Jinx in Hell
Childhood Memories
Jim Vassilakos (jim.vassilakos@gmail.com)
“My first opportunity to trust you,” Jinx says just before she
inhales about half of what Furcas did, then follows it with a
sip of wine.
“In a few minutes, we’ll be without our memories,” he
warns, a matter of fact tone to his voice, as though such a
state were perfectly natural. Then he takes another sip of
the Tabula Rasa before passing it back.
“I imagined as much from the name on the bottle,” Jinx
nods. “Might I inquire as to the point?”
“Oh…I’m just curious about something.”
“How long do the effects last?”
“Not long…an hour or two, a veritable eternity should
Gordo burst through those doors and decide to have his way
with us.”
“That doesn’t worry you?”
“He’s loyal,” Furcas takes another sip of wine. “And even
should he prove otherwise, he will have a somewhat
difficult time finding us.”
With that he gets to his feet, a small wand materializing in
his hand. He waves it around in a large circle, a line of blue
flame burning in mid-air where the end had passed. Once
the circle is complete, Jinx sees that he’s created some sort
of extra-dimensional portal.
“Come,” he says, picking up their glasses and walking
into this new chamber, which turns out to be a small study
lit by balls of light which dance near the low ceiling. A
long, leather couch is there, as well as lean-back chair, and
there’s a small coffee table upon which are stacked a series
of thick, metal-bound tomes at one end, and at the other,
several sheets of loose parchment and a quill.
As Jinx crosses into the chamber, the magical portal
vanishes behind her, Furcas taking to the lean-back while
motioning her to the couch.
“Now what?” Jinx queries, once she’s lain down with her
head on the armrest.
“Dictation, my sweet,” Furcas motions her toward the
paper and quill. “Dear, Furcas and Jinx,” he begins. “You
are both at home and safe. If you don’t remember anything,
that’s because you just drank some Tabula Rasa. While it
dissolves your memories for a time, it also returns them
ever so lovingly, so fear not, you will both soon be back to
your old, rotten selves. For the time being, however, feel
free to relate your lives to each other as they re-emerge
from your ragged minds. There are no secrets, here, nor, we
hope, will there ever be. Now sign it, and pass it this way.”
“If I won’t remember anything, why my signature? …Are
you also signing? I’m knowledgeable of pacts, but my
knowledge is limited to those spells of the ninth circle and
below…I’m not saying I dis—…well…maybe I am, but for
someone like myself who has never done this, could you
give a bit more information of what it may do?”
For a protracted moment, Furcas regards Jinx with all the
good humor he can summon.
“Just hand it here,” he says.
“I’m not done writing yet.”
“Well, then finish writing.”
“What is this for?”
“It’s a letter.”
“I can see that…but why it is only half-written?”
“Because you stopped writing to ask me,” Furcas blinks
for a moment, trying to remember her question or, for that
matter, who she is. Jinx, meanwhile, looks up, the space
between her ears bubbling somewhat pleasantly, as though
somebody cut open her skull and poured in some expensive
champagne.
“Where are we?” she finally manages, looking around the
study somewhat furtively, her eyes taking in the dancing
balls of light at the ceiling, Furcas’ long horns, and the
trembling page in her hand just as though she’s noticing it
all for the first time.
“That’s a very good question,” Furcas replies, getting up
and checking the room out. It doesn’t take long before he
discovers that there are no exits whatsoever.
Jinx, meanwhile, looks at the page in front of her.
“It’s no good,” comes the stranger’s (Furcas’) voice.
“We’re trapped.”
The scrap of parchment in her hand appears to be some
sort of letter. It reads:
Dear Jinx & Furcas,
You are home & safe. If you can’t remember anything,
that’s because you drank some cheap wine that some
dumb-ass probably pressed from Styx grapes. For the time
being
Jinx carefully folds it up and puts it in her pocket, quite
certain that it might have something to do with her
predicament, but honestly worried that the dumb-ass it
mentions might be her.
“Did you hear me? We’re trapped.”
They stare at each other for a long moment, each trying to
remember the other, not to mention the riddle of who they
are themselves. Finally Furcas blinks, as though
remembering something important.
“Didn’t you just have something?”
“What?”
“A piece of paper…it was in your hand.”
Jinx finds herself taking the note out of her pocket and
handing it to him. He apparently has no trouble reading it,
although the words come as slowly for him as they had for
her.
“Jinx & Furcas,” he begins, and for a moment Jinx can
vividly remember her mother holding her close to her
breast, murmuring her name as she suckled. It is a fleeting
glimpse, but the memory is real—she is certain—and with
it trickle a steady stream of thoughts and images, each
tangentially interconnected.
One of these is of a rainy night, when the others had come
seeking shelter in the old tower that her and Mother were
then occupying. Mother had assumed human form, hoping
to gain their trust, but they were a gang of bandits, and
would have killed both her and Jinx had she not been able
to fly into the night. Although shocked at their escape, the
intruders decided to occupy the tower, posting a guard, and
Jinx can remember waiting in the cold, wet darkness, until
Mother finally took her leave, communicating telepathically
into Jinx’s mind three simple directives: “Wait, listen, and
learn.”
Out in the dark distance, Jinx could hear their screams,
Mother dispatching them individually, then withdrawing in
order to regenerate from whatever injury she had sustained,
then returning again and then again, entering from the roof
or from a window or, finally, from the front door. When it
was finally over, she came and collected Jinx, cold and wet,
and brought her to feast on their raw, mangled flesh. It was
Jinx’s first taste of mannish blood, and it was good.
Mother cooked what they couldn’t stuff in their bellies,
intending to preserve the meat for as long as possible. It
smelt and tasted of smoke, but it was filling. After that they
dined upon mannish jerky and bone marrow. More humans
eventually came, seeing the line of smoke in the sky, and
Mother invited them to eat, sharing with them much of
what was left.
Jinx remembers the veiled laughter in her eyes that the
humans mistook for warmth and generosity, and she
remembers also laughing inside, their morbid fate the punch
line to a joke only Mother and she shared. Together, they
killed them, each quietly as they slept, and then she turned
their souls toward Limbo and whispered for them to rise,
and rise they did, bloodstained corpses at her command.
She had them stand guard outside, clowns of death at Jinx’s
command, her daughter’s playmates and guardians, mute
but ever-reliant.
As Jinx wakes from these memories, she sees Furcas
entrapped within his own, his eyes seemingly glossy with
the mysteries of his own, distant past.
“I remember my mother,” he says, as though it is the most
wondrous thing anyone could say.
“Tell me of her.”
“You tell me of yours,” he replies.
“Difficulties with trust?”
Furcas smiles, “I hardly know you.”
“Apparently you know me well enough to lure me into
your confidence with cheap booze.”
“What makes you think the wine was mine?”
“I was the one writing the note. Clearly, I would not call
myself a dumb-ass…and since you’re the only other person
here…”
“Hmm…” Furcas’ mind lingers around her logic,
wondering absently if perhaps they are mates to one
another.
“What are you thinking?” Jinx queries, seeing the sudden
salivation in his gaze.
“Oh, I’m still curious as to why this room has no exits.”
“Probably because the exit is hidden. You’ve never heard
of secret doors? I had one of those where I grew up.”
“Where was that?”
“An old, deserted tower…it was once a watchtower, my
mother told me. Oh yes…I was supposed to tell you about
my mother, wasn’t I? She liked the taste of human flesh.
What about yours?”
“She was among the first fallen,” he replies, stopping for
a long moment to quiz himself on the very meaning of the
phrase. “Her skin was of the purest white.”
“My mother was the exact opposite,” Jinx counters. “She
was as black as a starless night.”
“You, obviously, took after your father.”
Jinx blinks, trying to remember her father, or to even
remember the meaning of the word. It takes a moment
before it comes to her, but within the experience of her
early childhood she cannot place any reference to it.
“My mother never mentioned him. It was as though he
never existed.”
“So you two lived alone?”
“We lived with zombies.”
“Zombies?”
“We didn’t eat everyone she killed. Occasionally she
would…raise them, make them into servants…protectors.
Then she would leave, sometimes for days, sometimes for
weeks. She would come back, and she would teach me
things…how to hunt, how to read and write.”
“Did you enjoy this?”
Jinx thinks for a long moment, trying to remember the
times she questioned the use of such knowledge, for there
were no books in the tower save for those carried in by the
human trespassers, and those were as indecipherable to her
mother as they were to Jinx herself.
“I liked it when she paid attention to me,” Jinx finally
replies. “Wait…there was another instructor. We had
captured him. My mother wanted me to learn the language
of humans, and so we made him teach me what he knew of
it, since he was carrying so many scrolls. He tried to escape
a few times, but we would always track him down. There
was really nowhere for him to go anyway. The places he
called towns and cities, where the humans dwelled…they
were too far away.”
“What eventually happened to him?”
“He…” Jinx squints her eyes, trying to recall the
memories. “My mother promised him that when he finished
schooling me, he would be allowed to go back to the lands
of the humans. She would send him home. So after I
learned all that he could teach, she turned him into a zombie
and sent him off. She just pointed him in the right direction,
and said “Walk!”
Furcas can’t help but grin. “I think I like this mother of
yours.”
“She had her moments.”
Further Thoughts on Politics in A&E:
I feel that I should apologize for some of my remarks last
issue. Regardless of concerns over accuracy, using such
words as “arrogance”, “hypocrisy”, and “immaturity” were
clearly beyond the bounds of polite discourse1, and as I am
always, seemingly, erring on the side of incertitude, it is
remarkable to me that they fell from my fingers onto the
page. In short, I think it better to simply start again. So here
1
I don’t know when I’ve written a thought more laughably
obvious. Granted, this thought is, in itself, a bit two-faced, but, as
is often the case, my thoughts are divided against themselves. That
is to say, I am of two minds on this topic, and therefore to make
myself more fully understood, I must write on it yet again.
is what I think and, perhaps as important to understanding
my point of view, why I think it.
When I started contributing to A&E some years ago2, of
course it was impossible not to notice the political
discussions. For the most part, I paid them little heed, as
much of the time, it seemed to me, what was at issue was
some minor historical footnote.3 Quite naturally, I think it is
arguable, I didn’t see what all the history and politics had to
do with gaming, and having little interest in the topics then
under discussion, I simply abstained from discussing them.4
If you were to ask me, during this period, if I was for or
against politics in A&E, I think I certainly would have
answered that I was against the politics. I remember feeling
this way at the time, thinking to myself that all the political
discussions never seemed to go anywhere except that the
participants would often get snippy with one another, and
occasionally, from some minor spark, a flame war would
erupt, and I can remember shaking my head, thinking that
we’d all be better off to focus on producing gaming
material...that A&E could thereby be much improved, that
the content could be much better, more useful, and that
every page could be jam-packed with material of value to
roleplayers.
Aside from contributing write-ups from the Jinx
campaign5 along with various other articles, I also started
contributing a series of articles on a science-fiction RPG
that I was trying to develop.6 In working on this RPG’s
near-future setting, I had to confront the question of what
could happen in the near-term politically, as well as
economically, technologically, and socially. I had to start
addressing such topics as world population growth, social
decay, government debt, peak-oil, the environment, rapidly
advancing technology, globalization, and the clash of
civilizations, just to name a few. Hence, I started writing
some essays addressing what I initially viewed as a few the
issues immediately at hand,7 and I also started scrounging
around for various books on the topic of the future and what
it might be like to be living in it.8
2
Apparently this unholy incident occurred in A&E #297.
3
Granted, history is in the details.
4
It would appear this was an uncommon moment of sensibility on
my part. Actually, I abstained from commentary generally for
quite some time. Perhaps it is also worth noting that I also dropped
the name of my zine after about two issues, as I thought the table
of contents would be more useful if each contributor simply
entitled their zines with some phrase describing their primary
focus for that particular issue. In this way, I imagined, A&E might
more closely resemble the prototypical magazine with articles by
the authors each focused on various topics.
5
Starting in A&E #316.
6
It is still tentatively entitled Ragamuffin. See A&E #s 298, 307,
310, 312, 313, 315, 317, 337.
7
See A&E #356.
8
I finally got around to writing a few book reviews in A&E #s
359 & 361. I’ve also recently been reading a few more books that
relate to the future: A Short History of the Future (2nd edition)
(1992) by W. Warren Wagar (highly recommended), America
Alone (2006) by Mark Steyn, The Coming Economic Collapse
(2006) by Stephen Leeb, America’s Financial Reckoning Day
(2007) by Charles Coppes, and Our Earth: Global Warming—The
Evidence (2007) by Peter Murray. Also worthy of mention is this
month’s (July 2008) issue of Popular Science, with its articles
“Green Megalopolis” and “10 Audacious Ideas to Save the
Granted, my first political essay in A&E was probably as
early as A&E #314, but you must forgive me, as this was
the issue immediately following 9/11. I was in shock, and
so I felt that I had no choice but to write about it. Likewise,
it wasn’t until A&E #350 that I really started writing
comments as a matter of course, and once I did, I already
had a lot of politics on my mind,9 politics that needed an
outlet into what I believed was, for the most part, a forum
of intelligent, kind, thoughtful individuals who generally
accept each others differences and are tolerant of each
others perceived faults.
Of course, I’d already witnessed a good flame war or two.
I knew that you weren’t all saints. But I also knew that you
were smart, that you came from many different parts of the
world, from different backgrounds, and that you were all
gamers, which, for whatever reason, I tend to value as
meaning that you might perhaps have an open mind, at least
to some extent. So, therefore, needless to say, I began
merrily and foolishly trampling into politics, easing my
dismal mood by expressing it to all of you.10
Needless to say, once we began discussing the world and
our differing historical perspectives, a few members got
rather annoyed. Patrick was one of them,11 and Joshua
another.12 Robert Dushay accused me of inconsideration in
trying to use A&Ers to help develop the SF setting’s
background13 to which I, of course, heartily pled guilty, but
out of the many things he wrote that were particularly
worthy of note, he added that all that we had discussed and
that I had read and began to condition myself to potentially
believe were merely possibilities, not certainties. He wrote,
“Don’t mistake your choices for the certainty of how things
must be for all settings, which your original post appeared
to do, which is what set off this hot thread in the first
place.”
To which, I replied: “My apologies to everyone over this
political digression, by the way. I’d rather discuss all this
Planet,” and various shows on The History Channel, such as
“Crude” (originally an Australian documentary, see
http://www.abc.net.au/science/crude) and “Dogfights of the
Future”, which is about the near-future of military aviation.
9
This, it would seem, is evidenced by my rather bizarre essay in
A&E #351 as well as the sheer volume of my political remarks in
A&E #352. Let us chalk this up to the election pressure on a well-
meaning if indecisive voter. As I think Lisa remarked to me in
A&E #352, I was writing in order to think.
10
Indeed, the more that I learned, the more pessimistic I became
(if such a thing were even possible). This reminds me of
something Jinx’s player said to me. He teaches High School
English, and one of the essay assignments that his students can
choose to undertake is to analyze and write about the near-term
prospects and probable future (in their own estimation) of the
United States and of human civilization in general (or something
like that). He tells me that almost without fail, one can tell which
students are undertaking this particular assignment by the droop in
their postures, the sudden looks of worry and pessimism upon
their faces, the sign that they are becoming aware of the awful
world around them and that they are becoming steadily more
depressed as their research forces them to learn about the many
serious problems that the country and our world face.
11
He made what I can only assume was the full extent of his
annoyance known to me in A&E #357.
12
Also in A&E #357, Joshua pled that political discourse in A&E
should be at least held back to a dull roar.
13
See his comment to me in A&E #359.
in terms of what this science-fiction setting will be like
rather than in terms of what the world will end up being
like, but, at least when one is shooting for some degree of
realism, it often becomes difficult to separate these two
concepts. Nonetheless, I’d like any further discussion along
these lines, if there is to be any, to be purely dispassionate
if at all possible. I’m no longer trying to grind a political
axe here, and while it would be nice to bat around these
ideas just for the sake of thinking about them in greater
detail, unfortunately, I really don’t see how we can prevent
the conversation from becoming hopelessly political. It
seems to me that this whole subject just cuts too close to
home, so with that I’ll be happy to drop it if anyone here
feels that it is off-topic.” 14
And, at that point, I basically put this science-fiction
setting back on the shelf. I moved it to the back burner, to
not coin a phrase, and I wrote a few more articles of only
passing interest before my life suddenly became very busy,
what with the 2nd job and the various pressures pertaining
thereto. I did try to stamp out a few of the brushfires that
my political comments had probably helped fuel,15 but for
the most part, the discussion we were having, imperfect
though it was, was essentially shut down for the good the
APA.
Although I was disappointed that we had not made further
headway, the whole exercise left me considerably richer in
terms of ideas and ways of looking at the world. I wasn’t
angry with Lee, as I knew that the two-page rule was
probably for the best, and I wasn’t angry with Joshua, as I
could remember feeling much the same way that he felt.
But I was possibly annoyed that discussing politics,
particularly with the explicit aim of developing a near-term
SF-RPG setting, should engender such a backlash, whereas,
before, politics had been discussed in A&E with no
discernable gaming-related aim for dozens if not hundreds
of issues, and flame wars had come and gone over issues far
less consequential.16
Nonetheless, as I said, my life had gotten busy. For nearly
two years, I attended solely to the petty details of life along
with a new career, of sorts, or at least an extension of the
old one. I followed along with the APA intermittently, and I
was gladdened with the arrival of Ty Beard.17 I had flirted
with the idea of writing a series of Traveller-related
articles,18 and so the addition of a Traveller-zine to A&E
sorely tempted me to return. The fact that I didn’t return
immediately is a testament to just how busy I had become.
So when I finally did return,19 and I witnessed Brian
Misiaszek essentially warning Ty to knock it off with all the
14
A&E #360.
15
See my comments to Joshua and Marco in A&E #359 along
with my comments to Paul Mason and Brian Misiaszek in A&E
#360.
16
Brian Rogers informed me in A&E #392 that the great brouhaha
with Robert Rees was apparently over their differing opinions of
Everway, which might be important to some people…it might
even be important to me had I ever played Everway and had an
opinion on the matter…but really…was it all worth it? I mean,
we’re talking about a game, for heaven’s sake.
17
A&E #380-b (the true #380).
18
One of them, “Six Recreations for Traveller,” appeared in A&E
#355.
19
A&E #389.
non-gaming comments20 (which, as I’ve stated, I was
enjoying immensely along with his Traveller material), I
felt that I had to respond. After all, Ty was apparently in the
middle of developing a near-future setting involving, as its
central premise, militant Islam taking over the world.21 I
immediately saw a parallel between what he was doing and
what I had been attempting to do roughly thirty issues
previously.
Granted, Ty was not approaching the readership with a
questioning mind but rather with one that was dead certain
of the confrontation that awaits us. Needless to say, this
didn’t make him popular. Then, Louis, who shares many of
Ty’s concerns and who often discusses politics in his zines,
was told to be quiet in absolutely no uncertain terms, 22 and
this was really too much to bear. After all, Lee had made a
rule, a sort of compromise, if you will, and while one side
of the fence was adhering to it quite diligently, debating
each other within the bounds of the two-page rule, the other
side apparently thought nothing of telling the conservative
half of the political debate to knock it off.
I don’t think I would have reacted had their comments
been directed at everyone who was discussing politics.23 It
is perfectly acceptable to me that members should make
known their desire for the two-page rule to be modified.
However, what I could not tolerate and will not tolerate is a
selective attack against certain members based on their
ideology. Perhaps this is a personal foible on my part, but
whether there are liberals attacking conservatives or
conservatives attacking liberals, I have the tendency to
become quite agitated if either side is being treated
unfairly…particularly when it comes to their right to say
what they think.
Hence, rightly or wrongly, what I read made me angry. It
touched a nerve, perhaps also in part because I had allowed
myself to be silenced before my temporary absence from
A&E. And although Ty and Louis weren’t steering the
political discussions toward a similar end (the design of an
RPG setting), there could be no doubt that the discussions
themselves would, at some level, help them organize and
detail their thoughts, as, I felt, was the case for myself. So I
wrote what I wrote,24 and I have little doubt that some will
find it offensive.
Having said that, I have to also say that it would be
acceptable to me if Lee were to modified the two-page rule,
say making it a one-page rule, or a half-page rule, or a
quarter-page rule. If she thinks it would benefit A&E to do
this, then she should do it. My only concern is that
everyone operate under the same set of rules and that
whatever space is allowed for political commentary be
tolerated, however difficultly, by those who would prefer
not to see it. After all, it is difficult enough to maintain a
polite and productive political discourse without having
various 3rd parties snipping at your heels because they
20
This occurred in Brian’s comment to Ty in A&E #390.
21
See Ty’s “Commonwealth Campaign Timeline” in A&E #385.
22
See Joshua’s remark to Louis in A&E #391, about which he was
still unapologetic as recently as last issue, A&E #393.
23
Joshua’s comments in A&E #357 had been of a general nature,
and I obviously thought them appropriate enough to pay them
heed.
24
Indeed, this was hypocrisy on my part, as I had written against
“writing while angry,” and here I was doing it.
perceive your conversation as being off-topic. One might
liken it to playing tennis while under attack by a pack of
yipping, rabid, blood-thirsty Chihuahuas.25
So that’s the essence of my point of view, but having
been on the other side of the fence, I now need to turn
toward the members who are engaging in political discourse
and address them. Somebody here once said to me that in
A&E it’s not okay to argue why the real world is going to
turn out a certain way, but it is okay to say why some make-
believe world turns out a certain way. In short, people say,
but art shows, and so that is perhaps what we should be
doing (those of us who are so inclined).
If we feel strongly about a political issue, we can write an
adventure, a character, a setting or some sort of essay that
epitomizes whatever issue we happen to feel very strongly
about. For example, if you believe that Islam and The West
are destined to war, write a setting (ala Twilight 2000) that
shows what happens and puts the characters into the middle
of it. If you believe that the moon landing was a hoax or
that Castro killed Kennedy, write an adventure set in the
1960s, explaining the whole thing and putting the
characters right in the middle. If you think that peak oil and
world population will conjoin to create a valley of death for
all humanity,26 write a setting where this happens, where
political pressures caused by declining living standards,
resource depletion, and environmental degradation all
conspire to create a perfect storm. Saying it is easy, but
showing it is hard. It takes a great deal more attention to
detail, and one must focus one’s thoughts toward creating
something useful for gamers. What a pain in the brain! But
it can be done, and so that’s what I think those of us who
would like to discuss politics ought to be doing.
I’m reminded of a short article that I wrote for A&E #360
on “Growing Up in the Future” where the player learns
about the setting that his character inhabits by playing
through a series of childhood scenes. Childhood scenes, I
believe, are one of the things that most RPGs seem to just
gloss over, but they are critical for establishing character. I
am imagining something similar to the character generation
rules for Classic Traveller, where you roll to see what
happens and what skills are learned during a particular term
of service. This sort of generative system could be adapted
for writing scenes of childhood. One table could exist for
various attributes and/or skills, another for various elements
of the setting, and other for various personality tests of the
character, and after you roll some dice, the GM starts the
ball rolling by constructing the opening situation, and then
the player has to take it forward, making a decision that
will, in theory, help define his or her character.
As for the “elements of setting,” these will, to some
extent, have to include the current state of affairs as well as
information on what happened, historically, to cause this
state of affairs to come into being, and there might be
different, conflicting interpretations that mirror the political
divide in our own society. I’m reminded of Heinlein’s Lt.
Col. Dubois who, in Starship Troopers, explains the
downfall of western civilization.27 The reader, along with
25
Now, that’s a sport I’d pay to watch!
26
See footnote #17 in my zine in A&E #363.
27
Some called Heinlein a Nazi, perhaps not knowing that at one
time, politically speaking, he’d been pretty far to the left.
Regardless of the sureness of his view at any particular point in his
Rico, is being indoctrinated into a way of thinking, and I
think this is much more powerful than simply making a
political argument. It’s subversive and unfair, in a way,
because it doesn’t invite the reader to respond, as would the
standard, run-of-the-mill polemic, but rather simply states
its argument as the gospel truth within the internal logic of
the setting that the author has constructed, thereby
rendering the argument less assailable.
Likewise, when I think of near future settings, particularly
ones that entail some form of world government, there is
this very large question mark in my mind over what will be
the method of indoctrination of children, and, more to the
point, will it be more or less uniform throughout the
setting? I am reminded of Hitler’s famous quote, “He alone,
who owns the youth, gains the future,” a thought that
Orwell illustrated in Animal Farm, where Napoleon took
responsibility for the nine puppies that would latter
comprise his death squad. Huxley took it even further in
Brave New World, showing not only how the children were
being indoctrinated but also how, even prior to birth, they
were being specifically formulated, so to speak, to occupy
certain pre-arranged niches in the society.
Imagine growing up in such a society, not necessarily the
society of Brave New World, but rather any sort of society
where you are a cog in the machine and your purpose has
been, to a large degree, pre-ordained. I think that this is
probably a difficult, if not impossible, task, conditioned as
we (supposedly) are to the notion that human beings are
inalienably free, and that without freedom, existence is
essentially meaningless. I wonder what it might be like to
play in a Traveller campaign deep in the heart of the
Imperium as a young noble who is given to the notion of
freedom and democracy and who spends the better part of
his efforts combating all the evils inherent to absolute rule,
while still managing to not step upon so many feathers that
he loses his position. Yet, I have never heard of such a
campaign, much less actually played in one, nor is there any
likely rationale, for any such noble would likely be
persuaded by the self-serving argument that those of his
class rule by some form of “divine right” (theistic or
otherwise), and that this is as it should be, because
democracy on the large scale has proven itself to be
historically unworkable (or so, I imagine, would likely go
the thesis). And regardless of whether you’re on the left or
the right, you could fathom historical rationales that would
drive this point home, such as the failure of capitalistic
democracies to deal effectively with resource and
environmental issues or, on the political reverse, their
failure to deal, in a timely and decisive manner, with
growing existential threats of an ideological nature.
“Growing Up in the Future” of A&E #360, in particular,
sparked notions of how a dominant AI might organize the
planet, and what sort of catastrophe might lead to its seizing
of power on behalf of humanity, putting itself as the
custodian of a “Mother Race” to which it owes its very
existence but which has proven determined to blithely
commit mass-suicide if left to its own devices. How would
life, his mind and spirit were open enough to keep searching, and
so he tried on different, opposing views, and I think it’s this
questing for the truth that caused him to insert social commentary
into Starship Troopers (in my opinion, it’s the best part of the
book).
such an AI explain history to the child (human or
otherwise) with which it is charged? What sort of
worldview would be thereby imparted, and to what degree
would humans have a seat at the table in terms of choosing
their own destiny?
Once again, I don’t want to be accused of trying to get
A&Eers to do my development for me, but I think that this
is the direction that I’m likely to move, developing such a
society using my own skewed perspective as a basis for
how it’ll all fit together, and I’d just like to encourage the
others who find themselves drawn in by worldly politics to
do this same sort of exercise. Work on a setting or settings
that show us your political leanings without simply telling
us what you think. From Ty and/or Louis, in particular, I’d
be curious to see a setting that centers on Huntington’s
Clash of Civilizations or Steyn’s America Alone, complete
with adventure nuggets on ways that the players can take
part, and it would be illuminating, I think, to read a scene of
some father or mother trying to explain to his or her child
why history went down this road and what it all means for
their future.
All of the above are just my three or four bits, and, once
again, my apologies not only to those who I inadvertently
offended but also to those for whom my remarks of last
issue were deliberately intended. My word choice was
totally unhelpful, counterproductive, and inflammatory.
However, this whole discussion does bring to mind one
final thought, one no less confusing to me and one that is
also potentially inflammatory if taken in the wrong way.
Throughout A&E, for the many issues that I’ve
contributed, I rarely if ever feel a strong sense of the
campaigns that you run. Simon Reeve’s highly detailed
Triune Realm setting, extensive to the point of confusion,
was a close shave, and Lee & Lisa have presented many
write-ups from their campaigns, although these appear to be
the CliffsNotes versions rather than the actual
“fictionalization” so to speak.28 Also, Louis has written a
fair amount about his Ergodika campaign,29 and Ty has
written somewhat extensively about his Traveller
campaign, focusing on various aspects in different zines.30
From most of the rest of you, I get lots of pieces 31 but rarely
anything ongoing, and I’m not talking exclusively about
write-ups per se, but also about just a series of articles on a
particular campaign—here is where we went, and this is
what we saw: maps, challenges, and loot, so to speak. I
don’t mean to complain, but all politics aside, I wonder if
any others have this sense that A&E could be and perhaps
ought to be much more than it presently is.
28
See my comment to Lisa in A&E #350.
29
He’s also given me the actual rulebook.
30
It’s ironic, I suppose, that the two A&Ers who were told to be
quiet, politically speaking, are also two who have shared so much
of their roleplaying campaigns.
31
Some of these pieces have been quite outstanding, such as (just
to name two off the top of my head) Patrick’s Riley’s excellent
character write-up of Ingrid Atherton in A&E #349 and Brian
Misiaszek’s Ball of Confusion in A&E #351.
Comments on A&E #393:
Paul Cardwell: re Aging Gamers: Three quarters of a
century? Wow. Comparatively speaking, I’m merely a pup.
Myles Corcoran: re Brass Lizard: Absolutely beautiful. A
tip of the hat to your wife.
re Wolf Age: Very cool. I enjoyed the civs as well as the
spirits. What’s the surprise?
re Louis’ jokes & the Marathi: Perhaps I simply enjoy
phidiphid and phisphis more than you. Let’s just chalk it
down to a personal defect on my part.
Lee Gold: It’s a painful thing for me to suggest, seeing as I
enjoy Ty’s political comments as much as I do, however, if
you are serious about controlling political commentary and
the amount of non-gaming discourse that results, then given
the recent flak that both he and Louis have received over
including politics in their zines, maybe you should consider
modifying the two-page rule and changing it to a one-page
rule. Regardless of whether or not you do this, however, I
think that perhaps you should make it clear to the
membership that this space for politics, however large or
small you decide to make it, is not merely a limit but is also
a right of the individual members to exercise, and so it
should not be attacked simply as being off-topic so long as
people are staying within the bounds that you have set.
Joshua Kronengold: ryct Louis and my reply: Yes, that
was a bit of ramble on my part, but I wanted to let you
know exactly how I felt about your comment (angry and
disappointed) while still responding in a friendly way. It
didn’t come naturally, and perhaps, as a result, I was even
more wordy than usual.32 In any case, I hope I wasn’t too
insufferable in conveying my thoughts & feelings. I did
notice that you decided to ignore part of what I wrote, but
perhaps that’s for the best, as Louis has requested that the
matter be dropped. Back to gaming…
re Jinx in Hell: Yes, my collaborator is under the
impression that this unholy mess is somehow publishable.
Granted, a lot of unpublishable crap does somehow get
published, but this, I think, is pushing it quite far. At any
rate, as far as Jinx’s Vacation goes, the three scenes that
appeared in A&E #s 390-392 are in chronological order.
They took place in the old Judges’ Guild world, on Map 12,
down in the southeast corner of the map. What happened
was that Jinx (prior to ever entering Hell) used a device
given to her to escape a rather deadly situation. This device
could take her anywhere in the multiverse, but the
destination would be entirely random. We rolled some dice,
determined that she’d landed somewhere in the mortal
realm (the prime material plane), and so I counted the
number of heroic fantasy RPG settings I had on my book
shelves, rolled some more dice, and this is where she ended
up. I love having these sorts of random devices in the
campaign, to where the dice and a desperate decision on the
part of the player can completely change the entire course
of the plot. Jinx stayed awhile, getting to know this new
world, and eventually developed some attachments. Hence,
32
Shudder…
when it came time for her vacation from Hell, this is where
she decided to return.
Brian Misiaszek: ryct Ty and my reply: Since you are
emphatic that your comment to Ty was intended in the
spirit of friendship rather than censorship33, I will take you
at your word, however, please bear in mind that my
comment to you was similarly intended (dead French
philosophers and all).
John Redden: re Lee’s Space Game: Your PC was sucked
up where?!
re Politics & Insults: We appear to see things similarly,
however, not completely so. You write, “Some of us like to
game in the near and far future where the dark grind of
political economy is very real… Opinions (…) on religion,
economy and politics thus actually become gaming
material.” One of the really interesting things I’ve found
about A&E is that there are an awful lot of smart, well-
informed people here, and no matter what I think I know
about various things, there are usually a few A&Ers who
know quite a bit more and who will correct whatever
misconceptions I may have, and this is enormously helpful
from the standpoint of setting design and in particular from
the standpoint of near-future setting design, because, as you
intimate, so much of the real world comes into focus in
near-future settings.
Granted, different well-informed people often will have
opinions that are heavily slanted by their respective world
views. I think it was Paul Cardwell who said that if you
want to get a clear picture, you have to tap many different
sources. You can’t just rely on one newspaper or one news
station. You need to seek news and opinion from different
perspectives, and this is particularly necessary in the United
States where so much of our news is domestically-oriented
to the point of myopia. Hence, it helps the prospective near-
future RPG designer to discuss the world with people of
different political perspectives, particularly people who
understand RPGs and what the designer is trying to achieve.
A&E, being an international publication, ought to be ideal
for this purpose.34
You also write, “…if someone writes: ‘John Redden is a
fucking Communist”, this is a direct insult and Lee has
every right to delete it from the zine.” 35
Every right, perhaps, but I think Lee is wise not to censor
inter-member insults as this opens up a rather slippery can
of worms. At one time, after Joshua got annoyed about all
the politics in A&E,36 I began nursing the idea of starting
some sort of quasi-APA dedicated to political discussion so
that A&Ers would have some place to take their political
33
What you’re saying, in effect (and feel free to correct me if I’m
wrong), is that you were not intending to silence Ty’s political
comments, but rather that you feared that other readers might be
offended by his politics and thus might not read his zine, and so to
protect him from this unfavorable outcome, you wanted to warn
him that his political comments could potentially cause offense
and might result in fewer readers. Hence, in your mind, you were
doing him something akin to a favor. Okay.
34
However, for reasons that were not initially obvious to me, it
turns out that it isn’t.
35
Except, of course, if it’s intended as a compliment.
36
A&E #357.
discourse. In the back of my mind was this question of what
to do about participants directly insulting each another, and
I imagined then that I might do exactly what you suggest,
which is to just delete or otherwise smooth-over the
offensive comments before going to press (or to at least ask
the offender to edit it himself). However, upon later
reflection, I came to the opinion that this introduces a bias,
no matter how subtle, and that members might rightly take
offense at their insults to one another being deleted or
otherwise edited.
I mean, first of all, what exactly qualifies as an insult is a
bit of an open question. For example, I took offense to
Brian Misiaszek’s comment to Ty Beard in A&E #390, but,
in actuality, it’s quite a stretch to interpret what Brian said
as being an insult. It is, in all probability, my own
hypersensitivity to the notion of censorship along with my
profound enjoyment of Ty’s political comments that
triggered my reaction. Witness the fact that nobody else
reacted the way that I did, nor did anyone besides me
comment on Joshua’s comment to Louis in A&E #391.
Hence, for whatever reasons, I’m the odd man out.37
Furthermore, some insults are so deliciously vile that to
not utter them would be a crime against humanity. I think of
Churchill, whose insult to Lady Astor is legendary. He
famously called his political opponent, Clement Attlee, “a
sheep in sheep’s clothing.” Clearly, while all insults are
insulting (at least, presumably, in terms of their initial
intent), some are masterworks, and to edit them, a
defacement of art.38
The bottom line, I think, is that people are bound to take
offense to some comment for a whole assortment of reasons
which may or may not be justified in the mind of the
“average person”, and since this “average person” test is a
bit of a quandary, I think that Lee has made the right choice
by not getting involved as a content editor. Let the members
police themselves. It results in some needless, heated
verbiage and perhaps a few misunderstandings, but it also
gives members the freedom to choose their words with the
knowledge that they must be their own editors.
Some will take the high road as a matter of course, and
other, regardless of how we might implore them to do
otherwise, will insist on the lesser path. But if we were not
given the freedom to fail, then that means we never had the
freedom to choose to do right thing of our own free will,
and, just as importantly, it also means that we never had the
opportunity to correct ourselves when we do, inevitably,
screw-up. We are, after all, merely human, and I think that
this, especially, is something that we should all endeavor to
remember.
My past A&E submissions are at:
http://www.esnips.com/web/Alarums
37
I’m not saying that I’m wrong…just odd.
38
Note that it was also Churchill who purportedly wrote that “The
venom of a man’s enemies is a measure of his strength,”
something he probably thought to be true because he had such a
wealth of enemies, no doubt due, in part, to his talent for insulting
his follow man…and woman.