Monthly Archive for February, 2006

Ashe here once more for the Sunday rant, though this one’s on Monday…I was busy Sunday.

I’ve noticed since the site’s gone up and particularly since Chapter 1 has been available for value the ever-inevitable subject of what 7/13 and CoE can be compared to and what it’s “about.” This is a very interesting subject to me as I always wondered how people would view it and what they would add to it. As I was talking about before, one can only expect something completely different when a game is released. That people will interpret it differently than the author is an inevitability, but it’s always interesting to see how people view the book, even when they haven’t read all of it yet.

I think it’s always interesting how people point to influence first, or rather to comparison; how a movie may be like another movie but completely different or that a book may be like another someone’s read but not really. There is this emphasis on stereotyping yet not at all, which tries to get a point across that is often destroyed in the initial comparison. If I were to say that the film Ginger Snaps is like the Howling but not really and more teen-ish, the first thing one often focuses on is the concepts of werewolves and a teen scream movie; the person i’ve told has just conjured up an image of something like An American Werewolf in London crossed with Scream or Friday the 13th, which would not at all be a good description of Ginger Snaps. It’s all about interpretation and many authors or promotional representatives will spend painstaking amounts of effort to get across what they want the film/book to be viewed as being “about.”

Herein lies my big gag I suppose: CoE was designed not as a setting or a specific story, but as an idea, a concept or a basis for one. It’s not really about anything specific that I wish to enforce upon the reader; it’s about what you choose it to be. I wrote it this way on purpose. So far I’ve seen comparisons and ideas abounding and each one makes me smile because all of them are correct and none are. I could tell you that CoE is about adolescents who still have belief in the boogeyman and thus are able to war against it. I could tell you it’s about a caste of people who are descended from demon hunters…I could also tell you that it’s about people from another world trying to fight for this one or vice versa. None of these are what I think the game is about, but it could be.

Sure there are some particulars that lean toward my personal view of the book, it’s tones and themes, and the story lines best run on it, but I didn’t write it to be about something extremely specific.

So what then is Cycle of Existence about, in my opinion?

It’s about the power of hope and faith and their power. It’s about fighting against the odds. It’s about honor and self-sacrifice and being willing to do what it takes to fight for what you believe in. It’s about facing fear and conquering it but realizing that it will always be there. Above all it’s about balance. None of these are specific.

Two questions have also been brought to my attention by many people: is the book about children and why are characters not initially allowed to be members/servants of the Dark?

For one, the book is not about children. If I wanted to write a book about children as the primary characters, I would be hard-pressed to contend with Little Fears by Jason Blair and Key20 publishing, that is a hell of a book. A hell of a game actually; one I have the utmost respect for. I emphasize children a lot in the text for the primary reason that in the modern world children are the only ones it seems (or, rather, the majority) of us who possess true and unrelenting faith, Faith in the supernatural and faith in just about anything. If you tell a child that he can pass through a wall, up until the point he runs into it he is inclined to believe at least a bit that it could in fact be perfectly feasible. That unrelenting possibility, that dream incarnate, is what allows one to see that there are a lot of things in this world that cannot be remotely explained by science without really making a stretch. While in my personal gaming I do run a lot of campaigns where the characters are children (it’s also a big challenge to play one), the book is actually geared toward characters in their late teens to late twenties. At least, that’s how I see it.

As far as the thing with the Dark goes, when i say servants I mean it. The Dark is the apotheosis of all hatred, suffering, and base desire. Not any of the good side of it either. Those who serve it are broken or extremely depraved individuals, and the powerful servants (with the exception of the Shael-Khannan) are bound by such fear that they can do nothing but serve with absolute loyalty. They are fanatical and sadistic, cruel and unrelenting. Many of them are broken beyond repair and simply empty. Seriously I think if that’s the kind of character someone really wants to be then, in my opinion, they need to look at what’s missing in their lives. The Dark is the ultimate antagonist. It was the best way I could personally define evil, by putting all of the common and universal concepts of it into one terrible force. Demons are terrible things and there are no redeeming qualities about them. While I am working on a supplement that explains the Dark and may well allow characters to be made from its ranks, that supplement is very iffy as it will likely be an 18+ recommended book. Bad juju folks, bad juju to the max. Now yes, there is enough insight for a GM to create characters based on the races of the Dark (Orks, Labyrinthine, Lilim, Koraji and Shael-Khannan are all provided with viable angles), but with demons it just doesn’t work very well. However people are also likely to notice that, on the inverse, there are many aspects of Light and Balance inherent to a number of the Dark’s races.

But this, once more, returns me to the subject of interpretation.

What I provide the players with is an idea, an idea that I came up with and was influenced by the ideas and interpretations of many others. I use the term Fragments of Perception as a core concept in the game, and I would become quite the hypocrite were I to declare that my way is the only way to interpret the material presented. So whether a person thinks that the Dark is a great character angle for a campaign, or that the primary characters in the game should be children. Or even that the characters are actually an elite caste of supernatural beings more suited to Anime than reality. In the end, it’s al about interpretation, perception and comparison to one’s own influences and preferences. To a degree we all chose how we see aspects of reality, be they in the “real” world or that of fiction. All are built of our own fragments of perception.

The great challenge in life is trying to put those fragments together.

From Denton, TX 27 February 2006

– Ashe

Welcome to Ashe’s Sunday rant. Generally everyone has their day of the week when things are reflective or bad or whatever, for me that has always been Sunday; it’s generally the day whenever everything from the previous week comes together on me and either makes a lot of sense or absolutely the inverse. So every sunday (hopefully) I’m going to find something to talk about on here.

This week’s topic is revolution, which has been on my mind all week: the word, the concept, the act.

Revolution (from Meriam-Webster):

Main Entry: rev·o·lu·tion
Pronunciation: “re-v&-’lü-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English revolucioun, from Middle French revolution, from Late Latin revolution-, revolutio, from Latin revolvere to revolve
1 a (1) : the action by a celestial body of going round in an orbit or elliptical course; also : apparent movement of such a body round the earth (2) : the time taken by a celestial body to make a complete round in its orbit (3) : the rotation of a celestial body on its axis b : completion of a course (as of years); also : the period made by the regular succession of a measure of time or by a succession of similar events c (1) : a progressive motion of a body round an axis so that any line of the body parallel to the axis returns to its initial position while remaining parallel to the axis in transit and usually at a constant distance from it (2) : motion of any figure about a center or axis <revolution of a right triangle about one of its legs generates a cone> (3) : ROTATION 1b
2 a : a sudden, radical, or complete change b : a fundamental change in political organization; especially : the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed c : activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation d : a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something : a change of paradigm <the Copernican revolution> e : a changeover in use or preference especially in technology <the computer revolution> <the foreign car revolution>

It strikes me as fascinating that the word revolution has the meaning of cyclical movement while also suggesting the upheaval or violent change of an ideal, industry or institution. This suggests not only necessity, but inevitability. Not it’s something that does happen, but something that always, undeniably, WILL happen. History shows us that violent change is often the most effective and inevitable to be had, and gradual change deals more in resignation rather than alteration. I’ve been thinking about this a lot probably due to the amount of punk rock i’ve been listening to while working this weekend, which I haven’t been so much into since i was 16. I suppose everything is screaming toward revolution in the teens, always is. You take generations of increasingly self-aware young adults who are not quite kids and not quite grown and who generally would scream injustice at anyone who says they should be treated so and you put them together in an environment that mimics adult society to a completely exponential and almost comic degree (we refer often to such an institution as High School here in the good ol’ USA). Everyone thinks they’re old for their age and none of them are right. They’ll know it later in life but you try telling a teenager he or she is wrong…you’ll find that even if they act adult about it they’re still lying to you. That’s the beauty of it though I think…In these years we all travel through a rite of passage that none of us believe we will survive (and more and more do not) and many of us forget just how psychotic it was.

I began working on the first true incarnation of Seven13 in High School at the age of 17 (at the time it was called social corrosion). Now I’ve worked on varying incarnations of the system and the book since I was 12, but Social Corrosion was the first, now that I think of it, that really possessed the edge that CoE now has. In that same year I also ran Last Days, an apocalyptic translated-ony game (you are the character) based very heavily on Stephen King’s the Stand. At that time my world was filled with angst, conflict and a general distaste for society (like pretty much everyone else). I was into punk rock at that time (championed in particular by such classics as Operation Ivy, NOFX, Black Flag, Screeching Weasel and the Germs) and was inclined to write a game about horror that leaned on the actual way of things more for shock value than it did on demons or Horrors from The Beyond. It was the intro to this game, Social Corrosion, a story titled “…And the City Stood Still” that one me the Grand Prize at the city-wide Houston Writer’s Conference contest. I was the only person under 25 there. Since then I’ve been writing, working and studying the industry and society as an inspiration to create something with the idea of revolution in mind. I didn’t know it then but it’s become apparent now. Revolution is an inevitability and it’s about time for one in gaming. Hell, maybe it’s about time for one everywhere.

When I was first marketing and testing the waters under the company name of Pangea Games back in 2000 (when the rules were System13 and the book was the Thirteenth Hour) I was exposed to the idea that an independent publisher in the industry as a general rule would scrape together whatever money could be found, cut as many corners as possible, hit a couple of conventions and then wait and promote a bit here and there, hoping that the proverbial “big break” would come about and turn them into White Wolf or Wizards of the Coast (who at the time were still just getting going with the whole d20 thing). A sense of distance pervaded between the top publishers and the indies and most game designers you would talk to would be as discouraging as possible, citing that the game one designed was unoriginal, lacking and even if published no one would understand it or would bastardize how it was meant to be interpreted or played. It is among these reasons that I have neglected marketing in such sectors until most recently and have generally kept to myself. Like many of you out there who have ever attempted the nigh-imppossible effort of following a dream or an artistic endeavor, I was told the classic things such as “keep your day job” “get your foot in the door” and “be ready to fail.”

Now I’ve seen the RPG industry and its trends in detail since I was in Jr, High. I was around when Vampire: the Masquerade was carried in only a few places and was a paperback 1st with little recognition. I’ve also been in conversations not only with designers, but with gamers as well, and for those of you who say that they’re one and the same, there is sadly often a distinction. At some point, designers seem to become jaded, annoyed or self-absorbed and lose sight of what the important reasons they got into the business were to begin with. If you are a designer and are extremely offended by that statement, it probably happened to you. If you were like “it’s true” it likely has not. Why does this happen? Designers often forget that the moment a game hits the market, it is no longer theirs. A role-playing game becomes the interpretation and revision of the gamers the second they start a campaign. That’s what I love so much about tabletop roleplay. When I played Call of Cthulhu, it was my game. When I played World of Darkness it was all mine. My story, my interpretations, my world. There’s nothing to get; there is only what myself and my gaming crew believe. When I was still marketing and active on a particular gaming forum, I would constantly see developers or designers telling new designers with a decent idea “Your idea sounds too much like X game or Y system” without any constructive input or encouragement. To which I would generally respond “that’s ok, you role-playing game sounds a lot like Dungeons & Dragons.” It’s all been done, the trick is to balance out influence and creativity while not breaking your back trying to come up with some gimmicky system that doesn’t work but sure is original.

But I digress…ADD is an odd companion.

Revolution was not what I intended when I was writing Social Corrosion back in 1996 (or maybe it was, but if so I was none the wiser). Now looking at it I suppose 7/13:CoE is just that. I’ve seen too many people out there annoyed with the 10k or whatever d20 books that suck, the fact that WoD’s metaplot has been revised and done poorly (I rather like it, though I’m not impressed with the rules revisions) and who are looking for a system that works well for their campaigns and hits when they see it. I can talk about Seven13 for less than 15 minutes on the street (or simply show off just one of the many phenomenal illustrations in the book) and have most people itching to get a copy…with non-gamers it takes me about 25. It doesn’t have anything to do with being good at sales (I’m not and never have been), it’s about belief that the concept of trying to get your foot in the door is not near as effective as breaking down the door with a sledgehammer, and the understanding that change is inevitable, and you can either be a part of it or face i anyway. But there is a third choice they never really tell you about: you can be it. The more I see how this game hits people, the more I begin to wonder how much of an impact it can have, if it could be that revolution. Maybe so. I’m not vain enough to say absolutely, but maybe so.

Revolution is in the hearts of people, perhaps not always because they want it to be, but because complacency is not in our nature to suffer for long as a whole. Many of us forget this in our later years and shy away from it, or choose rationale over this primal instinct for violent change. My target audience for 7/13:CoE has no age range…it’s simply marketed to those who do remember that things are not what they seem and look deeper. To all of you, never forget. I was criticized once for the fact that I was talking to kids just out of high school as though I remembered my high school years all that well. Hell, I do. When you’re that age, feeling, emotion, pain is all exponential and you should never forget it.

Cause the calm can only last so long.

From Denton, TX 19 February 2006

– Ashe