I interviewed Ray Cox about Erotia, a game about sex, gods, and communication. It’s currently available on itch.io, and is a super lightweight game materials-wise. Check it out!
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Tell me a little about Erotia. What excites you about it?
Erotia is a small Freeform LARP that I designed with the help of my friend Fin. It’s about sex, gods, and communication. And it is small enough that the whole game fits on one side of a business card!
I’ve wanted to include more sex in my games for a really long time. I’m a professional GM, but the people I play with have never been super into it. Which is fine. Recently though I started Designing my own RPGs and LARPs. And I realised I wanted to make a game about sex, where you can have sex as part of that game. And after a lot of failed ideas, we have Erotia.
Let’s talk about safety and consent. How do you handle these in Erotia? What tools and structure do you use to ensure that Erotia is safe and consensual?
Well so Erotia being a game about sex and flirting, it was really important for me to include some safety tools. It was difficult however to fit everything into the small format. What we went with though was framing the safety tools as the most important part of the game. You always begin with a discussion of comfort, limits, and what you’re hoping to get out of the game. As well as electing a Safeword, which is a concept introduced to us through BDSM.
Ray Cox, the designer.
What is the narrative of Erotia like? What do you play out and do as characters in the game?
Once you have an idea of what everyone wants to explore, the game moves on to play. The play beginning with everyone introducing their gods, and then interacting. Your Erotia might be a dinner party, a picnic, or some divine friends cuddling up on a cold winter night. Part of your introduction of your divine role is telling others how you wish to be interacted with or interact with others. And those are mostly there as prompts for folks that might not be too sure of themselves. If my god likes having their neck kissed than someone could start by saying: “Hi, I’m Apollo; may I kiss your neck?”
The game lasts as long as there are people still in the play space. The game also ends for all players if the safeword is used. This is so that we can focus on giving proper aftercare to the person that needed play to stop.
Why did you include the gods as part of the game, and what do you think it brings to the table?
I really like narratives about gods; in particular gods as people with more confidence, and a clearer sense of purpose.
I wanted to make a game where you knew you were sexy. Where you had no choice but to feel confident. For me, pretending I’m a god brings that. And when ever I play RPGs where you get to be a god that is how I play it. So yeah, what I think it brings is a sense of power, and also the knowledge that everyone around you is bringing that too.
What are some positive experiences you’ve had while playing the game that related more to the emotional or social aspect of Erotia?
Well I’ve never played Erotia, and I have not met anyone that has. I do currently have a date scheduled with a Long Distances lover of mine to play the game when next we meet though. I’ve done the character creation part of Erotia a fair bit. I often use it as a creative exercise to help refine my gendermood, or to pump myself up before going out. You can also use it to flirt. Aforementioned lover and I have been sending each other fliracious letters with text like “I am Rei, the season. My domain of power is change. I am worshipped with loving praise, & offer submission in return that we might make out till sunrise.”
But if you’re reading this interview, and you’ve played Erotia, I’d love to hear what you thought?
There are any number of reasons why – some are simple, like “I can always get a glass of water” or “There are easy to read pronoun flags” or “The game offerings are amazing,” but some are far more complex, and today I want to talk about those more complex reasons. I’ll tell you a little about what I did first!
My Big Bad Con 2018 was intense. I was busy as hell, the entire trip. Somehow, though, I still recall distinct moments of calm and chill, even though my schedule was probably the fullest of any convention I’ve done and I had some of the most stressful events I’ve ever participated in. But that’s Big Bad Con, right? I’d say almost anyone who has gone there would say something similar – hell yes, I was busy! But I had a good time, and I don’t feel like my soul’s been ripped out at the end.
I love Big Bad Con because Big Bad Con loves me. If you go to Big Bad Con, I expect you’ll enjoy it, because Big Bad Con doesn’t just care about you, Big Bad Con cares for you.
I attended Big Bad Con last year and it was a remarkable experience. I talked about it in three bigposts. I had never felt the way I did at Big Bad Con, not at any other con. This year, I was insistent that John attend with me – John is not huge on conventions, but this one felt so different, I just needed him to try. Plus, he had a game to promote this year. And he did the Tell Me About Your Character booth!
Over the course of the convention, I hosted the Soda Pop Social, was on two panels by others (Expanding Fantasy, Other Paths) and one of my own (Beyond the Binary), ran Turn, ran my Leading with Class workshop for non-GMs, and played Roar of Alliance. That’s a lot for me at a con – like, GMing alone kills me, I never expect to survive it. But in spite of all of the overwhelmingness, I feel pretty good about the con.
I’m going to summarize each event here, but there may be more detailed posts about them in the future. I just want to give some framing for the core of what I want to talk about.
Soda Pop Social I arrived and immediately was escorted by the fantastic Jeremy Tidwell to pick up sodas for the Soda Pop Social. We picked them up, then I set up the event for a soda pop tasting that was quite fantastic, I think. We honestly got amazing feedback! Sean Nittner, who is kind of the guy in charge at the con, ensured I had tons of backup regular sodas for the guests and made sure my space was available.
We had such awesome response that Sean’s already asked about my hosting the social next year – in a bigger room, so more people can attend! It was awesome because my plan for experienced and new gamers and creators to connect worked (supported by people like Meguey Baker stopping by), and having a welcoming event for sober socializing was a real thing. Special thanks to Ken Davidson for helping me hold the door, because it was a very exciting event and I was a very anxious boy!
Expanding Fantasy The Expanding Fantasy panel was great, and DC (who did an excellent review of Big Bad Con here) did an awesome job running it. Kelsa Delphi and Lauren Bond were both awesome but I admit I felt a little intimidated. I was, I think, a little harsher and less kind than the rest of the panelists. I ended up getting a compliment on that afterwards, weirdly but nicely. But, it was good to talk about the ways we can approach fantasy that are more inclusive and less tied to the historical faves.
I wish I could remember the panels clearly enough to give a bunch of detail, but the general gist was to not reflect back on traditional media just to copy it – try to break down things and do it differently. I specifically recommended, if you do decide to pull from older media, looking back at old political cartoons from the era and see where the racist and otherwise bigoted stereotypes show up in the character descriptions, then move away from them.
Other Paths Other Paths was a great panel where we got to talk about alternatives to interpersonal violence in games. Anna Kreider ran it, and I was there alongside Meguey Baker and Katherine Cross. Everyone had really excellent things to say about why we are interested in having media that has alternative options to interpersonal violence (for example, because the world is super violent and if you only offer a hammer, every problem is a nail, and it translates back to the real world), and how we approach it.
I got to talk about Headshots and how I took something violent and changed it into something altogether different. That was cool, and I’m still reeling a little over getting a round of applause!
Turn This will end up with its own post at some point, but I want to especially thank my amazing players for being just the damn best – Jeremy Kostiew, Alex McConnoughey, Vivian Paul, and Karen Twelves. We had a foggy little island town with shifters who all had a lot going on, and in spite of a bunch of interruptions from outside we kept a smooth pace. I hadn’t been able to pre-prep the town like I’d planned, but we still got almost a balance of worldbuilding+character building and actual play.
Alex’s feedback after that the pacing was just right for em really made me happy – pacing for Turn is unusual and not everyone will like it. I am making a few small adjustments to the current text and process of Turn but it still feels very strong, and ready to go to Kickstarter at the end of the month. Having a private room to run the game made a huge difference – I would never have been able to run on a crowded con floor.
Leading with Class – Leadership in Games: Not Just for GMs The workshop went unbelievably well. I was assisted by the excellent February Helen, who had just the right of support and positive energy to get me through something very meaningful but very stressful! The workshop attendees were fantastic – thank you to all of you! – and engaged well with the materials. I messed up on my script early on and had to recover, but everyone was patient with me, and when I was back on track it was super smooth.
Helping my attendees build their leadership character sheet was so fun, and the feedback afterwards (including that it was better than scrum sessions and that it was easy to follow and exceptionally well organized!) really boosted my hope for Leading with Class, which is something many people know I have been struggling with lately.
Beyond the Binary Beyond the Binary was the only thing I was truly upset about afterwards, and it was entirely my fault. My panelists – DC, Krin Irvine, Venn Wylde, and Jason Tasharski – were all great. The big issue was that the room hadn’t been changed to a conference setup when I first arrived, which hadn’t been an issue for the previous panel but considering our estimated attendance was going to be an issue for us. What ended up happening is I had a room full of about 20 people trying to get me to fix the room to meet their needs, while trying to get started on the panel that had to start late in the first place. This was my bad planning – I should have asked Sean to change the room orientation before the panel prior, since the setup was originally done for LwC in the first place – and my bad response.
I struggled to respond to so many people at once because I was anxious about the panel and the panelists and about giving a good impression, and I failed. I also physically couldn’t help, and while trying to manage all of the things at once, I made myself feel helpless and it completely fucked up how I handled the rest of the panel. We had to skip tons of questions because I’d been too ambitious and I did a bad job. On top of that, at the end of the panel I slipped and said “guys” and I’m still incredibly angry at myself for it. So, my fault, but still hard to deal with. Everyone was very kind about it, and supported me even though I fucked up.
One important thing I want to note is that it was indicated I didn’t give equal time to the panelists, and that I gave voice to white panelists over people of color. And I’ll be honest: I didn’t notice I did it. But, I trust that it’s true. It’s potentially partially because I mostly had white panelists, which I didn’t do on purpose – I sought out the only nonbinary person of color I knew was a guest for the panel, but it’s legit that this isn’t enough. I’m not happy that I fucked up on this (AND I let nonbinary cred issues prevent me from wrangling time better), but I’m recognizing it as a note for change. I’m not sure how to do it, but I’ll do my best.
ETA: Overall the panel was good – the panelists had a lot of great stuff to say and their perspectives were super valuable. A lot of it came down to there being a broad variety of ways we all interact with gender identity and expression and how we should always talk to people first to find their unique perspective. Thank you to the panelists, and I’m sorry for being so negative here – this is my disappointment with my performance, not yours.
Roar of Alliance I got to play an amazing game of Roar of Alliance with John, Rose (not sure of last name), and S. Tan, all excellent roleplayers and strategists. I was feeling pretty rough due to the panel and some emotional stuff afterward, but everyone was really supportive and the private game room allowed me to recline on the couch briefly when I got a bad headache. That was super valuable. Honestly, it’s just such a great game that you can play with varying levels of energy and the players were so fun to play alongside! I had a great time, in spite of how rough I was feeling, and we told a lovely story.
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So, now I want to talk about why Big Bad Con matters so much, and what Big Bad Con DOES.
I’ve studied a little about leadership, you might say, and I’ve witnessed a bunch of different ways people run conventions in and out of games and how they lead in general. What the leadership team – cuz that’s what the staff is – at Big Bad Con does is create a culture change, a community, so influential that it impacts everyone who attends, from what I can tell. I think that some of this might be related to the culture of the key leaders on the teams, but everyone at every level at Big Bad Con is doing big things.
A recent Twitter thread by Alex McConnaughey sheds light a bit onto the mentality at the convention, where ey say “I feel like the folks running BBC never forget that the goodness of the community comes from the work put into it.” This is powerful, because it’s right – the people at Big Bad Con never seem to be coming at the convention from the perspective that they are good, but instead that they’re doing good. In the LwC episode on Values and Perception, I talk about my rule that there are no good people (3:18).
This applies to Big Bad Con well, because the people at Big Bad Con are doing good, they are acting good, but their behavior never comes with the sense of pride and self-distancing that comes with thinking that they are inherently good. Which brings me to another point that I mentioned earlier, in ethics. Big Bad Con practices caring ethics, from the best I can translate to convention organizing.
This sounds super weird, right, because they’re a convention! Aren’t they supposed to be about unfettered capitalism, productivity, and unbelievably high standards of goal-meeting? That’s the vibe I frankly get from a lot of conventions. Cuz they are like that – many of them are simply money-making measures and focused on Doing The Things The Most, and lose track somewhere of the fact that we’re all people. Instead, Big Bad Con seems to approach with caring first.
Like, one, check out their community standards. They’re explicit, and they are something you have to accept before you can sign up for the con. They also have really serious consequences for doing things that are harmful, and they’re posted all over the con and reinforced regularly. They also have an entire page dedicated to safety and calibration tools, which they made into a deck of cards this year! And these things aren’t afterthoughts, they’re regularly visited throughout the con, accessible, and the yellow bandanas worn by staff constantly remind you that there are people there to help who are friendly and enthusiastic.
Two, every event that I held, Sean and the rest of the staff were there for me. The fact that the panel didn’t go perfectly was entirely on me – I know for SURE if I had asked Sean for help, it’d have been resolved. But I didn’t. I know that because before the Soda Pop Social, Sean and Jeremy checked in with me and got me a huge ice bucket, a bottle opener, and helped me set up.
I know that, because the night before my workshop, Sean checked in with me specifically to ensure I had the equipment I needed AND supported me as a friend and colleague with kind words AND when he realized I could use an assistant, had it arranged for February to meet with me ahead of the workshop the next morning, fully ensuring I was going to make it through okay. I would have been a disaster without that support, and I hadn’t asked for it – Sean saw the need, and made sure it was addressed. And he made sure I had support, not someone to step over me.
Sean has also passed on a Viking helmet to me.
Which brings me to
THREE: Everyone I interacted with at Big Bad Con, staff or otherwise, approached basically every situation with How can I help? rather than You should do this. This is a huge problem for me professionally and especially at conventions – tons and tons of people approach every one of my anxieties and stressors with fix-it bandaids, as though I’ve never had a thought in the world about how to address my issues. I get instructions rather than support. It’s not universal, but it’s the majority, especially when it comes to running games and events. And…that didn’t happen here. Not last year either!
I noticed it especially surrounding things like the Leading with Class workshop, where I routinely feel like people correct me and tell me what to do, and running Turn. Would you believe, not a single person gave me GM advice? They just asked about the game, and asked how they could support me. This, to me, is the difference between caring about and caring for. At a lot of conventions, people care about you, but they don’t do the emotional work to care for you. And it’s not always the place, but approaching with caring for makes a difference.
Like!
Four! The convention has adequate water for attendees, quiet rooms for individual games, events like the Soda Pop Social and the Stitch and Bitch, and there was a low-key dance party on Saturday night. Some of this is thrown by the participants, but I also didn’t feel unsafe at the dance party – it speaks to the culture of the con that no one seemed overly intoxicated, that they checked with each other on the volume of the music, and so on. I saw people checking before they touched each other, even! Plus, Sean and me left the remainder of the sodas donated from the social to be accessible to all – and I know that rescued more than one person from discomfort.
Including me, to be frank.
And there was also stuff like how Jerome Comeau “held court” when injury and discomfort prevented him from participating in the normal events, and in doing so, created this gorgeous social space! John even commented on how nice he found it that he could just go hang out and be quiet or be social, at his own pace (this is the first convention John has not retreated to the room for extended periods!). I often feel free to just sit and be quiet at Big Bad Con, when I’m overwhelmed, and listen to others – I don’t get pressured into joining games or into having conversation. My point with this is that body needs and mental health needs are well respected – there’s peace, there’s sustenance, and different habits are respected.
Five, and this is a big one, is something talked about by DC in their post. When talking about Nathan Black and his exemplary behavior, DC said this:
“That standard became clear to me in many ways. I was on three panels, and I attended a few more. I was surprised to find older cis white men sitting in front of me, taking detailed notes on how to be better about diversity and inclusivity in setting creation. They were in panels on gender fluidity and non-binary players and representation. On working with children. On all sorts of things. They didn’t sling white guilt at me or my co-panelists. They didn’t raise their hands to make statements. They didn’t approach me after with emotionally draining stories. They said thank you, told me how much they appreciated my work and time, and maybe had a question that came from their 3 pages of notes.”
And this rings super true to me. Even the standard issue cis white guys that attend Big Bad Con, for the majority, are there to care and learn. DC notes they were often misgendered, and I get that, too, and that there is still bias (including colorism and so on) in the environment, but in my experience, the level of prejudice and enaction of it is so much less than other cons. I didn’t feel like people were sexist to me like at other conventions, but maybe that was because there are so many more openly gender nonconforming people at the event that fewer people assumed I was a woman?
I did TRY to look more…not a girl.
I recently started using Beau as an alternate name (I use both Beau and Brie pretty equally), and I had the pleasure of a lot of people I know at the con using it, checking which one I’d like to use, confirming my pronouns, and so on. It was really affirming, and leads to my final note (for now!).
Six: Big Bad Con includes positive masculinity in its progressive basis of caring. I am going to try to break this down simply, because it’s kind of a lot, but we can start with DC’s points about Nathan Black. Nathan represents a lot of what I think about with Big Bad Con as a community: relentless positivity, respect, honesty, kindness, generosity, and passion. And DC is right – that’s not just Nathan, though he is definitely pinnacle of it. I see that same behavior and energy in every Big Bad Con staffer I met, including ones who operate in masculinity like Nathan.
Sean, for one, is a man who I see as a brilliant leader. Then there are people like Jeremy Kostiew, who has a particular warmth I truly value. And Alex McConnaughey (who worked on Behind the Masc, writing the Minotaur skin for Monsterhearts), who understands masculinity in a truly fantastic way. And there are women and nonbinary people on staff who can express masculinity just like anybody else, too, so my point here is that these people on staff don’t erase that masculinity. They don’t label all masculinity as toxic and try to box it out of the events where caring is focused. There were spaces for people who weren’t masculine, but also mixed spaces, and an overall environment that said to me so long as you are doing good with yourself, you can be whoever yourself is.
I feel like somehow because of who all is involved in the convention – women, men, nonbinary people, trans people – Big Bad Con has made an environment that welcomes people of all different kinds. It’s not perfect, but I felt okay being a nonbinary masc person when I was feeling that way, and I felt okay being nonbinary neutral, too. Being nonconforming felt welcomed, even when it wasn’t femme. Because the leadership exemplified a variety of expressions, many of which included masculinity, I felt like my expression was safer and more respected.
And I think this reflects on the caring nature of the con, and why – as DC mentioned – these older cis white men are part of that community in a greater way than they might otherwise be. When you see people like you, even just a little bit, you’re more likely to engage. But it only works if they’re actually a good example! And I just think that the Big Bad Con community is such a good example.
I can’t wait for next year!
P.S. – I forgot to mention the HUGE amounts of charitable good that comes from the con itself with the food bank, the Wolf Run, and so on – it matters, and is part of the caring perspective!
Post-con Brie Beau’s status.
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This is the last 46 hours for the game zine I’m curating and contributing to, Behind the Masc, which is currently on Kickstarter. I wanted to write a quick post to remind everyone!
Behind the Masc is a collaborative effort with a team of great creators: Eli Eaton, Patrick Lickman, Raiden Otto, Adrian Heise, Lemmo Pew, Alex McConnaughey, Lawrence Gullo, and Tracy Barnett. They’re all making something new and original for this project! And they’re all non-cisgender masculine people like me, across the spectrum.
To my knowledge, Behind the Masc is a first of its kind as a crowdfunding project in indie games focusing specifically on our goal of reenvisioning masculinity – especially one by entirely non-cisgender creators. We’re using historical and mythological archetypes to show our perspective on masculinity and do so while making cool game products that work with existing games like the Demi and Minotaur skins for Monsterhearts 2, the Apocalypse World Trickster playbook, and the D&D 5th Edition male Baccae character background and Sorcerer recreation.
We’ll also have standalone products with a Twine game about the protector and my audio-text game, Echoes, about the hero. It means a lot to me. Last night, I wrote the first draft of the text for Echoes and I’m really excited to make this game!
My only stretch goal for this project is a higher pay rate for the contributors at $3000. We’re not trending toward that on Kicktraq, but we’ve raised those numbers a bunch throughout this campaign! We can work toward it, with your help!
Behind the Masc is new, and niche, and I knew that going into this project. We’re a collection of creators that make cool things but might not otherwise be noticed – and that’s part of the point. I would love to see more people back the project and potentially raise the pay for the contributors, but I will say now that I’m grateful we’ve come so far, that we’ve funded, and that the community has shown enthusiasm for the project!
Please back the project on Kickstarter if you’re interested, or share it on social media if you’ve already backed/can’t back! Tell your friends and colleagues about it, post it to message boards and raise awareness! We have less than two days to raise funds, and I’d love you to have a copy in your hands when we fulfill. Thank you!!
The Behind the Masc Zine Kickstarter is LIVE! This project is run by non-cis masculine creators and we’re making Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts playbooks, rich backgrounds for D&D characters, and some lovely art, too! Please check it out – we’ve got some awesome creators working on re-imaginings of masculinity!
I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum about their Kickstarter project, Dream Askew // Dream Apart, two games about community and belonging as marginalized people. I hope you enjoy the interview and that you’ll check out the Kickstarter!
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Avery Alder
Tell me about the project of Dream Askew // Dream Apart. Why does this joint project matter to you as a creator? Avery: While these two games tell stories of very different communities—Dream Askew is about a queer enclave amid the collapse of civilization, while Dream Apart is a fantastical-historical game of the shtetl—they’re also united in being games about marginalized people building a community for themselves against the odds, what we call games of belonging outside belonging.
For me, this project matters because telling stories about finding our collective power and learning how to live together in community matters. And I feel really proud about how we’ve merged those themes with the mechanics: power is distributed around the table, and rather than relying on chance, everything is driven by the choices that we make together.
Benjamin Rosenbaum
Benjamin: I love the games we’ve made, I’m excited about people playing them. I think this kind of in-person game can be a great space for learning and exploring, and I think it’s cool that these games celebrate the agency and struggle of communities with complicated relationships to the outside world, in settings that I think matter a lot.
What was your collaborative experience like on the project, and how did you handle complications or struggles of any kind?
A: Our collaboration gained momentum really slowly! Benjamin first wrote me about using the Dream Askew framework to create a game about Jewish shtetl life in 2014, and it wasn’t until 2017 that we committed to an active collaboration and co-development process. I’ve been really delighted by the ways that Benjamin’s innovations in Dream Apart have looped back to transform Dream Askew; key relationships are instrumental in defining the relationship web of the community, and they weren’t even in my original design!
B: It’s been amazing! Avery is brilliant, super nice, amazingly supportive, and has oodles of artistic integrity. She knows a tremendous amount about game design, community, and the technical praxis of creating and publishing games, and it’s been an enormous privilege to work with her. We’ve handled complications and struggles by talking through them, listening carefully to one another, and making decisions together — a process that has been strikingly full of fun and ease. I think our visions were very closely aligned from the beginning, and we also have very distinctive areas of expertise in the project. Each of us is the expert in our own game’s subject matter, so we tend to naturally defer to that expertise; and while I have a deep background as a writer and gamer, it’s my first professional game project, and Avery is one of my favorite game designers, so it’s been very easy to trust her judgement on game design and publication issues.
The Dream Askew cover.
Dream Askew
Tell me the core purpose of Dream Askew. What about it fuels your passion?
A: For me, the passion comes from building something that can be run at the drop of a hat, that tells meaningful stories, that’s legit fun to play, and that brings us closer to imagining possiblities for queer community.
I think the game is challenging in some ways! It requires players to take on a big creative load, and to jump into co-developing an apocalyptic world together. But for players who are up to the challenge, it’s a delight! The game uses lists and prompts to point players toward interesting dilemmas, and then gives them space to actually figure out how to handle them. That’s exciting! That’s what fuels my passion.
The Hawker playbook.
When you work on the project, what design elements do you keep as key priority?
A: I started work on Dream Askew in early 2013, when I was helping run a weekly, drop-in meetup group. It was queer-centering, but welcome to all who wanted to drop in and play something neat. I tried running Apocalypse World a couple times at those meetups, and it never quite worked: the sheets intimidated new players, the mechanics were slightly too dense to teach to new players in the short span of time we had each night, and the game always felt like it was cut too short. I designed Dream Askew to fit perfectly into that space: inviting, quick-paced, and perfect for weirdos. And that remains a priority. I want this to be a game that I can run at the drop of a hat for a gaggle of queers who’ve never played a roleplaying game before, and I want it to rock under those conditions.
The Dream Apart cover.
Dream Apart
Tell me the core purpose of Dream Apart. What about it fuels your passion?
B: What I really wanted was to capture the distinctive tone, setting, and underlying philosophy of Jewish fantasy and folklore, which differs from both the traditional high fantasy ethos of a titanic final battle between Good and Evil, and from the aimless-violent-vagabond ethos of sword & sorcery. I wanted to see characters who are rooted in community, in a deeply spiritual but also morally ambiguous world, a world in which evil is written with a small “e”: our own human failures of courage and compassion, rather than something alien and essentialized and external; characters who don’t wield triumphant violence to achieve their ends, but use wit, grit, and moxie to thrive in a world where they are likely to be always on the receiving end of violence; and just all the rich strangeness, cleverness, yearning, whimsy, irony, self-criticism, soul, and mystery of talmud, midrash, Yiddish folktales, and the literatures of the shtetl.
The playbook for the Klezmer.
When you work on the project, what design elements do you keep as key priority?
B: I think the main priority is capturing that spirit described above; other priorities include making it an accessible game with elegantly simple mechanics, concise design, and very rich fiction, keeping players supported in story creation so they always have something to fall back upon and aren’t left hanging if the flow of creativity stutters, and supporting a social contract that centers everyone feeling safe and curious and excited and connected.
The sigil for Dream Askew.
Dream Askew
What have been some of the most vital elements of growth in Dream Askew over the past five years, mechanically and thematically?
A: Mechanically, there are two ways that the game has changed that I think are the most vital: the introduction of the community worksheet, and the introduction of key relationships for every character role. These two changes shift the story of Dream Askew in the direction of community, relationships under pressure, and questions of belonging. The game feels like it contains a deeper treatment of its themes, rather than a more aesthetic, surface-level treatment of what it means to belong to a queer enclave. Key relationships were a piece of the design that Benjamin first introduced into Dream Apart, which I was so excited to borrow back for the apocalypse.
Thematically, I think the biggest difference isn’t actually with the game, but with the real world that I’m going to be releasing the game into. The idea that apocalypse was a contemporary force which operated in waves at the margins of civilization, that the digital realm would factor into not only the collapse but also what came next… in 2013 this was closer to science fiction. In 2018 it feels startlingly timely to be talking about. I talk about this more in the design notes I’m releasing alongside the game, but I think it’s chilly how much more real the world of Dream Askew now feels for me and my friends.
The Outliers zine, which is a stretch goal reached on the Kickstarter, includes additional game materials.
What elements of queerness speak the most to you personally, and to your experience in games, that you have brought forth in Dream Askew?
A: I think there’s a bit of misdirection at play in how Dream Askew portrays queerness. Character creation opens with a prompt to choose from a list of strange and unprecedented genders, and to think visually through physical descriptions and wardrobe combinations. Queerness feels like a flashy aesthetic project. And that’s definitely a real part of the game, one that it’s fun to play around with! But queerness is also the relationships you attempt to hold in balance, and it’s the fact that everyone has a different kind of lopsided power that both contributes to the community and also puts them at odds with it. The Iris is a potential healer, but also an unsettling psychic weirdo. The Hawker is a resourceful provider, but also a territorial profiteer. The Stitcher is an engineering genius, but also a strange recluse. The drama of the game comes from watching how these people who hold sway in the community tug its ideals and character back and forth.
The Dream Apart sigil.
Dream Apart
What were some of the elements of Jewish fantasy and folklore that you personally felt deeply about including in Dream Apart, and how did you include them?
B: Most people are familiar with a kind of Sunday School version of the Hebrew Bible, in which the Divine is a kind of mathematically omniscient and omnipotent Santa Claus whose job it is to make everyone be good. A cursory glance at the world around you should make it clear that this doesn’t make much sense. In fact the story (or rather stories) that the texts suggest are much weirder. The God of the Tanakh is volatile, mysterious, numinous, and alien; the midrashim and the Kabbalah make this weirder still, with a fractured Divinity in exile from Itself, and a universe-altering magic inherent in the smallest human actions (it’s not that much of a stretch to say that in the Lurianic Kabbalah, when mom lights the candles Friday night she is literally healing a tiny bit of the sundered Godhead). The psychic maelstrom of Apocalypse World (and thus of Dream Askew) is the closest thing to this theology that I’ve found in any game; it feels a lot like what Moses encountered at that bush in Midian. Magic in games tends to feel like engineering at best, and more commonly like ordering from a menu at Denny’s. Gods are either absent, or they’re statted-up dispensers of plot tokens and buffs. I wanted a kind of magic that would be terrifying, wondrous, unsafe, inchoate. I also wanted it to be tied deeply into the story’s drama of moral agency, because so much of Jewish tradition is about wrestling with complex moral questions that have no easy answers. Temptation, solace, power at a price, rebuke, reconciliation, grudges, forgiveness, these things are not just part of the social drama, they’re also central to the meaning of the Unseen World. A demon that just wants to try and kill you is not nearly as interesting as a demon that wants you to betray yourself. A golem isn’t just a monster, it’s an allegory of freedom and servitude, the limits and risks of violent self-defense and of human knowledge. A dybbuk isn’t just a possessing spirit, it’s one with an agenda and unfinished business.
The sheet for the Shtetl for Dream Apart.
Were there any unique challenges for approaching the subjects of Jewish culture and beliefs that are not addressed often enough or respectfully enough in popular media?
B: To the extent that shtetl culture is addressed in popular media at all — think the musical-theater and cinematic versions of Fiddler on the Roof and Yentl — it tends to be in a sentimental, rose-and-sepia-tinted, elegiac frame, ignoring a lot of the complexities and real-world grittiness. Non-Jews are usually offscreen menaces (though to be fair, one of Tevye’s daughters does marry one); economics is flattened into a virtuous poverty; and in general, the viewer is encouraged to see the events as a kind of hagiographic ancestral origin story. (The original texts are grittier and sometimes queerer than their tamed stage & cinematic versions, too — there’s a good argument that Singer saw his Yentl, who keeps the name Anshel at the end of the story as opposed to putting a dress on and running off to America, as a trans man.) At one point Avery asked if we should find a more Yiddish-looking font for the Dream Apart playtest kit; I responded that I really liked using the same one we use for Askew, to get away from that coy sentimentality and ram home the point that this, too, was a gradual apocalypse, with — for its characters– the same apocalyptic immediacy.
Avery writing notes.
One last…
Beyond basic structural elements, what are some pieces of Dream Askew // Dream Apart that are similar or contrasting – mechanically and thematically?
A: I think one of the most interesting contrasts—and one I haven’t talked about anywhere yet—is in how the two games approach supplemental reference materials. Since Dream Apart is historical, its reference materials need to offer up specific, tangible answers: here’s what that word means; here’s a plausible Russian surname from the era; here’s the river you’d walk alongside. Benjamin is working hard to make resources that feel thorough while remaining compact. On the other hand, Dream Askew is speculative and built upon a queer epistemology. Its reference materials need to do much the opposite, to reject a single definition in favour of pitching the question back to players in an encouraging way: that’s a great question, what do those words mean? My challenge is being exploratory and playful without coming across as hostile or opaque.
The Dream Askew // Dream Apart book and illustration.
June is Pride month, which is when we recognize the adversity queer people face and overcome, marked especially by remembering the Stonewall riots. When police raided a bar where queer people were gathered – trans people, gay and lesbian people, bisexuals, and all – the patience of queer New Yorkers ran out. Martha P. Johnson, a black transgender sex worker, is credited with initiating the riot as response to police aggression**. A number of other black people and people of color headed up the rejection of prejudice in power, alongside many queer resistors. Pride matters. When we talk about resistance and the pursuit of freedom, we should look to the best parts and most important parts of Pride.
Those parts are the people. So, as a gamer, I’m a people. I wanted to offer a way to connect with other queer people, and to have an easier way to frame who I am as a queer person – while showing how it matters to things I love.
This video includes a series of questions that I’ve responded to below. If you’re a queer gamer or queer person-who-plays-games, please consider answering these questions in your preferred format – video, social media, blog – and use the hashtag #IAmQueerGames.
This is supported by my Patreon at Patreon.com/briecs, as part of my community outreach and efforts in recognizing diverse creators. Thank you for watching! Here we go!
1) Who are you? I’m Brie Sheldon, formal game designer, journalist, and editor. I run a site called Thoughty were I talk game design and do interviews, supported by my Patreon. I’m a graduate of leadership studies and creator of Leading with Class, using games to teach leadership, which is supported by Patreon.com/leadingwithclass.
2) What are your pronouns?
I use either they/them or he/him, whichever is easier and makes more sense.
3) What’s your queer, in a few words?
I’m genderfluid nonbinary-masculine, queer in orientation.
4) What are your intersections and chosen labels? On the marginalized side, I’m disabled and have mental health stuff. For privileges, I’m white, well educated, and married to a cisgender man with a decent paying job and live in a safe neighborhood. On the fun end, I’m polyamorous, a gamer, and an artist.
5) What’s your gender (or lack thereof) and what does it mean to you? I describe my gender as genderfluid nonbinary-masculine because my gender identity – the inside part of me – fluctuates between nonbinary androgynous and nonbinary masculine, where I am never a man but I have some masculinity. I call myself a boy a lot because the soft masculinity that I associate with boyness is basically where I am then.
My gender is very important to me. I struggled with it for 24 years before coming out on a small scale and 26 before I told my family. It’s who I am and I love to live it freely.
6) What’s your orientation and what does it mean to you? I am queer, and I call myself queer because it makes the most sense to me. Being a fluid person and being non-cisgender, I fluctuate a lot on how I define my relationships, but basically I’m attracted to people of pretty much every gender. My attraction is different with different people – sometimes romantic, sometimes sexual, sometimes both, or sometimes aesthetic or none at all, and I also have a lot of platonic attraction. It’s all important to me! I feel a lot of feelings, and they find homes in many different places.
7) How do you present yourself, and how do you want to present yourself, including clothes, makeup, body mods, and anything else? My ideal presentation is moving between soft masculine and edgy androgyny, but both with boobs. I like my boobs and hate that having them decreases my masculinity, and my androgyny. I wish that I could be those things and still have boobs, and still wear makeup – which I do enjoy. I like wearing masculine or more unisex clothes – I could live in simple jeans, ballcaps, and tee shirts – but I super dig getting to wear those alongside low cut tops and stuff. It suits me.
I’m not planning on getting any further body mods than my piercings and tattoos – except more tattoos. Gender affirmation and hormones aren’t what will make me whole, from what I know.
8) What’s this got to do with games – gender, queerness, Pride? Games have a good dose of queerness in them already once you realize how easily you can put on another gender and orientation and have it be the identity you perform for a session, event, or campaign. If you think you’ve never touched queerness, think of how many times you’ve played a character of a different gender or who was attracted to a gender you aren’t. It doesn’t make you queer, but it shows how you can connect those things.
Gender and orientation are so tied to our experiences at the table because they’re tied to our real lives. Mechanics and settings in games can encourage queerness, and safe environments encourage engagement with identity questions – when we’re playing a game, it is a safety buffer. It’s a way to explore with training wheels. And when the wheels come off, we can tell stories we want to be told, since good media for us is so hard to find.
We must tell our own stories. We can make them rich and interactive for queer and not-queer people alike. It’s an amazing medium to dig into both queer reality and queer fantasy, and it gives us a unique power to frame the mechanics of the worlds we play in when we design queer games – how we handle violence, how we handle sex, how we handle stigma. The control it gives us to realize queerness is really important.
9) When do you remember being queer in game the earliest? What does it tell you about games and queerness?
Honestly, it started when I was playing Harry Potter text based roleplay when I was in my early teens. I started playing androgynous characters – very clumsily – and exploring who my characters could be attracted to. In my mid-teens I played some androgynous characters in D&D and flirted with the ideas of queer characters like lesbians and gay men, and even pansexuality.
But it was not well executed. We need games that support queerness and identity questioning, where it’s okay to explore these things and encouraged to explore them, and done with support in the text and community. Games can’t hold these spaces alone, they need support from those making them and playing them who know about queer culture and life.
10) What can cis straight people do to help?
Listen. Look at your life, look at your choices. If you’ve fucked up, apologize and don’t do it again. Remember that kink isn’t inherently queer. Donate money and time where you can. Honor our history. Hire queer creators. Support sex workers. Don’t write about us without doing research and consulting us. Use people’s proper pronouns. Be better than you ever have been.
Share a message with other queer gamers, both out and not, about the future.
Things are a hot damn mess right now, but we can make it through. Pride month is a big deal but it’s not the only month of the year we need to raise our voices, support each other, and keep moving forward. No queer person is alone in their queerness – we can find ways to work together. We need to recognize black queer people, queer people of color, trans and nonbinary people, bisexual and pansexual people, queer Jewish and Muslim people, and asexual and aromantic people.
Don’t forget that sex workers, disabled people, and people with mental illnesses are queer people sometimes, too. We need to remember we are in this together. Don’t let the pressure from privileged bigots crush you. And if you are still keeping private – it’s okay. We’ll be here when you’re ready.
Final Thoughts
I’m doing this because I want to see queer people in games be recognized and welcome them, as well as talk about why these things are important. I want to highlight the diversity in games that is so often brushed under the rug. I also want to open up the floor for queer voices. If I can do that for even one person, make just one person be heard? Yeah, I’ll like that.
This post is supported by Patreon.com/briecs patrons like you! Please feel free to support my work there or donate through the donation links in the description.
Note: In my video, I state that Marsha P. Johnson (a black trans woman) was the one who started the riot at Stonewall. According to this tweet: https://twitter.com/BlackFemmeinism/s…, the riot was started by Stormé DeLarverie, a Black Butch lesbian, and Marsha P Johnson & Sylvia Rivera (a Latinx trans woman) founded & organized PRIDE. I apologize for any errors – finding consistent information was pretty challenging.
Hi all! I have a Patreon spotlight today and it’s on the designer and creator Kira Magrann, who makes some queer, experimental games that explore intimacy and cyberpunk themes, among other things.
Kira Magrann
Bio via Kira:
Kira is a tabletop roleplaying game designer, queer NB cyborg, and snake mom living in Columbus, Ohio. She currently has a Patreon where she designs experimental games, a YouTube channel where she talks about game design, and she blogs a few times a month at Gnome Stew. With the support of her patrons she recently released a game about Lesbisnakes in wintertime titled A Cozy Den.
Tell me about yourself and your work. Who are you, and what does your work do?
I’m a queer cyborg game designer living in Columbus, Ohio. I’m a horror movie lover, snake mom, and I’m working on making my hair look like Major Kusanagi’s. My work, my game design work anyway, aims to educate, titillate, and inspire. When people play my games I want them to feel things and have learned something they didn’t know before. Hopefully the designs and concepts are also accessible enough to reach a diverse audience which is something I work hard at doing.
The identification stats for lesbisnakes in A Cozy Den, featuring a range from High Femme to Stone Butch.
Descriptions of the various stats in A Cozy Den, including presentation.
You’re a known activist and queer designer. How does your perspective regarding these things affect your design work and the work you do for your Patreon?
Gosh, well, being an activist and a queer designer means that basically all my work will have some aspects of those two parts of me in them. Everything I make is queer, or cyberpunk (emphasis on the punk), or related to queer or feminine monster metaphors. It’s a huge pool of inspiration to pull from, which means I can make games that are kind of like, combinations of these things, and maybe not like, 100% just one of them. So A Cozy Den, my game about lesbisnakes, is about half snake half lesbian mythical monster creatures who are trying to live together during the winter. It’s also a non-violent game and focuses on cozy stories and mechanics. It also uses lesbian terminology, your stats being derived from a scale of High Femme to Stone Butch. So that’s easily like, all three of my main interests in one game. This is how all my games go! I basically draw from what’s important to me in my personal life, and also the genres I’m inspired by and care a lot about.
Three lesbisnakes from A Cozy Den.
Tell me a little about A Cozy Den. What inspired you to write the game? What about it speaks to your design and you as a person?
A Cozy Den came about because I’ve been obsessed with snakes since I adopted my 8 year old corn snake Sol about a year and a half ago now. I basically read about them daily and am in all these FB groups in the snake community and just love them so much. I’ve actually loved snakes since I was a child but never really owned any until now (I’m 37!). I had recently learned that snakes den together, and it really humanized them, painted them in a more communal and cozy way.
I like finding ways that make snakes less scary for people, because I think that removing fear even in a small way toward an animal can make huge changes in a person’s life and in removing fear in the world in all kinds of ways. I’d also been really into lesbian lifestyle history at the time and watched this short documentary on lesbian communes, and suddenly it clicked… snake dens and lesbian communes are so similar in all these ways like, culturally. They’re outsiders, American culture is kind of afraid of them, and the communes in the 70s and 80s in particular were very purposeful outsider ways for lesbians to live outside of the norm in America.
“What’s a Den?” section of the A Cozy Den text.
So I basically just combined the two and was like, I can make a game that can teach simultaneously about two things I love: snakes and queer history. That is so typical of my design style. I’ll basically find all these connecting points with the many genres and things in the world I love, combine them into an interesting genre game setting, and somehow teach about them in the game. I’m queer and a snake lover too, so this game is very personal, very much about me and the things I love. I also wanted to experiment with mechanics, to see if I could make a pbta game without physical conflict as the main driver. I’m more and more interested in games that don’t have violence, and instead create different types of feelings or situations. So in A Cozy Den all the conflict is inter personal… can the characters get along with each other during the winter in a closed space? What does cozy look like in a tabletop game vs a video game? There’s a lot going on in this tiny weird game, and its very much how my design brain and personal brain work. I could talk about it for awhile lol.
The “Healing” section of A Cozy Den.
Your new videos have been well-received! How do you decide what to do videos about? What is your process for creating the videos?
So, my videos, basically I recently got obsessed with YouTube (you’re probably seeing a pattern here with my creative obsessions) and I was like, shit, I could do this. I’ve always wanted to learn more about video making and a lot of my personal media on my insta has been drifting toward video too. Whenever I want to get better at something, I get obsessed with it and do it until I get better. It’s worked ok so far although I wish I could stick with one thing it’d be easier lol.
My videos are about my design process and thoughts, so while I’m working on things throughout the week I try to note particular issues I’m having while writing or designing, or thoughts another youtube video or article made me have, and then I write those down. Then I pick one, and make a word document with a bunch of bullet points stream of conciousness style what I might like to talk about in that video topic. Then I’ll step away for a few hours or a day, come back to it and clean it up.
I’ve cleaned up my extra bedroom office so that the space behind me looks decent and I have windows in front of me for natural light, and I just use a very cheap tripod from amazon and my iphone for recording. Then I’ll record in about 50 second pieces (I’ve found smaller ones are easier to upload to dropbox for whatever reason), upload them to dropbox, download them to my computer (this usually takes hours) then edit them in a free editing program I have on my ubuntu computer called kdenlive. I don’t do anything fancy with the editing, just add music and text. Once that’s done I’ll upload to youtube!
A video from Kira’s YouTube on Playtest Process and Design Iteration.
There’s lots of tricks on youtube to get more traffic and stuff in like, the way you tag things and name stuff and put ending credits in… all those I learned from watching videos on youtube about how to do it. I want to get a little more vloggy with my videos in the future, play with cinematography more, but for right now I’m trying to get a rhythm and skill set to just make them regularly. I think of my youtube channel like a blog basically, like, what would I write about to the community on g+ or gnome stew, then instead of writing I just film it. I’m getting better! It’s still mostly an experiment.
What are some goals you have for your Patreon and your design practice in general?
My Patreon is helping me become a better designer while simultaneously putting out content that I can’t make anywhere else. It’s a really unique opportunity to be able to explore whatever kinds of games my heart desires and not worry to terribly about the “sellability” of it, y’know? I think a lot of creators know what types of content really sells, something with fantasy fighters, something grimdark, something with skullduggery… basically new takes on the typical rpg stuff.
In order to create something truly new and different, it means that you’re taking a huge chance as a creator that no one in the rpg community will be interested in playing your weird stuff. So having this patreon to support me even a little monetarily helps me make those unique and innovative games. Also it is paying my bills! I’d love to get it up to 1500 a month, cause then it’d legit be like a part time job! But until then I’m scrambling to fill the extra money in with freelance work which to be honest is kind of overwhelming. It’s a dream to be able to live off my patreon. I think it’ll get there.
The Actions from A Cozy Den with some handwritten markup.
When do you experience the most joy, and the most satisfaction, while creating?
Wow this is a spectacular question and I’m not sure 100% how to answer it lol! The whole process for me is very joy inducing. I’m a hyper creative person and my imagination is always on overdrive, so coming up with the ideas is really fun. I also love to be critical, and I think editing is a critical skill, so basically the part where you’re taking the ideas and narrowing them and sculpting them into something more specific is also really satisfying. The act of writing is sometimes a little tedious, but when I get a flow going I disappear into the document for hours at a time and that flow feels really good, creatively.
I do really love collaborating, especially when I’m in charge of a project and can choose who else is on my team. I’m very proud to work with other marginalized creators and hire them to create art or other work like in A Cozy Den or RESISTOR. Sharing creative work is definitely scary, but I love creating artwork that people use or wear, so when people are getting the game and playing it I feel very accomplished and get this feeling of sympathetic joy. So I guess those are my favorite parts of creating, and the things that give me the most satisfaction in the process.
A character sheet from A Cozy Den.
Patterns and colors for the various lesbisnakes in A Cozy Den based on their stats.
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Thank you so much to Kira for stopping in to talk about her Patreon,A Cozy Den, and her design! Please check out Kira’s work and share around this spotlight to show off the cool work she is doing.
You can find Kira on Twitter as @kiranansiand on YouTube, as well as through Patreon where she designs experimental games, and sometimes at Gnome Stew. Make sure to check out A Cozy Den, too!
This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
This is a diversion from games but related to my typical work and my current look into masculinity with Posers, and is as-of-now an unpaid post.
Mike Rugnetta wrote twoposts on the subject of the McElroy Brothers and the use of the term “boy.” I found it by a shared Twitter thread by @RowanGayle who I don’t know but said some cool stuff. And reading these things brought me to tears, because I want to talk about why I, personally, consider myself a boy…and why I don’t agree that boy must be or necessarily is gender neutral.
My coming out story is freely available on the internet so I’ll just say simply: for technical terms I use genderfluid nonbinary-masculine to define myself, but casually I refer to myself as a boy. It started jokingly, but then I felt it more significantly that the word fit me better than anything else, and it ties into these things that Mike and RowanGayle are saying. It is not necessarily about gender, but it is about identity, and it interweaves with gender for me.
When I first became a viewer of the various McElroy properties, Griffin’s voice really stuck with me (as a synesthete, to me it is the exact color and feeling of slipping on a banana peel, which makes me giggle). I liked how he talked about the characters they made on Monster Factory, and his enthusiasm. I also appreciated the not-entirely-but-pretty-damn-wholesome vibe the McElroys have thus far been some of the least problematic internet entities I’ve seen (along with Rugnetta and Mikey Neumann), and fuck if I didn’t feel the positivity and enthusiasm pouring out into the world from their media. Even when things were at the point where they could be problematic, they didn’t go there, or if they did, they apologized. That is important to me, so much, and that’s part of what “boy” is to me because of how it reflects in both the speakers and the subjects who are just trying their damn best – not necessarily good, but trying to be, always trying to be.
I see boy as inherently trying. Trying to be better, which is a common refrain for me, be better, and to be what you want to be. Hopeful is not something I am, but something I think translates well to boy-ness, and I don’t talk about how much I want to be hopeful, but I do want that, and I know that’s part of why I cling to boy. In the times Griffin used it in Monster Factory, it stuck in my head as this loving “our boy can do anything!” vibe and I loved that these boys, these no-middle-sliders boys who fumbled were still seemingly loved even though they’re characters in a damn video game. I have struggled so much with feeling okay with who I am, but every time I heard “boy” it poked a little at me, and I finally just let it in. Griffin doesn’t know me and neither do any of these other internet people but boy, boy stuck with me.
There is a playful, loving, hopeful, enthusiastic vibe in the idea of these boys that try so fuckin’ hard to just do the thing and to just be boys. That’s what I love about it, I think.
I’m not a man and have no desire to be, but the soft masculinity that sits in boy suits me. It’s not about men or women, and I think here is the flaw. Not everyone has to be a boy, and it is evident to me by the McElroy use of it that it is not necessarily gendered man or woman, but instead likely an androgynous space where some boys could be – it feels that it could be a soft masculine, but it doesn’t have to be.
My complication with the analysis thus far is more that we are only considering man, woman, and agender identities. It isn’t destroying the gender binary to take gender away entirely – expanding gender and understanding the complexities and variances of gender identity is what destroying the gender binary is.
What is a person who has a gender that is not necessarily binary but it does exist?
I dunno, I guess what I’m trying to say is, when Griffin used boy, it gave me a simple word for what I am. And that’s pretty cool, whatever people end up saying it is later.
This post isn’t presently supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs, but you can support me there – I know Patreon is presently sketchy, so feel free to just tip below if you want. Tell your friends!
This will be probably a three-post report because I’m trying to break down my panels and games pretty detailed, so I wanted to warn you ahead of time. These will be paid posts! Thank you for your support. 🙂
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Me on my flight in, very tired.
Overall Con Thoughts
Big Bad Con is the best con I have ever attended. I don’t say this to like, make other cons look bad, that’s not the point. I came out of Big Bad Con feeling much more positive about the experience than any of my previous con experiences, I didn’t get hurt while I was there, I felt safe and comfortable throughout the con, and I was able to play the games I wanted, see people I wanted, navigate registration super smoothly, make it through my panels with a lot of encouragement from the audience and fellow panelists, and I felt supported coming to the con after a death in the family.
The con also seemed very diverse, compared to what I expected or maybe what I’m used to, I don’t know – I saw a ton of androgynous-styled people, I know of many trans people who attended, there were more people of color that I interacted with than is my norm, and so on. It was awesome.
The rooms were great, local food options were tasty and at least accessible to me (I went out to dinner 3 times and had no real issues getting to the restaurants), and the food at the hotel was good so I didn’t get stuck if I was too sore to walk. I will note that the panel room was super chilly and that could be worked on.
I played two games that I really enjoyed, met so many new people in an environment where I wasn’t feeling pressured to rush, and it was just really great. Sean Nittner and the entire incredible staff (who talk about Big Bad Con here) made it a great experience for me. I honestly really want to go back and I don’t know how I’ll make it happen, but it would be worth it.
Note: My experience is only my experience, and others may feel differently. For example, Stephanie Bryant expressed that being the only woman in a large crowd of people outside Games on Demand was awkward and uncomfortable. This is something that could use review – for me this is a consistent Games on Demand issue but my experience isn’t universal.
more!
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Hazy!
Friday
I arrived at OAK airport around noonish on Friday, and Jeremy Tidwell was kind enough to pick me up and transport me to the hotel. The hotel is pretty nice! I had some minor room issues, but they were quickly resolved, and I got to meet Jeremy Kostiew FINALLY (his beard is gorgeous, fyi) and forgot how hugs work, as well as getting say hi to James Mendez Hodez, who I’m interviewing right now also.
I got to hang out with Mickey Schulz, Lex Larson, Misha Bushyager, and Rachel Beck. I loved talking with them and having a space where I could get settled into the con after the long flights. Also got to meet Tanya DePass, my roomie, who is awesome. Later I got to meet Sandy Jacobs-Tolle, who is really nice! I screwed around a lot but also spent a significant amount of time talking games culture, current work, and so on.
I noticed that there is a huge trend of people just really feeling like there’s no safe space for them. We talk about this online a lot, but in person, we were just really venting it out. We have to fight our way through just to be able to play. The number of people who said “I don’t play at tables with people I don’t know so I don’t game at cons” was significant, and heartbreaking. I know this feeling, and it’s just not fucking fair.
Later I went out to dinner with Tracy Barnett and some of the others. We discussed games a lot, but also some really challenging personal experiences from growing up, our own baggage, and how it influences our play styles, our gaming, and our lives. I had a few conversations like this over the weekend and was reminded that gaming is an incredibly human hobby.
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I was on the You Don’t Look Like a Geek panel with Kristine Hassell, Tanya, and Jahmal Brown. I admit it was weird (but good) to be the only white person on a panel. The experiences that the others shared we’re very far from my own, but I felt really lucky to be there as a part of it.
I was, to my knowledge, the only non-cis person on the panel, which is part of why I was there, plus my orientation queerness and disability. Those don’t all seem super visible, and in narrower communities like indie games they don’t seem remarkable, but those things still can fall into the category of weirdo for a lot of geeks.
Thankfully Big Bad Con had made steps to welcome people like me. Like Metatopia, all-gender bathrooms made a difference for me, so much.
We talked a lot about things that made us feel unwelcome or out of place. I am the only one who actually uses “geek” as a label for myself much, and it’s not a constant for me. We discussed ways to make geek environments more welcoming for people like us, how to handle exclusionary behavior, and also (my favorite) what benefits we had from being nonstandard geeks, much of which centered on finding others like us.
I liked when Jay talked about being a veteran and how when he had gone to basic training everyone had to be in it together, and how that’s how he participates in games: everyone is in it together, and they should try to find common ground. I will note this can be challenging (sometimes more for some than others), it’s a good intent. It’s relevant to the discussions that happened here and elsewhere about those behavior you will allow at a table, and why you would let people like racists stick around.
On the subject of being white, I was reminded how much white people contribute to ostracizing and distancing people of color from the community. That’s bad, and something I hope to continue working on.
I personally spoke a little about forgiveness and moving forward in geekdom. We have a hard tendency to hold tight to people’s mistakes, which is understandable. But when someone has apologized, even if they’ve demonstrated change and tried to make up for it, we so rarely give them forgiveness or allow things to move forward. They can continue to be pariahs, treated with disrespect, and so on. It hurts me to see that, and my heart ached when someone from the audience came to thank me for talking about it because they had messed up in the past and they feel like they can’t do enough to make up for it. That sucks! If you continue to be treated like a bad person even after you’ve apologized and made changes, the motivations to keep trying get fewer every day. This sticks with me.
That being said, we discussed the nature of exclusion and inclusion where keeping racist, sexist, homophobic, and other bigots in your space excludes people of color, women and trans and nonbinary people, queer people, and other marginalized people from your space. Even if they’re still at the table, they are likely uncomfortable and may have already checked out. This subject came up A LOT at my panels.
John Brieger caught up to me after the panel to talk about his current project and ask for my thoughts on his safety mechanics. It was fun to meet him and the others I caught up with, but my exhaustion and medication caught up with me and I hit the sheets early.
Before I crashed out, I was gifted a pocket size Script Change card by Tomer Gurantz! I received a lot of good comments about Script Change this weekend, and on Sunday spoke with Dante (Bryant Stone) about adding a new mechanic to it. It’ll be coming soon as one of the optional mechanics. 😀
Front of the fancy pocket card. 😀
And backsies! 😀
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That was Friday! It was REALLY packed somehow, even though I wasn’t actually that really busy. I am still processing a lot of what happened before I left for the con (work crises, loss of a family member, etc.), but I honestly have a lot of love for Big Bad Con. I had heard so much good stuff about it, I thought it would disappoint, but nope. 😀
Saturday (with two panels) and Sunday (with two games and talk on Script Change) coming soon! Thank you for reading!
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