You're Not That Deep, Kid; No Matter What Your Momma Told You.

Last night I was reading Twitter, as one does, when I ran across one of the role-players in my feed talking about the game he was running. Apparently he was under the impression that the game he was running was actually an expression of radical truth philosophy and that in imposing that philosophy onto his players and world he was teaching them something profound. Unsurprisingly the game imploded a short while later and he was mystified. I started to talk to him about it but his feed was filled with messages from the faithful who were being supportive of him. "You just have to push it harder." "The seeds are planted and you'll see them come to fruition soon." "Your players will get the message soon." It was like looking into an abyss filled with pseudo-philosophers each manipulating the others genitals while moaning, "You're brilliant!"

It's clear that this particular Dungeon Master knew just enough to be dangerous and then fooled himself into believing that he had mastery over not only the session, but the philosophy and his players. I'm not saying that if you're players want a game with a deeper philosophical underpinning that you shouldn't go out and give it to them but when you force it on them things are often going to go off the rails and you shouldn't pretend like you didn't expect them to - Hell, you can't even keep them on the adventure's path what makes you think that you can make them take up a philosophy? Especially one like radical truth! What bothered me so much about that thread was that it was clear that the Dungeon Master hadn't considered the ramifications for not only his campaign but for his friends playing the game. Radical truth isn't a joke. It will fuck up your relationships and if you're not prepared for that consequence than you shouldn't even attempt to bring it into your role-playing games. 

That's not saying that there aren't philosophies that you can go half-cocked with and come out the better for using. Communism and Utilitarianism are two political philosophies that you could easily bring along with just a loose understanding and be just fine implementing. Hell, they may even fall in love with Utilitarianism in your fantasy world since that's the only place that it can actually work. 

A Few Thoughts on Making Alignments a Meaningful Part of the Game

The School of Athens by Raphael

In order to make alignments a meaningful part of any role-playing game there has to be a real consequence to the actions that the players choose during the course of play that goes beyond the immediate reaction of the non-player characters close at hand. If a player decides to have the character be an awful mess of murder and predation on weak non-player characters then the world should react to her as such. But how do we avoid blanket responses that end up feeling like all evil characters are treated this way, while neutral characters are treated this way, and good characters treated yet another?

Nuanced reactions within the game world are generally not hard to accomplish over the short term as both the player and Game Master can easily keep in mind what has recently been done in the free city of Kimber but there is a mythologizing that occurs as time goes on around the characters previous actions. They become larger than life, so to speak, with the character's acts taking on a life of their own that often becomes far worse or better than what actually happened. For example, over time the story about killing of a town's sheriff expands to include his deputies and perhaps a few innocent bystanders.

Stopping the process of exaggeration within the average game (i.e. one not filmed or recorded) appears to be impossible. In truth it probably shouldn't be attempted as there is a natural enlargement of individual deeds through rumor and the retelling. Still, your non-player characters shouldn't know every misdemeanor and off-color joke the player's character has told in their lifetime; nor should they know every cleverly hidden away theft and undiscovered murder. How then do we keep the players' characters accurately assessed while still providing the room for rumor and exaggeration to take effect?

There is an additional problem that occurs to me at this point: how do we account for the differences between individual characters of the same alignment but who act in vastly different manners? For example, two characters of the chaotic evil alignment are being played. The first is a psychopathic killer who delights in acting out the worst aspects of human nature. By contrast the second player selfishly acts out her whims, often at the expense of everyone else at the table, but in general acts in a reasonable manner. Both characters are clearly chaotic in their actions and evil in their intent but there is a marked difference between them. How do we account for this difference in play?

In my experience such differences are hand waved with a look at a character's alignment and a dismissal of the actions as appropriate under that heading. Then the game goes on without any substantive difference in how the two characters are treated by the surrounding world (though that clearly isn't the case within the group). This sort of dismissal is a by product of the false equivalency produced by both characters being labeled as "chaotic evil." In our minds we equate all the vile actions of these players because of that descriptor with the end result being that all actions are treated as equals. The murder of a gigolo and the theft of a gambler's winnings are treated as the same even though they have very different consequences for all involved.

The problem of a false moral equivalent has been bothering me for a while when it comes to my own games. To help alleviate the discomfort I feel I have created a barometer to distinguish between the levels of evil and how others would perceive them in my game worlds.

This is the simplified version of the one I use in my home games. At the ends of the spectrum you have the Angelic and Diabolic ideals. These extremes represent the absolutes; the most extreme examples of good and evil that I can imagine. In between those two extremes there are four levels that I use to break up the levels of moral actions my players make. At the center of the barometer is the Neely Position which is the position of true neutrality on the moral scale. 

I've left the four positions between the end and the Neely Position blank for you guys to ascribe your own actions for each step. This should make it easier for people who want to use the scale to customize it for the morality of their game worlds with each position representing the actions of increasing magnitude (for example, in my games petty theft would be at the first position while genocide would be at the fourth position on the evil side of the barometer). This should make it easier to distinguish between characters of a similar alignment disposition without making the life of the game master into one of spreadsheets and hate.

WTF is Objectivism and What Do We Mean When We Say Something Is Objectively So?

Objectivism is the moral theory that there are certain moral truths that would remain true regardless of an individual's perception or desire and that this would remain so regardless of whether or not anyone else agreed or if everyone else in the world agreed with the moral truth. The underlying idea of this theory is that there is a way to determine the status of moral truths; however, the problem lies in actually creating a process to do so. In Antony Flew's A Dictionary of Philosophy he illustrated the problem for Objectivism as follows:

. . . If we accept that such judgements are not reports of what is but only relate to what ought to be . . . then they cannot be proved by any facts about the nature of the world. Nor can they be analytic, since that would involve lack of action-guiding content; 'One ought always to do the right thing' is plainly true in virtue of the words involved but it is unhelpful as a practical guide to action . . . At this the objectivist may talk of 'self-evident truths,' but can he deny the subjectivist's claim that self-evidence is in the mind of the beholder? If not, what is left of the claim that some moral judgments are true? (Flew, 343)

Objectivism, however, has morphed in the years since Flew wrote his fantastic dictionary in 1979 through the efforts of Ayn Rand and her cult like following. For our understanding of the term it can be broken down to hold the following (though it is not limited to just these concepts): (1) reality exists independently of consciousness; (2) human beings have direct contact with reality through their senses; (3) one can obtain objective knowledge through concept formation and inductive logic; and (4) that a proper morality is based around the pursuit of the individual's happiness - sometimes called 'rational self-interest.' Ayn Rand's philosophy is rightly discredited by most moral and political philosophers though that hasn't stopped her followers from pretending otherwise as they stick their fingers in their ears and loudly bray on.

What do we mean when we say that something is objectively so then?

To use the term in this sense is to say that the statement we are referring true will remain true regardless of an individual's opinion or of the opinion of the entire world. Often this refers to verifiable statements such as, "The Earth is the third planet from the Sun," but it can be used for logical statements such as, "All men are mortal" (which is true so far as we know but may not always be the case). 

Works Cited

Flew, Antony. A Dictionary of Philosophy Revised Second Edition. St. Martin's Press. New York: 1979. Print

Is It Cool If I Pirate This? Come On! You Haven't Been Selling It for, Like, 5 Whole Minutes!

Here's the deal. 

I'm reading the U.S. Copyright Code right now for a project that, hopefully, will be launching on January 1, 2016 so that I can keep myself and my team on the safe and legal side of things. It's about as fun to read as taking a hammer and dropping it on your bits while watching a Congressional Hearing about Congressional Hearings. Yet it brought up these two questions in my mind:

1.) There is a thing that you want to download from the internet. There are no avenues available for you to purchase it from a first party vendor, like Steam or Amazon, and you can only find it in secondary markets (such as used bookstores) and as scans/downloads online. The original intellectual property owners are long since gone and there is, apparently, no one in possession of the IP and no licensing of the the thing in the market (no shirts, books, so forth). Morally, is it okay to download the thing under these circumstances?

A second question:

2.) There is a thing you want to download from the internet. The intellectual property is still owned by a company/individual who makes money off the property but they no longer sell the version of the product you want to download. They have not attempted to make money off the product for a number of years. Like in the above situations there are no avenues available for you to purchase it from a first party vendor, like Steam or Amazon, and you can only find it in secondary markets (such as used bookstores) and as scans/downloads online. Morally, is it okay to download the thing under these circumstances?

Without a doubt if the owner of the copyright has not been dead at least a hundred years (and in many cases 150 years) then the product is not in the public domain - and some things (such as recorded performances of songs) might never pass into the public domain - so in the situations described above nothing that you're contemplating downloading is in the public domain. But there is this whole new thing that has developed in the last few years called abandonware. Which is essentially a situation where the copyright holder has folded and the intellectual property has passed into this realm of limbo where no one, apparently, owns the rights. 

After running this blog for the better part of two years I'm firmly convinced that I have some wildly intelligent and thoughtful readers. So I'm turning to you for help because I'm struggling with my own answers to these questions and I'd love to hear your thoughts on them.  

I'll be here, waiting. 

[Edited on 4/8/2015  at 4:12 PM EST to add the word "Morally" at the beginning of each question to help clarify my questions]

WTF is DARVO?

This weekend I was mostly reading a conversation online when a term that I had never heard before appeared: DARVO. The term is actually an acronym which stands for Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender. It was coined by Jennifer J. Freyd in her essay, Violations of Power, Adaptive Blindness and Betrayal Trauma Theory, which is specifically dealing with sexual abuse. The term came about as she was attempting to grapple with the actions of sexual predators when confronted with accusations of their abuse. As she explains it:

". . . I have recently begun to think about a way to conceptualize the events that occur when a victim or a concerned observer openly confronts and abuser about his or her behavior after a long period of silence in which the abuser could abuse without facing consequences. My proposal, currently very speculative, is that a frequent reaction of an abuser to being held accountable is the ‘DARVO’ response. ‘DARVO’ stands for ‘Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender.’ It is important to distinguish types of denial, for an innocent person will probably deny a false accusation. Thus denial is not evidence of guilt. However, I propose that a certain kind of indignant self-righteous, and overly stated, denial may in fact relate to guilt. I hypothesize that if an accusation is true, and the accused person is abusive, the denial is more indignant, self-righteous and manipulative, as compared with denial in other cases. Similarly, I have observed that actual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior. This attack, intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of law suits, overt and covert attacks on the whistle-blower’s credibility, and so on. The attack will often take the form of focusing on ridiculing the person who attempts to hold the offender accountable. The attack will also likely focus on ad hominem or ad feminam instead of intellectual/evidential issues. Finally, I propose that the offender rapidly creates the impression that he abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender. Figure and ground are completely reversed. The more the offender is held accountable, the more wronged the offender claims to be. The offender accuses those who hold him accountable of perpetrating acts of defamation, false accusations, smearing, ect. The offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense. ‘Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender’ work best together . . ." (29 – 30).

Freyd notes in the above quotation that innocent people will deny a false accusation but that someone who is acting along the lines of a DARVO defense will do so in 'a certain kind of indignant self-righteous, and overly stated, denial.' It won't simply be a case of someone denying an accusation but it will be this substantively different form of avoiding accountability for the act. She details a good example of this sort of behavior shortly after when she wrote:

". . . I have observed that one particularly useful strategy for avoiding accountability that appears in the cases of accusations of sexual abuse and assault uses logic like this: ‘I am innocent until proven guilty. You cannot prove I am guilty. Therefore I am technically innocent. Therefore I am actually innocent.’ . . . The offender takes advantage of the confusion we have in our culture over the relationship between public provability and reality . . . in redefining reality . . .” (30)

When confined to its original meaning the DARVO response makes a lot of sense; however, it has moved beyond its original meaning and has begun to be used to describe the actions of anyone that you don't like who denies an accusation.  For example, let's say that you're accused of being a bigot in public through the use of online social media. You're innocent of the accusation but when you demand proof your accusers begin to claim that you're committing a DARVO defense. You haven't engaged in ad hominem or ad feminam attack but rather have focused on asking for evidential proof - something that is completely reasonable under the circumstances and which is the opposite of what a DARVO defense would do - and yet your very asking is being taken as an attempt to use the DARVO defense. When DARVO is manipulated in this fashion it becomes an effective tool against an innocent individual by invalidating everything they attempt to do and say in their defense. It effectively silences them.

Works Cited:

Freyd, Jennifer J. “Violations of Power, Adaptive Blindness and Betrayal Trauma Theory.” Feminism and Psychology. Volume 7. 1997. Print  pg. 29 - 30

A Bad Relationship that Inspired so Much More

When I was younger I was so much more creative than I am today. Part of the reason for that creativity was that I had no other outlets: no child, no wife, no responsibilities beyond my own amusement. As a result I would wake up some days boiling over with ideas for new paintings and pen and inks. I would rush from my bed to sketch out the ideas that had percolated in my mind overnight and filled up every notebook, sketchbook, and scrap of paper that I could find. Then I went to college and started dating the Wild One.

We had been friends since we were 15 and had been off and on competitors, but when we got to college we started dating and screwing all the time. That was all fine and dandy, but the thing about the Wild One is that she had incredibly low self-esteem. And at some point she convinced herself that I wasn't creative at all. I suppose she thought that all of the art I did in school with her was simply derivative of other works - even when I was doing things that I had never encountered before - especially the works that won awards ahead of her own. It was around that time that she started saying little things meant to undermine my own confidence and self-reliance.

What she said worked. I lost my confidence and stopped drawing. - Now it didn't all happen at once, but over the course of three years. The sketches that I would draw were stupid. My finished drawings were always incomplete, my writing was lackluster, and my paintings were always muddied and without definition. I should have told her to go fuck herself. I should have pushed her out of my life, but instead I convinced myself that I loved her and that the things she said were told to me for my benefit.

In short I had my head so firmly up my own ass that I let her do all that to me.

It got so bad that at one point I actually thought about killing myself. Hell, I was standing on the desk with half my body hanging out a seventh floor window in the pouring rain about to take the plunge when I got a call from a good friend of mine who wanted to get a bite to eat and stopped me from jumping (not to be funny or anything but it wasn't the first time that Chinese food saved my life and it won't be the last I'm sure)!

The wild thing about all of this is that I was, and am, a smarter person than her in many ways. I am far better in interpersonal relationships. I have a better grasp of art, music, history, and literature. I could, at that time, speak two languages. I had a better grade point average and only went to class on test days. Hell, I was able to speak politics with the Lt. Governor of Tennessee and with State Supreme Court Justices without embarrassing myself! And yet I never once recognized what she was doing to me until the day I wrote a silly little blog that was just funny as hell. It was one of those surveys that come out every so often and I had copied the questions and wrote out these funny lines in response. It made me laugh; it made her laugh. When she asked me where I found it and I told her it was my own she responded, "It can't be, you're not that creative."

I was crushed and after she left I found myself sitting outside my dorm room smoking a cigar and wondering if I shouldn't just give up. I mean, fuck, if the woman who loved me more than anything in the world didn't think I was creative enough to do something so simple what was I doing with my life.

Anyway, after that little incident of self pity and stupidity I soon found myself reading a book that profoundly changed my life: Thus Spake Zarathustra (don't read part four he didn't want it published and it shouldn't have been). The book gets a bad rap because Hitler had a hard on for it. But the book wasn't about killing off people and creating a master race. Instead it was about the procession of generations; our internal and external relationships; our relationships with the now, the past and the future; but more than any of that it was about the commitment to one's self not to allow others to imprint their shit on you and make you feel bad for your strengths. 

That last part is what saved me, and it's what has been helping me remold myself into the person I want to be rather than the broken young man she had helped make me into. That strength of thought and iron will that Nietzsche wrote with reverberated down through the years and took hold of me. It pushed me to become a manager, and then a general manager making more money than I had ever dreamed of; and then it pushed me to challenge myself and become more than I ever had been before. It made me realize that I needed to be with someone who wanted to be with me, and that wanted to be more than she was the day before. It has made me into a good father and one that is setting the right example for my son.

Now it drives me to reestablish my creativity in my adulthood. I have formed a group with two of my friends where we will be expressing ourselves creatively through drawing, writing, sculpting, and movie making every week. I'm out of practice in some ways, but this blog is helping my mind percolate again. My hands no longer tremble when I look at a blank page and I'm already beginning to fill up the pages of a long ago abandoned art book.

Who knows where all this will lead, certainly not me; but it is a step in the right direction.