It’s typical in pulp fiction of all sorts that the intrepid Western Adventurers come to show some indigenous culture how their beliefs and ignorance are causing them some problems.  Inevitably the “natives” are educated by force or through persuasion how to do the “right” thing.  This is pretty prominent in HPL’s work as well. I feel his treatment of other cultures is where his xenophobia is most prominently on display. The theme seems to be that evil is associated with older, “primitive” cultures.

What if they were right though?  What if these older beliefs were ways that “primitive” cultures kept the Elder Gods at bay? As places around the world became colonized however, the artifacts and knowledge that kept them at bay became lost as well.  Under the influence of colonialism and the post-colonial corporatist era, the Elder Gods have broken their seals and are able to make their present more strongly felt.

The goal with this framework is not to advocate a “go back in time” mindset –what’s done is done — but rather to present a more nuanced view of the this preternatural evil.  The players not only investigate the phenomena, but to solve problems they need to understand the story of what happened or is happening in some place.  It has a bit of a social concious, but tries to get there implicitly.

Imagine that the statues that Western explorers thought were simple trinkets depicting Elder Gods were actually wards!  And now they are sitting in some rich collector’s cabinet somewhere.  Can you get them back or will you have to improvise  another solution?

This approach is something I would like to run with, as I think it is both broad and deep and capable of delivering some really strong adventure premises.

What adventure would you make based on this premise?

Look, I haven’t put up a post in over a month. Y’all are due some bad puns and a long post. Deal with it.

I don’t know about you, but my Twitter and G+ feeds are inundated daily with injustices and humanity’s inhumanity to humanity. It’s enough to make anyone – race, ethnicity, gender, whatever – want to burn something down, so when I see a chance to make some difference in my tiny little corner of this crazy universe, I gotta at least try.

One of these instances recently was PAX East 2013. I was going to be stationed at Indie Games on Demand running 13th Age, Dogs in the Vineyard and TechNoir (as it would turn out, mostly 13th Age). While one person can’t control the whole convention and what people say there,  sonuvagun MY table wasn’t going to put up with crap. I was going to have some kind of  sign or something to draw the line in the sand. I’d played maybe three convention games with strangers in my thirty years of life prior to PAX, none of which do I really remember, so I (probably with a bit too much gusto) went in expecting the worst.

During my investigations into tabletop tolerance tools, Quinn pointed me towards X-cards. You can read more about X-cards here and here but I’ll give you my short explanation as well. It’s a card with an X on it. That’s it. Done.  When everyone sits down to play, you hand out the cards and say (I’m abridging here) “if anyone says or does something that makes you uncomfortable, just hold up the card. No explanation necessary. We edit out the content and move forward, no big deal.” Why no explanation? Explanation reduces agency.

If agency and triggers and the like is old hat to you, go ahead and skip the next few italicized paragraphs. I write blogs as much for my own benefit as yours and I will come back and read this from time to time to refresh. 

I’m a scientist. In my day job, I have to justify and explain everything. I need a solid rationale to back what I do and be ready to defend my work when auditors, peer reviewers and QA come knocking.  My documentation has to be written according to standards I did not devise and in a manner such that someone without my knowledge or experience could repeat my work.  It’s bizarre to me to specifically not require justification or adherence to some authority or another.  My religious background fuels this also, but that’s a different story for another time.

However, at the table if  you feel you have to justify your emotions or reactions to me, they’re no longer yours. They’re effectively mine.  I’m attempting to take away or override your control. If I don’t agree that thing A is uncomfortable and you can’t easily explain why thing A IS uncomfortable, I can walk all over you. In all fairness, let’s give me the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume I’m asking because I’m legitimately concerned.  There are still the problems of:

• You’re tired of having to explain yourself all the time
• Maybe you’re not very eloquent or persuasive
• You can’t tell whether I’m concerned or being a jerk
• You don’t want to constantly be reminded of some painful experience
• We’re wasting valuable game time

No explanations. Flash the card, we respect it even if we don’t understand it, and off we go. If I want to ask you why later maybe I will, but you still have every right to say no or tell me to go do some fricking research already.

I took my X-cards to PAX and used them a few times. Many of the groups I ran demos for all knew each other, so I didn’t pull the cards out in those cases. Should I have? In hindsight, maybe. You never know what future issues you will never see might be averted by creating awareness in an already safe situation. I don’t feel bad about it, but if today were the Friday of PAX, I’d do it differently. Two points where they did matter worth talking about:

• The only time an X-card was ever pulled, I did it.  Jon Stavropoulos suggests the GM flash the card at least once to show that it’s OK, but I felt weird doing it frivolously.  (Ryven at 19 was the kind of guy who’d figure out he could use the x-card to censor queer content, for example. While I wasn’t afraid to have him sit down at my table, you better believe I was at least thinking about it.) As it turned out, I got my chance during a Dogs In the Vineyard game when one of my players kept throwing around the word ‘heathen.’ Correct for the setting? You betcha. Done without specific malicious intent? Also check. It really irritated me, though, and almost without thinking I flipped the card. The table was totally on board, we changed something and kept on going.  It was seamless. Would I ever have said anything on my own without the card? Never. I’m not that guy. I don’t fight for my own comfort. However, if a straight white guy like me can flip the card on a minor irritation that arguably doesn’t even really apply to him and feel empowered, I can only imagine what it would do for someone who has..  legitimate(?)(not the right word as its still authority-centered, but it’s all I’ve got) gripes with society.
• I had a 14-year old girl sit down at my table to play 13th Age with a bunch of men who all had at least 10 years on her, if not more. Her mother was going to remain at a nearby table. While she carefully selected the half-orc barbarian, I pulled mom aside and explained x-cards to her. “I don’t expect to run into anything problematic for a 14-year old. To show you that I’m thinking about it, though, here’s a card. I’ll keep you in sight as well and if anything gets weird, just flash it.” She never did, but was clearly grateful that I had some way to keep her in on the experience discreetly.

I don’t hit many conventions. I do PAX East and the Escapist Expo. I might make it to ColossalCon up in Sandusky in June this year maybe. When I go, my X-cards will go with me. They can go with you as well. There are PDFs below for X-card and O-card templates. (O-cards are “This is important to me. Can we explore more?”) There’s also a foldover sign with a script for explaining X-cards. (Art by *iara-art of deviantART) Take them and do good.

X-CARDS

O-CARDS

SAFE SPACE SIGN

Four of us (Me, Dev, De Ana, and Kennedy) played over a G+ Hangout. using Dicestream and a shared google doc.

The Natives were the Zemmies in the country of Zemmiland, occupied by the Elucidar Republic, who Dev controlled.

The Natives (Zemmies)
(Quinn) Ra Jamison, an oracle
(Kennedy) Nam Deta, Ambassador
(De Ana) Theia Lok, Witchdoctor

The Occupation (Elucidar Republic)
Governor Airith
Academician Zissera
Chief Inspector Hiversith
Tila Deta (scholar and daughter to Nam Deta)
Ambassador Crael

Traits

The Zemmies had a lot of magical traditions and powers, none of which the Elucidar believed in.  To slowly squeeze out the magic, they decided to force the magic men/women to get licensed, which required them to get tested.  The Elucidar’s academicians knew nothing about magic, so their tests held no relevance to magic…so everyone failed.

Most of the play revolved around the Zemmies clan ambassador (played by Kennedy) and prominent witch doctor (De Ana) and oracle (me) trying to get The Elucidar to come up with better tests or at least less stringent controls over magic, while a plague ravaged the land. The plague mostly hit the Elucidar, but was now hitting the Zemmies.  Later, we determined that the plague was magically created by the Zemmies to drive off the Elucidar, but the plague had since mutated to also attack Zemmies.

Eventually in the end, the Elucidar learned to fear our magic.  All three natives ended up running amok. I was the first. I had walked away from negotiations after promising the plague would destroy all the Elucidar.Unwilling to wait for my prophecies, I gathered a rebel force and sought to drive a big rig with a large container of plague into the heart of the biggest Elucidar-populated city.  The Chief Inspector enlisted  De Ana’s Witch doctor to try to stop me at the bridge.  In the first actual display of magic all game, she paralyzed me as I drove. I seized up and went off the side of the bridge.

The Elucidar then realized magic was real, and flipped out on the witch doctor.  A dozen dead soldiers later, they finally took out the witch doctor with a bullet to the head.

The ambassador, who was becoming increasingly radicalized, went to use his powers and enter the fight. His daughter, who inherited his powers and was already assimilated after studying abroad for many years, stopped him dead in his tracks with her more potent power.

The Elucidar?  Without announcing to the public what happened, they slowly began to encourage people to move back to their homeland, while still keeping an economic and military foothold in the area.  Zemmiland was no longer hailed as the chief vacation spot of Elucidar’s colonies…

Lastly, our rules:

• The Zemmies are inferior to the Elucidar Republic people.
• The Elucidar Republic likes to negotiate.
• The Elucidar Republic will never understand magic
• The Elucidar Republicwant the Zemmies to forsake their traditions.
• The Zemmies cannot get in the way of the Elucidarian profit margin
• Give the Elucidar Republic what they want or they will take what they need.

I’ll discuss what I like about Dog Eat Dog in another post.

Large Level 8 Worldbreaker
Initiative +8

Burnt ash staff +13 vs AC (2 attacks) — 35 damage
Natural even hit: the target takes 10 ongoing psychic damage.

Mind blast +13 vs MD (targets 1d6 nearby foes) — 30 damage and the target is dazed (save ends)
 Overwhelm: once per fight Hynd can use Mind blast as a quick action.

Worldbreaker. Hynd is a Worldbreaker. He has several powers that trigger when the escalation die hits a certain number. Each ability stays into play unless dispelled. If the number on the escalation die comes back to a certain number, abilities are not used again.
Each Worldbreaker ability can be dispelled or weakened by making a hard DC skill check of the appropriate type (as determined by the GM and hinted at in the description).
Worldbreaker: Hynd’s Sight. When the Escalation die is 1, Hynd’s sores and blisters reveal what they really are: eyes. They open all at once, sharing their visions of the world’s unflinching truth with Hynd’s foes. Whenever anyone makes rolls a D20 to hit, they roll two dice and choose one. Any creature who is not Hynd may take the higher of the two dice in exchange for taking 25 psychic damage. Hynd may take the higher of his two dice with no penalty.
Dispel: Hynd’s Sight can only be dispelled when Hynd is defeated or flees.
Weaken: Steer your mind towards more palatable truths (DC 35) as a quick action to reduce the penalty for taking the higher die to 10 psychic damage.

Worldbreaker: Unbearable Truth. When the Escalation die is 2, you must learn the world’s secrets and you must bear their terrible weight. At the beginning of each player’s turn, he must ask a question (types of question listed below) or take 50 damage and be weakened (save ends). The GM must answer the these questions truthfully, but the truth is a terrible thing. Every truth revealed should be as brutal and painful as possible. You can even replace former truths with the new, real truth; what a character thought he knew is not the real truth after all. A player may accept or reject the new truth. Accepting or rejecting the truth does not affect the revelation’s veracity, but details how well your character can cope.
Accept: Accept this horrible truth and take 30 psychic damage.
Reject: Refuse to contemplate this truth right now (DC 35) or take 40 psychic damage and ongoing 10 psychic damage (save ends).
Unbearable Truth Questions:
Escalation Die 2: Ask a question about another character in your party.
Escalation Die 4: Ask a question about something in your past or future.
Escalation Die 6: Ask a question about anything on your world, and brace for the results.

AC 24
PD 22
MD 18
HP 288

My “mythos” is going to veer towards the modern age.  I’m not saying everything is perfect in the now, but there’s no denying I have more opportunity today than there would be in the typical Lovecraftian setting.  Building in a modern setting lets me use history but not be oppressed or limited by living it.  It might be realistic to drink from separate fountains, but that’s not my idea of a good time.

The  next decision to make regards my relationship with the material.  I’m by no means a H.P. Lovecraft scholar, for reasons we’ve discussed. But let’s get into it.  The first frame is what I think of as “Mythopoeic Mythos”, and it’s meta as hell.  Lovecraft is problematic, right?  Lots of weird isms and resultant problems, right? So, let’s make him the center of the our game.

The monsters that Lovecraft describes are actually real things in our modern setting, but…they are not exactly as he described. But he’s the only reference point that serious investigators of the Mythos have.  H.P. tapped into something real, but in expressing it, it got all tangled up in his poor expressions.  Some of the info we can use, some we have to change, some of it is just incredibly misguided and wrong. And let’s say that H.P. Lovecraft himself is available, trapped away in some spirit realm, to occasionally be “consulted”.  What till he sees who will be asking him questions!

In this frrame, we keep H.P. Lovecraft’s work as a focal point, but we take it out of it’s times and we put the problematic elements into the context of a metafictional reference.  We can use this work or not, but we can also confront some of H.P. Lovecraft’s nastiness head-on if we choose.

The downside of course is that it means reading more of his work then you might want if you have problems with him.  Could be less of a problem if you have a person who is already a mythos buff in your crew. This frame could be a short mini-campaign, a really awesome 1-shot, or a neat diversion in another horror-based game.

For now, I want to talk about how difficult it is for me to engage anything Cthulhu-related. When I first played Call of Cthulhu the game I was hooked.  My friends and I had a lot of fun playing out these crazy tales of madness and horror.  We naturally avoided the more problematic parts of the mythos, and it wasn’t until a bit later when trying to get into source material from H.P. Lovecraft himself that I began to feel uncomfortable. Honestly, I’m not sure why I have to explain to anyone why discovering a person hates anyone who looks like you is a turnoff, but here we are. When the whole of Lovecraft’s racism became apparent to me, I just stopped playing Call of Cthulhu. The value it offered paled in comparison to having to think about the racism of the source material or the times (which was a little easier to navigate).

Now a lot of people will say that H.P.Lovecraft was a product of his times….great!  But let’s also acknowledge that his times possessed many messed up thoughts and philosophies.  Being a paragon of his time’s screwed up philosophies is not endearing me to his work.  Also, when you say “everyone” was racist in his times…are you saying black people were that racist, or do they not count?  Saying essentially that “all white people were racist during this time period” is completely unpersuasive.

The problem that I have with the Mythos is not only Lovecraft and the  ”White Man’s Burden” assumption of the setting, but with the culture of  gaming itself. Every time I try to discuss this, there is always at least one person who seems to want me to accept everything around the Mythos as uncritically as he does.  If I don’t I am some sort of liberal monstrosity who hates fun. I hate the notion that I am not allowed to have an opinion about the culture surrounding games without being ostracized, hated, or trolled.  Somewhere in our game culture we have to re-discover the middle ground between utter contempt and uncritical acceptance.  Maybe we can discover what is wrong with the culture of our games and improve them.

It’s in this spirit that I am revisiting the worlds of Lovecraft.  His work has spawned many imitators and variants, and is a deep influence on modern gaming culture.  Before you refute I would love if you’d reconsider the profound amount of Cthulhu games, products, and fiction that currently exist and have been made.

Like him or hate him, Lovecraft’s work is a big part of gaming culture. As a designer of color, I like having options.  Sometimes I just ignore bigotry, starving it with silence and moving on.  If that is my only response to bigotry though, it means I have to pass on opportunities I might otherwise miss. Sometimes I can do that by making peace with it. I can be “OK” with certain things to get by.

(When you ask your black friend about something and they are “OK with it”, please consider that “OK” might not be a full approval but rather a way of keeping their options open and saying that whatever you’re asking them about is not bad enough to keep them away from what they truly want. Or maybe they are truly fine! Viva la difference.)

Sometimes making peace is too hard.  At that point you ned to re-imagine and revise. I like options, but I don’t like the options provided me.  My creativity demands I create work with not only different protagonists, but different assumptions as well.  Maybe the end result doesn’t resemble the Mythos at all. I’m fine with that. What I want is a version of Cthulhu that I can live with. I’ll present some ideas I have for doing so, some work that I’ve found, and later I will write an adventure using the the models and formats I’ve established.

Next, you get to groove on the class design, a gridless, 4e/3.5 mashup that retains only some of the negatives (I still hate to-hit rolls but that’s another post).

Let me tell you what I think the underappreciated superstar in 13th Age is: Backgrounds. What’s so great about backgrounds?  Well, backgrounds “thingify” experience, replacing the big skill list of other games with a mapping of  your character’s experience to what they do now.

I know it doesn’t seem all that special or all that great, but to me Backgrounds tell you so much.  having intimidate at +4 tells you something but not that much.  It’s a measure of effectiveness, but it doesn’t describe mannerism or development.  Red Sea Pirate +4 on the other hand, can tell you quite a bit when you use it for intimidation.  In fact, it has to tell you something to even be used. What about being a Red Sea Pirate allows you to intimidate someone effectively.  Is it a general skill, or do you know this person in particular will be  terrified by your affiliation?  Mapping your Background to your skill check in this way reinforces your fiction.  In essence it makes each skill check a mini-flashback to show what you’ve learned. If you’re ever confused with how to use Backgrounds, just ask yourself (or better yet, share out loud): when did I do this before in my Background?

A Background sits somewhere between a skill and an Aspect (for you FATE junkies ) and/or a distinction (for the Cortex+ faithful).  Because of what Backgrounds describe and do, I started contemplating how a Background can describe negative experience.

Say you anger a powerful sorceror. Before you leave, he places a curse on you for your insolence, a spell that makes you talk with snake like speech. You’re intelligible but you sound pretty weird to anyone listening. There are a few ways to express such a curse, but I really like just making it a Background.  ”Simon’s Slithering Speech -2″ just fits.  Now, rather than describing the list of ways and circumstances in which the spell operates, whenever the curse would affect you, the GM (por you, be honest!) can bring that into the roll.  Negative Backgrounds should always be used on top of normal Backgrounds because there is a conflict of experience potentially that exists.  Having the Slithering Speech would be counteracted by Entrovian Diplomat, so just combine the two and take the net bonus or minus to the check.

You can also use negative backgrounds for injuries. A few different ways to implement this (if you want something more in-depth, holler and I’ll write it up!), but I’ll go with one.

Before making your first death save, you can accept a minor or major injury for a bonus to your death save rolls.  If you accept a minor injury you get a +2 to your roll and if you accept a major injury you get a +4 to the roll.  If you make your death save, you take an injury background, chosen by the GM, as a -2 (minor injury) or -4 (major injury).  The GM can put on something like Concussion -2 or Lame leg -4.  Injuries can be recovered by making an injury save, which is a hard save.  A minor injury can be made at the first rest, but a major injury can only make saves after at least two rest periods have passed.

This is just a start to how to use negative Backgrounds in your game.  Tell us what you think! Have you already tried using negative Backgrounds in your 13th Age games?

Nope.  I think that enough people were interested into the folklore/culture pieces that we will try to make that a regular once a month (at least) item.

I still have a lot of things to say about hip hop and RPGs that will be coming soon.

I should add that I hate having to talk about inclusiveness and what it takes to expand the demographics and read of RPGs.  Hate it.  But I hate more that the appeal of RPGs is still so limited.  I love RPGs a lot, I’ve loved them for the last nearly three decades of my life.  I want my son to feel comfortable playing them, and all of his friends and their friends.  I want roleplaying to be something that fits in with whatever else they are doing. I want them not to feel isolated or alone inside gamer culture. So I have to do this.  I’ve been intimidated in the past by the resistance of the culture to change, but I’ve decided to use my fear as fuel.

I’d rather just be working on my own individual bliss.  I don’t really want to be known as the ‘diversity guy’ or the ‘black game designer’. I think I’m a decent game designer in my own right, and I hate having this asterisk applied to something I spend so much time on. But you know what? I’m proud to be a black game designer, and I’m happy to do the industry the favor of trying to expand its reach.

I am driving towards making more inclusive products, helping people make more inclusive products, and supporting products that broaden what fantasy is. I’m sure there are many people who don’t think I can do this, or that it doesn’t need doing.  That’s your right to believe what you will.

I really hope you enjoyed the content we provided this February.  If there was something you wished we drilled into more, let us know!

I want to thank everyone who supports Thoughtcrime’s mission of making good games for everyone.  We are taking time in the blog to analyze what we like about this hobby and learning how to spread it.  The goal is to make games that are accessible in time spent and in demographic reach.  I personally believe that the future of our hobby lies here if it has a future (I am pretty sure it does).

I want to thank in particular this month, in no particular order: Chris Chinn, Ryven Cedrylle, Tracy Hurley, Milton Davis, Jeremy Morgan, David Hill, Filamena Young, Judd Karlman, Raymond Terry, Richard Rogers, Meguey Baker, Emily Care Boss, Mark Diaz Truman, Kip Hampton, Eric Duncan, Ryan Macklin, John & Brianna Sheldon…I’m sure there is someone I forgot here, but hopefully not! There have been a lot of awesome people actively supporting and boosting our mission this month.  Thank you all.

Last, to my incredible wife and my amazing son: The future is ours.

The only thing ending in February is complacency.

I’ve been promising a Congolese history post for a while now. I must to some extent claim both success and defeat. As I brought up in the previous Congolese folklore post, African history doesn’t look like European history. In fact looking at it from the ‘great dates, great deeds’ persepctive, there’s practically no ”history” prior to about the 15th century. On the other hand, the Congolese cultures remain largely unchanged from their beginnings tens of thousands of years ago. People can be found who live generally the way their ancestors did since time immemorial. The lifestyle is the history. For my final contribution to Black History Month (though I hope only a beginning towards promoting Afrocentric game material), I’d like to cover two of the cultural groups found in the Congo and in the surrounding areas and how some very surprising game material might come out of it.

San

The San are a hunter-gatherer group of the Bantu family who span over a majority of southern Africa. They are sometimes called Bushmen, but that is not their word for themselves. They in fact have many words for themselves depending on sub-tribe and location but San is the one designated for foreigners to use in describing the large collective.  Now if I told you I was thinking about a ‘primitive’ people in a region of Africa specifically known for not being good agricultural ground and asked you to guess what RPG I thought might best fit the setting, I’m willing to bet FreeMarket would not be anywhere near the top of your list. Truth is, I happen to think it’s a pretty good fit.

One of the dirty little secrets of history is that agricultural development may have been humanity’s biggest mistake ever. Sure, the life of a hunter-gatherer isn’t idyllic and there’s something to be said for being able to store up food and water during the times Mother Nature isn’t so nice. We started farming for a reason. Yet what we find is that wars, disease, and the need for codified law and power structures don’t exist in any substantial form in early hunter-gatherer groups. It’s not until we decide that I own this land here and you own that land there and we have a bunch of kids to work said land and all get crammed together into towns and cities that violence and pestilence arise in force.  In contrast, the San people, using Quinn’s ‘gameable culture’ notation….

SAN
* We require no more of our children than to play and socialize.
* When not foraging, we spend our time in conversation, joking, music, and sacred dances.
* We have an economy of gifts.
* We utilize our whole environment for food and tools leaving nothing to waste.
* We make decisions by concensus, men and women of all ages alike.

Archetypes
Archer-Spearman, Cosmic Child-Creator, Mother-Shaman. (Find a bunch of San folklore by clicking here.)

Eating bugs and hunting large game with poison-tipped weaponry may not be a lot of fun and there are no permanent homes to speak of, but really you could do a lot worse than live this sort of lifestyle in moderate to good conditions. It’s practically a low-tech post-scarcity (pre-scarcity?) culture. Certainly some amount game hacking would be required to make FreeMarket fit in here, but if you’re not a fan of the high-tech outer space science scene, consider being a hunter-gatherer in the south African desert.

Bushongo (Bakuba)

Lest we slip into the trap that “all of unknown Africa was forever pastoral primitives”, right in the heart of the Congo as the Portuguese were making their first arrival was the Bushongo or Bakuba kingdom. “Kingdom” is one of these words that we today tend to think means one very particular thing where, in actuality, it isn’t at all a single concept.  I’m going to paraphrase AfricaFederation.net here since it does a good job of explaining how the Bakuba kingdom was arranged:

In the Bakuba system of government the king was above all a symbol. His ministers, the Kolomos, paid him great respect in public, even if they were his known enemies. In private they made no pretense of subservience. If the king wanted to see his ministers he had to go to their houses or meet them on neutral ground. The ordinary members of the tribe had representatives at the court on a political and professional basis. Some of these officials represented geographical areas, trades and professions. The weavers, the blacksmiths, the boat-builders, the net-makers, the musicians and the dancers all had their representatives at court. There was even a special representative of the fathers of twins.

In addition, artistic expression was perhaps the most valued skill in the kingdom. It was said by some visitors that the Bushongo ‘left not one surface unornamented.’ Masks, cups, storage books and sculptures were all highly prized exports from the Bakuba homeland. (“The representative of the sculptors was held in highest esteem [at court]. The Bakuba sculptors are considered to be the finest in Africa.”)

Semi-feudal government? Check. Aristocrats with a lot of time on their hands? Check. Heavy cultural emphasis on decor and presentation? Double check! Bakuba is immediately recognizable as an excellent setting for a Houses of the Blooded game for those who want to get away from the Ven culture.  You may have to go through European sources to get the most accessible descriptions of trade goods, but the dedicated researcher should be able to find some reference to the actual Bushongo royal documentation  - one of the few cultures to rely on both written and oral traditions about equally. On the Trail of the Bushongo is a strong start.

I am surprised though, because the fundamentals of making hiphop music and RPGs are , to me, pretty damn similar. A  tabletop group when it meets is a lot like a freestyle cypher. Both are groups who meet to create a story and expression through speech.  Both follow informal and formal rules to produce that speech (creativity needs constraints), and both are rooted heavily in a sense of improvisation and experimentation. We push each other and play quite literally with our words, forming sacred spaces where imagination is the prime value.

That’s when it all works, anyway.  Half of the fun of playing at freestyling and RPGs is learning the skills to get you to that space consistently. Time is a factor, but more important to developing that skill is your commitment to experimentation and improvisation. Building your “vocabulary” gets you consistently to that space and lets you bring others with you.

In my head, that’s how hip hop and RPGs are very similar.  Having done of both (I’m a much better roleplayer than rapper, sorry!), these are the commonalities I see.

Tomorrow I’m going to talk about ways we can use hip hop as a creative launching point for RPG play.