I remember reading somewhere that trauma is like genetics. It can get passed down to each generation. We often see it as a cycle, but it is more like the branches of tree, touching us from the past.
That always made sense to me. I can draw some pretty clear lines from the damage of my grandparent’s lives right into my own. It shows up in personality affectations, bad habits, and vices that need to be managed.
I count myself lucky to be self-aware enough to identify those things.
Who knows how far back the trauma traces though? Did it start with the experiences of my one grandfather during World War II? What damage did my other grandfather have that led him to abandon his family?
These are all personal, interesting questions. They are the texture of a life. The kind of thing we try to approximate in fiction and games to build connections.
It is the insidious genius that I felt unfold on Sunday when we kicked off our Pendragon Great Campaign.
I've never had a chance to play the Great Campaign. Never gotten to try navigating a knight through the anachronistic world of Stafford’s version of Camelot. Friends and acquaintances have always spoken of it with love, sparking my hunger to play.
It has been my white whale for decades.
Now, like Ahab, I am facing my demon. And in facing it, I am finding the outcome to be different than I expected. I won’t slay this monster. My obsession is going to consume me.
Our first session took hours and we never got to the making of the characters we will be playing. By the end, I was exhausted.
Exhausted and entirely satisfied.
We didn’t make our characters, but I know who my character is. I know where they came from. I know the history of their home, but more importantly I know the history of their family.
And from that history, you can see the trauma.
It was riveting. Year-by-year, Thor read to us the events that occurred starting in 413 CE. He put their family in a place as well as a time. We rolled dice to determine what happened to the forebears of our character’s and made small decisions.
I gave everyone names.
A simple exercise, yes. Also a demanding one that takes time and effort to achieve the reward. One that requires you to sit with the moment. To actively listen. To consider what the life events. The births. The deaths all mean to the person you will ultimately begin to play.
This depth. This hard work to shape the vessel you will use to explore the human condition is why I love table top roleplaying games.
It is also why I bounce off of the Powered by the Apocalypse class of games. Hard. Like a league ball off brick.
Pick from five things and define your version of this class? Too simplified. Too shallow. Not enough texture.
I get why people like those things. They provide the promise of low prep play. You jump in and you get going right away.
I got kids and a busy life. I see the appeal.
But, that busy life is exactly why I don’t want to play those games. Why I want the hard thing that challenges me. I only have so much time, so I want that time to be in the depths. Not a shallow pool that just looks deep from a distance.
Which is why I am excited to see who Guy is and who they become. They carry with them the weight of their family's history. One filled with prejudice, violence, mystery, disloyalty, and untimely deaths.
Or, put another way, generational trauma.
Weekly Roundup
Poetry, playing tyrants, a possible TikTok slayer, and help for a legend in special effects.
My Work
I have been struggling with the form and function on the final booklet that goes in the Mystery Box. Gazetteers are a tricky thing in game design. They can become these bible size tomes in the blink of an eye. They also can be a slog of “why would I ever care about that” information.
I knew I didn’t want to hit either of those notes. My game design is as much an art experiment as it is anything else. I just couldn’t figure out how not to avoid either end of the spectrum…
That is until this weekend when I got inspired by Matt Snyder. Matt wrote Dust Devils, a seminal work in indie game design. He also wrote the lesser known, but equally good, Nine Worlds. Matt also happens to be a skilled poet and that got me thinking. Thinking got me to writing.
And now the Gazetteer is going to be a book of poetry.
Gaming
Tyranny is an odd duck of a game. In some ways it is like every other post Baldur’s Gate RPG and in others it is surprisingly different. This is a particularly good article looking back at this strange game that showed up at a strange time. Link
Technology
I’ve been futsing about with a new TikTok competitor on the AT Protocol called Skylight lately. I like open software and open protocols and the general philosophy behind the protocol, so am finding it worth playing with. It didn’t hurt that the first video that showed in my feed when I signed in with my Bluesky account was from 404 media either. Link
Creativity
Apparently Tom Savini lost everything in a fire. Including the poor man’s pets. At a 80 that is not something easy to bounce back from. The guy is a creative legend. Link
