Casual Homophobia in Gaming

My regular campaign group met today.  I've written a few other posts about it.  The world has been magic deprived for the last century or so, and it appears that the magic is slowly returning back (in metaplot terms, we have a new GM who has only recently returned to GMing and wants to incorporate the full ruleset slowly).  The campaign has been running since August and today we had our first encounter with monstrous creatures--a phase spider and a land-based decapus.

The dreaded decapus slithered our way.

t today.  We've gotten into a regular groove for every other Sundays.  I'm really enjoying being a player as well and our GM is doing a great job.  I particularly enjoyed encountering the decapus--it was presented without a Bestiary-entry-based description and so it was like trying to figure out an entirely new threat!  I loved it!

I'll skip over the plot points (though I'm happy to share game notes with anyone who's interested), but we had a moment where we were talking about getting the short end of the stick.  And one of the other players made reference to "a dick up the ass."

He knows I'm gay.  I don't believe that he has any problems with it either.  In fact, I doubt that this person thinks of himself as homophobic at all.  I tried to slough it off as a joke while still pointing it out, but it actually left some lingering resentment.

I'm conflicted about how to address this.  Our GM is my college roommate, so I know that I can say anything to him.  And, I know that he'll understand it.  But, I'm not sure that I need to involve him.  I struggle between wondering if I should pull him aside and say something or if I should try and casually hint that this behavior isn't okay.  On the one hand, I think issues related to casual homophobia are best dealt with quickly and concisely.  On the other, no one ever wants to rock the boat.  So, maybe it would be best to try and just let things sort themselves out.

Dear readers, what do you think?  What's the best way to address casual homophobia in gaming?

The hammer has fallen!

So, my home campaign has been having some scheduling issues.  Nothing that doesn't happen to everyone else, I imagine.  We're all adults and have lives and fitting our habit into those lives can be complicated to say the least.

On the one hand, I very strongly believe that joining a gaming group is much like joining any other team.  Because everyone else's ability to enjoy the game is contingent on all (or at least most) people being there, dedication is required above and beyond just showing up to do something like go to movies or dinner with friends.  Obviously, there's nothing enforceable like a contract here.  But the concept of the non-binding but seriously entered-into covenant does come to mind.  So, I think that it's important that everyone be there because everyone else's enjoyment is, to some degree, contingent on the presence of everyone else.


On the other hand, I believe that because commitments to a group are something so important, it is important that they be spelled out pretty clearly from the beginning.  By constraining the bounds of the commitment, everyone who has committed can take extra care to meet it within its pre-arranged constraints.  It's essential not only that everyone gets on the same page, but that everyone is clear on what the page is form the outset.  And, from the beginning one of the things that we said we were going to do was leave our weekend evenings free.

Funnily enough, as I was listening to some Know Direction footage from Paizo seminars at GenCon on my way home from school tonight, their Ask the Paizo GMs seminar dealt with just this issue.  So, here's their wisdom on the topic.  (I'll switch it over to their YouTube channel once they put up the video).  I think that they hit some very good points (several of which diverge from some of my earlier thoughts on scheduling via email that are excerpted above).  

But, I also want to share a message from our GM that I believe gets the point across far better than I ever could:

Hope you enjoyed it.  Posts coming at least daily now.  After our next session, I’ll be back with further details about our four mismatched adventurers' life with the TREKkies.[1]

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[1] Pronounced “Trooks.”

Buying In to Byenn

We had our second session in the new campaign last night.  According to Roll20, it’s called Byenn.  I’m not sure how that relates to the world as of yet, but I’m going to take it on faith that it will be important, or, if not important, at least serve as a sufficiently indicative moniker for the campaign.  Since we have agreed that we are going to hold our next session on Friday afternoon, I’m under a bit of a time crunch to get this summary written.  On a happier note, I remembered to take some screen shots this time around.  So, there will be some graphics in this update!  Huzzah!

Joramon and our GM getting ready for a play session.  Joramon is reading through the last blog post about our first session.  At the bottom you can see Aliana on the left and cannot so much see Rhyss (me) or Jertyl.

We left our heroes in the midst of a riot (cum rebellion?) in the city of Flynnt.  Rhyss (me), Aliana, Joramon, and Jertyl[1] recently slipped into a building at the behest of a bunch of people who it appears actually started the riot during the execution.  Agreeing to accompany Joramon to his home to find his stuff was a questionable judgment call.  This appears to be completely insane. 

We’re holed up in this building and there are a lot of other people with us.  Yep!  You guessed it!  They are all TREKkies.[2]  We’re taken to meet their leader.  His name is Serge and he’s not particularly friendly.  He definitely has a thing against dwarves, like Joramon.  But, we were fighting in his company, so we appear to be given the benefit of the doubt.  Serge has the four of us packed upstairs so he and his team can decide what to do with us.  There are lots of wounded people, but a several able-bodied ones as well.  We comply and are escorted to wait for the verdict.

The heroes wait upstairs while the TREKkies decide their fate.

As a team we haven’t really had much of an opportunity to really meet each other yet.  Unfortunately, we don’t really get an opportunity to do this because we have to discuss what the hell is going on and how we want to respond to things.  Joramon isn’t surprised about this, but informs us that he doesn’t much care for his fellow dwarves either.  Rhyss is really just in it for the adventure.[3]  He takes a seat and starts playing a popular satirical tune on his pan pipes.  It starts with, “Who runs the world?  Dwarves!”  It gets an approving snort from the other side of the door.

Guards appear at the door and ask us to come back downstairs.  (Did I mention that there’s still a riot going on all around us).  Rhyss decides to be impressive and attempts to do a vaulting flip off out of his chair.  He bombs it and lands on his head, almost destroying his lute!  What’s a bard without his instrument?  The beautiful Aliana pulls him up.  Trying to recover his poise, Rhyss tells Joramon, “That’s the same trick I used to bed the Pasha of Ruana’s daughter!”

On the bright side, Serge and Co. have decided that we are all trustworthy.  On the so bright that it burns side, they have decided that we are all so damned trustworthy that they’d like us to join their order.  They believe in fighting against tyranny so that learning and peace can flourish.  Rhyss is down with concepts like that—it’s a life philosophy he approves of.  Unfortunately, they want us to show our dedication to the cause by getting the first letter in the TREK symbol branded onto our skin.  Joramon and Aliana agree pretty quickly. 

The main floor of our hideaway house.  You can see Serge above.  He's the one with the word "Serge" floating underneath him.

Rhyss pulls one of his favorite tricks—he hides until he’s wanted.  They fail to find him (except one injured guy who sees Rhyss slip under the table and just smiles).  When Serge calls out for Rhyss, he leaps onto the table and informs his new benefactor (or jailer, the two seem pretty congruent at the moment) that his skills run more to sneaking about and garnering information and that a brand would only impede doing that.  Serge agrees, reluctantly, that Rhyss will not need to take the brand.

Rhyss hasn’t had much time to chat with Jertyl yet, but Jertyl’s next move impresses him.  Jertyl doesn’t want to get branded either.  Thank God[4], someone else seems to be showing some sense here.  Before Jertyl and Serge can have it out, there’s a knocking at the door.  Is it a pleasant knocking?  Nope.  It’s the kind that’s followed by a battering ram.  Joramon and a TREKkie run south to reinforce the barricade.  Serge yells that we all need to get upstairs as quickly as possible.  Joramon, Aliana, and Rhyss follow, but Jertyl decides to stay downstairs and take stock of the situation.  Possibly Jertyl also wants a moment to reflect on the joyful development prevented his being branded.  Rhyss certainly felt like it was a close call.

Aliana splits off on the middle floor.  Maybe she heard a noise?  Rhyss and Joramon are rolling upstairs post-haste.  I guess we are going to the roof?  Maybe this is a horror movie?  There are people surrounding the base of the building, so we head to the one place with the least good options for escaping…

Full shot of the grinder house we got thrown into.  The crazy alchemist is hidden behind my name screen.  We are on the roof.  The plank bridge to the right has fallen, but we'll have to rush and defend the one on the left soon!

Chaos reins on the roof.  After a moment’s notice, Rhyss can see that it’s controlled chaos though.  There’s a few guys on the roof along with Serge.  As Rhyss and Joramon get up there, someone pushes a barrel off the roof.  Nothing happens for a second and then there’s a big BOOM!  Apparently the barrels are filled with something incendiary.  We take up positions on the roof.  That’s when Rhyss notices the planks connecting our roof to two other roofs crawling with Flynnt’s city guard.

Things are looking rough when Aliana arrives.  Apparently she went to investigate something she heard—a mad alchemist below who gave her several doses of alchemist’s fire!  We may have a chance!  Battle ensues.  Rhyss takes position behind a barricade and starts firing arrows.  Joramon’s fighting along the edges of the roof keeping defenders back while Aliana chugs vials of alchemist’s fire at our attackers.  Then Jertyl shows up.  He’d stayed downstairs while guards sent in their feral tracking dogs.  He’d laid one out, but then had to flee up the stairs with the little bitches on his heels. 

We’re trapped thirty feet above ground on the roof of a burning building with guards coming at us from both sides.  Rhyss lands a lucky hit on a guard coming from the east building and knocks him off the plank.  When he loses his balance, the plank falls with him.  Joramon is holding the western plank along with Serge and some TREKkies.  Aliana is chugging alchemist’s fire for all she’s worth.  Jertyl lost his hook in a grisly encounter with one of the dogs below, but he’s fighting guards up top with his scimitar. 

Suddenly, Rhyss sees something on the edge of the northern wall.  A small hole has opened up into what looks like a hidden crawlspace.  Most of the TREKkies are dead now.  Joramon has taken out the guards and the western plank bridge, but things don’t look good.  Even Serge is on his last wind.  Rhyss yells to his companions to hightail it into the bolt hole while he covers them with arrows.  The three of them make it in.  Serge and the TREKkies aren’t so lucky.

Someone’s installed a false wall along the northern edge of the building with holes connecting the floors.  We flee down them as quickly as possible.  Finally, there’s a hole too small for the tall folks to fit through.  Aliana and Rhyss slide through to see what’s going on beneath.  Joramon and Jertyl beat a hole and we end up underneath the building before crawling through the last hole—into a subterranean hideout presumably carved by one of the TREKies.

Just as our heroes slip into the bolt hole, the building comes crashing down on top of them.  Our pursuers have been cut off, but we have no route back above.  Jertyl lights a torch and we see we’re in a hideout with six beds, a few chests (full of food no less!) and tunnels heading north and south.  Joramon’s in bad shape and wants to hunker down for the night. 

Jertyl finds the food in the chests and we decide to rest.  Aliana and Joramon are now that last two members of the world’s smallest gang.[5]  Jertyl and Rhyss appear to be along for the ride.  Where are we going next?  You’ll have to wait for our next recap[6] to find out.

End scene.

Like this post?  Hate it?  Tell me in the comments section below!

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[1] Who I, Boyd the player, not Rhyss the character, am already lobbying to switch into a class that has an animal companion who will, of course, be called Yertyl the Turtle.

[2] Possibly in response to my last recap, our GM has informed us that the word should be pronounced “Trook” (rhymes with the noise an ape makes).  I am going to continue calling them TREKkies, but you can pronounce them as Trooks, Trookies, Trekkies, or Jumpin’ Jambalaya Juicers for yourself.  I don’t mind.  Really, it’s up to you.

[3] Or is he?

[4] Insert name of the Byennese (Byenni?) deity here.

[5] All credit to Aliana on that joke!

[6] Unless we start live streaming.  We might, if you provide comments asking us to!

A New Campaign!

I’m playing in a new campaign and I’m pretty excited about it.  My college roommate (who is a player in the game I run) has started up a new campaign.  He’s done some amazing world design.  The campaign is very gritty and incredibly low-magic.  Our party (best as I can figure out thus far) consists of a barbarian, a fighter, a rogue and my bard, Rhyss Ravenwind.  We’re in a city in the middle of the continent. 

The main meta-plot element is that magic doesn’t work very well.  It just kind of stopped about a hundred years ago.  This was bad news for the races that relied heavily on magic, especially elves and gnomes.  The dwarves and the humans allied and basically hemmed all the magical creatures into a ghetto country on the southwestern portion of the continent.  The dwarves really run the show, as they essentially control the economy.  Even in the human lands, they are pretty clear powers behind the throne.  Halflings, no surprise, have ended up as slaves.

Recap:

Last night was our first session.  I’m playing a bard, so I’m relatively well-known around town.  (I’ll post Rhyss’ stats at another time).  I’d ended up tied up with an elf who was looking to bring his wayward daughter home.  She’d gotten tied up in a commune or cult or some such, all of whom have been tattooed with the “TREK” symbol.  (I have taken to calling these partisans the ‘Trekkies,’ much to my GMs annoyance I fear).  I really am trying to give the symbol, which is a stylized form of ancient words (in Elvish or perhaps a language pre-dating it) for ‘tryanny’ and ‘infinity.’ 

None of our characters had met at the opening of the show.  Rhyss’ mysterious elven companion got taken away by the town guards after they’d tried to convince her to quit the Trekkies (I’ve done it again).  He had apparently been involved in a bit of a murder shortly after he got to town.  (It’s okay though—the government’s totally corrupt and being an elf is liable to just get you made a slave, so forcefully resisting arrest just for being alive is rational).  But, the elven companion had another friend who’d been laid up at the inn.  Her name was Aliana.  Things got excited when Rhyss was headed to the public square for the public execution of the elf and his companion, named Aliana.  Given that Rhyss was with the REAL Aliana, things very a little bit confusing.

We arrived and they put on a brutal show.  The fake Aliana (alas, Rhyss’ friend the elf’s daughter, who apparently should have known to come home when her father tried to be a good dad) was drawn and quartered.  Then, all hell broke loose.  Rebels?  Rioters?  We don’t know except that a bunch of incendiaries were thrown onto the dais.  The guy running the show’s bodyguards hustled him off while the town guards came out in force.  We hightailed it back to the Inn Aliana and Rhyss were staying at, with some other randos (including, it seemed, our other two PCs) in tow. 

Back at the inn, we learned that the authorities in this town really don’t do well with defiance.  We barricaded ourselves in the inn.  Rhyss got some time to meet his new companions.  He and Aliana were already getting along famously, less so Joramon.  Joramon’s a dwarf, but has been kicked out of his clan (Rhyss thinks there’s a story there).  He decided to pick a fight with the proprietor of the inn over free booze.  Unfortunately, said proprietor puts a roof over Rhyss’ head and Rhyss was already having to calm things down.  Fortunately, the complete chaos outside helped with that.  We tried to help some ladies get in to the inn from the danger through a window upstairs, but one of them was shot down (literally!) while trying to climb up.  The other ran off in the scuffle, but we ended up killing some guards.  This was very cathartic, but in retrospect, probably not a very good idea for remaining non-slave members of society.

Then a building near Joramon’s home caught fire.  In a fit of over-niceness (the guy had tried to kill Rhyss’ boss), everyone agreed to accompany this dude to his home.  So, we start hauling ass through the streets.  In a riot.  (But not a zoot suit riot).  The journey through the streets was brief, but harrowing.  Every building was boarded up from the inside and dead bodies were everywhere.  The only folks about and about were guards, looters, victims, and—of course—us.  We saw soldiers trying to force their way on a young lady.  Well, actually doing so.  We took out those guys.  With extreme prejudice.  Aliana and Rhyss learned that they work pretty well in combat together, which was a nice thing to learn.  One rapist got away, and called for reinforcements—we were wanted fugitives!

The group finally made it to Joramon’s home.  On the bright side, it hadn’t burnt down yet.  One the less bright side, all of Joramon’s stuff in the house had been looted.  So, kind of a waste going there.  About that time, the inn at which Rhyss had been working collapsed in a burning heap.  It was only a few blocks away from the tenement in which Joramon’s small dwelling was, so we had a nice view of our last connections to civilization go up in flames.

Aliana made it to the roof of the building next door while Joramon was checking out his house, so she noticed the folks in the street first, three more guards upset about the morning’s execution gone wrong.  They seemed to be coming our way.

We made our way out to meet them, but suddenly two guys dressed like the bomb throwers from the execution intervened.  They too had the mysterious TREK symbol.  We made quick work of the guards (including a brief reappearance of our sexually demanding friend from earlier in the scenario) with their help.  That’s when we noticed that one of the buildings had been unboarded.  People were gesturing that we go inside.  The TREKies seemed okay with it, and we were apparently all on the same team, so in we went.  That’s where our session ended.

End scene.

Thoughts:

Our GM did an amazing job.  First of all, the map was gigantic.  He’d clearly made plans for any number of things that we might say or do.  Also, this was my first time on the player side of fog of war in Roll20.  Damn, that feature can get annoying.  What seems like just a minor shading on the GM’s screen is completely opaque to the players!!!  I am going to try and balance between ‘the map shows only what you can see’ and ‘here’s enough information to orient yourself.’  Honestly, I had enough information to orient myself.  Maybe I will start keeping some maps?

The opening scene was HUGE.  By huge, I mean that I had my screen zoomed to only 40% and I still couldn’t see everything.  The square and the barracks looking over it took up more space than I could really keep track of.  It made it easier to just focus in on what Rhyss could see and focus on.  Well, sort of.  One of our players is also out of DC and he and I share my computer.  Keeping the screen wide enough so that we could both see things was a little disconcerting.  I may ask him to bring his laptop next time.

This is also not a campaign that’s going to concern itself about niceties like CR.  There were several times when it was fairly obvious that if we attacked we would die (having arrows raining out of the barracks and twenty guards headed into the crowd we were a part of come to mind).  As a GM, I struggle to keep encounters challenging but still pretty close within the CR system.  As a player, I like being part of a story and knowing that CR has gone out the window.  There are encounters that we cannot win.  I embrace that.  It will only make things sweeter when we do win everything in the end.

Also, our GM had created several factions and given them motivations.  What didn’t become clear until about halfway through the session was that all of these factions were playing on the full board and he was having to keep track of where they were, what they were doing, and how they might react to us.  It looked like a lot of work, and my sympathies lie with him. 

On balance, I’m interested and intrigued with the new campaign.  It’s unclear whether or not we’ll learn where the magic went.  But, we are definitely going to learn who these TREKkies are and what’s going on with the political situation in the city.  I look forward to recapping our sessions as we go along.

Enjoy hearing about the adventures of Rhyss?  Find them boring as watching paint dry?  Leave a comment below!