By Night Studios Archives - Keep on the Heathlands

Blood and Betrayal Chronicle – Interview with Jason Carl

Recent news from By Night Studios has raised a lot of eyebrows, and caught a lot of attention. By Night Studios is the company that creates officially licensed Mind’s Eye Theater products for the classic World of Darkness. They are a licensee of White Wolf Entertainment AB, based in Sweden. By Night Studios released some details on their new business venture, Blood & Betrayal Chronicle, a global LARP story for troupes and individuals. People paid attention, because this is a new method of connecting individual troupes to a larger story. Jason Carl was graciously willing to answer some questions we had about this new endeavor.

Jason, can you start by introducing yourself?

Hello! I’m Jason Carl, CEO of By Night Studios. I’ve been working in and with games most of my adult life, at Wizards of the Coast (Magic The Gathering organized play, Dungeons & Dragons 3^rd Edition), Xbox Game Studios, and Wunderman Seattle (Xbox marketing), and also as a freelance RPG writer (White Wolf). Today I’m also the Producer for Vampire The Masquerade 5^th Edition for White Wolf.

How does this differ from the B&B and R&R games you’ve been running?

By Night Studios has run large-scale Mind’s Eye Theatre LARPs annually at World of Darkness fan conventions including The Grand Masquerade in New Orleans, Las Vegas by Night, and Los Angeles by Night. We called these LARPs ‘Blood & Betrayal’ for Vampire the Masquerade and ‘Rage & Retribution’ for Werewolf the Apocalypse. Hundreds of players enjoyed these games—there were over 400 players from many different countries at last year’s Blood & Betrayal—and each was a one-night event with a connected story that players could affect. So, what player characters decided and did at Blood & Betrayal Las Vegas affected the events of Blood & Betrayal New Orleans, for example.

Now we are offering the chance to participate in a global LARP chronicle that builds on the story from our convention games and continues forward.

You are planning to use the new www.worldofdarkness.com functionality to help facilitate this Chronicle, can you tell us a little about why and what that site will do?

We’re very excited about this! The website launched at GenCon 2017 and included basic Mind’s Eye Theatre character and troupe management tools. We’re adding new features continually, and soon Storytellers will have access to powerful online tools that will help them focus more on telling great collaborative stories and less on bookkeeping.

In this way, Blood & Betrayal troupes that use different rules for their LARPs can still, if they want to, interact globally by standardizing the way they handle downtime procedures.

A great example of this is the Vampiri No?ne Kronike in Zagreb, Croatia—they’re using a very Nordic-style rules system for resolving the challenges in their Vampire the Masquerade live games, but their Storytellers use the Mind’s Eye Theatre rules in the background to manage Experience Points, character downtimes, influences, and other actions that are difficult to simulate physically at a live game. Mind’s Eye Theatre is the almost-invisible engine that the game runs on. We’re seeing more chronicles do this, and we want to support this option for global play.

This seems like it might overlap with some of what the fan community already does, through organizations like Mind’s Eye Society, Underground Theater, etc. How does it differ?

We can understand how it might seem that way, but that’s not our intention, and we don’t foresee much overlap. Fan clubs like Mind’s Eye Society provide not only a LARP story that links dozens or hundreds of local games that all play by the same LARP rules, but also a complete administrative structure for club officers to help them run smoothly. Many players really enjoy and prefer this kind of consistency: it allows them to travel more easily between games that participate in the same fan club, knowing that everything is standardized no matter where you go.

What we discovered is that many games also want the fun and benefits of a linked global chronicle, but prefer to maintain their local LARP rules and independent administrative structures. The Blood & Betrayal chronicle is intended to address this need.

Most networked fan clubs seem happy with how they are doing things currently and we anticipate that they won’t be very interested in what we are offering. But…

Is it possible for a fan club to join and have all of their games sync with the larger chronicle?

…any fan club or individual game or chapter within a fan club that is interested is more than welcome to join the chronicle.

Talk to us a little about the philosophy behind being rules agnostic for local games. Are games allowed to interact with one another outside of convention games?

They’re allowed, and even encouraged to interact outside of convention games. Players will be able to travel between local games—but they must respect the local rules and policies when they visit other games. We foresee that some Blood & Betrayal games will interact frequently by virtue of their close proximity, where others may interact only online or at conventions, but they’re all free to share the story to the limit of their preferences.

Would you describe what you are doing as global meta-plot integration? If so, how do you hope to tie this into the trans-media experience that White Wolf has talked about previously?

First let me say a bit about transmedia. The simplest explanation is: a story told through multiple mediums. Consider Star Wars, Star Trek, the Marvel Universe, Game of Thrones…these connected stories are told in books, television, films, video games, graphic novels, board games, and more. Some transmedia stories are more connected than others (consider how Marvel links its cinematic universe to its television shows and video games). Others are more loosely connected.

Now let me say that it’s important to note that this is a By Night Studios project. We’re a White Wolf licensee. If White Wolf decides to incorporate the Blood & Betrayal chronicle into a transmedia effort, that would be awesome, but it’s not something that is planned currently. White Wolf is very focused on developing the 5^th edition of the World of Darkness games at this time.

Fees: Tell us a little bit about what you envision the membership fee providing a player or troupe?

We would like share everything! But we are still working on the fee structure with our licensee and the website developer, so unfortunately we can’t offer any additional details until we get closer to launch.

Where do you see the Blood and Betrayal Chronicle going in the future?

How does this help create a more inclusive atmosphere in LARP moving forward?

I’m going to combine my answers to these last two questions because I see them as interrelated, exactly like our World of Darkness LARP community. We hope to grow Blood & Betrayal into a fun LARP experience shared around the world by players living in many different countries and who bring many different traditions of play with them. We envision players who come from Nordic, freestyle, JEEP-form, Mind’s Eye Theatre, minimalist, competitive, blockbuster, and even boffer traditions all being able to share in a Vampire: The Masquerade story that spans the globe, and communicating as they do—sharing ideas and experiences in ways that help break down barriers to inclusiveness. We know that this is a very ambitious goal, but we feel it is very important to try.

Looking for a Jumpstart for your Vampire: The Masquerade Game? Check Out Dark New England: Five Chronicle Jumpstarts on the Storytellers Vault!

Storytelling to the Back and the Front of the Room

Storytelling is hard.

The purpose of this article is to both communicate my personal storytelling style and refine it. I want to explore, with you, how I want to do things and why I should be doing them. I hope that you can find something in them that helps you too. I know that talking to, and roleplaying with, others over the years has helped to improve my storytelling and roleplaying. These will be written from the perspective of a World of Darkness larper, but many of these ideas should apply to other tabletop and larp games.

I want to talk about the difficulty in storytelling to the back and the front of the room. In theater it is important that the play read not just to the close seats, but to all the way in the back row. The actors must not only be able to be heard, but must emote in a way that everyone can understand. There are many ways that theater accomplishes this. Everything from the shape of the stage, to the costumes and props are meant to tell a story to the whole theater. We have to do the same things when running game. We have to reach the back of the room.

For my purposes I divide players into four different categories. Many players will fall into more than one and will change over times. These are not meant to be groundbreaking or all inclusive, but I find them convenient. These categories are indicative of how players find their fun in a game.

Storytellers can address all of these player types by running an inclusive game. Inclusive games are founded with the idea that every player deserves a moment to shine and to have a chance to be part of the story. When writing plots the staff should create situations that have a theme and purpose that fits within the genre of your game and engages character driven by different things. These plots should require a variety of skills to complete or understand them and encourage players to recruit outside of their cliques for help.

Internally Driven

Sir Laurence, as Hamlet, Tragedy Embodied

These players self generate personal plots through history and roleplay. They tend to enter play with a goal that they wish to accomplish. That goal can drive inter-character conflict, like the quest to be Prince of a city or it can be driven by NPC interaction, like the drive to gain Pillar Status for your clan. These players enjoy working toward the goals they have set and like to feel as if they could accomplish them.

Seek to support their personal stories by integrating it into the plot of the game as much as you can. Let them climb their mountains, but do not give them easy success. If they succeed, it should be in spite of the trials and difficulties. Ensure that success and setback comes in turn. They want to feel a sense of accomplishment that is worthy of recognition. Give them both hope and the potential for failure.

Externally Driven

These players prefer Storyteller generated plot. They will create their characters with this in mind and will frequently seek to be very good in one or two areas of the game. Some of them will be focused on combat or investigation, but they could just as easily be experts in lore or influence. Players that are driven by plot like to complete missions and solve mysteries in game.

Support these players with interesting and engaging plot. It does not need to be complex to intrigue them, but it does need solid themes and story that fits within the genre of the game that is being run. Give them opportunities to use their skills to move plot along, but write plot that is not simple to bulldoze through. A solid foundation will allow you to improvise along with player action and ideas.

Experience Driven

Convention of Thorns 1 – Experience LARP

These players are seeking to have a “Moment”. They want to experience real emotions and drama. Their characters will have great histories and cool costumes and they will use those to pursue scenes where these moments can happen. Experience driven players prefer to stay in character and encourage others to do so as well. They are at game for the roleplay itself.

Storytellers can support them by involving them in divisive and difficult situations. Even if, and sometimes especially if, they have great setbacks and failures these players embrace the roller coaster of feeling. Allow them to play out these situations, but do not allow it to go so far as to detract from the rest of the players. When you are planning games, look for opportunities to include moral and ethical choices. This not only gives them a place to roleplay, but also creates depth for everyone.

Undriven

These players frequently struggling with either the rules, setting, or roleplay in general. They enjoy being involved and spending time with their friends. Sometimes, they are just uninterested in the game, but want to hang out. Everyone falls into this category at times. There are nights when you are too tired or burnt out to really engage plot. It is not always a bad thing. Taking a step back and allowing everyone else to shine can be refreshing for yourself and healthy for the game.

Engaging Undriven characters can be difficult, but the first step is education. When a player looks excluded, pay attention to them. If it is because they do not understand what is going on or how the rules work, then either you, or a designated helper, sit down with them and teach them the basics. Knowing the setting and rules will get them to the point where they know how they can interact, however learning to effectively roleplay helps even more. I like to attach them to an a divisive character or NPC in game. It gives them a goal and something to do. By throwing them in the deep end, they get to become immediately involved. If they still seek to stay on the periphery, give them space. Some players are satisfied with just being at game.

Conclusion

Players are more important than game, characters are more important than plot. Drive everything around creating an experience for your players. This does not mean that you hold back from negative consequences or even character death, just that you ensure they are meaningful. Meaning is the greatest thing you can give to a player’s actions. If you give their failure or death a cool story, they will remember it forever. Do not be afraid of a little boredom or breathing space. This gives players time to relax and characters time to reflect and plot their next move.

Player action and character agency is difficult to deal with at times, but your plot is not as important as player enjoyment and engagement. If the plot is not working or if the players have a better plan, let it go. Allow their solution to work if it makes sense and fits into the game setting. Be willing to script or storyboard scenes that have gotten bogged down or are uninteresting. If a mass combat has reached the point where it is just a series of bland challenges and it is no longer challenging or entertaining, then script the rest of it. Players are willing to negotiate appropriate consequences for a victory, if they feel that is fits with what is happening.

Ultimately, the way to reach every player in your game is to be interested in them. Give everyone, individually, a moment in the spotlight. Take the time to get to know them and to learn why they come to game. Watch yourself when you are writing stories and running NPCs that you do not get too caught up playing to the front. Those players deserve attention, they drive your plots and are usually the social leadership of your game. However, do not forget the back. Those players are at game to enjoy themselves too. Be interested in all the characters in your game and seek to integrate everyone into the larger story.

Trans Representation and the Changing Face of Werewolf

Trans Representation and the Changing Face of Werewolf

by Lang Schmitt

Early on in the new Werewolf: the Apocalypse BNS book we meet Verity Argyris. Verity is a young Black Fury historian who’s working to record the oral histories of the Garou, and her observations are scattered throughout the book.

After many pages of meeting Verity through her observations, we learn on page 62 that Verity’s mothers in the Tribe were one of the first to keep male-born children, and that at her Rite of Passage she was proclaimed “not just their daughter, but a sister of the tribe”. In other words, the text is obliquely saying that Verity is what we’d identify as a trans(*) woman.

A Societal Shift

I haven’t seen a lot of online discussion of Verity. (Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places.) While I was searching, though, I found a lot of discussion from several years ago about if a character like Verity could exist among the Black Furies.

A lot of gamers came to the conclusion that she couldn’t. The Black Furies, they argued, placed too much value on a person’s biology – and Garou would view sex-reassignment hormones or surgery as a tool of the Weaver. (More on this in a minute.)

Let me be clear: the first edition of the Black Furies book came out in the early ’90s, when including a radical second-wave feminist group in your fantasy world seemed progressive and forward-thinking. The Black Furies were based on real-life trans-exclusive Wiccan groups, which emphasize the sacredness of female-bodied biology and experience and reject male-bodied people as equal members.

But the BNS book states:

black-furies-tribe-image — Black Fury Tribebook Revised Cover

“[The Black Furies’] viewpoints have evolved, due to their new leadership.

The Age of Apocalypse has shown them that the equality

they seek so viciously is a complex issue, involving more

than just women and children. They realized that their

exclusivity would damn them … Those who

identify as having the hearts women [sic] also received the

blessing of Artemis and have been welcomed to the tribe.

… Despite their newly opened mindset,

there are rumors of a rift between modern and traditional

Furies regarding how lenient and accepting present-day

Black Furies are perceived by other werewolves.” (p. 70-71)

Trans-exclusive radical feminist (TERF) groups still exist in real life. They inspire harsh feelings from trans activists and their allies, who argue that excluding trans women from cis women’s spaces is pointless, and further marginalizes an already marginal population. Some TERFs and their groups have not moved past their trans-excusionary worldviews – but many are evolving, like the Black Furies are.

Some gamers will cry foul, arguing that it’s a political act to write a world where the Black Furies are beginning to welcome trans women. But this in-game change is tied to a real-world change, and it would be equally political to not include trans people in an era when we are becoming more visible and accepted.

How to Write a Trans Character

I am young and trans. I am … blessed? … to have come of age at a time when trans people are newly visible in popular culture.

angel-rent Some people would tell you visibility is an unambiguous good. I’m less certain. There are a lot of lazily-written trans characters out there. The Lazily-Written Trans Character is often a conventionally feminine trans woman. She is non-threatening and non-sexual, although she may be a sex worker.

She is usually tragic in some way. Often, she dies before the end of the story, to teach our cis protagonists some kind of lesson. Think of Angel from RENT, or Rayon from Dallas Buyers Club.

To be completely fair, this type of character is far preferable to unsympathetic trans caricatures, who are grotesque, hypersexual, and dangerous. (Think Buffalo Bill, or the attack ads that air about transphobic bathroom legislation.) But lazily-written trans characters are toothless, and ancillary to cis characters’ stories. They’re objects of pity (or vapid inspiration), rather than figures of genuine strength. They are no one anyone would want to be, or could ever be.

There is tragedy in much of the trans experience – but we are still the heroes of our own stories. But you wouldn’t know that from looking at these characters.

We are slowly seeing a broadening of the range of trans narratives that exists in mass media, but problematic characterizations remain. And even as we see more progressive types appear, mass media portrayals of trans still have something pernicious to them: the most interesting thing about us, in these stories, is that we are trans. Our narrative arc is our transition. Without our gender, we would be no one.

We don’t see a whole lot of Verity in the BNS book, past two vigniettes and her own observations. But she shows herself to be strong, observant, curious, intelligent, and active. She’s head and shoulders above the passive, pitiable trans “type” who furthers cis narratives.

Critically, she is more than her transition. There’s plenty of hay to be made about Verity’s gender, in thinkpieces like this, but ultimately her trans-ness is a footnote. It only comes up obliquely in the previously-mentioned quote, and in passing when she fears rejection from Black Fury elder in the second vigniette. It’s far more vital that she’s gathering information, and serves as our viewpoint character.

I can think of very few trans viewpoint characters in mass media, and even fewer who aren’t shown through the light of their transition. Verity feels like something genuinely novel.

The Real-World Politics of Werewolf

Why does this matter? Why does W:tA need trans representation?

When I was looking for discussions about trans in W:tA, I found that many anti-trans fans of the game have (or had) a medicalized and pathological view of trans people. We are out-of-balance, the argument goes. We are a product of modern medicine, not nature. No Garou would ever have us (except for maybe Glasswalkers).

I reject this argument out of hand. The medicalization and pathologicalization of trans is comparatively modern. Pre-modern cultures often made (and make) a place for trans people: Romans had galli; Indian society still has hijra; many American Indian cultures have third or fourth genders. Our position has varied from place to place, and we have often been the first to be marginalized and scapegoated in times of trouble, but we most definitely existed and we were often accepted.

It is we, in our Weaver-ridden society, who want all genders (and all bodies, in the case of intersex people) in two boxes. In fact, the BNS book gives a clear route for a non-medical transition for trans characters: the first level Ajaba gift in this system, Mask of Night, which lets characters transform their body to that of the “opposite sex”. Shun the Weaver’s medicalized works, and embrace the transformation nature offers you!

We are in fact very in-balance. Thematically, we mesh perfectly with a game about shapeshifting and balance – even as societies, real and fictional, find dynamic points of balance around us as we re-take our place at the table.

This brings me to the biggest reason why I think W:tA needs trans representation.

Many of the gamers I’ve spoken with are a little leery of this game – and to be completely fair, that’s a feeling I share. W:tA has a troubled legacy, in a lot of ways. I found that a lot of female and trans gamers perceive W:tA as a “game for bros”. Despite the game’s best intentions, they argue, W:tA players often create toxically masculine characters, who enact stereotypically masculine power fantasies without consequence. (This is completely separate from the in-universe transphobia, or “noble savage” stereotyping of Indigenous peoples.)

werewolf-ban — Werewolf 20th Anniversary Edition

Obviously, this is a generalization. For any W:tA group I could point to that’s ridden with hyper-masculine power fantasies, I’m sure my readers could find several more that are thoughtful and well-balanced, that draw plenty of female and queer players.

But that’s not really my point: fairly or not, this is the baggage the game carries with it. A signature character like Verity isn’t a surefire medicine against W:tA‘s machismo, and I imagine a lot of gaming groups will choose to ignore the changes made to the Black Furies. But I imagine Verity might take the air out of the sails of a few of the hardcore bros out there, and make Storytellers rethink the feel of the setting.

It takes all kinds to save the world – ranging from the classically masculine fearless and strong, to the classically feminine sensitive and nurturing. It takes all kinds to build a healthy gaming community, too.

It remains to be seen what Storytellers and players do with BNS’ Werewolf. But I think BNS has taken a potentially polarizing, but critical step toward broadening the game’s world – and making it one female-bodied people and queers are more likely to find friendly to play in.

(*) For the purposes of this article, I’m using “trans” as an umbrella term that includes anyone who is not cisgender. “Cisgender” or “cis” means having a gender identity that corresponds with one’s biological sex. Trans, here, includes people who have taken medical steps to bring their body closer in line with their identity, those who want to take medical steps but have not done so yet, and those who feel no need to do so. I also mean it to include people who fall outside the gender binary.

Lang Schmitt is a transmasculine genderqueer person. He lives in Madison, WI and makes his living writing. He currently plays in Underground Theater. Find him on Facebook, or email him at langschmitt@gmail.com.

GUEST REVIEW MET WEREWOLF 2016

So a quick history: White Wolf published a LARP (Live Action Role Play) variant of their Old World of Darkness (oWoD) series in the early and mid-90s dubbed Mind’s Eye Theater (MET). By Night Studios (BNS) recently acquired the right to make new LARP materials from oWoD and have set out to create newly revamped systems that are based today incorporate more recent societal themes. This is a review of their newest book in this reimagining, Werewolf:The Apocalypse.

The Story

werewolf-cover — All Images Used are the Property of By Night Studios, White Wolf, and their Respective Owners, they are used here under fair use, any concerns please alert us ASAP

In the original setting, the world ended around 2000. To allow for the game to be more modern, BNS had to work from the point where the world would have ended, forward, and continue to build the world. This was a monumental job that could have fallen flat if they had gone in the wrong direction. Instead, they hit it out of the ballpark.

The story moving in to the current era is plausible, interesting, and makes for a large amount of story hooks for any storyteller. The feeling of something akin to an Apocalypse happening was preserved. At the same time, the authors moved both the game and the setting forward. I feel the most impressive thing they did was characterizing the cyber generation, especially in a game historically defined by hatred of technology (and sometimes progress). The inclusion of two political factions (The Concordat of Stars and the Sanctum of Gaia) working both together and against one another while fighting the same war also adds a new angle that storytellers can use if heavy meta-politics are their players’ jam.

Most importantly to me, some of the tribes have moved forward to become fully fleshed out, living groups of people. Black Furies accept all women and cubs of both genders born to the tribe, the Wendigo aren’t solely just angry native people, and in general, the setting incorporates globalization of our culture in a very appropriate and respectful way. I’m not saying that if you hadn’t dug deeper in to those tribes I mentioned before you wouldn’t have found life and spark, but this is an area where I feel the previous LARP books did a disservice. I feel like BNS went above and beyond to truly give new players a glance in to a living, breathing cultural organization of people, especially ones with more sensitive themes.

Mechanics

If you are familiar with rock-paper-scissors, you can play this game. Mechanically not much is changed from BNS’s MET: Vampire: the Masquerade (VtM). You have test pools determined by your sheet, you throw rock-paper-scissors, you compare your results and then things happen. Some elements are new, but if you are familiar with the other book, this book is an almost seamless transition. It’s also obvious that this is BNS’s second book, because concerns with MET: VtM have either been corrected or elaborated upon (backgrounds, etc.).

The only mechanic that is truly new, and I feel makes the game stand out from its companion, is the Quest System. Players develop a Quest, work together to determine requirements, and then, regardless of success or failure, collectively create a shared narrative. This emphasizes player cooperation and agency, while reducing storyteller stress. It’s a great example of a system promoting positive play and I am very impressed with it. I have heard a lot of Vampire storytellers that want to incorporate it in to their game and I look forward to that.

Relevance to New and Old Players

I would like to preface this section with the fact that BNS talked with the community at large about what they liked and disliked about Werewolf, and it’s pretty obvious that they took those suggestions to heart in their development of the new book. They made a lot of changes to make the game more palatable, easier to run, and easier to play.

My old group of players has an adage. “Forget what you knew before, read through the book and that’s what you have.” There is a lot of difference between the original Werewolf and this one. But these changes aren’t bad, especially considering the backstory of the book. If you like Werewolf, you’ll definitely find the old Werewolf you love deep inside the heart of this book, as well as a whole new world to explore

For newer players, this book is a great introduction to the genre. With the inclusion of definite mechanics and story hooks that allow for inexperienced players to play as Kinfolk (the human relatives of werewolves), and Cubs (newly changed werewolves), and also to become actively involved in the story, even as low powered creatures (I’m looking at you Den Mother), even the greenest oWoD player can truly become involved and captured by the system and story. Don’t try and read the whole thing in one sitting though.

Storytellers are given a lot of information and a lot of meat to sink their fangs in to. The Umbra section alone could be an entire 5 year chronicles. This makes the book great for someone trying to run a game, especially if paired with its sister book, Vampire the Masquerade. There are 750+ pages of pure information to sink your teeth into and you have all the time in the world to get to know it.

Art:

This needed its own section. The art is amazing, representative, evocative, and while the style may be slightly strange at first, it meshes well. There are depictions of strength and serenity in both genders. It’s some great stuff.

skin-dancer But… it’s not perfect.

My major gripe is that there are firmly more depictions of men than women (by a factor of maybe ¼ from a quick count through the book) and there are a few ‘sexy poses’ that women are in that you don’t see the men paralleling (I’m looking at you page 735). There’s nothing wrong with sexy, but similar poses could have been employed in some of the male images. Also the bewildered and bored look that the two women in the Pentex scene respectively have (page 610) hurt my soul a little bit compared to the businesslike and serious look the men have.

These seem like petty gripes, but I hold BNS to high standards in regards to being open and accommodating to the community, and art is one of the major ways that the gaming community has majorly failed to do this in the past.

Overall, the art is stunning, and despite these issues the full color renderings of them make me want an art book with more.

Portability:

So there is one Were-Elephant in the room I’d like to address. The original LARP books were small and portable. This book is not. While the 750+ pages are absolutely glorious and give you all the information you could ever need, it’s also a monster of a book. There are ways around this (printing and creating subsection binders, e-readers, etc.), but those are hoops that the consumer has to jump through themselves. Also, the size does seem to mess with certain e-readers and PDF readers, so a B&W option of the pdf at some point in the future would be appreciated. mourning

Final Verdict

This is an amazing book. It’s a great re-imagining of Werewolf that addresses and deals with a large amount of the issues that the community was vocal about. It’s obvious that the two years of work that both BNS and the community put in to it have paid off and I feel like this is definitely going to revitalize a once dying subset of the LARP community. They have taken a part of oWoD that I loved but was always hesitant to suggest due to problematic issues in the original source material and morphed it in to something I would suggest to most, if not all, of my LARPing friends to try out at least once.

Will Martin has been LARPing since college and has found no reason to stop yet and is quite fond of being able to watch the age where the art of gaming has become more self-aware and critical of itself. This is accented by his job working in Public Health with a focus on underprivileged communities. Currently he is the head Storyteller for a yet to be named Werewolf LARP out of Washington DC, run through Underground Theater.

*Note, all opinions are the opinions of their respective Authors and may not represent the opinion of the Editor or any other Author of Keep On the Heathlands.

SUPPORTING INCLUSIVITY IN GAMING

Last Thursday I received my advance PDF of Mind’s Eye Theatre Werewolf: The Apocalypse, this post was informed by some preliminary reading of that book which made me happy with some of what the writers addressed. The rest of this post will not exclusively be about By Night Studios, but I want to call them out for moving things in the right direction and striving to be one of the more inclusive gaming companies on the market. I think this comes from the form of gaming in question. In some ways, LARP is an atmosphere where inclusivity, and safety, are much more present. You have larger groups, and often groups engaged in physical storytelling.

I got asked the other day what inclusivity in gaming means to me.

Inclusivity means having a game world that reflects reality in its diversity. Inclusivity means an openness to thought, to writing, to characters that walk a spectrum of identities. Inclusivity means a game culture that welcomes players and encourages them to engage in world building in a self-reflective way, but also in a way that acknowledges a plurality of vision about the purpose of gaming. Inclusivity means trying to find a way to engage, support, and empower any player that walks through the door, if their goal is to support the collaborative process.

Storytelling and gaming are essential elements of our being. When I engage in stories that challenge my perceptions, that encourage me to think, to expand, to reflect, that is what I search for. I want everyone to have that chance, to be included if they want to be included. I want anyone that picks up a book I write, or a plays a game I play, to feel like they could make that their core pastime. Collaboration requires maneuvering with, and for people. Inclusivity embraces that challenge with the goal of trying to open the door so that all people, voices, and thoughts are heard, considered, and added to the collective memory, the shared myth.

Inclusivity in gaming is a process that can start from the ground up, or, from the top down. What, in this case, do I mean by top down? I’m talking about from the game company themselves. From choosing writers, to tapping artists, all the way up to developers, a desire for and a strong commitment to inclusivity impacts their games in ways that ripple throughout their fan communities. That isn’t to say the job of inclusivity is only on the developer side, but they have a role to play. (hah, no pun was intended but I’m going to keep it now I’ve noticed it)

Actions both subtle and obvious help to encourage an atmosphere of inclusion in a game. Let’s run through a few of them.

PRONOUN USAGE: White Wolf was one of the first companies to use the female pronoun in their books. This is one of those subtle decisions that can have a huge impact. Having she sets the tone that women, just as much as men, can be the standard gender for roles in the World of Darkness. That was 1991, and a pretty big deal in that day and age. Today using she is less trendsetting, and is still powerful. At the same time, using gender neutral and gender ambiguous pronouns can indicate an attitude of acceptance of all gender identities, both for players and for characters. If reading through a book and a signature character is a 3-dimensional figure who happens to be gender queer as part of their identity, it represents some of the diversity within our world.

SAFETY AND CONSENT RULES/STANDARDS: Consent is an important part of the social contract of gaming. Players consent to sit around your table, or embody characters in LARP, and they need to continually be provided the option to opt-in or out of story elements that could hurt them as players. By Night Studios is doing well in this department, in the MET Vampire book this concept is treated with respect and given decent coverage. In Werewolf? They’ve done even better, pages 19-20 cover several concepts that are essential to supporting player safety and encouraging behavior that ensures it. They discuss Bleed, Personal Responsibility, Sportsmanship, and techniques of storytelling that support player comfort like Fade to Black and Time Stops. For those of us who have been around the LARP world for a while we’ve seen a lot of discussion on these things, and it is essential to have them front in center in a game book.

kadira — Kadira by Bryan Sime: From Ki Khanga

REPRESENTATIVE IMAGES: Recently Wizards of the Coast received some soft praise for having one of their signature characters be a black woman. This is good, and needs to continue. What is also praise worthy is that the character is wearing, basically, sensible armor. There is also the awesome new game, Ki Khanga which is set in a fantasy world based on Africa. Games like this, and games that incorporate honest representation are part of the process to make games more inclusive. Representation matters, just as with gender, characters with similar looks and ethnic identities to players help to give them role models. They also give players with different identities a chance to see awesome characters that do not look like them, which I believe has an impact on how people are seen in one’s day to day life as well.

SUPPORT FOR PLAYERS WITH DISABILITIES: This I feel, is at times the area that we have the most opportunity for growth and development of new strategies for support. One of the concerns I’ve had with the newer White Wolf books is their size. These books are 500, 600, 700 pages long in one volume. I struggle to hold him in my hands and this is due to a very moderate problem with grip, probably caused from my military service. Thankfully I have pdfs and other electronic versions of these books I can read as well, but it would be amazing to have some other technology to support our gamers with other disability concerns. Some of this is built into our new devices, but that only goes so far. I’d like to hear some feedback on what sort of devices, support, or ideas could help in this area.

Here is my take-away. We are doing better as a community, partly due to the benefit of Kickstarter and other forms of crowd-funding that allow for smaller projects to get off the ground. We can do better, though. That should not be taken as a critique, just a fact, we can always do better, we can always work to be compassionate and supportive and inclusive and we should always strive to be so. What games do you think are the most inclusive? How do you ensure a sense of inclusivity in the games you create or the games you play?

Josh is the Admin@KeepontheHeathlands

*Note, all opinions are the opinions of their respective Authors and may not represent the opinion of any other Author of Keep On the Heathlands.