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. 

Ain't that a Kick to the Head

I know that some long time readers might be wondering if I've abandoned Dyvers since I haven't been posting here very much lately; rest assured, I have not. The thing is that a lot of the things I've been interested in talking about mostly involve me saying that they're bullshit and not really wanting to debate or discuss my opinion on the matters. +Alexis Smolensk has that shit covered on the Tao of D&D and I'm not really one to follow someone else's shtick when I can do my own thing. 

I think I've got it out of my system now so I'm going to see if I can't post more often on here again. Here's hoping there are some of you out there who still find the things I write worth reading. 

-- Charlie

Friday Art Fest, Week 12, 2016: "Dawning" by Low Bros

"Dawning" by Low Bros (source)

"Dawning" by Low Bros is one of those paintings that I have a hard time describing why I think it fucking rocks. Maybe because it reminds me of Star Fox with the blocking polygon effects or maybe it's the boarder that makes me think about being in the doctor's office when I was 13 years old and no one could figure out what was going wrong with me (spoilers: they never did). In the end it doesn't matter because this painting just fucking rocks. I want to see it hanging over my computer and to hear my son howl at it. I want to adventure in it when I'm playing D&D. 

It. just. fucking. rocks.

Friday Art Fest, Week 11, 2016: "Orgullo" by Gustavo Rimada

"Orgullo" by Gustavo Rimada (source)

Often when you hear people talking about confident women in art they're talking about some sort of meaningless garbage where the woman either needs to be placed into a masculine role or where they have to be put up on some sort of pedestal (though that must be done without any hint of sexuality). Such things do not concern Gustavo Rimada's works as he has made the women he paints into the sort of people I've known my entire life: confident, uncaring of your social mores, and fully capable of destroying your world if you fuck with them.

"Orgullo", pride in English, typifies what Rimada's been capable of creating. She exudes the sort of integral nature of what true pride in oneself should be. There is no fear in her eyes and every bit of her has this sort of, "I give not one fuck about your shit," attitude that I just adore. In "Orgullo" is everything that I imagine to be found when you look in the eyes of Amazons. She's Red Sonja and Dejah Thoris. She's Zuggtmoy and Iggwilv.  "Orgullo" is everything right with the powerful women that actually exist in the world without the baggage shoved down on them by people with too much time on their hands and an ax to grind.

In fact, I like it so much that I'm ordering a poster of it this week. If you have an opportunity you should check out Rimada's website because he's putting out some fantastic stuff.

Friday Art Fest, Week 10, 2016: "Tales from a Tin Can" by Brian Despain

"Tales from a Tin Can" by Brian Despain (source)

I love how playful Brian Despain's worlds are with their expressive robots that remind of SCUD the Disposable Assassin in the best way possible. Every painting he creates seems to expand on a world rooted in its own logic and that breathes with a vibrancy that many would kill for a tenth of what he's able to portray.  

I adore this painting. 

The robot with his clinched fist, puffed out chest, and open heart speaks to this determination that has me thinking about Superman and the Golden Age heroes that used to put fists on their hips and dispense justice to NAZIs without a care about their teenage sidekicks who are spinning about while bullets wiz over their heads. It's as though we're looking into an alternate timeline where the robots have been purposfully built to accomplish tasks that go far beyond the simple welding operations that Ford has concieved of and instead has moved towards something that would feel at home in Matt Groening's Futurama or William Shattner's Tek novels. 

If you get a chance you should definitely check out Despain's website as he's created a series of paintings that have given life to a world far more interesting than I can do justice. 

O' Greyhawk, Where Art Thou?

The other day Christopher Perkins, Principle Story Designer for Dungeons and Dragons at Wizards of the Coast, put out a poll that went like this:

_______________, for the win.

— Christopher Perkins (@ChrisPerkinsDnD) February 22, 2016

Out of the 2,829 votes Greyhawk got 538. Every other setting presented as an option by Perkins beat us by an average of 200 votes. That's just embarrassing.

I mean I get it; I really do. Dark Sun had a pretty popular relaunch during Fourth Edition (those Dark Sun books are actually really cool and you should totally check it out). Dragonlance still sells a ridiculous amount of novels and was really well supported throughout Third with an official Campaign Setting book and a bunch of third party releases from Margaret Weis and the Sovereign Press group. And of course Eberron was fully supported throughout Third and Fourth editions with supplements, adventures, novels, art, and articles on the website and the magazines. 

By contrast Greyhawk hasn't had anything officially published by Wizards of the Coast since 2007's Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk. Largely we've been absent from the conversation and we've seen Cannonfire, arguably the largest community of Greyhawk enthusiasts, steadily growing silent over the last few years. We're at a point as a group where we either need to become active in proselytizing the setting to other D&D enthusiasts or we need to recognize that the setting is going to become a footnote in the game's history. People will read about in Wikipedia as the place where Gary Gygax ran his games, and that will be all they'll know about it, and that's a damned shame.

The thing about it all is that we know Greyhawk shouldn't be left to such an undignified fate. As a setting it was home to many of the greatest adventures in the early days of the hobby. They're so good that even today we're seeing them shape what many people view as the standard of what a good adventure in our hobby looks like; which is great, but they're being moved out of Greyhawk and into the Realms as Wizards of the Coast uses them for inspiration and transplants them. They're creating a new standard of what good looks in modules like Princes of the Apocalypse for a whole new generation of fans that may never even think to go out and pick up what inspired their favorites. 

Greyhawk is a setting that I've found had enough room in it for my version of it, and for +Mike Bridges' version for it, and +Joseph Bloch's version for it, and for every other version you run into without the sort of cannon pissing contests that crop up every time you so much as mention the Forgotten Realms. The reason for that is that Greyhawk is so flexible as a setting: we have space ships, wars with demons and gods, artifacts so powerful that their names have been in every edition since they first appeared back in First Edition, all the named spells in every Player's Handbook came from characters that exist only in Greyhawk. Two of the most successful times in this hobby's history came about when Greyhawk was active: First and Third edition. In First, Greyhawk helped establish what was possible in the game and the adventures set there are still talked about today.  In Third, we saw the return of Greyhawk as it was the edition's setting; it was flexible, and by and large, loosely defined for this edition. In doing so it offered a level of freedom for new players that let them carve out their own Greyhawks and brought people like me into the community with this hunger for the setting.

Greyhawk is the setting that gives us the opportunity to do our own thing when we start out. We don't have a library of fiction that has established a narrative for our world that our Players feel we must hold tight to our bosoms. Our setting isn't filled to the brim with godlike non-player characters (NPCs) who shuffle our players' characters about the world like chess pieces; and quite frankly, the NPCs die far too easily in our setting for them to even hope to attain that level of Machiavellian power.

So how do we turn this about and bring Greyhawk back to the forefront? How do we get Wizards of the Coast to recognize what we see in this setting?

The simplest answer is that we have to get vocal about the setting. We have to tell the ladies and gentlemen of Wizards' D&D team that we want Greyhawk to come back with this edition of the game. We have to talk to them on Twitter and email the Wizards corporate office. But more than that we have to go to the places where people are talking about Dungeons and Dragons and role-playing games and engage them about the setting. We need to open Greyhawk up on reddit, and we need to encourage people to join it on Facebook. We need to be champions for Greyhawk, because if we aren't then no one else will be. 

The Brutal Legends of Our Beginnings

Lately I've been playing a lot of Double Fine's Brutal Legend (which if you've never played you totally should check out) and I've come to believe that one of the things that has been missing from my favorite role-playing games is a sense that the world has a history that occurred long before my entrance into it. I don't mean just that the world has an sense of recent history with conflicts between nations, subterfuge, and racial / clan rivalries that color the way that the world functions; instead I'm talking about a deeper mythology that underpins everything. This mythological foundation to the game world is one of the things that Dragonlance did really. 

My first real interest in Dungeons & Dragons started with the the Dragonlance Blue Boxed set and its setting book that told this history of the world in this really great conversational style that would become a hallmark of the types of role-playing books that I love (shout out to Kevin Siembieda and his Rifts books for putting out some of the best examples of this style of writing in gaming). The way that the story of the world was written and the brilliant art that TSR coupled with the book kicked my imagination into overdrive. I've spent years taking its tantalizing descriptions and expanding them in my head to form my own understanding of the world. And yet I don't feel like I've ever had that level of engagement with my favorite setting: Greyhawk. 

Don't get me wrong I've put in a lot of hours shaping the world in a fashion that suits my sensibilities but there's always been this blank spot in my mind when it comes to making the world have that same sort of place that Dragonlance, Iron Kingdoms, Warhammer, and Rifts have occupied. So I'm asking for you help today. Do you know the legends of Greyhawk? What are its mythological foundations? Who created the world? What history exists beyond the Suloise and Baklunish Wars?

Help a brother out.