10 by 10 room

John Kim, on Vincent Baker’s blog:

And you know, when I look at people’s reactions to Dogs in the Vineyard or even Kill Puppies For Satan, I don’t see many people offended—judging by the threads on RPGnet or such. Vincent may get a clueless email or two, but most people just don’t care. The recent games people have gotten up in arms about are games like Blue Rose and Wraeththu. Guess why?

Context: Dogs in the Vineyard presents a sort of backward highly patriarchal society, but this was okay because we players are supposed to be in a position to judge it. (And also, the rough historical analogue did have this kind of patriachy.)

On the other hand, Blue Rose presents the trope of romantic fantasy, depicting a lot more gender / sexual equality than most fantasy. And yes, on several major fora, Blue Rose is held up as some oppressive tract, crushing down on the rights of the heterosexual.

Interesting, that.

My friend finished his game of Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot, ported to the Dogs in the Vineyard system. And he has a list of NPCs. Excerpts include:

Benjamin Disraeli (apparently pro-nuke)
William Gladstone (apparently anti-nuke)
The Magnificent Brotherhood of the Flying Machines (blue-clad Irish ninjas on ornithopters)

I am so, so very proud.

Folk were talking about possibly adding “roleplaying bonuses” to Dogs in the Vineyard”, but the consensus was that the Social Contract among players was where a problem was really at. DannyK’s interpretation:

The price of a stripped down, narratively driven system like the DitV system is that the system doesn’t provide as much protection against asshats. That’s common to a lot of Forge-baked games. You could narrate your character god-modding and killling everybody n Chicago in hand-to-hand combat in a PTA game, and there’s nothing but the contempt of your fellow players to stop you.

Does that make them bad games? Of course not. It just means you have to be careful who you play them with. “Will allow you to play with asshats” is not a very good design goal for an RPG.

But really, Brand reminds us:

Of course, this is the same with D&D.

GM: “The orc comes swinging his sword at you, what do you do?”

Player: “I tell him I like toast”—player pushes forward a natural 20 and grins.

GM: “The fuck?”

Player: “I like toast with a natural 20. That’s critical toast liking.”

GM: “Right… the orc ignores your toast liking and kills your ass. Go roll up a new character.”

Of course there’s still a need to put more structure onto the rules / pre-existing social contract, rather than straining the ad hoc social contract further. But dude: toast.