Stop that. You’re helping no one.

Too often, fruitful discussion of problems is derailed by proposed solutions and then argument over the solution’s foreseen effects. Sometimes, that leads to further understanding of the problem, but just as often it turns into a pointless waste of energy in the form of a flame war.

It also creates a situation where “I see a problem and want to talk about it” is unhealthy, because the discussion desired is not the discussion created. And then those sorts of conversation seeds are less often planted, which hurts us all (if, like me, you believe that discourse is how we elevate our communities).

Next time someone presents a problem, take a moment to understand it. Set aside your assumptions as best you can — especially when those assumptions are counter to the problem. Like countering someone saying “I don’t like playing games like Burning Wheel because they’re too crunchy for me” with “Well, it isn’t for me” as though the human being you’re replying to is the problem.[2] Ask questions. Get some sense of what is behind the problem.

I understand the desire to immediately problem solve, because that is for many of us its own reward cycle. And I understand the impulse to be the first to post a new solution online, because then maybe you look smart and that’s yet another form of reward. But slow your roll and take some time to understand problems, and you’ll get something even better out of it:

You’ll become one of the sharpest people in the room, for having come to understand so many viewpoints. And you’ll be one of the more appreciated people in the room, because instead of being an assuming cockbite with fast, vacant answers, yours are thoughtful and are themselves worthy conversation seeds.

So, if you cannot bring yourself to slowing down and understanding someone else for the good of others and the community overall, consider the rather selfish ones I just stated. :)

- Ryan

[2] If you say that, punch yourself in the face right now. That’s pretty damned insulting to immediately suggest the other person is him or herself the problem.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #31: How would your life be different if you’d never gotten into gaming?

Gaming has influenced my life so much that it’s hard to say. At minimum, I doubt anyone before friends, family & random coworkers would know my name. I wouldn’t be invited as guests to places and all that jazz.

More than that, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be alive today. That I’m typing this is right now is no small deal.

But I’m not ready to explain that in more detail. At least, not yet.

- Ryan

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #30: What lessons have you taken from gaming that you can apply to your real life?

That’s a tough question. I have been gaming sine late high school. My friends, social life, and now business prospects all involve gaming. Narrowing it down to one set of lessons? I don’t think I can.

But rather than try to iterate many lessons, I’ll name just one. One I have mentioned before: we make our own win conditions.

Gaming & being a game designer over the years has taught me about the value, power, and limits of amateur psychology.

- Ryan

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #29: What does the word “gamer” mean to you? Is that different than what other people seem to think it means?

Self-identifying game enthusiast.

Granted, these days “gamer” covers so much ground. Do you play Call of Duty? World of Warcraft? iOS games? Board games? RPGs? The word does not even pretend to mean a tribe anymore, as it did once when gaming was a thing to apparently be shameful about.

- Ryan

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #28: Do you have any house rules when you game? What are they, and why do you use them? If not, why not?

There’s a theory that all gaming is influenced by house rules, and that’s one of the formative elements of roleplaying. I find that idea interesting and feels like it fits with 90% of what we do.

Anyone following my blow knows I talk about game hacks, which is what game designers call “house rules”. :)

- Ryan

Thinking about the work will help you answer questions you know, so it’s good to chill and think outside of the actual moment of working. But in doing the work, writing or designing or whatever, something interesting happens: you discover questions you didn’t expect, and — more importantly — you discover answers you didn’t expect.

I’m changing Mythender’s character creation up a bit, to make it faster for convention play. If you’ve seen the character creation from before, you’ll see that there are different questions for your Heart and for your History (now called Past). They were open-ended questions. Some people dug them. Some people stalled. So I decided to just have three stock answers to chose from for each.[2]

Which, by the way, is a fuckton of content to make up.

The other thing you had to make up before, which I’m now putting on as choices, are what your Weapons are. I wasn’t sure how to do that; a couple months of mild thinking about this didn’t answer the question, and since I’m running this in a couple days, I had to just sit down and do it wrong just to have it done.

In doing that, the solution presented itself: the Weapons you choose come from the choices you pick for those questions. Now, that seems obvious, but it wasn’t obvious when I wasn’t sitting down and actually doing the work.

(Why I wasn’t doing the work? Making up 108 answers felt daunting, even though I know the way I should have done it is to do a little at a time. Sometimes, I’m a damned moron. :)

I’ve felt that way project after project, and if I need reminding of it, I’m sure others do to. So, if you’re stuck, and taking a moment hasn’t unstuck you, sit down and just be willing to do it wrong. You’ll discover unexpected answers in that path.

- Ryan

[1] I stumbled upon this old post recently, which I never followed up on with Part II. Or my blog is an ongoing Part II. I’ll go with the latter.

[2] For those who liked filling in the blank, that still exists. It’s now called “Advanced Character Creation,” and the text for that is pretty much “The questions are there. Pick your own answers & Weapons.”

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #27: If you were an Ent, what kind of Ent would you be? Or, what other NPC creature would you be? Why?

The idea of “NPC Creature” is weird. Again, one of those “yeah, these questions highlight that my hobby is so damned different from other people who also play RPGs” questions.

But I can say that being a Shadowrun-style dragon would be pretty fucking boss.

- Ryan

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #26: Who or what was the most memorable NPC you’ve ever encountered? Why?

Hmm. So many games.

I can think of one, but it was memorable because it was a really bad GM bit, where the GM had his pet NPC in a convention one-shot, and was talking about him after the game was over. I won’t go in any further, because that’s unkind.

There’s one thing. I was playing in a Sorcerer game run by Jesse Burneko (of the Actual People, Actual Play podcast). It was a Victorian gothic game with a heavy familiar theme, and my demon was my grandfather bound in a pocket watch. The only way the watch could communicate was through normal pocket watch activity. During a tense scene, I was talking with him/it. Jesse delivered a powerful performance of a barely animate object that sticks with me today.

- Ryan

Here’s the thing: life isn’t going to give you those moments. At least, it won’t when you need them. (Frankly, you probably get them more often than you think, and don’t notice them. But that’s a digression.)

I will digress a little further, and make a gaming analogy.[1] In Don’t Rest Your Head, as the GM spends Coins of Despair, they turn into Coins of Hope for the players. The players may, when their characters are in a moment of rest or calm, spend one of those Hope to heal their character.

And as the GM, it’s not my fucking job to give you those moments. You want to heal? You want to breathe? Make that moment happen.

The same with life. You need to make those moments happen when you need them. Sometimes that means pushing to accomplish something pressing harder than you otherwise might. But sometimes it means being honest with your capacity as a human being and carve out a time where you can breathe despite the feeling that the walls are closing in.

I cannot tell you which is right for you, because it’s all situational. I have to deal with a bunch of pressing health stuff right now, which cannot wait long. But once I accomplish the next goal with that, I can give myself a day or two to breathe. On the other hand, sometimes I need to give myself the day off of freelance work, because the pressure causes me to become subpar with the work. And evaluating which is which is a skill that I’ve only started to hone, and am far from mastering.

When these moments happen, I try to ask myself (though the wording is not quite like this in the moment in my mind): What is the most pressing problem? What’s needed to deal with this? Will pushing on it be a detriment to my short-term or long-term sanity?

And when I deem I need to, I force moments in time for me to breathe. Because no one is going to hand those to me.

That I didn’t do this enough in 2010 is why I crashed hard, burning business relationships and some friendships, and why I slowed down in 2011. After all, sometimes the reason we need those moments to breathe, sometimes we feel like we’re being pushed too hard, that’s because we’re doing it to ourselves.

I encourage everyone who works with me on projects to do the same thing, and I try to recognize (when I’m able, like when we’re working in the same office) when people need and aren’t themselves recognizing it or feeling the ability to ask. Because sometimes we need some help from allies to make those moments happen. No one’s an island, etc.

- Ryan

[1] Which breaks my rule for analogies: stick to food, relationships, or sex. Other analogies, including sports, don’t always translate. (Which reminds me of a story that Paul Tevis told me about baseball analogies not translating to his Swiss coworkers.)

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #25: If you game enough, you’re bound to run into someone being an ass. What’s the most asinine thing someone’s done in a game with you? How did you react? Did that experience change the way you game?

Two stories.

I once told a guy I regularly gamed with to never come back to one of my convention games when he, in two of them, talked shit like “oh, well, when Ryan’s running at home, the game would have already been over” or “oh, Ryan will let me get away with this.”

For the second one… [TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Assault]

One time, this one gamer in a Montsegur 1244 game (a GM-less one with scene pass-around) had a scene with my character, and he started it by screaming “You raped me!” In, uh, a crowded game store. There wasn’t a person at that table who happily engaged with him after that.

I sort of half-larp sometimes, standing up and exploring the physical space, and I literally walked out of that scene. Paul Tevis talked about this some time ago on Have Games, Will Travel.

The solution that some of us have taken is to just avoid these sorts of people. Sometimes I’ll walk away from a game if I see such a person there. Life is too short to play games that I feel are going to be shat upon by toxic gamers.

- Ryan

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #24: Have you ever been to a game convention? What was it like to be surrounded by so many other gamers? If not, would you like to go to one? Why or why not?

*laugh*

Once or twice. [1];)

I love it. I do small, regional shows. I do Origins, Gen Con & PAX. I run game gatherings. I love getting the tribe together. It helps purge the toxicity that Internet bullshit & miscommunication creates. Plus, it’s just great to meet people in the flesh and game face-to-face with new folks.

- Ryan

[1] By which I mean between ten and twenty a year, for those who don’t know why I’m laughing.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #23: Have you ever experienced Total Party Kill (TPK), or been close to it? What effect did that have on you personally? On your group of players? Have you ever used retroactive continuity (retcon) to save yourself? Why or why not?

Quite a few times, but I’ll just talk about two unusual cases.

One was a game of Mythender that went a different direction, and we played with the PvP rules. The PvP rules, incidentally, are geared to make mutual play death likely.

And they did. Total party kill, if I remember right. But it was a good end to that game, a fitting note about what godlike beings might do to one another.

Another was an old GURPS Black Ops game I ran. The idea was that I was going to TPK the group in the first session, in order to end it with all the characters coming back as reanimated operatives five years later. And like many ideas, this was a good idea…that was almost executed for shit.

One player was in on it. And we did a long running attempt-at-Ronin chase/battle where I kept overwhelming and killing them one by one. Which was not exactly one. One guy kept rolling really well, and eventually I decided to stop pursuing him when he was the only one left.

They were about ready to tell me to fuck off and never run again when I turned to one guy and said “Hey, Mike, you should roll Fright Check.” He looked confused — they all did — but he complied, and we ended up the characters waking up mid-reanimation procedure. As a group, we ended on an interesting — and good! — note.

Oh, and this was my first time GMing with this group, over a decade ago. So, yeah, there are better introductions. But I stayed one of the regular GMs, so that’s something.

I later pulled this trick again in a GURPS WWII Winter War/Weird War game, but I started with “We’re going to start with normal soldiers being slaughtered, like the beginning on a zombie flick, before we get to your Ski Patrol badasses”. I learned to preface. :)

- Ryan

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #22: Describe the worst game you’ve ever played in. What made it so bad? Did your fellow players help, or make it worse?

My very first game of Dungeons & Dragons. I think second edition. It’s the high water mark for “shittiest game”, which I guess is more “high sewer mark”.

I was asked to join a game for a one-shot, as I was in town crashing over at a friend’s place. They were a third level chaotic evil party.

Yeah, it’s one of those stories.

I make my character before the game, with some help. A third level elf wizard named Brennan Quisinart.[1]  When we get to the game, as it starts, the DM describes the camp and then asks me what I’m doing.

“Uh, I guess I’m warming myself by the fire?”

He rolls some dice behind the screen, and says I take some amount of damage (he said something specific, but I cannot recall the numbers, just the hatred). I died, due to arrow fire that came in from no where.

Then the attack begins, where everyone else fought and I did fuck all but watch.

After the fight, we talk for a moment about whether I need to roll up a new character. I pointed out that I hadn’t actually played the old one, so maybe I could just rename him. So I did.

Oh, and my body was looted by another PC. So when I come back, I played my character’s half-brother, Shaft Quisinart. Because, well, I got shafted. I also described my elf as essentially blackface, because apparently I thought mock racism was funny once.

I asked for my character’s stuff back. What happened instead was said PC murdering my second character.

So…take three on my elf wizard. This was was Superfly Quisinart. I remember describing goldfish platform boots. I don’t know why. Probably because I was being shat on and making someone laugh was a new personal win condition. Said character did not challenge to tough fighter for his shit back, mainly so I could actually play.

And we played some bullshit game where “oh, you mesmerize the barmaid” was cool. They found some table of STDs in D&D and randomly rolled “Mummy Crotch Rot” for my character, though that was a long-term affliction, so whatever. Ha ha, STDs. Ha ha, joking about the fantasy equivalent of rohypnol.

Later, we had the climatic fight and we won…somehow with me having two Magic Missile spells memorized. So I used them against the guy who killed my second character, took back my item, and no one gave a shit. There was a joke of “yeah, that player never has characters survive.” They were even sort of celebrating this momentary win until I took it away.

I only remember one guy’s name, and haven’t seen them in years. I hope those guys aren’t douchebags anymore. But yeah, that was my first experience with D&D, and I’m glad it wasn’t my first experience with gaming.

- Ryan

[1] Don’t judge me. We were all young once.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #21: What’s the best bribe you’ve ever given (or received as) a GM? What did you get (give) for it?

My only response is to be somewhat disgusted by the question.

- Ryan

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #20: What was the most memorable character death you’ve ever experienced? What makes it stick with you?

I cannot remember the name of the character, but I remember most of the other details. This was a GURPS Fantasy game several years ago, with a heavy Inquisition theme. My Christian knight character was essentially fucked politically, captured, and given to the Head Inquisitor in the region to extract truths & confession. He was a very devout knight, loyal to the idea of the crown more than to the actual forces at work that had true power. That was..a problem.

That he travelled with a Muslim of note was also an issue, in the form of “another reason we’re going to torture you, as an example.” It was a very hardcore, religious war-themed game. Brutal. And an entire session was a smash-cut back and forth to the rest of the party trying to figure out how to break him out of the fortress and my torture.

I made some will rolls, but was never told that my character completely submitted. The GM took a novel-for-the-time twist of letting me decide that. I didn’t want to go out like that, so I didn’t. And we kept talking & playing scenes of torture.

I learned a lot about medieval torture devices & methods in that session.

In the end, he was sentenced to be burned at the stake in the square. The party, in disguise, watched him die.

That was the session, and turned out to be the high point of the campaign, as after that it flopped and a couple sessions later went on permanent hiatus. Still, hell of a character death.

- Ryan

I strive to be unnecessary, on my terms.

This might sound weird, but when I come onto a project, it’s because my skills are needed. Same reason anyone comes on board something, ideally. Some of my jobs at Evil Hat involve figuring out what resources we have for our Fate & Dresden projects, project a publication date, and then figure out deadlines to get to that point (or revise the publication date because the deadlines are unreasonable). I talk with writers & editors to figure out how the hell we do this thing. And I talk with Fred about what his needs as a publisher are.

That was my job when I came on board for Dresden, because that didn’t exist. Amanda Valentine was attempting that, but she was fighting a hard battle, between gaining rapport & trust with the crew and Evil Hat growing as a company & learning to, well, be something more than a three-man band, it wasn’t working. At one point, I said “okay, my turn” and I started coordinating with everyone. I had a decent rapport with most of the people involved, and I have the sort of personality that worked in that moment to get the project moving.

Today, Amanda’s that person on the Paranet Papers, and I’m happy. Why? Because I made myself unnecessary for that role. (I am, of course, still doing that for Don’t Hack This Game.) I don’t just want to bring my skills, I want to transfer them. I want others to learn from whatever I’m doing — good and bad — just as I want to learn from them. And in doing so, a really cool thing happens:

I become free to grow and try other stuff.

I grew up in a world of people who became necessary, became core to the place where they worked. That is, until they got laid off, and then they struggled to find relevance in a job market that changed on them. As a third-generation software developer, I grew up in this world, watching us move for jobs or struggle in unemployment, vague memories I don’t quite understand because I was young. When you become too important to a place, growth is stifled. When you work 50+ hours a week, the time & energy to develope professionally for the future is cut short.

So, I try to make myself unnecessary, on my terms. I still strive to be useful & highly skilled, but not so core to something that I am lost when life happens and I’m suddenly out of a job. And not so core to something that if I’m hit by a truck, people who depended on me are now totally fucked over.

That’s what I mean when I say “on my terms.” When I’m in control of how I keep myself from becoming to necessary to something, then I have the flexibility to adapt to life changes. I know many people who fear this state of being, because they see no security there. But having worked in government service, I see such security as an illusion; no one can provide security to you but you.

This is likely a ramble to most people, but it’s been on my mind since I’ve re-entered unemployment.

- Ryan

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #19: What’s the weirdest character you’ve ever played? How did you end up with him/her/it?

Let’s stick to PCs I’ve played. I don’t know if I can pick the weirdest, but I can focus on the first weird character I played. I cannot remember his name — it was over ten years ago — but it was the second D&D 2/e game I played. I talked with the DM, and wanted to play what we ended up calling “a chromatic elf.” I was one of a cursed elf tribe whose skin changed color based on the moods of those around him. Not his moods, which was key.

This lead him to becoming the party’s scout. They figured out the distance they could stand to not affect his skin, and had him march out. When his skin changed color, that was trouble.

Oh, and he was a first level mage. Who miraculously survived the couple sessions I played.

Which, thinking on it, is the sort of weird I like. Take one thing, and otherwise play it straight. He was a scared, timid thing because, you know, the whole world was pretty fucking scary and he was suddenly the party’s coal mine canary.

How I ended up with him? Probably because I was in my “I want to be a unique snow flake” phase. I was young, in college, and a sad nerd. You know the story. And I had a silly idea that ended up being a bit harder than I expected.

You know what? I kinda want to play that again.

- Ryan

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #18: Have you ever “cheated” on a die roll/random chance outcome, or looked up a quest solution on a fan site? Why or why not? If yes, was it worth it?

Oh, totally. I mean, I’ve been playing for years, and occasionally out of frustration in the past I have just lied about a die roll. And I understand why: in games where failure is uninteresting and brutal, and when die rolls are repeating like in a long-form battle or combat-focused RPG, having a third boring failure in a row while others are having better luck is fucking frustrating.

I accept this in a minis game. Luck is a big part of that. But I want luck to have less primacy — not none, but less — in what I feel is a collaborative experience. Or I want said element to have some fucking meaning.

On the flip side, I have fudged rolls as a GM. Sometimes I have lied about a good roll and sometimes about a bad one. This is before I really got acquainted with the Let It Ride philosophy, and it’s something I did more with GURPS than in any other game.

These days, I like playing games where this isn’t an issue, for one reason or another.

- Ryan

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #17: What was the best reward you’ve ever gotten in a game? What made it so great? How much do you need tangible rewards (loot, leveling, etc.) to enjoy a game?

As a dirty, hippie story gamer, the best reward I’ve gotten in a game in the game itself.

No, seriously. I cannot recall any item or treasure that I’ve gained in a game that has been memorable. That’s not what turns my gamer crank.

That said, the act of acquisition & progression are important psychological reinforcement cycles to reinforce a moment of accomplishment. Long, long ago, when I did Master Plan podcast, I did an episode on my personal theories on advancement. I should revisit that topic as a blog post.

- Ryan

Good luck, folks.

We learned a lot with Third Edition — in design, in marketing, in the OGL experiment, in long-tail publication, all of that jazz.

We learned a lot with Fourth Edition — again in design, but also how the effects it had and the different crowds it drew to and away from it

Regardless of which edition you like better, if you like either at all, you would be a fool to not learn from all of that. And I hope that D&D Next will give us more to learn from again. Not just the negative examples the Twittersphere harps on about, but some honestly good stuff too. And given the design team, I trust we’ll see something eye-opening.

Rock on, folks.

And to everyone who is going off crazytown, making huge, declarative statements about what will happen, keep doing that. I’ve bookmarked some of the crazier ones for when I need a good laugh.

- Ryan