What happens when an archmaster removes the conditions that allows a previously Ascended being to exist?

This depends on the rationale for Ascension. Most Ascensions are pretty durable because an Ascended being exists in a state more fundamental than the Phenomenal, but if they depend on a recurring relationship with the Phenomenal World, it might be possible to dethrone them. This is the sort of thing that brought the Abyss into being, however.

What’s the deal with the Aswadim? They don’t seem so bad.

The Aswadim want to enjoy a spiritual state that allows them to embrace fundamental contradictions. They want to be Hypocrite Buddhas. This is different from knowing a fundamental ground of being prior to categories of existence that may seem contradictory, but can be resolved when you’re enlightened. This isn’t really the same as giving everyone their private universe. It’s more like giving yourself an insane private universe and telling everyone else it’ll be totally cool, unless they’re weaklings.

Is there a way to protect your Imperium Rites from outside interference?

There’s no direct method. You need to adjust the Force you’re pushing into the rite to avoid Aponoia.

What happens when you fail to seal an Omen?

You can’t use it until you seal it. You may design new challenges at a +1 difficulty increase, as per p. 78.

What happens when you fail to Exalt an Omen?

The changes it represents fail to occur, and you don’t Ascend. You may keep trying, but Aponoia may add additional Omens to seal and Exalt to get your plan back on track. Eventually, it may become impractical to continue, as Arcane Experience, Willpower dot and eternal wound costs repeat themselves.

Incidentally, you can’t heal eternal wounds, as far as I’m concerned. Dave may be more liberal about this. Archmages who’ve repeatedly failed probably sacrifice their Physical and Social Attributes first, followed by Wisdom, then finally Gnosis. I can’t think of a more pissed off entity than a sorcerer who’s insane, crippled, and whittled down to Mastery after reaching too far, too often.

Can you change your Omens?

Yes. See p. 77. One common usage is to shake off Profane Omens, since you can’t progress toward Ascension until to finish with them.

So, what can other supernaturals do about all this reality editing?

I assume they can do something, but I don’t know what it is. I personally think the ways in which other supernaturals interact with Imperium is unique to each type, rather than there being corresponding arch-vampires and arch-werewolves. Remember that Imperial Mysteries includes the option that archmages aren’t really altering reality for anyone else — just themselves.

In terms of the wider World of Darkness, the book assumes a kind of Anthropic Principle where the universe necessarily includes the conditions under which other supernatural beings exist. I don’t know why it might be that way and frankly, it’s none of my business. It’s your prerogative.

Let’s get the art out of the way first. Unfortunately, this book was finished in the wake of serious layoffs at CCP that disproportionately hit Atlanta. I don’t blame everyone for having other things on their mind, but committing to a release close to the promised date, but it looks like it hit the art. Cover artist Ken Meyer Jr. is actually pretty good, but this looks like they went with a draft piece just to get the book to market. Some of Kaluta’s art isn’t well used, either, because some character pieces are already used for specific signature characters in the core. Bad! John Bridges’ original art (there is original art in the book) looks good, though. I’ve always been fond of his stuff, and wish he’d been able to do more.

Honestly, if I was worrying about my friends losing their jobs and having my duties kicked around, yeah – a Mage book might not be top of mind. That’s understandable.

(Maybe you guys can produce a cool alternate cover! Send it to me and I’ll post it, assuming it’s legal.)

OK, art’s done. We can get into the content.

This book was a long time coming. Back when we were doing Tome of the Mysteries Bill Bridges and I sketched out what post-Master magic looked like. I teased folks with this fact from time to time. When Seers of the Throne came around, Ethan Skemp proposed a radical reordering of the usual presentation, where we would look at the high level machinations of the Exarchs first – and I was lucky enough to write that stuff. This was my first collaboration with Dave Brookshaw.

Dave came to my attention because of meticulous play reports (among the few I really trust) and the fact that he seemed to get stuff I dropped in the form of hints and subtext. Collaborating with him on Seers was a smooth process that confirmed that he understood the game artistically, beyond bare play procedures, carrots and sticks.

I kind of knew what I wanted archmages to be like: scary, remote, operating at a high enough level to alienate lesser mages, but not incomprehensible, once you understood the context – whatever that was. I wasn’t sure about that part.

Dave approached me to pitch this book. We did an outline. We started to understand The Context.

The original outline was for a big 160 pager. When EWhite Wolf accepted the pitch we got . . . less. But with help from Matt McFarland we prioritized, cut, economized, and ended up with something publishable with fewer pages (we still went over; the book was important enough to us that we basically added material, gratis, toward the end of development).

Dave and I split the book based on our interests. I gave him the old outline for Imperial Practices and he turned it from shooting the breeze into real rules. I took more of the fluff – I like the fluff.

Now before all this, I did Equinox Road, and the Game of Immortals. At some point, I told Dave and Matt I’d make another one of those. I had no fucking idea what I would do, just that I thought I was so cool I could totally pull off a minigame like that again. It wasn’t even in the original fucking outline. A few weeks in, I had designed and abandoned a stupid system with Tarot cards (don’t ask, I don’t remember) and went to the bar with my buddy Kearsley. We chatted about karma point spendy systems and how they end up getting all fucked up (order of declaration becomes a big thing, and everybody spends everything or the minimum) and he suggested I think about Blackjack’s “this high but no higher” principle.

Ping!

In development, Matt added a very powerful idea: that we should mostly ignore fears we might offend partisans of other games and general fears that we might just blow up the whole World of Darkness. Instead, we came up with a scheme where we could play with ultimate power, obscure the big secrets Storytellers want to control, and provide an out for folks afraid that archmages will blow up the world. (It’s based on the Anthropic Principle; since the big changes are retroactive across time, vampires and mages must necessarily live in a world where they can both exist. This begs the question of what now-dead universes might have had crawling around in them, but they never existed!)

So we had a good team, long term preparation and a strong degree of control over the end result. I think that made it work. I would only change a few things (besides the art John Bridges didn’t do). I wrote a fantastic bit of fiction to end the book with, but it got cut. I would have loved to more tightly integrate Imperial Mysteries with other Mage and World of Darkness books, but that apparently broke a strict policy about making books dependent upon each other (which I already knew, but man, this is a capstone for the whole universe, baby! I thought I deserved some slack). I wanted a bit more prose, and less procedure.

But I’m basically happy with it. The length constraint was, in the end, a blessing, since it forced me (and Dave, I think – can’t speak for his process) to convey more information using implication and subtext. There’s a school of thought that says you can’t use those in RPGs because everything needs to be accessible and functional on day one. I don’t believe that – never did. I don’t want books you rifle through, use and put away, except for reference. I want books to pick up again and again.

I hope this is one of those.

I know why it happened for the Chronicler’s Guide (I submitted a proposal without knowing it was already on the schedule) and I suppose some good prior work with Chuck helped with Mirrors. But even with two of the best folks to work with around, I still think these “odds and ends” books need to overcome an inherent suck factor lest they end up about as useful as all those lame-ass “Setting Riff: Thing I’m never gonna fucking play” productions that waste Internet.

I think my doubts helped me produce good stuff. I wanted to beat those flaws. I wanted my stuff to engage instead of look all shifty and indecisive. There’s a reason the best restaurants have the smallest menus. They know what’s good.

So I had to build whole restaurants.

Gamers already excel at modular modifications, so I concentrated on wholesale rebuilds: integrated systems that aren’t so easy for a smart audience to get through catch-as-catch can “hacking.” That’s  why my Chronicler’s Guide stuff features heavily modified systems. “White Wolf Comics Presents: The Cabal” and “Action Horror” featured a number of systems that not only stand on their own, but “talk to each other” in ways I’ve either mentioned in the text (Action Pool + Extras + Critical Hits) or left to be discovered in play.

Beyond integration, I wanted to also deal with the weak tone that I think plagues optional systems, and make them something other than pie in the sky outlines (“Setting Riff: Who Gives a Shit?”). Woundgate is very much a product of that. Chuck gave me Fantasy. As he said over at Terribleminds, he let me indulge myself as long as it hit the section objective and didn’t suck.

This led to the following process:

1. “What the fuck does fantasy mean? It’s only a genre when it sucks.”
2. “I’m not writing elf rules.”
3. “Reproducing old weapons and straight up magic systems sure would be a ripoff for the average WoDer.”
4. “If it’s not recognizably WoD then it’s a stupid waste of time.”
5. “Fuck, I’m reading Aeternal Legends again.”

That last part may be handy self-promotion but it’s also true. Stew brought Big Modern Fantasy to town with postmodern fey gateways — open ended weirdness (and taxes!) from anywhere to anything. I didn’t want elves or Big Time Spirituality (well, I wanted to leave that unstated, but my Woundgate has it) but I wanted strange little kingdoms. Thanks to that structure I could present one setting  without having to choose a particular type of fantasy. They made perfect “genre zones” so that Conan can tool around the Great Lakes while magitech unions picket along the Mississippi.

(And yes, I created fantasy folk. Not elves. Not “races.” No, they aren’t templates, so you can have a Wargaz mage if you like. Anybody notice the Wargaz are the smartest of the fantasy peoples? Intentional, and very much inspired by the introduction of Guns, Germs and Steel, where Diamond talks about the smartest guy he knows. People can treat it like a callback to Conan’s intelligence in the Howard stories, I guess.)

Best of all, I could fill this stew with chunks of the World of Darkness, providing cool hooks for anyone who knew the games well enough to use them. Like I said, I didn’t want to just make a fantasy port of the system. Any smart gamer could give a dude pointy ears, a sword and infravision. The challenge is to provide something that isn’t so easy. I want too give fans value, and something concrete they can play and share immediately, with a minimum of fuss over ground rules.

Matt McFarland’s development style features friendly cautions when he thinks something is crossing the line. He still gave me a great deal of freedom, to the point where I think I underutilized the potential there. The Cabal (comic-booky) chronicle is already a bit of an unusual sell to an RPG audience though, so maybe that’s for the best. It’s supers, but not big on point builds and highly specific powers. You don’t even make your own characters! Again, I wanted to get a sense of mythology and cohesiveness out of it that short treatments have trouble with, and I wanted it to be all Mage, even as it paid serious homage to comic classics.

Are we going to get any more of this stuff? I know Mirrors’ science fiction section was finished, fun to read and good to go. What about the postscripts in each book? What’s happening? Good question. I’d love to write something big about Woundgate, for instance, or work on that Mage archmastery book people have wanted for ages, but even though I know the World of Darkness isn’t shutting down and more electronic products are on the way, I don’t know what they’ll be, or how they fit into the larger plans CCP has for the brand. I write, and don’t plan on stopping.

It can work with electronic games, where players need the freedom to choose their own commitment level within the structure, since they’re playing with the product as the partner, not other people they value beyond the play space, or maybe convention play where people are temporary companions in a sharply delineated experience. It can work for the odd one shot. Beyond that, sustainable RPG play happens in a zone of negotiation, where play and text conflict, produce useful compromises, and give birth to a story through the responses of participants to the crisis.

I’ve been reminded of this lately on two fronts. First, I did a search for Mage: The Awakening’s Nemean: an NPC I created to helm the game’s signature city, Boston. Second, RPGNet talked about the end of Mage: The Ascension six years later — specifically, the scenario I wrote, “Judgment.” Both of these presented cases where I wanted to provide practical stuff in creative tension with Big Ideas (or Big Ideas I thought gamers would assume were there). So, one at a time:

Judgment: The Consensus is Just a GMPC

One of the important elements of Mage: The Ascension is that reality is determined by the massed, mixed up beliefs of human beings: the game’s Capital-C Consensus. That leads to a vision of ending the game where one faction or another wins, or we get some kind of new compromise as vetted by the human majority. The problem with this is that it contradicts the idea that the PCs decide what’s happening, and it’s not much of a basis for the action-oriented, fantastical and horrific elements of the game. I suppose I could have designed a scenario where the PCs go on a massive PR campaign, shake a lot of hands, save the Computer’s baby and win it to their side and dodge Republican Technocrats with Guns, but that would have been either boring or hokey. Boring, in that having meetings isn’t very action-fantasy-horrorific; hokey in that as contrived as “Judgment” was in some places, it would require an even bigger contrivance to set up scenes where the PCs win hearts and minds based on big stunts. Basically, the Consensus takes the place of the unbeatable NPC, whose heart is only moved by the GM’s whims or whatever is coded into the adventure.

All the same, the PC-centered quest makes everybody else look like they’re sitting on their asses, being overrode with True Will. So what’s a poor boy charged with blowing up a corner of the World of Darkness to do? Telos, as conceived by Bill Bridges, was pretty loose; I probably could have run “Barack bani Obama: Telos We Can Believe In!” or the Glorious Proletarian Mass Magical Thing (some of both was in Judgment, but I didn’t have room for one and had to cut the other). But subtext slithered beneath M: TAsc‘s bombastic, thesis-first front. One subtext had to do with an increasing realization that parts of the Consensus concept were unworkable, sinister and even immoral. Ethan Skemp often spoke of how the concept undermined the idea of humanity being part of nature. Under Phil Brucato, the game said spirits wore masks, but kind of had their own thing going on no matter what anyone thought. I also wrestled with a number of disturbing thought experiments (Does a sexist Consensus make women stupider?).

Plus, I increasingly became aware that M: TAsc had a very deep mythology and one that was surprisingly well integrated for something built by people who often had wildly divergent ideas about the game and how people should get along in general. I wanted to be true to that. I wanted to answer the prophecy in The Fragile Path and build upon obscure references in Sorcerer’s Crusade (which is where the Ixoi come from — I didn’t make ‘em up). And I wanted to give Voormas his due because I knew from direct experience that he was one of the greatest antagonists for real, ongoing chronicles. I wanted to make things work with Kathy Ryan’s stuff as much as possible, after a productive, epic phone call that helped me leave room for individual personalities, since these drove her work on the line.

And of course, I wanted to exercise a writer’s privilege to make a few observations in reaction to a game that I loved. One wrestles with a good game, and I spent five years wrestling with my M: TAsc chronicle.  This gave me room for boots on the ground insights that aren’t so neat and tidy (like the Nephandi being self-deceptive, since they really come off as clowns under smart PC examination) but felt substantial at the table. I decided the best solution was to take this stuff, question the Big Idea of the Consensus, mix it up with all that canon, and bomb my players with it. I adjusted the results in the writing and Bill Bridges told me how to best fit it into the book.

So that feeling of struggling, at once accepting and questioning the basis of the game — and aiming for something that felt naturalistic despite all of the Big Scary Crap translated itself into the result, designed to be playable in the context of a game wrestling with the consequences of its development, and the PCs wrestling with the results in a structure that let them tour as much of it as possible — all while leaving something with a comprehensible basic structure, and without something as lame as “We like unicorns now. Signed, Humanity.” Writer fiat that throws an archmage in your face at least sets the stage for an unpredictable result (Protip: Voormas can probably kick your ass, and will countermagic attempts to do that 10 success Corr trick in the book unless you’re very sly). Writer fiat through 6 billion people working the Fifth Business is just lame.

The Wizard Crapped in Your Cornflakes

Ah, the Nemean. I love that guy. Mage: The Awakening went through lots of iterations. That includes the Boston section (and book). We knew that the game was going to feature lots of internecine struggle — “all against the Man” was there, but not  as big a deal as its predecessor. The preconditions for the Nemean already existed, but the Consilium structure was fairly open-ended. It could be a whole bunch of things, from a tyranny to Grownup Hogwarts. This made the whole idea of making Boston a “model” Awakening city problematic. The closest thing you could do was make it a staid academic gathering that must band together against something or other from time to time when it’s not arguing over brandy. Boring!

I didn’t want a “model.” I wanted something people would use in real games. So I designed a real sonofabitch who could be ported into these roles:

The Quest Guy: As the boss, the Nemean can send PCs to do cool stuff. Yeah, this isn’t innovative, but sometimes “innovative” takes a back seat to something people will actually use. Plus, Mage was redesigned so that a quest provides concrete rewards (Arcane Experience) even when you don’t get to keep all the goodies.

The Hammer: Novice GMs sometimes need a guy to lay down the law and declare standards, and even experienced GMs can use a guy like that. Again, this isn’t original, but it works. I knew the dangers of this (killer NPC!) which is why I declared that in the Nemean’s Boston, you can grab ass and stab each other as much as you want if you leave the city and general order of things intact. He won’t bug you except to enforce basic minimums that also happen to be what GMs need to avoid SWAT Shooting Gallery Nights.

The Predecessor: Finally — and this is the big one — the Nemean was designed to be replaced. One of the shallower critiques of this guy is that the Bad Ruler is Vampire‘s shtick (really? There can be no bad bosses outside of Vampire?) but Mage has a mortal hierarchy with no time constraints on gaining power. It’s inevitable that a PC cabal will eventually earn the power to overthrow him, and his desire to stay on top means it automatically generates a plot, particularly since he sits on one of the setting’s secrets.

This is the basic difference between writing for play and writing to satisfy somebody’s sense of structure. If I was just looking at it as filler that adhered to a format I’m sure I could have gone the fannish route and picked Guy Who Fits In, but I didn’t want him to end up on the same ash heap as so many canon characters. (Do you know who the Awakening signature characters are? I do, because I’ve got ‘em written down, but they’re not doing much. They’re not bad, but for some reason nobody ever ran with them as they did with Solomon Birch.) I wanted people to use him.

Did it work? I’ve seen him in dozens of games and writeups. There’s an early 1900s hack of him on Obsidian Portal. I’ve seen folks commiserate about dealing with him in their respective games. I love that. Not only is he getting used, but he’s generating common experiences. As for me, I actually started with him deposed in my Toronto-based game, and got lots of mileage out of a treacherous alliance with the PCs.

One thing I freely admit about the guy is that he’s not the height of eccentricity and innovation. I’ve designed all kinds of bizarre NPCs, but I didn’t want the Nemean to be one of them. I wanted him to be accessible to people just getting into the game, but giving him a strong (if mostly passive) core motivation, an easy way to portray him and ways he could move the game along, but with room to make him more complicated, if necessary. Vampire‘s Solomon Birch has a lot of these same accessible qualities. He’s got a strong personality, an unusual look, an immediate hook via his faction, and is set up to get things done.

Fighting With Yourself

In both cases I was tempted to just go with the flow, accept the Big Idea at face value and slot things in. Instead, I erred on the side of making something to play, then fought to reconcile it with all the Meta stuff. In one case I got something very complicated; in another, I ended up with something pretty simple, even stereotypical. I’m happy that people have made use of both, even if they did their own wrestling along the way. I encourage people to discover cool, playable stuff that throws the Big Ideas of their own games into question. Yeah, you’ll end up making excuses (I am, right here!) but the important thing is that they’re cool excuses.

Example: Fall of the Hegemonic Ministry

In Mage: The Awakening’s Seers of the Throne sourcebook I foreshadowed the fall of the Hegemonic Ministry, one of the big Seer factions. It’s rotting from the inside, relies too heavily on state control of the economy and is ripe for replacement. If Mage had a metaplot you might actually get to see the Hegemonic collapse in a source book. How should we do it while sticking to the principles in my last article? I’ll to try to stick to as few steps as possible but don’t look at this as some strict methodical road map.

(Don’t look at this as an actual development document, either. In the real thing, I’d be more specific about content and wouldn’t have to describe a lot of the process, and I’d divide content by chapter and section, not steps in a creative process.)

1) Come up with a cool name.

Really! This lets us do more right-brain work on the topic by exploring it through lose tricks and wordplay — and it helps with marketing, too. How about Shattercrown?

2) Brainstorm the plot.

All I know right now is that I’m kicking the Hegemonics to the curb in a story called Shattercrown. The name makes me think of aristocrats. Seers of the Throne tells me that the money-focused Ministry of Mammon is the Hegemonic’s heir apparent. Aristocrats and money make me think of Monaco. James Bond. Movie Stars. High Fashion. Yeah, this is going to be about occult shenanigans, spy-fi and Terrible Old Men with Money.

I think the Hegemonics are running out of money and Mammon is to blame. Seers get off on wealth, so losing it is a terrible blow. The Unity’s servants look shabby compared to their rivals now. Seers are ambitious bastards — Hegemonics must be running to better paying factions. The top levels start to get desperate and sloppy. There’s a Master with a gambling problem. When he loses big thanks to some surreptitious Mammon countermagic it sets off a flashpoint. Spells fly, mages die and the rogue Master escapes. Oh, it’s on. Each side gets ready to duke it out.

Pentacle communities notice the Seer civil war. It’s their big chance to hit the Throne hard. The Silver Ladder will call an emergency Convocation, perhaps the first Grand Convocation in over a hundred years. The other orders modify any plan to suit their own agendas. That renegade Seer Master is wiling to help them and has sent underlings to let Pentacle representatives know, but it’s hard to track him down. Both sides in the civil war want a word, you see.

Okay, cool.

3) Provide procedural advice to get players into the story.

A metaplot isn’t useful unless we can get play groups involved. A typical White Wolf book would do this implicitly (“Faction X buys more pancakes!”) and we’ll still use that method, but it’s time to give the Storyteller (GM, whatever) direct advice on how to add this to a running chronicle/campaign. Back in the last book for Mage: The Ascension (called, er, Ascension) I wrote a sidebar about setting up trigger events in your game to start a metaplot’s engine. I want to do that here, too. I’ll  suggest several ways character actions can set up a chain of events that lead directly to the event in Monaco. I’ll also address Reign of the Exarchs, since with the right framing it can act as a prequel to the Shattercrown event.

4) Design global events.

So, stuff happens that moves the story forward. It’s time to set it down (along with the question of who buys pancakes or in this case, sides with or against the Hegemonic Ministry). I see this creating a fluid time in Awakened politics, where Seers try to entice Pentacle mages into temporary alliances, promising special consideration if their side wins. It’s a time for traitors and double agents. The Silver Ladder and Free Council won’t stand for this sort of thing, of course — they won’t compromising with the Throne for favours. The Mysterium would sure like to get its hands on the Seers’ stuff, however. This is half of the event book style stuff (like Requiem for a God).

When it comes to whys and hows, we’re going to follow the Mekton Empire model for some items. I’ll provide complete information for the main thread of the story, but I’ll also ask a bunch of questions about hidden facts and motives without answering them — but I won’t leave lame adventure hooks as a consolation prize. I’ll set down a list of 3 to 5 possible options so that harried Storytellers can make simple multiple choice selections, along with a reminder that pure DIY is encouraged.

Incidentally, part of making a metaplot work involves reaching back as well as moving forward. I’ll invent new bits of history here and in the adventure.

5) Make cool toys.

It’s not a metaplot unless there are some neat systems and more entrenched setting elements to support the main set of stories that might take place. I’ll design a system for espionage, trust and faction loyalty and a bunch of new spells mages might use whipping down the Autobahn after rogue aristocrat sorcerers. Setting-wise, I’ll design a few new factions to support the most obvious player and antagonist stances, along with one or two that don’t fit in one box or the other so easily. This is the other spot where event book techniques work well.

(Keep in mind that in a full treatment I’d probably have  more metaphysical, secretive story happening in tandem with obvious stuff. It might all be fallout from an Imperial spell, for example. Odder factions and systems can easily take root here. I’ not going to go into detail because that’d be too much work for a blog piece.)

6) Create lots of characters to fill PC and NPC roles

I’m taking some influence from Scion here, as it gives you ready to play characters at each tier of power. These guys are really handy because even if you don’t play the Son of Thor you can always bring him in as an antagonist, ally or Fifth Business dude in some godly meeting. Lots of the characters are useful; I want maybe 150% of the number I need to just get the plot on its feet. I’ll describe their intended uses in a straightforward fashion: as a supplement to more atmospheric descriptions, not a replacement. And yeah, I might add a few really powerful guys because they’re useful, but I’ll follow up with advice on how to use them.

I’ll design one or two relationship maps so that we can find out how the most important characters get along at a glance. Vampire: The Masquerade’s Chicago by Night is a great example of this technique in action.

7) Design an important adventure

The attached adventure shouldn’t just be a side story, but something the travels through the heart of the metaplot and has a chance to alter its outcome (though not necessarily completely — part of a rich setting comes from there being things players can’t change, but as this causes the money wailing of a thousand nerds you should never say so in the book). The adventure is the machine that shoved the metaplot to its ultimate resolution, even if it doesn’t do so in a way that necessarily meets player or character objectives.

8 ) See if breaking any metaplot rules would make it better. Mix things up. Smooth the bumps out. Question structure.

I lied — I totally want to deprotagonize you beneath my cool Mary Sue NPCs! Well, not really, but if we get to far into a method we’re likely to end up with some boring-ass thing that feels like the gaming equivalent of painting by numbers. People say they want structure and ways to make reconfigure chunks of stuff within set rules, but the finished product usually ends up seeming a bit soulless. At some point we need to smooth things over, build seamless links between the chunks and make it feel like an organic whole with its own mood, motifs and message. It needs some soul or else nobody’s going to care.

(I should double-emphasize that it’s not as if RPGs don’t have a ways to go with that last one. For instance, I’m still a bit stung that the transgendered cop I created for “Bloody Mary” in Urban Legends got that part of his background cut at the developer’s insistence.)

Right after the D20 licence came out but before the Book of Erotic Fantasy I floated a thought experiment with some other writers about attacking the license with three books:

• The Killing of the King: The occult flow of causality requires you to assassinate JFK using every possible permutation allowed by the (loosely conceived) constraints of evidence to prevent the early rise of “Third Way” liberalism, because it sucks. Just look at how many times Tony Blair had to lie.
• D20 Eco Ops: This’d be a modern resource with rules for eco-activist sabotage. The game systems would be integrated into comprehensive descriptions of the organizational and tactical methods used by real groups, with the explicit position that the book was an ideological training ground.
• The third one is still a project I’m pursuing so I won’t go into too much detail, but it involves methodical real-world drug use by characters to stimulate their creative autonomy.

In retrospect a rewrite of the D20STL would have just resulted sooner, but the real point wasn’t to attack the license as much as use it as a conceptual benchmark in pursuit of challenging ideas. It’s all pretty contrived, but I’m afraid that I don’t think RPGs are doing better right now. They’re about Meta-issues for gamers, either situated in the game or the community. There are a whack of games stabbing at depth, but they just don’t succeed. It’s stuff like Man, organized religion sure is screwed up! or It’s hard when people die! or Poor people sure have it rough! or Aren’t you offended when I’m gross!

Challenging art requires to to fight a position that’s commonly believed in a way that gets to the point. Gamers are overfond of Star Trek-style superloose allegories (It’s really about black people/queer folks/etc, not aliens!), possibly because these were invented to avoid complaints from people just like them. The fact that these people lived in the 1960s indicates we haven’t come very far, have we? We like to use these to dodge blame for the bad stuff (like orcs as stand ins for colonized peoples) and take credit for the good stuff. We need to build challenges that are harder to dodge.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Mage: The Ascension (and others; just going with what comes to mind first) both tried out these sorts of challenges, though neither succeeded completely. Werewolf started out by saying Human nature and corporate capitalism in particular are immoral, destructive forces. Mage said Modernity isn’t necessarily desirable, probably isn’t rational and is a servant of political interests, anyway. Boy, did that make people mad, and not mad in a kind of throwaway fashion. Gamers still get pissed off about it. They get pissed off when hints of it come up, like when Awakening added a nod to John Zerzan-like primitivism in Tome of the Watchtowers, or whatever Phil Brucato wrote in Changing Breeds, and they’re probably not going to like something in an upcoming book where the easy colonized-peoples metaphor are the smart guys.

This kind of thing doesn’t happen too often though. It’s hard to present a commercial proposition that’s based on telling the audience their beliefs are screwed up unless it’s about religion. If it’s about religion it’s pretty easy because people who can’t irreverently manipulate signs suck at RPGs anyway. So besides things like like Satan was a good guy! Angels were stone killers! writers and designers get scared of saying this stuff because they don’t want to alienate their audience, especially now that segments of the audience can broadcast all kinds of crap in response on a public forum.

You would think that smaller publishers would pick up the slack here but by and large, they don’t. They’re pretty addicted to Trek-level allegories to inoffensively pick up the slack, with a side order of the ‘ol grossout (like that Old School thing where the guy details the evil things you do to summon demons and crap). I’m not saying it’s never been done there (Steal Away Jordan, for instance) but the small press sure has some ways to go.

It also doesn’t help that the culture of gaming is chock full of creative machismo. Everybody wants assurances that their creative impulse isn’t being oppressed by the GM or designer or group of something — everybody’s an enemy of the big swinging cock of self-expression. Challenging that . . . Well, it pretty much feels like pointing below the belt and laughing to these types, and making a statement about how you ought to think or feel can’t help but do that. It’s a pity, because it other media people take more responsibility for their responses.

I’ll put it this way. You know those crazy far right movie reviews that talk about how every flick will turn you into a gay(er) (more) heathen (card carrying) communist? Keep that style of analysis but remove the slant (mostly; there’s something inherently totalizing and fascist about that mode anyway) and you have how pretty much every internet-vocal gamer reacts to new RPG stuff they have a problem with. If someone did that for every movie they saw without a hint of satire or comic effect you’d probably think they were assholes, wouldn’t you?

Finally, you can’t do your best job without revealing something of yourself. It’s possible to do a good job writing against your beliefs, but it can be seriously disconcerting. I despise the world views of the Euthanatos and Silver Ladder, but people frequently cite that stuff as some of my better work. RPGs represent a special danger because the audience generates its own deep narratives and might really piss you off with them. I really sympathize with Vincent Baker dealing with Dogs in the Vineyard being used to play SS members, resulting in oneupmanship where everybody tried to sympathize with the SS. The answer to these challenges is that doing something like this means you’re an asshole, but nobody really wants to be put in a position where they have to call somebody an asshole. And win or lose that fight, you’re dealing with someone who created an involved narrative to an immoral end.

That’s the danger; that’s the challenge. Once you flirt with the heavy stuff you’re not dealing with remote intellectual questions any more. You’re laying it out, and you may end up confronting what you don’t just think is a creative conflict, but a basic moral error while you’re fighting for a position you believe leads to something finer in the world.

Who’s up to the challenge? Am I up to it? I don’t know. I think we need it. I hope we get it in 2010. Like I said at the beginning, it’s not the purpose of art, but without it, an art form has no purpose.