Today on approachable theory we’re talking about meta accessibility tools, and we’re going to start by breaking down what I mean by that term. Read more!
Today on approachable theory we’re talking about meta accessibility tools, and we’re going to start by breaking down what I mean by that term.
Continue reading “approachable theory: Meta Accessibility Tools”I want to talk about so many things in the realm of Wolfenstein and how it portrays masculine characters, but I want to talk first about the characters themselves. We’ve addressed how Wolfenstein: The New Order talks about masculinity through the main character William “B.J.” Blazkowicz, and how it functions in genre. Now I want to address some of the other characters that are in the game and how they are presented (I may not address all your faves, sorry).
This is part of a series on masculinity and the game Wolfenstein: A New Order. The series focuses exclusively on Wolfenstein: A New Order and the characters within it, though it does reference the backstories of characters that may not be revealed until later games in that series. Much of the specific details here were sourced in the Wolfenstein Wiki.
Content warning: Nazis, hate crimes, domestic abuse (parent-child, spousal), violence, homophobia, racism, ableism, eugenics, torture, suicide, animal cruelty
SPOILERS for Wolfenstein: The New Order and elements of Wolfenstein: The New Colossus.
I want to talk about so many things in the realm of Wolfenstein and how it portrays masculine characters, but I want to talk first about the characters themselves. We’ve addressed how Wolfenstein: The New Order talks about masculinity through the main character William “B.J.” Blazkowicz, and how it functions in genre. Now I want to address some of the other characters that are in the game and how they are presented (I may not address all your faves, sorry). I also played the Wyatt timeline, one of the most vital decisions in the game, so I won’t address Fergus or his timeline much (playing thru again hasn’t been possible with my cognitive issues). I’ll likely address characters like Caroline, Frau Engel, and Anya in a separate article, because that’s a very different matter.
Note: I may not discuss Sigrun, Frau Engel’s daughter, from The New Colossus in detail due to how her experiences are related to my own trauma, and since she is from a later game. We’ll see!
First up, we’ll address the Resistance. Note that I don’t think that these characters are without flaws, but I want to appreciate their good characteristics.
I want to talk about Max Hass with a desperation. Max is a pacifist, and was born with a brain injury and abandoned as a child. I love Max for a lot of reasons, but I will note that he experiences the stereotype of many mentally disabled folks in that he is physically minimally vulnerable, very strong, and speaks simplistically – only saying his name. This portrayal is obviously from a challenging perspective and can be harmful. However, the character is well-loved, heroic, shown to be mostly capable except for his own traumatic responses, and while he is shown to be childlike, he is distinctly masculine in his presentation.
Max is flawed in his presentation in regards to ability, though he is definitely fitting a trope. But he’s portrayed as a masculine character in a youthful way, which is something we rarely see in war games. Childlike natures are often presented as juvenile, rather than something understandable that people respect and support, like when B.J. helps recover Max’s lost toys as part of an achievement and story thread. Max Hass is an example of a character that could have been done better, but to me his inclusion was valuable – it’s okay to be disabled, to perhaps be childlike, regardless of the reasons behind those things. You can still be loved, still be a boy at heart. These are things we often strip from disabled masculine people, so it mattered to me.
Next to Max, we don’t go so far to find Klaus Kreutz, who is the one who recovered Max from behind a dumpster after losing his own disabled child to the Nazis eugenics. He was originally a Nazi soldier, and after losing his son and his wife in a tragic encounter, grew to deeply hate the Nazis and their ideology. He turned against the Nazis and became a member of the Resistance, and while he encountered initial conflict with B.J., they eventually become colleagues that respect each other. This encounter is shown in The New Order, and is important because in many instances, we frame Nazis or fascists as not real men or even men who change sides as not real men because they’re disloyal or because Real Men don’t do violence, and this is a flawed and messed up concept. In the game, they don’t portray the situation as such, instead focusing on the Nazi atrocities and whether Klaus might harbor any Nazi beliefs.
Klaus is shown as caring, and loving towards Max. He is without a doubt portrayed as a masculine character with a past of violence, but now he instead cares for Max as if he was his own child, and doesn’t question giving his life for the resistance. He embodies heroic qualities and paternal qualities we associate with adoptive fathers. Doing this to someone who left Nazi service and showing that people can change is a vital element of the storytelling in The New Order.
The flip of the coin is Probst Wyatt II, a dedicated and initially idealistic soldier who served alongside B.J. and in one timeline of the game, he is the character saved from the terrifying Deathshead, a villain who tortures the characters quite horrifically. Wyatt experiences post-traumatic stress disorder from the war and depression after the suicide of his mother. He is one of the few genuine portrayals of mental illness in a masculine character I’ve seen in AAA games where the illness is recognized and respected. Wyatt is given space to struggle through his illnesses and not forced to participate in further war, and granted space within the Resistance compound to recover and rest.
I cannot describe how much Wyatt’s story impacted me. I am so very used to seeing symptoms of mental illness hidden in games, washed over or described as supernatural or unreal. They’re often shamed, or dismissed as unmanly or unmasculine and masculine people who struggle with mental illness are emasculated and lose their agency. They’re shamed if they take space to deal with or struggle with their trauma. How many moments ask you to “Man Up”? Doesn’t Wolfenstein itself use a frankly shitty difficulty level imagery with B.J. in baby clothes if you choose the easier difficulty? (Don’t think I’ve forgotten it, I think about it every day.) Wyatt’s struggle is vital and important, and the way the rest of the characters treat it is even more important for any type of character, but definitely a masculine one.
Note: From what I know, Wyatt copes with addiction in an attempt to help his illness in The New Colossus, but does recover after some challenges. I think this is also an important story, and hope to play through it someday.
J, one of my favorite characters, is one of the few Black characters featured in The New Order (aside from Bombate, who I adore) and is the survivor of a hate crime by United States white supremacists. He is a guitarist and initially, as mentioned in the previous article, finds conflict with B.J. because he tells B.J. that in the U.S., white people (and implicitly, I think, the military) were the Nazis. J is so important to the story that it disappoints me not all players might fully engage with his story and his scenes, since they aren’t mandatory, but he opens B.J.’s mind literally and figuratively by playing music and giving B.J. drugs that cause him to hallucinate, but also reflect on his thoughts about Black Americans and about the role of white U.S. citizens in the oppression of Black people. It’s a beautiful scene.
J himself is portrayed in many ways like Jimi Hendrix, who he appears to be based on – natural hair, colorful clothing styled like 60s and 70s funk fashion (as much as can be managed in the war). He does not fit the white concept of masculinity, and that’s important. He could be seen by some to be flamboyant, but instead he is presented as expressing himself. He could have been presented as hyper masculine and robust in a racist stereotype, but instead he is thin, scarred, but still resilient. I could say a lot more about J, but I would want to hear more from Black players on his masculine portrayal, and on that of Bombate.
Bombate is a Resistance fighter and I know that in The New Colossus he is portrayed somewhat as a womanizer, cheating on one character with another. However, in The New Order, he’s steadfast and tells stories of his experiences at the hands of the Nazis. Bombate traveled north from his home in Southwest Africa (Namibia) to face the Nazis head on, and after two years was put into a forced labor camp. He has been through immense trauma, but it never once is designed in The New Order for you to feel any disrespect for him for the way he processes that trauma or to see him as anything other than heroic.
He is framed as masculine, and is not dismissed as a threat to the Nazis. Bombate is an immediate powerful ally for the player as B.J., respected and trusted. It is refreshing to see a character presented so simply as someone just and who did the right thing, even if they suffered, and not have the whole story be how they are now weak because of their trauma (but not presenting them as unrealistically powerful, either). Especially for masculine characters, I feel like this is underrepresented.
The final Resistance character I want to address is Set Roth. Set is one of the only Jewish characters we interact with, aside from B.J., and the highest profile masculine Jewish character whose identity is relevant. While there are absolutely concerns about the portrayal of Judaism in Wolfenstein, I was happy to see a Jewish character at all since past games kind of blurred over that beyond the main character (whose identity wasn’t really addressed). As far as masculinity goes, Set is presented as an elderly man, but still virile, still brilliant, and would by many be stereotyped as a wise old man (never failing to lose that vibe of men-are-smarter-than-women). However, he works alongside Caroline as an equal, and never once places value on masculinity of himself or others over that of the mission or the women in the game.
Set is unusual in that his gender and presentation is not so overt and this may be a case of how we tend to de-gender or minimalize the genders or presentation of people who aren’t the standard issue white person, but it also may be related to the fact that he is older and we desexualize and de-gender the elderly in a similar way we do some young children. However, as I have limited exposure to masculine Jewish culture, I could also be witnessing my own bias in action – and this is something I would love to hear more Jewish perspectives on. I am far from an expert, I’m just sharing what I experience and witness.
And now, a note on the other side of the conflict. We won’t dwell long on them, for obvious reasons. Note that none of my allowances for the possibilities of characters having trauma or reasons for their actions means that I excuse their actions or that I think anything they do is okay. Just for clarity! There are absolutely more masculine characters in the Nazi side, but I don’t want to give too much attention to them – they are mostly hypermasculine, toxic, and cruel characters.
Hans “Bubi” Winkle is the 15+ years junior companion of Frau Engel. His presentation is harder to address, because at first you might think that he was effeminate as a way to mock the unmanliness of Nazis or frame them as subservient to women, making women the enemy. But this… did not play out for me in the end. Hans (I refer to him by his name, not what he’s called by Engel) is absolutely a villain. He is absolutely a masculine character, but frankly he’s not the kind of masculine United States citizens are used to. German masculinity, from what I’ve witnessed being there and knowing a number of Germans, is not the same as U.S. masculinity. Hans is still within the range of masculinity in his dress, many of his mannerisms, and even his toxic masculinity of killing for the woman he loves. Engel is his “everything,” and for that, he wells with cruelty and indulges her atrocious acts.
It is important not to forget the masculine characters who are not what we stereotype as masculine. It’s important to address toxicity and the cultural context of the characters we see in media, regardless of whether it sounds good. The relationship between Frau Engel and Hans is toxic, especially when you factor in her abusive nature to her own family, and Frau Engel’s own favoring of time-typical masculine behaviors and dress, and masculine people over feminine people in her life. You note in the game that Hans plays up his ditzy boytoy attitude when around Engel, but becomes more brutal and masculine when apart from her. Hans stays in his position of power by following her rule, which is his failing as a human as much as it is clearly a method of survival. He is the passionately loyal lover and companion – willing to do anything to maintain his status, especially since his past life as an unsuccessful prison guard would never be worth going back to in comparison.
Wilhelm Strasse, a.k.a. Deathshead, the initial villain of the game, is a polar opposite of Hans. He’s immensely powerful, and while he does fall in the end thanks to B.J., he’s held up as the epitome of Nazi brilliance and cruelty. However, it becomes very obvious throughout play that his eugenics and white supremacy (and male supremacy, if his cadre is any indication) is flawed. The dog brains he puts in robots still maintain habits of regular dogs, his creations suffer in pain, and his pride is what leads to his fall.
He is absolutely portrayed as a masculine character in the same way that other Nazi generals and authorities have been portrayed in propaganda, like the doctors who performed atrocities. Their maleness, their masculine nature, is supposed to be what makes them so brilliant, so dispassionate and willing to be cruel and cold in the pursuit of science. It is a vile concept, but it is clear in the game that the Resistance and those opposing the obviously villainous Nazis don’t buy it. He is a villain in part because of this perverted toxic ideal of pristine and perfect masculinity. Instead, the characters embrace the imperfect masculinity of characters like Max, J, and B.J.
That’s part two of this detailed series on how masculinity is designed in Wolfenstein: The New Order. Design includes how characters are written, how they interact, and how they are presented, beyond the mechanics or rules in the game. I hope to explore more of this topic in future installations of this series, and I appreciate your time as I pick apart my feelings on the game. Please consider supporting me occasionally or monthly on ko-fi.com/thoughty as I do more posts like this!
Content warning: alcohol abuse, binge drinking, discussion of risk of violation of consent and assault, underage drinking, social pressure, childhood trauma, anxiety, PTSD, coping, domestic abuse, suicide mention, self harm mention
I have been drinking since I was twelve years old. Alcohol, that is – water and I go way back. I grew up in a drinking heavy culture with easy access to alcohol and the understanding that booze makes you fun, in spite of my own traumatic experiences as a child showing me that drunk adults were not fun. Nonetheless, I jammed to that song and by the time I was legal to drink, I was seasoned, and it tipped over rapidly into a binge drinking habit that nearly ruined my life.
Content warning: alcohol abuse, binge drinking, discussion of risk of violation of consent and assault, underage drinking, social pressure, childhood trauma, anxiety, PTSD, coping, domestic abuse, suicide mention, self harm mention
I have been drinking since I was twelve years old. Alcohol, that is – water and I go way back. I grew up in a drinking heavy culture with easy access to alcohol and the understanding that booze makes you fun, in spite of my own traumatic experiences as a child showing me that drunk adults were not fun. Nonetheless, I jammed to that song and by the time I was legal to drink, I was seasoned, and it tipped over rapidly into a binge drinking habit that nearly ruined my life.
I have not been drunk since December of 2015. Let’s talk about it.
Over five years of moderation – what I chose instead of abstinence sobriety, knowing my own reaction to abstinence and how often I would still be exposed to alcohol living in Pittsburgh, working in games. And games are part of how it got so bad. Corporate had a huge part in it too, but conventions were the tipping point.
To be clear, I still drink alcohol. But I went from, at worst, a full bottle of liquor a binge (binging over 8 drinks a night, multiple nights a week) to now at most, two small glasses of Manischewitz or mixed drink every couple weeks or so. Sometimes, I’ve gone whole months without even tasting alcohol beyond Listerine. But for me, sobriety is about not being drunk, not abstinence. Learning to control my intake, my exposure, and learning to not get drunk.
Surprisingly, with that came the significant limitation of what I drink – mostly it’s for special occasions or to try something special. To me, with a family history of alcoholism, during this pandemic, this has been a massive achievement. I am proud of how far I’ve come.
I got there because of three very specific things:
…all of these things combined made me into a monster of a drinker. One corporate networking event, I was given so many free drinks that I enthusiastically drank to hide my anxiety that I passed out in a Subway bathroom, broke my phone, missed work, and had to call my spouse to rescue me while I couldn’t find my car keys. My first Gen Con, I willingly drank an extreme amount of alcohol the first night, aided by many of my peers and people far older than me purchasing me multiple drinks and encouraging me, even when I was obviously drunk.
The drinking made the people around me include me more, talk to me more, say nice things to me – and it dulled my deep, untreated anxiety and PTSD from being around drunk & drinking people – plus everyone else was drinking, and seemed to be drinking a lot at these events, and so many people were drunk or had behaviors that triggered my PTSD about drunk people that I thought I wasn’t the only one. After that night at Gen Con, I woke up without a hangover after getting mad sick all night, and everyone else was wrecked. I thought it was normal. I thought it was okay, and that most people were like this, just like they were in corporate, where I’d watched coworkers and bosses drag in hungover for years. It was not normal, nor was it okay.
After an abusive relationship where my partner encouraged me to drink because I was “more fun” and “not annoying,” where they abused me less when I was drinking, I got to the point where my last Dreamation, 2015, took me over the edge. I was manic, in the midst of a traumatic episode post-abusive-breakup, and I don’t remember most of it. I am sure there are still people I should apologize to, but it took me two years to apologize to one of the people I hurt the most out of shame and self-isolation. I was destroyed after that weekend.
After that, I stopped drinking at all within a week. I tried to cut it out completely for a while, and then at the end of the year I was at a work event and got so trashed I had to be escorted home, got in a verbal fight with a coworker, and broke some items at home (not to mention the bruising from being sloppy). A coworker had said something triggering during the event and I just cruised down the hole, and after that, I realized abstinence and exposure needed some recalibration. My goal became to moderate, minimize, but also avoid environments where drinking was common, plus I made the goal don’t get drunk not don’t drink, and it helped.
I have had the edges of tipsy a few times, but I have even dumped out drinks to risk going further. I started promoting safer drinking spaces and sober spaces, like with the Soda Pop Social, at cons that I attended. I realized that my abusive relationship would have been shorter, my experience with assault may not have happened, and my childhood trauma may not have existed without drunkenness. I pursued therapy doggedly and I stopped attending a lot of events that bred the environment that triggered my bad behaviors, and stopped hanging out with people who did the same.
I’m talking about this in a gaming space because dear lordy, is it relevant.
Gaming spaces are flooded with alcohol, references to alcohol, and alcohol abuse, plus predators who take advantage of that. We have seen in the past years many people plied with alcohol, harmed, and then shamed for participating in a toxic and drenched culture of legacy game people, people with power and authority and charisma, and people who have been chosen as darlings of the industry using alcohol to do business, take advantage of people, and abuse the power that they have.
Drinking in moderation can be safe and fun, but when you apply power dynamics and people thinking it’s okay to do business (or pleasure) to an environment full of alcohol, surrounded by and surrounding alcohol, it is toxic and dangerous. The fact that the only drinks we really mention in games like D&D are alcohol is no coincidence to our alcohol focused culture. There was even a “get drunk and get interviewed to spill beans about the industry” interview series that was wildly popular on Kickstarter, and I spent months of anxiety disgusted and upset about it. Few people seemed to care, because hey, drinking’s just fun! Right?
And now, we are in the pandemic. We are isolated. We are all broke. When the tide turns, if it does, and we return to events like game days, conventions, private house cons, I feel like the risk will be amplified. Predators will be in full force, and we’ll all want to celebrate, and to celebrate is to drink, according to a lot of cultural baggage we have. We also have a huge influx of people who are designing and gaming who have never been to these events, who may not know how to be safe, or who may be vulnerable to people and structures of power.
I want to see us avoid the pitfalls that will happen. So, the people who may be at risk mostly have been told what to do: be careful, don’t trust strangers, don’t drink at conventions or events, etc. I want to talk to people who don’t think they’re at risk of predation, addiction, or moreso, promoting dangerous behaviors.
For people running conventions, you have some responsibilities.
This all sounds like a lot of work, but welcome to the modern era of conventions: where we try to give a shit.
For those of you who struggle with alcohol or addiction, I am always here to be your dry buddy. In fact, when I attend cons or events in the future, I am hoping to connect with other people attending who will be dry buddies – people who attend events with you and jointly agree to skip the alcoholic drinks and leave if things get rowdy, and escort each other safely away from events.
We can never guarantee someone is safe alone, or fully safe with any other person, but we can make an effort to vet people before events by getting some references before allowing them to have any access to vulnerable people. I will always try to keep you safe, but I am not perfect. We have to work together, be honest, and stick to what we promise together as a community.
I want to see a safer community someday, but I fear the pandemic will increase our risk including when it passes. Be safe and be thoughtful. If you feel you are at risk for alcohol abuse, avoid at-risk spaces if possible, and check in regularly with a buddy regardless of where you are. Find help now, and know that your way of getting help doesn’t have to be the same as everyone else’s, so long as it works for you. We can get through this, all of us who struggle.
Devlog on Itchio: https://briebeau.itch.io/script-change/devlog/209532/script-change-update-2021
Hey all!
I’m excited to announce that Script Change has experienced a significant update with three more tools and a new layout! You can find the new free text version at briebeau.com/scriptchange and the PDF plus the handouts are still free with option to donate at briebeau.itch.io/script-change. I have raised the suggested donation to $5 because of the sheer amount of time and effort I have put into Script Change over the years, and the continued creation of new content. I hope that’s okay!
In 2021, I’ve added Bloopers & Outtakes, a formal wrap meeting structure, the Editor’s Notes with picks, squicks, and icks to help guide content and response, and Two Thumbs Up to help with quiet check-ins and for less verbal players. These changes have been developing for a while, and I’m so excited to release them for you all!
Note: For the time being, please use the previous revision’s handout to put out descriptions on the table for reference, as I need more time to do the layout work and nothing’s changed on it. Also, in the new Bloopers & Outtakes section, I managed to only write “bloopers” on each Reel listing, but I’ll fix this soon if I can. I apologize for missing it!
Thank you so much for your continued support!
I spent a lot of time thinking about the middle name I wanted after I decided to depart from my birth name fully when it came to my legal name, and it got me thinking about Wolfenstein: The New Order…Real people should not be punished with the weight of anyone’s ideals as their expectation…
Buckle in folks, it’s a long one, and the start of a series! This one is personal AND professional, pursuing an understanding of some complex theory and experiences. I am excited for it, so please join me in that excitement!
Content Warnings for this and the following posts, adding new ones as necessary and bolding the relevant ones for today: gender identity, gender dysphoria, disability, mental illness, Nazis, childhood trauma, physical trauma, death, war, violence, hate crimes (mentioned), racism (mentioned), anti-Semitism, domestic abuse (spousal & parent/child), animal harm (mention), legal struggles for trans persons, social isolation.
For the longest time, I thought I’d keep my birth name nickname as part of my legal name. While my full legal name has forever been a bane to me, I have seen myself for a long time as The Brie. But that’s it, right? The Brie. It’s a title, not a name that suits me, or that represents who I am. It represents some of what I create, but I am not Brie. I’m Beau.
Brie Beau Sheldon. Still The Brie, still Brie Beau in creation, but not Brie.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the middle name I wanted after I decided to depart from my birth name fully when it came to my legal name, and it got me thinking about Wolfenstein: The New Order. How the designers at Machine Games remade William “B.J.” Joseph Blazkowicz had a huge impact on me, and I had one more element: I wanted my initials to be B.J.
I came out in 2016 while I was playing The New Order off and on. I loved the game passionately, and it was mostly because of B.J. (For the purposes of this post and those related to it, we’ll stick with The New Order. The New Colossus has a lot more to dig into, and I’m not ready for it – and I don’t have a new body on the way, either.)
B.J. started out in games as a one-dimensional angry Nazi killing white guy. He finishes The New Order as a poetic Jewish man in love with the woman who helped him recover from a severe injury and gave his life for his belief that everyone deserves to be free who lets other people be free. That’s quite a turnaround.
I was struggling, I suppose, for people who represented what I saw in masculinity. While I am nonbinary, I don’t struggle as much with expressing and representing that part of my identity because of its flexibility. Masculinity is more of a challenge, but is just as important. In real life, I have quite a few men and nonbinary masc people that I respect massively and appreciate for their masculinity. But, I learned a long time ago not to base my ideals on real people – real people should not be punished with the weight of anyone’s ideals as their expectation, and that’s what happens. So I was hunting.
I was also hurting. I felt so left out of the community, I had entered two new jobs where I felt alienated and afraid, I had started a Master’s program where I was weird and strange to everyone I met, and I was still struggling with my mental and physical health, as well as various life stuff. I needed someone to restore my faith in me, in what I believed, even if it was fictional – to me, that it could be conceived by others was enough.
As I played the game, I realized slowly that B.J. was the masculinity I see. He is a flawed man, but he is also a man who has been harmed (in some ways, he reflects his original creator (domestic abuse & chronic illness warning)- strange after all these years!). No one is perfect, and he does not subscribe to the idea that the decisions need to be made by or controlled by cis straight white men. His leaders are women and disabled women. He defers to his wife Anya after they escape from his hospice and get married, her leading the way in the bedroom and also being his guiding light in the field. Caroline, a brilliant leader and amputee with a prosthetic, is his most trusted colleague and the person who is in charge of his life.
In his interactions with J, the Black guitarist who survived a U.S. Nazi attack, he works to overcome the ingrained racism he was raised with. He works side by side with disabled veterans and civilians, people of all ages and backgrounds, and even reformed Nazis. While yes, B.J. may initiate a first interaction with someone who violates his worldview in a shitty way, he apologizes, he backs down, he defers to the marginalized, and he tries to change.
And yes, I will be frank – B.J.’s poetic waxing in my noise-cancelling earbuds wooed me to a degree, and I do think he’s a huge hunk of himbo. But when I cried at the end of The New Order, it was not just because the story itself ended. It’s because my time with B.J. had ended, this space of time where a man who does great violence because violence is called for and because he is the right one to do it awkwardly looks like a puppy when his wife kisses him, and overcomes some extreme suffering at the hands of many different people.
He does harm to himself to rip away the marks of Nazism, and takes acid with J to see a new reality, and makes the hard decisions, and dies and lives and breathes freedom and hope. B.J. feels ultra-masculine because he does violence and he speaks harshly, but in reality he is soft and he hurts and fears but keeps going as that ultra-masculine presentation because he is the right one to do it.
To me, we represent the best masculinity not so differently from femininity, aside from weird invisible things I can’t explain. It’s the kind of guy who if you ask him, he will beat down every bully that’s ever threatened you, no matter how big or endless, but he would be so much happier to lay back on green grass while a dog or his kids bound around him and wait for his lover to say “Please do” before he does. That’s B.J. We got that from Blazko, the person who looked like an angry Lego® Man was his avatar.
I want to examine this in more detail as time passes, with a series of posts, talking about gender, game design, and much more. I will be clear: I do not think B.J. is a perfect person in any incarnation. I don’t think The New Order is perfect, either. But I think there’s a lot of richness there, and I think it’s important to break things down when they latch onto my heart. I hope you’ll join me as I dig deep and try to share ideas for tabletop and video game design both by looking at what The New Order, and B.J., do right and wrong.
I did find a middle name, by the way. It’s Jágr, which is a Czech name in honor of my commitment to Thomas, who blushes sometimes when I say sweet things to him, and pronounced like Jaeger, because it’s the Czech version of Jaeger and Jaeger means hunter. I think it’s undeniable that just like B.J., I am a hunter and always have been – of love, of hope, of joy, of answers, of freedom, and of those who seek to take freedom away.
I’ve pressed submit on the request to have my name change prepared by a legal professional 15 minutes ago. It’s going to be expensive ($160 for legal help, $160 for the courts, ~$200+ for putting my name in the papers for protest), but I can’t wait to be realized as myself.
B.J. was 32 at the beginning of the first story told in games. I turn 33 in two months. It’s time for a change, and some growth. I have so much hunting to do.
Beau Jágr Sheldon.
That’s me.
Hey, friends, supporters, consumers, and colleagues. this one is a little important.
I hope the best came for you in major holidays for each culture and religion or lack thereof that came before this post, and the same wishes for you in the festivities (or lack thereof!) to come. Please stay safe in the continuance of COVID-19 and the many dangers all marginalized people face, and seek joy in every moment – even if it’s fleeting, it heals more than all the rest.
That being said, this is me. Beau Sheldon.
Content warnings for discussion of mental illness, physical disability, financial insecurity, gender identity, gender dysphoria, mention of hallucinations, mention of schizoaffective disorder, mentions of political and social issues in the United States, and details of creative dysfunction.Continue reading “A Very Merry Mental Illness to Me”
Thoughty remains! So does Script Change. I still hope to do some interviews, as mentioned, very periodically. I want to talk more about design, and about leadership in games. I want to talk about the things I personally enjoy in games, break them down, see if I can make them make sense. I hope when the worldsuck eases I’ll release more games, though I doubt anything I do solo will be as big and fancy as Turn. I’ll be separately supporting my partners with their projects. Oh yeah, and I’ll still be accepting guest blogs here when I can build up a larger fund for paying creators!
My first interviews were before Thoughty – on my previous and now defunct site that I ported here with Systir Productions & 616, and on Gaming as Women with attendees of a Gamerati game day and then Judy Bauer of all people. I kicked off Thoughty and Five or So Questions in 2014 as a continuation of the original blog, but only the interviews really stuck around.
I have done over three hundred interviews on Thoughty, about 250 of those being Five or So Question interviews. I have only had a few interviews fully fail to be completed due to scheduling, and one pulled by the creator. I’ve interviewed people about not just tabletop but also card, board, and video games, plus lonely solo games, huge collections of tabletop and live action games, their artwork, their design process, their Kickstarters, and more. I have had an exceptional opportunity to pick the brains of the most brilliant designers in tabletop games, from legacy designers like Ron Edwards to genius women designers like Dr. Jessica Hammer and Meguey Baker to groundbreaking modern designers like Jay Dragon and Rae Nedjadi. Many of these people I have grown to consider friends and colleagues, and I’m so grateful for the amazing things I’ve learned from them and shared with you.
I have been supported by my Patreon supporters primarily for these interviews, enough funds to pay for my website and a bill every so often, some busy months enough to help me pay medical expenses. I am incredibly grateful for my supporters, for everyone who has shared an interview, recommended a creator to reach out to, or praised my interviews, regardless of whether they supported me financially!
You may ask, if this is so great, why does the title say you’re ending interviews? What does this mean for Thoughty? Why has the site been so slow recently, anyway? Well, that’s what I’m gonna try to answer here. This is… a bit long. I’m still me, you know.
I apologize if this is the first some of you may be hearing of my current health status, but the quarantine has made communicating really difficult. Please watch this video and feel free to reach out, but do not feel any obligation to give platitudes. Things have been rough but I’m doing my best! <3
Hey all!
I wanted to let you know that there are some changes happening here at Thoughty, changes that I hope will be temporary. As you may know, I’ve been running Thoughty in some form for about eight years, more intensely for the last six. It can often seem like a slow, easy job, but there’s a lot more work behind the scenes doing stuff like juggling interviews and researching games and constantly researching game community and culture. But.. your nonbinary boy here is pretty wiped out.
The last two years of Thoughty have been wracked with stress over some of the major crises in games, as I have been personally affected by some bad shit that happened, especially with the effect on my mental health. Plus, trying to arrange interviews has become even more challenging – as I try more and more to interview marginalized creators, I have to deal with the fact that those interviews are more likely to take twice or three times as long, get dropped, or need to be rescheduled because marginalized creators are super overloaded. This makes it harder to keep things on schedule, and it also can be pretty exhausting constantly chasing people down and feeling like I’m just bugging people for interviews when they obviously have better things to do. It’s hard on me as an interviewer. And man, Zine Quest 2 was rough…
I also know that I have been slower in my responses. Since my accident in 2017, keeping up with written communication is harder, especially if it’s combined with stress, and I have been struggling with my own mental and physical health. This means that I have several reviews I’ve just put aside because reviews involve a lot of reading (which is very hard since my head injury), I have not been able to seek out interviews as much and have had to rely more on requests for interviews (which have been pretty great!), and I have not created a lot of additional content that I wanted to.
While I love interviewing, I also have felt kind of… icky about the fact that so much of my interviewing is strictly driven by Kickstarters and capitalism. The Kickstarters can be stressful for timing if the interview goes slow, but the bigger part is that sometimes I struggle with supporting Kickstarter and organizations like it when they’re doing things like trying to prevent union formation in their company. And even though I do love itchio, it’s still just about selling things – there’s a lot of pressure to be successful financially in the industry, and I feel it too. I feel strange sometimes being personally opposed to making our work be about its financial value, then framing interviews as focused on how to buy things – but it would be unfair to interviewees not to highlight their work and try to get people to invest in them!
All of these various things have made me worry – maybe I’m just no longer fit to run Thoughty, maybe I need to find a new person to run it, maybe it needs to shut down. It’s possible some of these are true. I am not ready to make those decisions though!
I have a couple more interviews to release, but aside from the occasional interview through the requests and my own movement to feature more Black creators, I’m currently planning to back off of doing timely project interviews as my primary purpose for the blog, and suspending reviews. I want to talk more about game theory and my own game work, plus my experiences playing games and how they influence my thoughts on design. This should be temporary, because I do actually rely on the funds from Thoughty and I do not expect people to stick around for my ruminations – I know the primary interest is promoting people in the community and making people aware of Kickstarters that are currently happening.
However, I am hoping it will give me a break and allow me some time to recover from the stress of interviews that have felt like a strain for all involved. I want there to be enthusiasm, and more timeliness, when I return to asking people questions about their projects! One permanent change is Friday Hi-Day is obviously dead – the response was virtually nonexistent and that was emotionally draining. It’ll be archived and maybe someday something better will exist in its place.
Thank you all for understanding! I hope you’ll stick with me through this, and understand that this is the only way I can think of to address the burnout I’m experiencing. If you go, please check in someday to see when the typical content has returned!
<3
Hi all! Today I have an interview with Michael Dunn-O’Connor about Rebel Crown, which is currently on Kickstarter! Check out the responses to my questions below!
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Tell me a little about Rebel Crown. What excites you about it?
Rebel Crown is character-driven rpg with a player-facing campaign. Each character playbook focuses on a unique relationship with the claimant and gives that character a driving motivation to remain on this quest. The claimant is its own unique playbook, which thrives on sharing the spotlight with their allies and acting on their council. The campaign is driven by player choices: which factions to ally with and which holdings to pursue. As you group, you play to find out whether the claimant can take their throne and what sacrifices must be made along the way.
What are the various playbooks like, in a few examples of their abilities and how they interact with the game, and what power do they have in the narrative?
A lot of our design process started in the playbooks. I tend to get the most out of campaigns where the characters are deeply connected to one another and have a shared commitment to a goal or objective. Since the premise of a succession crisis lends itself to focusing on the relationship between a Claimant and their allies, that created an opening for us to create purposefully asymmetrical playbooks. Most of that asymmetry has to do with the Claimant playbook. There must be a Claimant at the table, and the other playbooks are sworn allies of the Claimant. This playbook is at the heart of the campaign, but we didn’t want to make a game that follows the story of one player character at the exclusion of the others. So we made the Claimant’s player explicitly responsible for spotlight sharing and reinforced this responsibility through their XP triggers:
The result has been that the Claimant is constantly pulling other characters into the scene to ask their advice, to request a sacrifice, to reward their loyalty. The other playbooks have XP triggers that reward them for taking initiative, to not wait until the Claimant asks for their advice or intercession. Here’s the Devoted:
The flow from these rewards has been really satisfying, and character motivation and relationship is constantly at the center of play.
The playbook special abilities reinforce character dynamics without being too restrictive (especially since special abilities may be chosen from other playbooks).
A sample of the Devoted’s special abilities suggests different approaches to protecting the Claimant (guarding them in battle, defending their name in a public forum, or engaging in duels on their behalf). The Devoted is defined by their love of the claimant, but there are many ways a player might take action on that motivation.
To dig in deeper, in the case of the claimant in play, how does the game guide the player toward a just and moral leadership that would make their claim to power morally superior to the claims of the usurpers?
The moral righteousness of the Claimant’s quest is in many ways the core fruitful void of this system: it’s a driving question that the game can’t answer for you without closing off some of the explorations that make RPGs really compelling. However, we try to direct play toward this question in thoughtful ways.
One way is the way that each sortie generates Unrest for the retinue, and more destructive sorties produce significantly more Unrest. The sortie objectives push the retinue to gain new objectives and ingratiate themselves with powerful factions, but the consequences of this expansion often impact the common people of your holdings the most. Here are the Entanglements you might roll at the highest level of Unrest:
Unrest provides a slow creep of consequences for the people your Claimant has sworn to protect and provide for. How they address these consequences is an unavoidable topic of play.
The playbook that most explicitly focuses on the question of just rule and moral leadership is the Idealist, who has allied with the Claimant because they believe it is a path to the greater good. The Idealist’s XP triggers put pressure on the Claimant to do the right thing even when it’s not expedient and encourage the Idealist to keep that question of moral leadership right at the forefront of play.
I note that you talk about expressing your heritage, background, or trauma. How are players supported within the game in regards to traumatic or triggering content, and also, speaking of heritages, are you involving sensitivity readers in the project?
Trauma is a term from Blades in the Dark that appears in many Forged in the Dark games. We replaced that mechanic with ‘Scars’. When a character’s Stress exceeds their limitations, they must choose whether to take one final action before collapsing or to pull themselves together and carry on. We both wanted to avoid the term Trauma given its specific meaning in the context of psychology, and we wanted to rework the mechanic to provide more player choice in the moment.
We’re working on integrating safety tools into the rules text. I’ve been influenced in this regard by playing with some folks through The Gauntlet’s community. We want to provide clear prompts on CATS (content, aim, subject matter, tone) that people could leverage when introducing the game to a group. We’ll also encourage the use of Lines & Veils and the X cards. When we run are games at Games on Demand, these are the tools we’ve used and we want to provide the same resources to folks running it on their own.
The design team is just Eric and me; we haven’t brought in outside readers, though our playtesters have given a lot of valuable feedback on how we can directly address the more problematic aspects of any fiction set in a feudal setting.
What does an average session look like, including the sorties you mention (a term some of my readers may be unfamiliar with)?
A typical session runs through three phases:Recon: In which the retinue (the Claimant and the allies) gather information about other factions and identify an objective.
The Sortie: The main ‘mission’ of the session. This could be an attack on an enemy faction, a diplomatic meeting, or an attempt to drive off wraiths from a vulnerable holding. The goal of a Sortie is typically to gain a new Holding (some property or asset) for the Claimant’s Domain, to strengthen relations with another faction, or to weaken an enemy faction in some way. The retinue may also seek to vassalize another faction, bringing them under the Claimant’s rule without seizing their Holdings.
Downtime: In which the retinue recovers from injury and stress, engages in long terms projects, and trains their skills. Downtime abstracts weeks of time as the player character pursue their own interests, discuss their long-term priorities, and seek solace together from the difficult campaign.
The Domain sheet includes a calendar for players to track their Sorties, Seasons change every two Downtimes, providing a richer sense of time scale and place.
At the end of the session, players asses how they earned XP based on their playbook, and whether their character’s Beliefs and Drive changed based on the events of the session.
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Thanks so much to Michael for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Rebel Crown on Kickstarter today!
