Still Alive

 As some of you might have heard, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and kept invading since then, and on 24th of February Russian military attacked major Ukrainian cities. So we've been at war for 8 years, but now we're at WAR war. 

Meanwhile, I've been interviewed by Zak Smith who's Playing D&D With Porn Stars. Previously Zak had interviewed the founder of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the creators of Marvel Super Heroes and another Marvel game that I never played but it's a thing, and now there's me, because I happened to live in Ukraine and now it's an interesting place. So we talked about war, about tabletop games, and about current president of Ukraine and what issues people here have with him. 

Stay strong guys, this is going to have repercussions all over the world, but we'll get over it. I think.

The Inquisitors' Road

So we had a longish break from actual tabletop roleplaying. Some people got sick and couldn't participate, some people had neglected to play because of birthdays (I ask you, what is the use of birthday if you don't spend it playing LotFP?), everyone is depressed over the possibility of Russian invasion, we got so down that we actually considered playing Monopoly.
"Or you could, you know, DM something".
"Guess I could".
Which is when I pulled out the Inquisitors' Road by Zak S., written to be played with Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and things got rolling.
In this adventure a group of priests ride out to examine the rumours of heresy and evil-worshipping. The priests are a fun bunch, there's an old witch-hunter, a guy who witnessed a holy miracle and has been drinking non-stop since that day, another guy who's a bishop's nephew or cousin and a couple others. The players are hired guards who are supposed to protect the priests from brigands and snakes and such.
The problem is, one of the priests is not who he seems to be.
The Inquisitors' Road is a murder mystery that starts before the first murder happens. There's a short lists of things that happen on the first night, on the second night etc, something that I usually dislike because I like to improvise, but in this case I decided to just follow the instructions, after all, it's Zak and his tons of experience. And it worked like a charm. The player characters did some bonding with the priests, ate a snake, found out there's something ominous happening, fought some brigands, and then things started getting bloody. They thought of some good tricks to try and find out the murderer, the only reason why these tricks didn't immediately work was because Zak had thought of them all first and made the murderer a cold and cunning well-prepared bastard; but every thing the players tried gave them a little clue about the murderer's identity.
It ended in an epic scene with blood fountaining from open wounds and dead bodies all around. The players were barely alive but very happy.
Next week we're going to continue the story with the second part of this Cube World module, The Gray Fortress, which is rumoured to be the lair of the mysterious and malignant Moon Church.
Hooooowl.

Wolf picture by Zak S. You can get Inquisitors' Road from his store at D&D With Porn Stars as part of Cube World #2.

Werewolves Are Bards

"They won't let you bring a weapon on-site," she said. "Not even in your car" . 

"I left the gun in the safe at the shop," I told her. "And they don't need to know that you are a weapon".

In "Mercy Thompson", werewolves are sociable creatures. Really sociable. They need to have a pack, or some substitute, otherwise they'd go crazy and die. There are "lone wolves", but they tie themselves to something like a pack, too - family, team of mercenaries, I dunno, group of tabletop players, why not. 

Also werewolves are deadly predators. A werewolf literally has two minds - there's the human, and there's the monster. Sometimes the human is in control, sometimes the wolf is. 

Finally, there are submissive werewolves, who don't have the ambition to fight someone to the death just because, and there are dominant werewolves, who often die early after being Changed, usually in a fight with another dominant werewolf. And when a wolf is dominant, it affects more than just the "let's fight" urge. A dominant werewolf can give orders to weaker wolves, can make another wolf calm down and relinquish the control to the human half, and also can bend normal humans to their will. 

In other words, dominant werewolves are a charisma-based class. They also really like music, with their enhanced hearing letting them get much more out of it than normal humans.

And did I mention that the leader of all werewolves, the Alpha of all Alphas, is an old Welsh bard? 

Now, there's this thing about bards. I like bards. Zak Smith doesn't like bards. When I bought "I Am The Weapon", I joked that I just might try to make a bard character using the system, to which Zak responded that I am a monster. Perhaps he was right. So... 

Werewolves are bards with a split personality. In "I Am The Weapon", one of the stats is "Appeal", and it's basically charisma - combination of good looks and strength of personality. A werewolf can use this stat to force his or her will on others, by rolling Appeal against the other character's "Calmness", the stat that represents force of will, sanity, and ability to resist mental attacks. In a dominance battle between two wolves, it's simpler - Appeal against Appeal, the winner is more dominant, the loser may accept it or try to settle the argument with fangs and claws. This is how many wolves die.

There's a catch, of course. Whenever things get messy, the wolf tries to take control. When the werewolf is under stress, the player rolls his Calmness against his Appeal - the willpower of the human against the instincts and personality of the wolf. If Calmness wins, cool, you're still in control of yourself. If Appeal wins - then the wolf is in control. Your character is now a fierce, bloodthirsty predator. For how long? Could be one round, then you roll Calmness vs Appeal again, could be more, I'm still not sure how I like it. 

Another catch is that werewolves are very, very sensitive about anyone disrespecting them. Looking into a werewolf's eyes is a challenge.  Another werewolf sitting behind you in a car is sneaking into your territory and planning an ambush.

Werewolves are tough. They start out having superhuman strength, agility and senses (just above peak human ability). When they shift to wolf shape, their strength, agility and senses increase by one level (but Calmness goes down by level, so it's easier to lose yourself to wolf when you're shapeshifted). 

Werewolves badly need to have contacts. They have to start having some group as a Contact (not necessary a pack, though it's a popular choice). 

Werewolves transform, want it or not, at the night of full moon. 

And, to make it easier to flesh out a new character, I've thought of some questions to ask a player. 

1. No one (pretty much) is born a werewolf, people are Changed into werewolves. When did this happen to you, what did you do before the Change, how did you survive? (Previous occupation gives you a Skill, which can be useful or not in present time)

2. After the Change, medium life expectancy of a werewolf is about 10 years. Most frequently new wolves are killed in battles for dominance or for breaking the rules of the pack. What special quality do you possess that let you survive? 

3. Lone wolves die. To which group are you connected, who knows what you truly are? 

4. A werewolf is a killer by nature. How do you deal with the bestial bloodthirst that lives inside you? 

Next time we'll talk about vampires.

I am the werewolf, he is the vampire, she is the witch, and each of us is the weapon

 Zak Smith's superhero system, I Am The Weapon, is cool*. 

But having a cool system isn't enough. You need to think of something fun to do with it. And when it comes to superheroics, with me, it's always either "Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can again, and again", or "Otam, clotam, Batman in Gotham". It gets old fast. 

So I thought about urban fantasy. There's a nice book series (actually, two of them) by Patricia Briggs about an Earth where the fae decided to come out in 1980's and admit that, yes, they do exist. Thirty years later the werewolves followed. And no one wanted to out the vampires for obvious reasons. 

It's a world with plenty superpowered characters who are very different (werewolves are mostly similar but they're all more or less crazy which gives them variety, vampires who are old enough to be independent usually have different powers, and every kind of fae is different from another kind of fae, and there are also witches and demons and Native American supernatural people and by the way remember king Arthur's sword? The sword is a real thing, and it's still hidden somewhere close by). 

So I took IATW, and I started working on a pitch that would help to make up some characters suitable for this world. Werewolves are strong and fast and have sharp senses, and vampires are strong and fast and dead at daytime, - cool, sure, but I also want their magic to work in different ways, using different stats. The magic of the witches is easy, Zak's Sorcery from IATW should work just fine - intellect-based, learn a spell before you can prepare it, cast it in a critical situation before you can learn it, prepare up to five spells per day and so on. But vampires should be special. 

And I had some ideas that seemed to be fun, some of them about making a character, some of them about playing. I'll write more about those after I give them some testing with the group. 

______

* Last time I checked, you could buy I Am The Weapon from Zak's Store. It's worth every cent.

This is Brandon Leon-Gambetta

 This guy. 

According to his site, where I took this picture, Brandon Leon-Gambetta is a Peruvian-American game designer and tabletop media creator known for his work on Pasión de las Pasiones, the Stop, Hack, & Roll Network of podcasts, and pushing for increasing the voice of marginalized people in the ttrpg industry.

Cool. 

This is a game by Brandon Leon-Gambetta, advertised on the same site. 

I'm not a fan of Latino telenovelas. I don't know if it's good or bad. It's available through Magpie Games, Magpie Games also are making this game: 

And managed to gather more than 9 millions dollars on Kickstarter for it. Doesn't feel like my kind of game, but Avatar the Last Airbender is undoubtedly cool. 

And this is Zak Smith. 

                            "Most Accurate Self-Portrait To Date", Zak Smith

                                    Courtesy of Fredericks & Freiser, NY

 

Zak has been harassed online for years. And it was not because  his ex-wife made accusations against him - the harassment began years before their divorce. What was the reason? Well, Zak has been accused, for example, of being sexist and racist.

And this is the group that played tabletop games with Zak. Those are women, of different ethnicities, and they look like they're having fun.

And these are the women that defended Zak after he was accused of being an abuser, and agreed to help defend him in court. Which, as you probably now, means that if they lie, it would be a crime. Is that something that you, if you're a woman of colour, would do for someone who is a sexist and a racist and an abuser? I wouldn't. 

Also there were people in the comminuty who accused Zak of being transphobic. Now, you might know that there was a show titled "I Hit It With My Axe" which was about Zak and his group playing D&D. They show came to its end when the company that filmed it hired an openly anti-trans person, and Zak stated that the group will not work with the company that has such hiring policies. And that was it. 

How many transphobic people do you know who would say "No, don't make a show about us, don't give us money, we don't want to work with you because you hire anti-trans people"? I haven't heard about any.

So why would people lie about things like that, about someone hating women when it's clearly not true for anyone who knows Zak and his friends at least superficially?

One reason is that Zak wanted people to behave like reasonable adults. If you claim that something is good - please explain what is good about it. If you claim that something is bad - please explain what is bad about it. If you claim that someone did a wrong thing - please prove that it happened. And if you know that someone did a wrong thing, and are familiar with the proof that this someone did a wrong thing - don't treat this person like it didn't happen. 

Not a reason for a normal, healthy, happy person to hate someone, right? 

And, rather logically, people who wanted to hurt Zak wanted the opposite - to make accusations without providing any evidence, and to be treated normally afterwards. So they tried to make claims that provide emotional response. Like accusing someone of harassment - it was and still is emotional. Gamergate provided a good base for that. People read that someone is a harasser, and get angry faster than they think "But is it true? Is there any proof? Is it right to accuse something of doing something that bad without evidence?" 

So - say that someone did the worst thing you can think of. Trigger the emotions. Don't stop, keep accusing. If someone questions your actions, yell that they're siding with the harasser (even though the actual harasser is yourself).

Zak is harassed by people who make confessions like this one. 

I think that we should by all means fuck it up for this person, because they sound like a dangerous sociopath and not like a normal, healthy, happy person. And strangely they don't seem to find anything wrong with being a harasser, and admitting to being one.

Now, Brandon Leon-Gambetta - he seems to be rather happy in that picture. And he's doing good, he's making the things that he likes, he's famous. All is cool for him. 

And here's Brandon Leon-Gambetta casually admitting he had been harassing Zak for years, that he did this with others "as an industry", and weeps that it wasn't successful. 

And this is not cool at all, but it seems that Brandon Leon-Gambetta thinks that harassing someone should work. 

So, to sum it up: getting hate, stress and threats sucks; but causing hate, stress and threats for someone else is good because it works because it feels stronger. 

I should also note that Brandon Leon-Gametta accused Zak of "railing against SJWs". I didn't know what the term meant, never having seen it in Zak's blog during the years that I followed it, so I looked it up. It's "social justice warrior", that is, someone who aggressively opposes social injustice, like, you know, hiring anti-trans people. Once again, a person who supports women, supports trans people, supports people of colour is accused of hating everything that he supports. 

Which doesn't make sense, and isn't true.

Need I remind that at least one of the people who was part of the "we as an industry tried to harass Zak out of it for years", namely Ettin, was found guilty of slander by court and had to make a public apology and pay a fine? 

Need I remind that Zak has been banned from several platforms dedicated to roleplaying games not because of accusations of abuse (which are false, and which came years later), but as part of the "we as an industry tried to harass Zak out of it"? 

Need I remind that harassing something is wrong, harassing someone for years is worse, and casually admitting that "yes, we harassed someone for years and don't feel bad about it"is a pretty clear sign that something is seriously wrong with those "we as an industry"? 

Shouldn't someone ask Brandon Leon-Gambetta about it? 

Shouldn't someone reconsider their opinion about Zak, knowing that he was harassed by years by people who know casually admit it? 

What do you think? Because I think they damn well should.

But why should I care about Zak?

 If you're new to the tabletop gaming scene and have just found out how Zak Smith was attacked, you might ask yourself, "Should I really care about all this?"
The answer, of course, is yes, you should. 

But why? 

Because an innocent person was attacked and his life was ruined, and that's a terrible thing.  

It happened long ago and it doesn't matter now!

No. It's happening right now. In many RPG-related platforms promoting, discussing, even mentioning Zak is forbidden, unless you write something harmful about him. Which means that he cannot defend himself, people who support him cannot defend him, and people who just don't like baseless accusations cannot speak against attacks on him.The subreddit dedicated to OSR, "Old School Renaissance", D&D-based games which Zak's works are an important part of, is one example of this. 

Are you saying we should defend abusers? 

No. I'm saying we should defend people who are wrongly accused. Zak is not an abuser. 

Are we really sure he's innocent? 

We are. There is a thing called "presumption of innocence". Until we have proof that someone did something wrong, the person is innocent. There is and have never been no proof of Zak being an abuser. He is innocent.

 But is there any proof that he didn't abuse anyone? 

There can be no proof that something didn't happen. But there can be proof that something else did happen, which makes the first thing impossible. Like this: I can't have any proof that I didn't eat this apple, but I do have a video of my sister eating it, and a witness who supports the claim that she, indeed, ate this apple. And since I couldn't eat the same apple that someone else had eaten, it proves  that I didn't eat it.
There are proofs that Zak was in good relations with the woman that accused him of abuse. There are records of their phone and Internet messaging, there are witnesses who knew both Zak and his wife closely, there are close relatives of Zak's wife's family who knew them closely, and it all supports the claim that Zak and Mandy had a non-abusive relationship. 

 Are we sure there's no proof of abuse? 

Fairly sure. Zak has been taking it to court for years now, and some of the people who accused him of being an abuser had been ordered by court to publicly apologize and to pay a compensation fee to Zak. If they had proof of abuse, that would support their accusations and the court wouldn't have found them guilty of slander. 

How do I know there's really proof and there are really witnesses that support Zak's position? 

You can ask Zak, who, unlike the accusers, has made answering the question his principle. You can ask in comments of his blog, https://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/ , or you can write him at zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm. 

Okay, I get it, Zak's innocent and he was wrongly accused and it's a bad thing. Many people are treated terribly, should I care about all of them? 

Frankly, yes. It's normal to care about terrible things and people who become victims of terrible things. 

It sounds frustrating. 

Because it is. Life is frustrating, and the more you know about the world, the more terrible things you find out. But when you know about them, you can help fix them. 

 Riiiight. Could you give me just another reason? 

I guess. Do you care about art? Zak is a damn good artist, and his career is being destroyed by a hateful mob. 

Do you care about literature? Zak is a damn good writer, read his articles in his blog about literature, art, cinema, architecture, they're great. And his life is being destroyed by a hateful mob. 

Do you care about making society a better place? Zak supported Black Lives Matter movement, he was arrested by the police, he gathered money to help his friend who is a journalist and had her eye permanently damaged by a police bullet. And his life is being destroyed. 

Yet another reason that Zak suggested: 

I think a larger issue is a lot of :

1. Actual creators, and

2. Useful conversations about games

are in a situation where they aren't as good as they could be because they're afraid of the same people who did this attacking them

As long as -the people who did this- are still being treated as respectable, the issue is way bigger than me: they're a mob that can and does make doing better work and having realer conversations much harder and often impossible. 

So, basically, if you don't do something to protect the people who do something you like, they'll stop doing what you like because they're afraid to be attacked. And once again, it's not because they do something wrong. We're still talking about attacking the innocent.

Okay. I guess I should care. What do I do about it? 

 Find out more about what happened, don't just trust me. Zak has made a blog with official statements about what happened and what he did and what he didn't do and who supported his position and who accused him and what are the proofs. Here it is: http://officialzsannouncements.blogspot.com/

When you know stuff, don't be silent. Talk about what happened. Oppose people who lie and fling false accusations. 

Join with other people who don't want to let the innocent suffer. 

Ask Zak what you can do to help. 

Everybody's Kung Fu Fighting

You know what they say. Teach a man to be a Dungeon Master, and you can sell him modules and supplements for years; show a man enough cool tricks, and he'll be able to make new ones for himself, at home, for nothing, with only a small aubergine. 

Take martial arts and fighting styles. Sure, Marvel Super Heroes had "Martial arts A" and "Martial arts E" and all that, and it was kind of okay, I guess?.. But not too exciting. 

I didn't think much about it because I didn't know there was anything that could be done to make fighting styles more interesting. 

And then came Zak. 

"Here, have Lucky Number kung fu", he said. And it was simple (the simplest, in fact, that Zak could think of), it was fun, it was definitely bringing something new to the table. It left me in the position of a monkey who had just picked up a really cool stick - I like it, I can do stuff with it that I couldn't have done before, and I have absolutely no idea how to make another one like this. But who cares - check out my cool stick! 

 Then Zak said "Hey, have some more fighting styles" (The Lucky Number, because it works, and five more, equally simple and fun). And my monkey was even happier, but also started thinking. When you have six fighting styles, you start asking yourself: What if you use this one against that one? How do they work against each other? How do they work together? 

It's a funny thing - knowing that there can be several very different styles in your game. You start looking for new stuff. I picked some moves from Xena Warrior Princess (the show and the RPG, it's an oldie but it's fun), and one interesting style from "Veins of the Earth", which was a fun book, though its authors, Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess, later behaved like shameless lying abusers. 

And then Zak said "Hey, buy Cube World #37 in The Store, it's got The Assassin's Opera",  and this time it was slightly different, because there was more than just different fighting styles - each of the Assassins had his or her own appearance, stats and weapons. And their styles tied in with what they were, looked like, and used.
Cool, I thought. I was just assembling a group of female brigands for my players to run into, and I wanted each woman to have her own style and special abilities.
And I used a couple of Zak's styles, and the rest I just invented as I looked at the figures I had ready. It turned out to be really easy. Look at her, imagine what could she do to gain an advantage, translate it into game mechanics. Done, next.

I still use Zak's kung fu now and then, because being able to invent something doesn't mean you shouldn't use the cool stuff that someone else invented for you. In fact, it's even more fun this way.