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I Am Well Acquainted With All Forms Of Misery

@masterofthesixwordsonnet

I'm Anthony. Jokes and cats abound.
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What Torchbearer Taught Me About RPGs

Google Plus is now dead. I found my preferred roleplaying-games community there. So many friends and discussions and games. I wrote the following piece on G+ in August 2017. It is the closest I’ve ever got, before or since, to RPG “theory”.

(This particular text is actually the version I posted to Facebook, which is the social-media account closest to my meat-space civilian life – hence that little oh-what-is-an-RPG-anyway? tangent.)

+++

WHAT TORCHBEARER TAUGHT ME

Torchbearer is a roleplaying game. It taught me that I shouldn’t play human characters, in roleplaying games.

~

Preamble: for the last three years, I’ve been playing a lot of tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs) over the Internet. Basically, you know that game the boys in Stranger Things play? That, but in a video conference.

I am a Person of Colour ™, and I almost always play with white dudes.

I wish this didn’t matter. But in 2015 I played with some dudes who, after hearing me speak, started talking about how English was definitely my second language.

Ever since I’ve been hyper-aware about how I present to white dudes.

~

Anyway: Torchbearer is an RPG. Based on another game called Burning Wheel, Torchbearer’s schtick is nostalgia: it is designed to emulate perilous, early Dungeons & Dragons-style dungeon crawls.

It uses BW’s “beliefs, instincts, and traits” (BITs) mechanic - define your character’s personality and goals; get rewarded for playing accordingly.

I don’t really have an issue with BITs. “Fight for what you believe in!” Oh, my self-sacrificing dwarf gets experience points for taking a hit meant for the foolhardy wizard - ie: actually being self-sacrificing? Neat!

~

But playing according to your character’s beliefs and instincts is half of how you need to play in the Torchbearer ruleset.

At the end of every session, you also get experience points for “embodiment” - roleplaying in a “believable and entertaining manner throughout the entire session”.

Basically, this means funny accents and exaggerated manners. Which - hey: also seems to makes sense. Funny accents and exaggeration is what makes RPGs fun. I want to have fun. You’re rewarding me for having fun? Neat!

~

Thing is: embodiment can only go to everybody at the table, minus one, in any given session.

It is quite a game-designer-ly thing to think that competition is a good way to make any experience points you gain feel earned / meaningful.

So: players have to rate each other’s performances. Players compete to be entertaining.

And, in my group, embodiment effectively became the “you were the least memorable character, tonight, no XP for you” penalty.

~

I found a group to play Torchbearer with, on Roll20.

My first Torchbearer character was a not-conquistador: a cleric with light in his heart, come to bring Civilisation to savage lands.

He only ever got embodiment once, when I gave him an awful accent (his name was Ulric, so it was a German accent) as a last-ditch attempt to make myself stand out.

My second Torchbearer character was a goth-chick assassin. She spoke in a slinky voice and wore the blood of her victims as makeup. Massive OTT edge-lady.

The other dudes didn’t think much of her, either.

~

Okay, fine. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a great role-player. Gotta try harder!

My third Torchbearer character was Slessik, the snivelling rat-man coward. Great warriors protect Slessik, yes-yes? I did the raspy voice and the hunched posture and mimed licking my whiskers and everything.

Slessik was a hit. His embodiment rate? 100%!

I had fun playing him. And, because in Torchbearer how well-liked you are basically equals how survivable your player-character is, Slessik was my longest-lasting character.

~

After Slessik, I had enough of playing an essentially non-human character. (It made my throat sore.)

My fourth Torchbearer character was an elf. He began as a slave. He was lazy, and tried stupid schemes to get out of work; this meant he got in trouble, more often than not.

He was also a massive coward. Essentially, I saw him as Slessik, in elf form, with a stammer instead of a hunch and rasp.

~

No more embodiment. Like, 0%.

My elf died pretty quick. Dead by the - second session, I think?

I sighed, and switched to a fearless, leap-into-danger mantis-man. He / it spoke in a raspy monotone, and was a ravenous predator.

One was the other dudes said:

“Yay! Slessik is back!”

~

Was it because I didn’t do a voice, with my “human” PCs?

But the other dudes didn’t do voices, either. They got their experience points.

Maybe I just didn’t play with enough colour. But - the other dudes played characters just as trope-y and textbook as my own. Proud barbarian; mysterious wizard; quiet Aragorn-type ranger. They were archetypes, they were fun, they got embodiment.

But I didn’t. Not unless I played a monster.

~

I started thinking about the other campaigns I’d played, online, with white dudes.

I realised I had a tendency to other myself. Play outsiders. Strict cannibal savage. Cyborg with binary-to-human translator. In any party of adventurers, I was usually the outlier figure.

Easier, you know? In our video conferences, I had different skin, a different speech pattern. I couldn’t understand certain references. Didn’t laugh at certain jokes. I kept quiet when the other guys talked about American-football teams.

Mirroring that dynamic in-game meant less dissonance, on the whole.

~

You know - that’s fine. I’m not about to pretend the cultural divide isn’t there. Neither am I going to make a big fuss about it.

It’s just - a thing.

~

But there’s a lesson here, for designers - of games, or otherwise:

~

Thor Olavsrud, Torchbearer’s creator, day-jobs in tech.

His collaborator, the designer of Burning Wheel, Luke Crane, works for Kickstarter.

Crane has previously said that he designs his games against social dysfunction. He believes that players will inevitably, inadvertently be anti-social fucks, so Burning Wheel (and, by extension, Torchbearer) are systems designed to make that impossible.

These are systems that handhold you to civility, making sure that there are incentives for working together, being group-oriented, entertaining your fellow players.

~

Olavsrud and Crane are liberal types. Crane has taken selfies with Anita Sarkeesian. Hearts in the right place, and all that.

But I think it is a distinctly technocratic stance to think that people are intrinsically going to be terrible.

And that the solution isn’t to be adults and talk out our problems, but build a system where bad behaviour is impossible. “Solve” the human condition through better design.

~

That doesn’t work.

Torchbearer, a game / ruleset / system Olavsrud and Crane designed, because it tries to account for and course-correct real-life-people-around-a-table social dynamics in its system design -

Is the only game I’ve ever played that, in effect:

(a) mechanically rewarded me for intentionally other-ing myself, and (b) mechanically punished me for not other-ing myself.

~

My takeaway from all this:

Don’t try to manage real-life social dynamics using rules and systems. It doesn’t work. And it will probably cause some harm.

+++

Two years on, re-reading this, I still stand by what it says, by and large. I remain skeptical of using (game) design to social-engineer a Better World. (That still belongs to real-world organising and activism. No shortcuts!)

Two things I’d do differently:

1) “Crane has previously said that he designs his games against social dysfunction.“ 

I no longer remember the source of this assertion, so as it stands now it’s a claim with no evidence. (I will argue that the design notes in the Burning Wheel rulebook support the idea, though.)

2) I’d further emphasise that there were no bad-intentioned people in the above account.

Torchbearer’s designers are progressives. The guys I played with were – with one notable, Pizzagate-believing exception – decent folk. I still remember most of the sessions I had with those guys fondly. They probably identify as woke.

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theomancycos

Eileen the Crow jacket and cape, made by me

I actually opted for a dark gray wool instead of black this time and airbrushed in the shadows during weathering to create more visual depth than you typically can get with black fabric.

The feathers in the cape are a mix of strips of painted black gauze with some added real feathers for visual interest. I'd be down to make a tutorial for the gauze feathers if that was something people were interested in!

If you're interested in commissioning a costume like this for yourself, email me at theomancycostuming@gmail.com

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keepcalmandcarriefischer

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdQuxw52/

I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful

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saint-batrick

if you're not from the us american south, there's some amazing nuances to this you may have missed. i can't really describe all of them, because i've lived here my whole life and a lot of the body language is sort of a native tongue thing. the body language is its own language, and i am not so great at teaching language. i do know i instinctively sucked on my lower teeth at the same time as he did, and when he scratched the side of his face, i was ready to take up fucking arms with him.

but y'all. the way he said "brutus is an honourable man" - each and every time it changed just a little. it was the full condemnation Shakespeare wanted it to be. it started off slightly mock sincere. barely trying to cover the sarcasm. by the end...it wasn't a threat, it was a promise.

christ, he's good.

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anais-ninja-bitch

the eliding of “you all” to “y’all” while still maintaining 2 syllables is a deliberate and brilliant act of violence. “bear with me” said exactly like i’ve heard it at every funeral. the choices of breaking and re-establishing of eye contact. the balance of rehearsed and improvised tone. A+++ get this man a hollywood contract.