You know the deal, click to embiggen.)

There are actually only certain sections that I need to worry about. Sections like the Rules and the basic intro are all going to be the same from guestbook sheet to sheet. So too the place for signatures will be handled by the layout so that leaves me with the following to do.

• The Character Story
• The Character Descripton
• Conflicts
• Words
• and of course Story Seeds

I will also have to give consideration for the special hand sign, but that’s still in development, so I can’t give you the inside on that yet.

YET.

So there’s no right way or place to start, but I find the Story Seeds to be the toughest part so I tend to do them last when I’ve figured out everything else first.

Character Story

So this section is what people will first read about the character, in theory, and gives them an idea of why the character is fun. Fun being the operitive word. It should be a little twisted, a little funny, or if you’re doing a more dramatic character really compelling.

Easy, sure, so long as your remember this has got to be in around 100 words. Or, if you prefer, two short paragraphs. So in one hundred words, give or take, you need to:

• Give a feeling for who the character is.
• How they’re in the situation they’re in.
• Potential roleplaying hints, or suggestion of how they might behave.
• A hook to lead them into their seeds.

If you break it down to about one sentence to a paint above, you’ll probably be fine.  If you can have each sentence hit on two points, you’re double plus good. Does this seem a little obsessive compulsive? Yeah, it probably is, but that’s me, counting projects down to 100 word blocks if I have to.  More importantly, a Guestbook character is a lot like Gaming Haiku. All my favorite forms of poetry are very structured forms, so I’m bringing that to this project. YMMV.

So the character I’m doing right now is the Bonus Character we’ll be distributing at Gen Con Indy this year. (Yay! Woo!) In this case she’s a super awesome badass Space Marine. She’ll be a lose tie-in with our game Machine Zeit, you know, marketing and all that. Anyway, that gives me the following information for the sheet.

A hired gun with skills, experience in dangerous environments, she’s being paid good money to be set up to a derelict space station and scope the place out.

That’s 28 words, not bad. But I feel like I can pack more information into this opening line. I’m going to take out the mention of ‘money’ and replace it with ‘credits’ and adjusting the value attached to something more geeky. That propels the character into a more clear sci fi setting with a different system of income than our own. Also, ‘scope the place out’ is very weak. It says nothing about the character, the setting, or her purpose on the station, and so it’s got to go. After thinking about it a while, (and staring at the word ‘derelict’ while trying to figure out why I can never spell it right…) I decide ‘in search of profit and something far more personal. Something his employers don’t know he’s after.’  With a little more fidgeting, that changes out intro into:

A hired gun with skills, experience in an array of battlespaces and covert opts, she’s gotten a frak-ton of credits in search of ‘sensitive company property.’ That’s not the prize she’s got an eye on, however, she’s looking for something far more personal, and something her employers don’t know she’s after.

That’s about 50 words, and it might be a little obsessive, but I feel like almost every word suggests something about setting, character, mood, or motivation. “Sensitive company property’ and how she’s hiding things from her employers gives a feeling of paranoia and EBUL CORPORATIONS that’s vital to this subgenre as well as our game specifically without harping in too much detail about it. (Battlespace is real term. I found it on the DOD Military terms site. I love research!) Even the word ‘array’ feels better to me than ‘variety’ or other synonym because array has a sci fi military feel to it. Every double meaning you can cram into the character is a good one.

So with that, I feel like why She’s there, who sent her, what she’s after and who she is nicely covered. (There’s a little space between the cold hard mercenary and her search for ‘something personal’ so the player of the sheet can take it in either direction. Roleplaying suggestion, not demand, after all.) Now I just want to give a little more punch to the ‘setting’ and the hook for the story seeds to come and I’ve got a whole 50 words to do it! So I hit up the station itself, again, a tie in to our other game, but it needs to stand on it’s own. In this case, I’ll borrow a bit from our cover copy because these are words that have already been labored over and it saves me some work.

She’s heard the ghost stories about the stations and ignored them. She was wrong. The ghosts are real. Whatever they are, they’re hungry and they don’t like intruders. Whatever else she may be, the Space Marine is an intruder.

That satisfies me on the points I want to cover and gives me plenty of angles for my story seeds to come. That clocks the character story in at about 90 words. (I tend somewhere around 88 words. I don’t know why.) It gives me room for a sentence in case David takes a look and decides I’m missing something. But again, YMMV.

Character Description

This is actually just notes you’d give to an artist to describe what you want the piece. I’d give rough age, possibly body type, important details, what have you. In this specific case, we handed the art over to our cover artist George Cotronis. With him, because we know him as an artist we just gave him the layout requirements, that it’s a female space marine, and step back to wait for the magic to happen. If I were working with a new artist, I might get more specific and I might mention our Artist Guidelines. If you have some Creative Commons clip art you’re tossing in there, or you’re going to draw your own stick figure, you can skip this step.

Words

I actually like to do the Words to Use next, because this is simple and gets me juiced about the character. This is a mix of five verb and five Nouns. (Though, admittedly, I cheat sometimes and use adjectives here and there.) Usually, this process involves putting music on too loud and dancing around in front of my white board until the words spring to mind. Sometimes, like with this character, I can borrow from their profession to help with words. In this case, I’m going to hit up words from the DoD site I mentioned above and maybe some words from the Halo playing community. (If I can stand it.) Or maybe movie and TV related, Battlestar Galactica comes to mind and some words that suggest body horror to go along with the ghosts in the setting. After a little research, I come up with these words.

Nouns: Sticky, Intangible, EMP Intrusion, Trap,  Radiation.

Verbs: Frag, Strafe, Agonize, Decay, Freeze.

Again, there’s some double meanings here. (Frag could have been a noun, but I think it says more if it’s a verb.) A lot of your micro setting can be drawn out of these words and some of it took some tightening. For example, at first I used EMP Emitter because that sounded like a cool toy. While cruising the DoD site, though, I saw they had the term “EMP Intrusion” which says so much more with less. Now I could have a device that could do such a thing, or maybe monsters or station environment or whatever you want to do with it when you’re running the sheet.

The other fun thing about the Word to Use is that they’re not for you as a player. When you’re being the Space Marine, you can totally ignore this section if you want. It doesn’t come into play until your running the story for your partner. You have a bunch of words that imply things about your character and your setting, but challenge you as a GM because you have to jam them into the story of a character who has nothing to do with them.

Complications

There’s only three of these babies, and again, we’re going to be using the themes and setting tropes and so on from the character sheet even though they don’t get used by the player during his character turn. I like to draw on cliches or things that would regularly be a problem for a character like this. Why? Well, let me show you. Let’s say, these are your conflicts:

1. All Out of Ammo: During your story, being completely out of ammo is going to be a big problem.
2. Fracking Piece of Junk!: Some big important piece of technology will fail during your story and hinder you big time.
3. This Sucks: In your story, a vacuum will threaten your life.

This is all stuff that ties into a Space Marine in a Sci Fi horror pretty well, clearly, but it isn’t for her. These are complications her player throws at the other player. So, if the other player’s sheet is, say, a teenage super hero trying to pass a midterm without getting caught using her powers, that suggestion of a vacuum may not mean the vacuum of space, it may mean a vacuum cleaner that’s gone wrong somehow. Likewise, say the other player has a fantasy elf princess, they’re going to have great fun trying to figure out what ‘technology’ means within their story for the sake of the second conflict. This is really what this game is all about, twisting your head sideways and telling a short quick story while standing on your head.

And, so far as word count and all, lean on the short. Imply instead of say. I don’t say ‘vacuum can be space or a cleaner.’ I leave that to the players to decide. Ambiguity is a good thing when used on purpose, it’s especially useful in poetry, for example, and as I said, this is much more like poetry than it is like prose.

Story Seeds

For me, for whatever reason, this is THE hardest part of a Guestbook character. Partially because we’ve created some really crazy restraints and partially because I know these seeds are going to be what really inspires stories and I’m LOATHED to have them suck. Basically, these are ten (or nine, we’re working on the layout on that,) three sentence story starters that bloom into the adventure your character is going to go through. So, you look at your list on the character, pick a story seed you haven’t done yet, and tell the other player, your GM, what adventure you’re going to tell with her help. Clearly, every time you sit down to play this game it’s going to be different because the conflicts and so on come from a different sheet and person, but with several seeds to choose from, you have even more variety to play the same sheet over and over again.

How are seeds constructed? Well, first I decide if there’s a theme I’m using, or if I’m just drawing from the character. For example, with The Taco Girl, I wanted most of seeds to be ‘about’ her wanting to help her community and her family. This helped me narrow down what sorts of stories would come out of her hook.

For the sake of our Space Marine, I think that each of the seeds is going to draw from either what she’s personally looking for vs what the Company wants her to look for.

Beyond that, the format is very specific. One sentence to set up the story. One sentence to introduce the main conflict or problem the character will face, and one sentence to tell both player and GM what they character must to to resolve the story successfully. That’s it. That’s all the time you have for your seed. But no pressure, because you’ve already got in your head plenty of methods to help with this micro writing. Here’s my process.

1. Once on the station, you’re free to start looking for your daughter, held in cryostasis from before the crisis that shut the station down. Unfortunately, you’re not the only one looking for your daughter, as a bounty hunter appears on the station and now you’re racing to get to her first. Figure out why this bounty hunter wants your daughter and protect her from him before he can escape with her.

I feel like that’s a fun little seed with plenty of little mysteries to explore, but I think it can be tightened up. A lot actually. For example, we know the Space Marine STARTS on the station, so there’s no need to say ‘once on’ and so on. No need for bridges between the story hook at the end of your character story and your story seed. Start these little monster ‘in media res’ as the smart guys say. (In the middle of the action, if you can’t be bothered to google it and don’t know it already.) Additionally, some of the language can be tightened up and a lot of excess language can be dropped. Honenstly, I wouldn’t try to write the sentences perfectly tight the first time through. You’ll waste a lot of time thinking about doing instead of doing. With writing, especially mircowriting like this, it’s easier to perfect something that exists than it is to create something perfect out of nothing. Write your whole seed first, than go in and trim and adjust. With that in mind, here’s what I cut the seed down to.

1. Your daughter is being held in cryostasis on the station and you’ve got to find her. A cut-throat bounty hunter is on the station with you, he also wants to find your daughter, and it can’t be for any good reason. Get to her before he does or risk losing her forever.

Now, I’ve left some stuff out to make the story more flexible. Finding out why the guy wants her isn’t as important, but mostly that’s because I feel like the player will tend to include that anyway in order for the narrative to make sense as she’s creating it. In this case, I don’t mention ghosts, the evil corps that sent her up or anything like that. The player will again, potentially drawn in from that flavor, or they might not depending on the sort of descriptive words and complications they’re throwing into the mix. I don’t think it’s necessary for each story seed to hit on all points on the character. Quite the contrary, using some and not others gives you more variance out of one sheet and increases the chances for replay which is vital to this game. Three seeds based on the same idea with different parts of the sheets ‘setting’ can help you fill a sheet up pretty fast.

Here are some of the other seeds I’m going to throw on this character.

2. There’s a black box on the station you’re supposed to collect. Not only does it contain the reports of how your husband died up here, but the ghosts of all the other victims up here are trying to protect it from falling into corporate hands. Destroy the ghosts or prove to them that if you get the box, you’ll make sure their deaths are exposed for what they were; murder.

3. Your daughter is being held in cryostasis on the station and you’ve got to find her. Only, your dead husband is up there and he can’t see the difference between friend and foe anymore. Convince him that you are there to help so you can get past the protective spirit before the life support fails and your daughter dies.

4. You know what’s in the hardcopy you’ve been sent up to retrieve, and you know what it’s worth. Due to structural failing, the hardcopy has probably fallen into the lowest section of the ship, through a few ‘circles’ of ghostly-hell. Descend through several floors of ghost infested horrors to find the hardcopy without joining their ranks.

5. They told you it was just some equipment, but as soon as you see it, you know it’s a weapon. So you’ve got a huge radiation-producing megaweapon, but getting out a live with it is going to be hand since it seems to attract the ghosts on the station. Make good your daring escape with the weapon as the ghosts, monsters, and station itself try to stop you.

6. While collecting your bounty, you realize there are still about ten people alive on the station in need of help. They know how to avoid the monsters better than you do, but they don’t know how to survive the mercenaries sent up to ‘erase’ the ‘loose ends.’ Get the survivors out while they help you dodge the ghosts and you help hold off the mercs.

7. The station is supposed to have been ‘dead’ for about six months when you go up. And yet, as you are searching the wreckage for your bounty, your reality keeps getting overlapped by visions of that final fateful day. Don’t lose yourself to the horrific flashbacks of death or get dragged into it by the ghosts who can’t let go.

8. If there’s anything you hate more than bounty hunters, it’s pirates. The station is crawling with a team of pirates up here to steal company property. Fight off the pirates and prevent them from getting to anything too useful without them fragging you and adding your ghost to the community up there already.

9. You’ve been sent up with an engineer who is as brilliant as he is daring. What he isn’t, is prepared for the physical danger of a malfunctioning station full of hungry dead. Keep the man alive while he risks his neck to study what destroyed the station.

Some of these seeds will have identical set ups, they’ll share details, but because of little additions of setting or pieces of background left out, there’s a lot of room to play. Other things to keep in mind while you’re creating your seeds.

• The seeds do not need to be related. They’re only ‘cannon’ in the story they’re used, so even if the seeds contradict each other completely, no worries. (As in the case of number 1 and 3.)
• Cheat if you have to. There are times even the greatest poets broke form, and there’s really no problem with that. If it was good enough for The Bard and Dylan Thomas,  it’s good enough for me. (Just try not to do it too much, that’s half of the fun of the creation.)
• You don’t need to use the conflicts or the words in your seeds. Remember, they’re for the other character’s stories. They should fit themes and tropes and so on, but they don’t have anything to do with what happens to this character.
• Be exacting. Ambiguity in idea is good, in word choice it isn’t. Use exactly the word you mean, and use every word you can to fill in colour and concept. Spare nothing. Abuse your thesuraus. No risk of being flowery here, the work is too brief. (Micro writing fascinates me, but that’s another post.)
• Leave room for interpretation whenever possible, but especially in your ‘solution’ sentence. Don’t tell them ‘kill the monster, get the gold.’ Tell them ‘get around the monster, get whatever he’s hiding.’ Solutions that do not require violence are very good solutions indeed. There are plenty of games focused on slaying the monster. This is a game about solving the problem instead.

So, if you happen to still be reading at this point, thank you so much for sticking around, and I really hope you try your hand at this yourself. I look forward to hearing what you do with these sheets in play, in hacking, and in creation.

Don’t panic. I didn’t get religious or anything. It’s just that my dad really looks like Jesus and and this was the only painting I could find that didn’t a)freak me out or b)have really pretty girly eyes. There’s nothing wrong with a man having pretty eyes, my dad just doesn’t.

Every day of my life is a celebration of motherhood, my own, my mothers, all other mothers before me and around me. So it’s really good to stop and take the time to honor the dedication and honor that’s required to be a good father.

I’m very lucky to have so many good fathers around me. Both my husband, the people in my subculture who post regularly about their wee ones, and friends old and new who take it on themselves to be good pater familia.

But the mother of them all, (heh) is probably my dad. And not just because he looks like Jesus while being a total Atheist. And not just because he’s a musician and composure with an ear that can hear around corners.

No, really, my dad is great because he never saw my gender as a reason to limit my learning. He believed creativity and technology belonged in the hands of girls as well as boys. More important, he never saw, so far as I could tell, there was a divide between art and tech and that’s something that stayed with me my whole life.

I can remember our Tandy computer and being allowed to ‘play’ with it under supervision. I don’t know how old I was, but not very. I THINK I remember using some kind of paint program on it, but again, this was a million years ago, so I can’t be sure.

More clearly, I remember our first Macintosh. I remember my father getting an early version of Finale, a music engraving program and him taking the time to show me how to use it. I would copy Bach and Chopin into the computer program to practice with it as well as, I think, to be raised with a level of comfort with computers. They were just a part of our household, and frankly, that changed who I was. I could touch type well before they were teaching it in school. When the introduced us to the beasts in school, I was already comfortable. In a lot of ways, I make my living in and around a computer, all things I don’t know I’d be able to do if not for that early exposure.

And at least, as far as I could tell, it was never a thing ‘girls shouldn’t do’ with my dad. It never even came up.

And he never saw gaming as anything weird.

Sure, when I was a teen, he got a little tired of hearing about it, but really, my parents were the ones to introduce me to gaming. They bought my the Nintendo and my first copy of Final Fantasy. I don’t think I’d ever heard of it before that introduction. I can’t remember where my first copy of the Starter Set for D&D came from, but I think it was my father’s friend, and I remember them searching the boardwalk and the hobby stores that summer to help me find all the crazy shaped dice that were needed for the game. I worked with him to build beautiful train models. Rock tumbling. Stargazing. All traditional male hobbies, but that was never a boundary for my dad. With him, it was just cool stuff he wanted to share with his kid.

So, yeah, dad, thanks for that early exposure. Thanks for never hesitating to introduce me to your newest coolest technology, and thank you for being you!

The door burst open at the same time one of the windows shattered inward. Four armed men pushed their way into the sanctuary with murder in their hearts.

The nun opened her eyes, drawn from her meditation more by the violent thoughts than the violent acts. She allowed her sense of the room to guide her hand, her eyes were too weak for that work. Two bullets later two of four men lay dead on the floor and the nun hadn’t moved anything but her gun hand.

The other two dropped their guns and went to their knees. It was a hard way to gather converts, but it happened.

–Amaranthine, Chapter 4

An hour previous, Kitty and Sahar had left the Hilton to find the temple on foot. It was said to be tucked into an ethnic ghetto further into that part of the city than nice ladies should venture into alone.

On the bright side, as Kitty mentioned to Sahar, she wasn’t a nice lady.

They heard the precision shots from outside, Sahar’s dark eyes scanned the outside for assalints, while Kitty did what Kitty did best. Kitty rushed in.

In time to see the cooling bodies bleeding out on the hardwood floor and two other gunman on their knees weeping. A small, wizened old woman in religion robes Kitty couldn’t identity sat near an alter with no iconography on it. In fact, the church was, so far as Kitty could tell, nondenominational. Nonreligious almost.

“How did you make those shots?” Kitty asked, scanning the scene.

“I did not.” The old woman said without opening her eyes, the smoking pistol still in her lap. “I simply enabled the bullets to seek out taint in the hearts of the unworthy. These men came to murder me. I allowed the gun to decide their fate. A pure heart cannot be struck by my bullets.”

Sahar slipped in behind her companion. “Sister Intira, the one you were looking for.” Kitty barely glanced back, her eyes following the frail old woman as she rose to her feet, knees and elbows cracking as she shoot.

“You seek to learn this. Purity in killing? Holiness in murder?” If it was a line, Kitty bought it.

“Yes, Sister.”

“I see. Well, first, we’ll need a cleansing.” The run rose and the bullet left the barrel, hitting Kitty straight in the stomach.

Sahar, not alarmed, sighed and shook her head. “Really, Sister. Always with the theatrics.”

“I know elder,” said the nun to the younger-looking Sahar as Kitty slumped to the ground, holding her gut, still shocked. “But it does get the point across, doesn’t it?”

So much is happening with our game Amaranthine, and yet, I still had to take a second to write a little additional fiction to go along with game text and this BITCHIN’ painting for that part of the book. Seriously, this is fun stuff, and so very Amaranthine. See also: Chuck Wendig as an Amaranthine. And our cover art! Woo!

Okay, this one may piss someone off. I’m sorry ahead of time, but I have been honestly talking about my power fantasies and this is one I see in women gamers enough that I have to assume there’s something to it. I can’t speak about you, or why you have this particular fantasy, but I can sure as hell tell you what does it for me.

She’s relentless. That’s what they say about her. She makes a choice and she follows it through, with the determination of a Rottweiler, whether she’s going after a john, casing a pimp out of her territory, or getting the girls who walk her streets to get their shit together. Usually they call her a bitch, but she laughs it off because, well, she likes the violent connotation.

She fucks for money. She never much liked the word prostitute, it sounds like a ‘social disease’ that some stuffy shithead in a suit attributed to ‘fallen women’ and no one has said anything better. She knows the activists are using the term ‘sex worker’ and she’s okay with it. It applies too, but if you ask her, straight up, she’ll say she fucks for money. Whore is a sacred word, to her, and one only a couple of people get to whisper to her in the heat of passion.

She works the streets because she likes to catch the violent johns off guard and take them out of the equation. Six years ago she got caught cutting a guy’s cock off and feeding it to him. She found a ACLU lawyer just as crazy as she was and they got the charge reduced no nothing. She spent six months in prison. In that time, she became a sort of martyr. Wherever people were demanding rights for sex workers, they held up pictures of her, even if she did kill someone in cold blood.

Sometimes she still feels things. She’s not a sociopath, so far as she can tell, but she can turn it all off when she needs to. But that whole ‘hardened’ thing is bullshit. She just chooses when she cries. And that isn’t often. She hunts so long as she’s still physically able to, and after that, she might take those activists up on their regular requests to come help them out. For now, killing fuckers who go too far is more useful than shouting at congress. She fucks way too many congressmen to think they’ll listen. Yet.

News people, good detectives, vampire hunters, all sorts of people come looking for answers about what’s going on in her turf. Even the werewolves won’t move in where she’s working because they think she’s crazier than they are dangerous. Or maybe it’s the same thing.

They say crazy. She says empowered. But that’s a debate for college students and bloggers.

She’s not a junkie, she fucks because she likes to. Men tend to be more trouble than they’re worth, so keeping them emotionally at arm’s length is the way to go. She doesn’t like junkies working in her turf. Too dangerous. Raises the risk of disease. But she’s got contacts in programs. They might help the junkies, she can’t. They may just get them out of her hair, and that suits her just as well.

She’s proud, dynamic, and aggressive in her sexuality. She fucks who she wants and doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to. She’s arrogant, sometimes, and she rubs people raw. They either lover her for it or hate her, but in the end, they don’t walk on her. A poet she’s fucking calls her a ‘force of nature’ and pities anyone who tries to tie her down. She burns copies of ‘Pretty Women’ at protests and can quote Veronica Franco when it suits her but she never finished high school.

She’s been raped, she’s been beaten, but so have plenty of suburban housewives, if you ask her about it she’ll remind you.

She’ll deck you if she has to, but she’s rather hold you tight and kiss you till you shut up and do what she wants.

You can’t stop her, you can only survive her. She’s not a victim of the patriarchy, she’s the reason they’re afraid of women. And one day, she’s coming for them.

So yes, this is a highly idealized situation. Many sex workers in the US are beaten down, abused, and unable to stand up for themselves like this. I don’t think that’s the way it has to be, and I CERTIANLY don’t think it should be that way. That’s another post, however. Point is, you don’t want to play the millions of boys who go off to war and just get killed, you want to play the hero of war. The one who gets through the gritty reality and becomes a legend.

I want the same thing.

I don’t want you to punish me with STDs, even if that’s realistic, because I’m playing a sexually liberated woman who uses her talents (not just her body) to make herself powerful within her society and subculture. I don’t demand your war hero have crippling PTSD or life threatening cancer, because this is fantasy.

I don’t want you to punish me with pregnancy because that is not a story I want to tell with this character. (Unless I’ve told you otherwise.) I don’t want you to punish me with pregnancy because I think it’s sick to treat the creation of a new human being as a means to subjugate another human being. I have heard, in some form or another, GMs actually say, “ha ha, I’ll show that slut. I’ll just have her get pregnant and she’ll have to stop playing the character.” Worse still, then they hold the threat of ‘murdering the baby’ over my head if I play the character any way. Anything, in their sick little world, could result in miscarriage. It’s cruel and it’s weird and I want you to stop and think before using a creation of new life as a ‘consequence.’ Think about what that says to the people at your table. Think about what that means. It is not a thing than would ever be used to stop a male character, and so it’s an inherently unfair punishment for, frankly, something that doesn’t need to be punished.

In this particular fantasy, this woman has killed to avenge herself or her friends, but she isn’t a professional killer any more than your super hero who hunts down serial killers. And considerably less than your badass mercenary. There is a revenge element in this part of my fantasy that isn’t necessary for every sex worker character or even a majority of them. In that case, the violence free sex worker whose only crime is controlling her sexuality and making it work for her instead being a victim to it should be treated the same as your musician who entertain audiences and should be seen as more noble than your gun runner or your drug dealer.

Want badges that account for your merit outside of gaming? Weep not!

http://www.nerdmeritbadges.com/

The Family Tech Support is a personal favorite of mine.

Here’s another story I want to tell, and read, and play. I figure, why start off in the middle or at the bottom. I want to start at the top and go out from there! I want the world changing event to start just before my character takes center stage. I want to START with a brave new world. I want power and compassion and, yes, sword fighting ghost Nazis and Martians and evil fundamentalists all in the name of the NEW American way!

The CIA agent arched a brow and then broke into a bright smile, nodding his head. “President.” Two more men stepped up on either side of the freshly sworn-in President and the small party stepped out onto the stage to an eruption of cheers.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the next President of the United States.”

She stepped out among them. She was tall, and easier to define as ‘handsome’ than beautiful. What she had was poise and power. People called her ‘the Amazon.’ It was something Diana, aptly named, always found funny, but never commented on in public.

“My fellow Americans.” The words swept her up with the same rise of excitement and historical import that seemed to sweep over the crowd. Her vice president, a man ten years her senior, wiped a tear from his eye, and she smiled. “I knew we’d get here somehow.”

They cheered.

She told them that the struggle wasn’t over, that it would never be. She told them how proud she was, how their struggle to overcome the ignorance and fear once characteristic of Americans. She praised the mandate they sent the world by now lifting any limits in leadership. She say from racial liberation, and now the mightiest blow every struck against the gender gap, America truly was becoming the land of the free.

They cheered.

Later, Champaign and congratulations were passed around. She got a phone call from the president of India, and the two women exchanged thoughts too briefly.

Hours later, with her husband tucked in bed, she walked through the hall of the White House.

“Madam President.” A voice called out to her.

She turned to see a well built man, maybe twenty or thirty, military trim, but in a uniform she didn’t recognize.

“Welcome to the White House. We have, one could argue, waited a very long time for a woman of your caliber to join us here. Please. If you’ll follow me this way, we need to explain to you how things really work on this end. Tell me, have you ever used a gladius before?”

If Dan Brown et all can work occult conspiracies into the very tapestry of the US, the bible, and so on, why is it so hard for you to let me be a woman and president and fight with a flag on my shoulders? Turns out, it actually isn’t. Basically, I want Wonder Woman for President. Yeah. I went there. It’s my power fantasy, nyeh nyeh.

I’ve got most of my designs in from James Gabrielsen. Man, this stuff is tight! Seriously, go and hire him right now for things. I’ll wait.

Are you back yet? Great! So I’m going to post a badge or two for your enjoyment and so you can see his work in action. They’re with my embroider now. It’s going to be a blast.

Other news, we’re in our last day or so for our Kickstarter for Amaranthine! We’ve also outline the next game, Guestbook!

In Guestbook, you play normal people, in extraordinary situations, and you do it really damned quick. Then, you trade with your friends, and repeat at the next possible opportunity. Every character in Guestbook is a self-contained product (but you need two players to play.) Each character is a brochure-style, full-color screen that doubles as a GM/Player screen you can use while playing other games (and so you can play Guestbook during lulls in play!) At first, we intend to release about five character sheets, with more to follow, depending on popularity and demand. You’ll be able to buy them at Gen Con for a nominal fee, or from us directly. You will also be able to purchase them in PDF form so you can print them out of your own accord.

You want in? No worries! Here’s how you get your copy of Guestbook as soon as we finish writing it!

Alright. You guys are amazing. I thought, ‘gee.. lemmie pick ten.’ HA! I could not, in anyway, pick less than twenty of these babies, they were that good. (Rob, I am totally looking at you, kid.)

So here’s the final list. Some of them are listed with icons and some of them without yet. (Feel free to give me ideas if you have them.)

1. Tombstone – TPK
2. Tombstone with Laurels – TPK (GM)
3. Boot – Ejected a problem player
4. Bar of Soap – 3:2:1 rule
5. A dagger with a grin for the pommel guard and heart on the pommel: Backstabbed your boyfriend’s PC.
6. A dagger with a frown on the pommel guard and heart on the pommel: Backstabbed by your girlfriend’s PC. (Genders can swap on these two, of course.)
7. 2 Dice, one big, one small – Gamed with kids in the house
8. Round Dice – Diceless play
9. Hacksaw cutting a die in half- Hacked a game.
10. Killed a party member for the drama
11. Foot over a d4
12. Cried in Character
13. Gold ring, surrounded by fire, gold ring, surrounded by ice: Met your spouse or significant other at a game.
14. Female Restroom Silhoutte over a D20: All Girl Game
15. Nat 20
16. Method Larper
17. Lost the Game
18. Multigenerational Gamer
19. Pizza Clock
20. Gaming while sloshed

So what’s the next step? It looks like I need to farm out the design on these little buggers. Turns out I’m not as clever with the art as I used to be and I am SWAMPED writing Amaranthine. So here’s what I’m looking for.

• Very simple 2 inch diameter circle image of the badge. Simple, clean, clear, because this is getting put through a sewing machine.
• Quick turn around. The sooner I get these in, the more of the badges I’ll actually have at Gencon.
• This is a paying gig. You give us the art for these twenty little icons, we drop you sixty bucks American. I don’t know what the pro rates are for this sort of project, if that’s very low, don’t feel insulted, just feel my regret that I can’t afford you.
• Clearly, they have to be royalty free images. Or, you know, I’ll get sued and have to sell my daughters on the black market, and no one wants that. (Especially not the unfortunate buyer.)

Okay! That’s about it! Contact me! Lets do this thing! Thanks!!

Let’s talk about the rare animal in gaming culture.

The Female Power Fantasy.

Don’t worry, there isn’t just one. That would make this a simple issue, and GOD knows we don’t want simple issues. Here I am, a gamer that happens to be a middle aged mother. I’mma show you my power fantasy so you can consider it when you are writing the settings and material where I want to play out my fantasy. Take this as only one example.

The King glanced out the window, his courtyard full of Renard’s men. He turned, heavy hearted, and kissed his wife on the lips briefly, but passionately. “I go without a fight, you and Rose will be safe. We have no other choice.”

The Queen accepted the kiss, it would be their last, but not his words. His words she met with cold rage. They didn’t have time to have this argument again, and she wouldn’t taint their parting that way. “I love you.” She said. “I will get you back.”

He smiled at her, turned before she could see tears in his eyes, and left, stroking his sleeping daughter’s back before he left. She watched from the window as Renard’s men bound her husband and carried him off. That done, they began to sack the castle, with steely blades ready for any relative of her husband, any heir to the throne, breaching the agreement immediately.

Of course, Leona, the Lion Queen, they called her, was prepared for that. She whipped off her robe, slid into her leather, took up her sword, and bound her baby to her chest in a sling like the peasant women did when they can to care for a suckling child and still work the field or go to market. As a child she had been sickly, the captain of the guard then trained her with a sword to ‘build up her strength.’ It had worked, and left her one of the most talented swordsmen in the kingdom, though it had never been proven it combat to the death. She grew strong and sturdy.

Once, the king had whispered gently into her ear. “You don’t have to be lovely. You just have to be loved. And you are loved more than any other.”

The journey from there was perilous. She and a small band of other heroes gathered in the name is destroying Renard, all for their own reasons. At first, the warrior Endric dismissed Leona, attempting to drive her from her revenge, but the first time he saw her kill a man with her babe tucked gently under her shield arm, he stopped questioning and began to believe.

It wasn’t always easy. Rose would have a scar for life from the bolt that missed her mother and grazed her instead. Leona’s memories are often bitter sweet, like the moment she watched her girl take her first steps beside the body of a dead bandit.

But there was determination in her. She would fight on for the good of her people, and her husband.

As her daughter grew to a small child, and the Rendard’s court began to shudder, Leona grew more and more confident that her husband was dead. The wide eyed hope of a young mother gave way to reality and a yearning for something more. Something beyond revenge.

Would she accept the affections of the dashing assassin in her conspiracy against Renard? What would she do when rumors of her husband’s death prove both false, but that the reality is something much much worse? When Rose picks up a knife and asks to learn ‘what mommy does’ what will Leona do?

Is it absurd? Probably. Is it unrealistic? Certainly. But tell me what’s realistic about your eight level wizard throwing fire balls? Tell me what’s realistic about dragons? It’s a fantasy. This is one of mine. I have seen plenty of yours. Make room for mine, and you have my gratitude. Yes, a mother taking a child into war is insane. But really, isn’t anything player characters do insane? Yes, it’s likely the baby would be killed in fight after fight after fight. Or, we can, you and I, agree that that isn’t what this story is about, and we can set that aside as an option. See how that works? We can and do bend reality to fulfill fantasy all the time. You can do it for me as easily as you can do it for yourself. Especially now that you know what I want.