Shared Items

Pirate Jenny: Finally!

Danielle Lewon has released Kagematsu!

I got mine! Now you go get yours. Then, let’s play.

Check out the nifty cover design:

This really caught my fancy, so I’ve gotta share it:

I am … well, I’m just blown away. Beautiful leather masks from an artisan named Andrea aka “Merimask” in New York. I am in awe. Just go look, you don’t need to read my jabbering any more. Go. Now.

merimask’s Gallery.

Rob’s got several juicy ideas to share here. I’ll quote the one that hit me deepest.

In other media, you may become invested in the characters, but in RPGs, the characters may become invested in you (or at least your character). The creation of a reality that looks back on the actor is huge, and it's often dismissed as mere sleight of hand since these people and places are not real, but I would counter that the fact that they are fiction does not rob this of its power. Most creative media rests on the idea that we may be powerfully and truly moved by fiction, and I see no reason to carve out an exemption here.

via Rob Donoghue: Considering the Medium.

That’s certainly why I keep turning to RPGs. They’re the only place I get the kind of reflective impact I crave. All I would add to that is that for me, it also matters a great deal that the act is extroverted and collaborative, so that there’s a whole slew of reflective potency weaving and surging around that moves everyone in ways that an introverted creative act can’t match.

John Harper shares something that is so elegant and simple that it will likely become my new yardstick for measuring the characters I play, the situations I introduce as a GM, and the things upon which I focus during game/setting creation (including VAM and Scarlet Masque). In terms of my preferred style of play, I’d say that it doesn’t matter one little bit what sort of cool setting, premise, theme or concept that you come up with unless you’ve got these four items firmly intact:

What makes a fit character for (a roleplaying) game? The Four Cs.

Connected: The character has relationships (positive and negative) with other significant characters in the situation.

Committed: The character has a stake in the outcome of the situation, and will stay to see it through.

Capable: The character has the capacity to affect change in the situation by taking decisive action.

Conflicted: The character has beliefs and goals that are in conflict. They must make choices about which are more important, and which must be abandoned or changed.

via John Harper @ The Mighty Atom.

And of course I submit Lady Blackbird as an excellent example of this in practice.  I’d rather play a 12-page game that sets up the Four Cs perfectly than play a 300-page game that doesn’t.

Here’s a great gem of sequential art that Tommi Brander shared on Google Reader, and now I’m sharing it with you.

“With no one challenging me I choose to challenge myself.” – Tumble Upon Johl.

So true. So very very true.

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker’s father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

- Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy