Profiles in Positive Masculinity: Terry Crews

Terry Crews just got more points at character creation than the rest of us.

A few weeks ago, Terry Crews, bodybuilder and actor, testified before Congress in support of a bill of rights for sexual assault survivors. He did this as a victim of sexual assault. Here, it makes some sense to add a manly picture of Terry Crews – and there are no pictures of Terry Cews that are not manly. Let’s go crazy, though:

Terry Crews is funny, charismatic, seemingly kind and affable, and also 6’3” of raw, certified Grade-A beef. He’s action-figure muscular; a “force of nature” indeed. You do not pull his man card, his man card pulls you. He is not the person you think of when you think of “victim of sexual assault”, even if you specify that you are talking about a male victim of sexual assault. He is who you think of when someone says, “Hey what if He-Man was recast as black?”

So, one lesson: anyone can be a victim of sexual assault. Assume nothing. Which was, of course, part of Crews’ point in testifying before Congress. Most people who see that testimony have to take a moment and think, “Oh.” Maybe even really think.

One of the few valid-seeming claims of the Men’s Rights movement is that sexual assault of men is generally ignored, even when we are trying as a society to understand and od right by female victims of sexual assault. If we have a problem with women not reporting sexual assault, we have a much larger problem with men not doing so. The same is true with domestic violence – male victims of domestic violence are genereally not taken seriously, even though there are almost certainly millions of such victims.

Toxic masculinity hurts everyone, including men, because it is toxc masculinity that says to men that seuxal assault is just “boys being boys”, or a joke, or something you should get over, or something you should be ashamed to tell anyone about. Terry Crews could pull my arms off, but he describes being humiliated into silence about what happened to him.  He is a popular, recognizeable public figure – imagine what it is like for someone who is not enormously strong and enormously famous, for the millions of victims we never hear from. What keeps them silent? For the most part, I would say it is toxic masculinity.

What can we contrast with that toxicity? The ongoing constructive work of defining and nurturing positive masculinity. In this case, we have Terry Crews using his position of influence for the greater good in two ways. First, he is speaking to Congress on behalf of the millions who will never have a moment in front of a Senate or House committee. Second, he is demonstrating to other men that speaking out is the right thing. In amongst the thoughts men might have, that they don’t want to be seen as weak, or a bitch, or a victim, there is also this kind of ray of light – we would all like to be like Terry Crews.

Be like Terry Crews. Encourage your friends to be like Terry Crews. Support men who are like Terry Crews.

 

Metagaming Is Good

The question is whether you are metagaming for more fun and drama, or metagaming for an advantage over the other PCs nor NPCs.

Metagaming is a perennial topic of discussion among tabletop RPG players and has been, I imagine, from the beginning. What I mean by metagaming is thinking about what to do in a gaming session from your point of view as a player, with the knowledge you have as a player, rather than from solely from the point of view of your character, with the knowledge that your character presumably has.

I hear more people speaking against metagaming than for it. It is in a similar category to min-maxing or power gaming – behaviors that are common but generally frowned upon. In all of those three cases and more, however, I think these behaviors can be a good thing in game. In the case of metagaming, I think it is unavoidable. Given that it is unavoidable, I will give some instances where I think it is good for the game, and then talk about some examples of when it is anything but.

Good Kinds of Metagaming

Thinking about the other players

“That’s what my character would do” is a statement that I have heard many times as justification for something that made the game less fun. Here’s the thing – don’t prioritize the thoughts and feelings of your imaginary person over the thoughts and feelings of the real people at the table with you. Period. We don’t play RPGs because we are stuck for ideas of what characters might do – you can always justify your character doing something interesting.

Thinking about the moment

We’ve all been playing out an encounter or a scene, and have thought, wouldn’t it be cool if a particular thing happened right now? Sometimes it is up to us to make that interesting thing happen. Even if it might feel “out of character” for your own character, people do surprising things all the time. Maybe this is a sudden turning point in your character’s life – she dramatically chooses just this moment to show something she hasn’t shown before. Seize the moment, and make the cool thing happen.

Thinking about the story

No matter what kind of story you think RPGs produce, whether Picaresque, or Story Now, or Story Later, or improv comedy, RPGs allow us to create stories together. And sometimes, it is best to prioritize the story in a given moment. Do we need to move on from this scene?

What Makes Metagaming Bad?

Doing it for your advantage as a player

Using your knowledge of the game, or the setting, apart from what your character would know so that you personally can have an advantage over the other players is just being a dick. Hopefully you don’t need me to tell you this, but laying out this distinction might be helpful if you need to call someone out for their behavior.

Doing it for your character’s advantage over the other characters

Metagaming to give your character an advantage over the other characters is also clearly also a dick move. There are always opportunities for your character to shine if you know more about the setting or the system than the other players, but all of these are better opportunities to make the other characters shine.

Doing it to shut down another player

Niche protection is a thing. Every character hopefully has at least one special thing that they are best at. The street samurai fights in the street. The bard charms and improvises. The hotshot pilot hotshots and pilots. It’s possible, but crappy, shut another character down where they would normally be strong. You understand the stealth mechanics better, so you out-sneak the rogue. You know the setting’s politics better, so you out-maneuver the courtier. A negative metagamer can shut down other characters, rather than letting them have their opportunity in the spotlight.

Bonus round: your stories

What’s the worst example of negative metagaming that you’ve seen? Or the best example of positive metagaming?

Profiles in Positive Masculinity: Philly Starbucks Guys

A lot of the articles about Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson haven’t used their names, so I didn’t feel like putting them in the title, but I imagine many of you reading this know who I am talking about. Back in April, two black men entered a Starbucks in Philadelphia (near where I live) and asked to use the bathroom. They were told that the bathroom was only for paying customers, so they sat down to wait for a friend to join them. Then the manager called the police and asked that they be arrested for trespassing. They were later released when Starbucks did not press charges.

This story hit a nerve, in large part because it is another example of how just existing while black brings suspicion from white people and unwanted contact with the police.

The response from Starbucks was pretty decent, but that isn’t the focus of this reflection. What I found really interesting was how the two men responded to the incident and what followed. There was some media attention, and they both behaved with a lot of dignity. Ultimately, there was a settlement agreement with the city of Philadelphia. The two men took $1 for themselves, and had the city donate $200,000 to set up a foundation to help high school kids who want to become entrepeneurs.

This is what positive masculinity looks like. Two young men are profiled and then unjustly harrassed and arrested by the police. This is hardly the first time they’ve experienced racism They have a chance to profit from the situation, but instead they make a statement, and take the opportunity to make life better for kids they’ll never meet. Starbucks has a chance to do better, and hopefully will. Philadelphia has a chance to do better, and hopefully will. And high school kids have a chance to learn to become entrepeneurs, and hopefully will.

Thoughts on Vampire the Masquerade’s V5 Preview

I just downloaded and read the V5 preview that White Wolf made available today. It’s 27 pages, and contains sections from the final, published book (though I hope they gave it one more read-through, as I found one typo without looking very carefully).

Dossier of the Damned

These are interesting snippets of information intended to set the scene – notes from vampires and from those who are researching vampires. The Masquerade simply can’t be maintained in 2018, but the question is, who knows about vampires, and what do they know? This introduces the new terms they’re using for vampires among those who study them – blackbodies, or blankbodies, drawn from the Pre-Alpha scenario and referring to how vampires show up in IR scans.

Concepts

This is really more like “themes”, concepts the guide you in understanding the World of Darkness and creating a chronicle together. One theme has always been that vampires are not the good guys, and White Wolf hits this theme here as well. You are playing a predator who feeds on human beings. Maybe you cling to humanity and maybe you don’t, but you are not a Good Person.

Fashion

Basically a few examples of imagery, and the repeated reminder that you can’t dress like a vampire in public. Sort of the “This ain’t the 90s Goth scene” section.

Clans

We get write-ups of the Brujah and the Toreador, and both are very much in line with the past of those clans. I like that they list more than one nickname for each clan, and I like the artwork of sample Brujah looks in that section. Well, I like that it’s there, and I like the concept of multiple views. Unfortunately, the four female examples are all models with hooker shoes, and the four male examples are all models wearing fashionably ripped street clothes. I would have much preferred a variety of body types here, as well as some indication that one can be a vampire and not necessarily be fashion-forward. They’re also all posed as if they are at a fashion show instead of caught in the action, so the art fails the test of “Show me what my character can do in the game.” Unless V5 is about standing around and looking cool.

We don’t get the same images for the Toreador, ironically, since that’s the only clan I could imagine composed mostly of people who stand around posing in over-priced distressed clothing. But, again, in both cases, these are recognizably Brujah and Toreador as far as the text goes. Clan flaws are now Banes.

Speaking of which, the Toreador’s Bane got a lot worse in this version. Not only do they lose themselves in beauty, but when surrounded by ugliness (according to their particular aesthetic), Toreador lose dice from all uses of Disciplines equal to the Bane score. So…ouch. Also, flavorful. Why do they surround themselves with beauty? In part, because they have to. Overall, though, this feels like giving them two Banes instead of one (albeit weaksauce) flaw.

Beliefs

Characters begin play with between one and three Convictions, which are up to the player at character creation; things like “Thou shalt not kill.” These are the moral lines that the character has set for themselves (surely to be stressed and pressed upon by the Storyteller). We read that incurring Stains in pursuit of your Conviction might mitigate Stains, which is confusing and, since this is a sample, unexplained. Violating a Conviction might also, at the ST’s discretion, incur a Stain.

I’d have to see the full text but we might have Capitalization Creep here.

Chronicle Tenets are kind of like themes combined with lines and veils from other systems. You are setting the genre conventions, key ideas, and also limits of your chronicle together, and I like the way this is handled. This is the kind of conversation that games increasingly call for, and it looks like these will have mechanical weight, as violating Tenets can apparently be a source of Stains. Basically, you’re postmodern vampires and you are creating a shared morality together that will be in effect over the course of your chronicle.

Touchstones sound similar to what is used in Chronicles of Darkness and Vampire the Masquerade 2nd Edition. They are specific things in the world that keep you grounded in your humanity (or threaten your humanity when they are threatened).

Ambitions are just what they sound like – the general things that drive your character from night to night, beyond the hunger for blood. Desires are specific, and must be connected to something that’s come up in the relationship map for your chronicle already (i.e. must be connected to an existing NPC or key aspect of the setting for the chronicle). I like this – knowing what a character’s Touchstones, Ambitions and Desires are is pretty much all an ST needs to know where to push a character from night to night, and are all of course “flags” that let the player say “This is what I want to see in this chronicle.”

Celerity

Explicitly recreated so as not to mess with the action economy, Celerity has variant powers for each level (and it isn’t clear if you choose both or have to pick one or the other). The powers also don’t build on each other like previous versions of Celerity, but rather give the character a specific ability or move they can use, often by making a Rouse roll. So you can dodge bullets, rush around the battlefield in a blur, and run across ledges without having to roll to keep your balance. Feels like Celerity to me, and I like it.

Loresheets

These are the most interesting thing in this whole preview, an idea that I love. There has always been a tremendous amount of metaplot layered over Vampire, since 2nd Edition at least. It has been something I have seen integrated into chronicles, and the problem has always been that those “in the know” nod sagely when something comes up that they read in a splatbook while the rest of the players are just in the dark, wondering why everyone thinks this weird name is so important.  And I say this as a ST who has included metaplot things in my chronicles to make the in-the-know players nod sagely.

Loresheets give actual connectivity between the mechanics and the backstory of the game in interesting ways. The three examples given are a loresheet for Theo Bell, a loresheet for Helena, and a loresheet for the Week of Nightmares. Each bit of lore is treated like a background, rated from one dot to five dots, with more dots giving you deeper connections to the backstory. For example, one dot of lore in the Week of Nightmares means you tell the story of that harrowing time in a way that vampires find fascinating. You are sometimes invited to retell it in Elysium, and get 3 extra dice to your performance roll. Five dots in Week of Nightmares means you have a vial of the Ravnos Antediluvian’s blood. What you do with the blood is up to you, and the effect it has is up to the ST. That’s…awesome.

Overall

V5 feels like it is trying a bit too hard to be fashionable, but then previous editions all felt like they were trying too hard to be Goth, which is just a subset of fashionable. I did feel like the artwork was more fashion and less horror, which was too bad, despite some of it being beautiful (and full-color).

There might be too many things to keep track of, though I’d have to see all of these mechanics in play of course. But Disciplines, Banes, Humanity, Stains, Convictions, Chronicle Tenets, Touchstones, Ambitions, Desires, Disciplines….and that’s just a taste of capitalized words from this 27-page preview. These are all cool ideas, but they make this already a significantly more complicated game than D&D 5E, for example, and it might just be too much for some players to want to keep track of. Again, though, how this all works in play remains to be seen.

And to be clear, I like this version of Vampire. I like the direction they’ve taken. I think this is an improvement on previous editions of the game in many ways – the way morality is seemingly handled, the way Celerity was reworked, and especially the Loresheets to name a few things I really like. I just need to find some players who want to play Vampire.

Died By Suicide

This is a repost.

A clergy friend of mine asked on Facebook how one should refer to a person who commits suicide. What’s good terminology for that, since it is something a lot of us (clergy and otherwise) are talking about right now.

A question like this comes with innumerable questions attached to it:

• What kind of disease is depression?
• Is depression treatable? If so, what kind of depression is treatable, and with what interventions?
• Do we have free will or the illusion of free will?
• Is suicide a selfish act?
• Or is suicide like dying of heart disease – succumbing to an illness?
• Is it even helpful to generalize much about suicide? What do the numbers and research say?
• How do we talk about suicide without causing an increase in suicide rates?
• What can we do about a lack of mental healthcare in the United States?

It can become very tempting to weave all of these questions into how we answer a question about how do we refer to a person who died by suicide. We could say that they succumbed to their illness, like having heart disease, or that they took their own life, like someone making a choice and acting on it, or that they completed suicide, indicating the need to talk about suicide attempts versus successful suicides. We could add a theological element and say something like they returned to God, or something I would never condone, like God called them back home.

The problem I see with these terminologies is that they demand a particular kind of conversation right there. They pre-frame the discussion one might end up having, and kind of push a discussion on people who might not want to have it. In a way, these responses beg the question.

So when I’m talking about suicide, which God help me I’ll continually be doing as a person and as a pastor, I’m just going to say that someone died by suicide. That’s the simplest, most factual way to put it I think. Then for the other questions: how did they die by suicide? What preceded the suicide? How will it impact the people who love them? What is the nature of suicide? and so on, the door is open for that too. It has to be.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition Demo

It occurred to me that there are probably plenty of folks who are curious about Pathfinder 2nd Edition but have no iterest in my info-dump about my Origins 2018 experience. For all of you, the following:

I got to sit in on the demo scenario for  the current iteration of Pathfinder 2nd Edition. Overall, it is still very much Pathfinder, and it seems like they are taking this opportunity to clean up some of the rules, simplify a few things, and take feats that everyone always takes (Improved Initiative for example, or Precise Shot for archers) and just make them class abilities. Some observations, presented as bullet-points:

• Increased hit points at level 1. My 1st level goblin alchemist had 15 hit points (Constitution 12 I believe)
  • Speaking of which, goblins are a core race and alchemist is a core class. We had a fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue, and an alchemist. Other tables with 6 players had another character – I’m not sure whom. Except for Fumbus, the new iconic goblin alchemist, the familiar iconics were the pre-gen characters
• Skills and attacks seem to be ability score bonus + level. I couldn’t tell if it was just that, or if skill points had been spent
• Fighters can fiddle with shields (and so can wizards who cast shield) by raising or lowering them to provide more cover in a fight
• Only fighters get attacks of opportunity, which is GREAT, because I really detest attacks of opportunity. It’s just an onerous movement tax in combat that slows down everything and adds nothing and doesn’t make sense in a fight
• Play is split into “modes” – exploration mode and combat mode. Exploration mode is open, skill-based, etc., and combat mode begins when you roll initiative. A little video-game-y but makes sense and formalizes something that’s always there
  • Your initiative roll is based on what you were doing when the fight started – many of us rolled Perception and the rogue rolled Stealth for initiative
• Some weapons are “deadly”, meaning they add an additional die to critical damage rolls
• Critical successes are always 10 over the target number, and apply to skill rolls as well as attacks, and critical failures are always 10 below the target number
• You get 3 actions per turn, and can make 3 attacks if you don’t move. The second attack is made at -5 and the third at -10, making critical failures much more likely as you go. Still, some third attacks still landed for our 1st level characters against zombies
• I was watching the numbers, and vulnerabilities are more common. Zombies are vulnerable to slashing, and took 5 additional damage from any slashing attack. Skeletons were resistant to fire, so resistances might be a bit more common as well
• Speaking of skeletons and zombies, they had much more hit points than normal as well, based on how much we had to pummel them to bring them down
• Spells take up to 3 actions to cast, and they take 1 action per component required – verbal, somatic, material.
  • For example, the cleric could cure light wounds with 1 action, or cure light wounds 30 feet away for 2 actions, or channel energy for 3 actions, dealing 4 damage to all undead and healing 4 for all living things in a 30′ radius. Undead had to save and if they failed they took 8 damage
  • Same with magic missile – the wizard could send up to 3 magic missiles, 1 per action spent casting, and I imagine other spells scale up as well

And just assume that if I didn’t mention something, it didn’t catch my attention (we weren’t allowed to have our phones out during the demo and agreed not to try to take pictures) or it hasn’t changed. For example, the three saves seem unchanged, and your second diagonal step still counts as 10 feet on the battle map.

Origins 2018

Clockwork: Dominion

Reliquary Game Studios was in full effect at Origins 2018 – I knew because they are my friends from college 20 years ago and are still my friends today. They had a booth, shared with Fearlight Games, and a demo room that they also shared.

Clockwork: Dominion is a game I have demoed for them before, and I likely will get roped into demoing it again. I edited the core rulebook and Quick Start Guide back in the day, and helped them set up their Kickstarter campaign. It is a great game, and is the only Victorian game I would actually play (and certainly the only one I’d ever run). I’m not a huge fan of Victoriana, but the game is that good.

The Quest for Overlight

There were plenty of issues with events at Origins, which ins in my limited experience not new. For example, the location listed for demos of Overlight by Renegade Game Studios was not only incorrect but maybe a third of a mile or more away from the actual location. Fortunately I was still able to find my way to the demo room and play some Overlight.

The setting is interesting; the art is beautiful. The system…is probably in a final phase, but it made me wish they had refined it earlier in the process. The main issue is that there are two full resolution mechanics, one that is similar to Savage Worlds without a Wild Die and the other that was a target-number dice-pool system. This is just a needless problem – one or the other could have been cut, and honestly needs to be cut from my point of view. It’s as if in D&D you rolled a d20 for half of your tests, and then for the other half used a percentile system.

Oh wait, that’s what D&D was until…4th Edition, to varying degrees. But it was never good game design, and it still isn’t. The guy running the demo was nice and did a good job, but I don’t think I’d be able to get past the parallel resolution mechanics to play the game on my own.

Kids on Bikes

Kids on Bikes is a really fun game, also by Renegade. The killer app is definitely setting creation and character creation – they smoothly tie in blank space for creativity, leading questions about the other characters, and the charaters’ hobbies and fears. The tropes you choose from for your characters make sense, and I like that though the game is Kids On Bikes, you can play kids, adolescents, and adults all together.

We didn’t engage the powered character rules, but I like the options there as described to me by the demo person after our session. You can play the powered friend (Eleven, E.T., etc.) as a character who is shared by all of the players at different times (Maybe E.T.), or as one of the player-characters (Eleven), or you can not include a powered character at all (Stand By Me), or all of the characters can have powers (Supers School). You can build the powered character, or you can use a deck that they sell to draw powers and character traits randomly.

The significant flaw I perceived was with the resolution system. It is very much like Savage Worlds without the Wild Die – roll a die, and all dice potentially explode. D4 if you are bad at a thing, up to d20 if you are great at it. (All six tropes use one each of all six common die types, so everyone has a d4 and a d20 to start) The problem comes with the fact that you roll against a target number set by the GM, and it is very difficult to map, or intuit, the probability with this dice system. It is, for example, much mroe likely that a d4 will explode than a d20, but the d4 lets you roll up to an 8 and the d20 up to a 40.

In brief, you get very swingy results, and our game included difficulties from 5 to 20, which I think is too wide a range. Honestly, I might even end up hacking the dice system, or not going with the guidelines for difficulty in the book (if those were being used correctly in the demo). The nice thing is that the system is simple and clean, so you can probably hack it readily and get on with what is a very fun game. (And when you fail you get Adversity tokens, so maybe the swingy difficulties are a way to build those up? I’d have to play more than one demo to know.)

More Refurbished, Less Art

It’s been about 6 years since I was last at Origins, and since then the whole convention center has undergone an overhaul. More public art (by actual artists – there are touch screens where you can learn about their work) and far more plugs make the whole thing a lot more comfortable for someone like…everyone at Origins. A disappointing difference between this time and 6 years ago (or 11 years ago) is that there seemed to be fewer artists and less art. The last time I was there, a whole hallway was dedicated to artists and their work. Now it was just a smal corner of the dealer hall. I can only speculate on why this is – and to be clear, the artists who were there had a lot of excellent work on display.

Soul Food in Linden

I got to have some legit soul food at an African-American Cultural Arts Center in Linden, across the street from a Nation of Islam funeral home. The food was great, and it was about as far as you can get from Origins culturally while staying in the city of Columbus. A nice break, despite the heat.

Hiding In Starbucks

To be fair, I did a good amount of hiding near coffee at this convention, and it helped me deal with being over-stimulated and anxious as I am at events like this (combined with the parts that are genuinely fun). Right now I am just trying to build up some resolve to go talk to the very friendly Renegade Games demo team about whether the designers are interested in making a connection with The Bodhana Group. (Yesterday my friend the Executive Director gently reminded me that I am on the freaking Board after all)

Heroes and Villains

An unintentionally kind of intimate seminar with Michael A. Stackpole and [person’s name and background here] with only a handful of people there, so it was kind of intimate. We got to ask whatever we wanted. It as a bunch of solid writing advice from two very solid professionals, but it made me wonder as I nodded my head – am I at the point where I know this stuff? I think I might be. What I need to do, that I am not doing, is try my hand at some more actual fiction. Nothing they said surprised me, and it was all things I have heard from writers before. Not that it was run-of-the-mill, I’ve just listened to a LOT of writers and editors talk about their work and process. But did I, like, level?

Video Game Room

Some folks here at the convention are happy about the video game room. It is a darkened room set aside with huge screens and video games you can play on those screens. You just walk in and sign up and play. You might even just watch, or take a nap, or whatever, and it could easily double as a quiet room for people who are somewhat over-stimulated by this whole convention thing.

It gave me the idea that The Bodhana Group might be able to host a quiet room for folks at Origins 2019. I think it’s a good option to have – necessary for some people, and when we’re talking about thousands of con attendees, “some” is a lot.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition

I got to sit in on the demo scenario for  the current iteration of Pathfinder 2nd Edition. Overall, it is still very much Pathfinder, and it seems like they are taking this opportunity to clean up some of the rules, simplify a few things, and take feats that everyone always takes (Improved Initiative for example, or Precise Shot for archers) and just make them class abilities. Some observations, presented as bullet-points:

• Increased hit points at level 1. My 1st level goblin alchemist had 15 hit points (Constitution 12 I believe)
  • Speaking of which, goblins are a core race and alchemist is a core class. We had a fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue, and an alchemist. Other tables with 6 players had another character – I’m not sure whom. Except for Fumbus, the new iconic goblin alchemist, the familiar iconics were the pre-gen characters
• Skills and attacks seem to be ability score bonus + level. I couldn’t tell if it was just that, or if skill points had been spent
• Fighters can fiddle with shields (and so can wizards who cast shield) by raising or lowering them to provide more cover in a fight
• Only fighters get attacks of opportunity, which is GREAT, because I really detest attacks of opportunity. It’s just an onerous movement tax in combat that slows down everything and adds nothing and doesn’t make sense in a fight
• Play is split into “modes” – exploration mode and combat mode. Exploration mode is open, skill-based, etc., and combat mode begins when you roll initiative. A little video-game-y but makes sense and formalizes something that’s always there
  • Your initiative roll is based on what you were doing when the fight started – many of us rolled Perception and the rogue rolled Stealth for initiative
• Some weapons are “deadly”, meaning they add an additional die to critical damage rolls
• Critical successes are always 10 over the target number, and apply to skill rolls as well as attacks, and critical failures are always 10 below the target number
• You get 3 actions per turn, and can make 3 attacks if you don’t move. The second attack is made at -5 and the third at -10, making critical failures much more likely as you go. Still, some third attacks still landed for our 1st level characters against zombies
• I was watching the numbers, and vulnerabilities are more common. Zombies are vulnerable to slashing, and took 5 additional damage from any slashing attack. Skeletons were resistant to fire, so resistances might be a bit more common as well
• Speaking of skeletons and zombies, they had much more hit points than normal as well, based on how much we had to pummel them to bring them down
• Spells take up to 3 actions to cast, and they take 1 action per component required – verbal, somatic, material.
  • For example, the cleric could cure light wounds with 1 action, or cure light wounds 30 feet away for 2 actions, or channel energy for 3 actions, dealing 4 damage to all undead and healing 4 for all living things in a 30′ radius. Undead had to save and if they failed they took 8 damage
  • Same with magic missile – the wizard could send up to 3 magic missiles, 1 per action spent casting, and I imagine other spells scale up as well

And just assume that if I didn’t mention something, it didn’t catch my attention (we weren’t allowed to have our phones out during the demo and agreed not to try to take pictures) or it hasn’t changed. For example, the three saves seem unchanged, and your second diagonal step still counts as 10 feet on the battle map.

Overall

For me personally, it seems to be much better, and more enjoyable, to have a loose schedule that is mostly free time. I can do things like have three hour conversations with my friends, and jump in on demos if they interest me, or just sit near a a plug and write (as I am doing now). Origins is a good convention for this method, though I would somewhat prefer the greater numbers of artists and writers in the past combined with the greater numbers of seats and plugs now. Maybe that’s the future of Origins?

The Bodhana Group is looking at attending Origins in 2019 and having a presence there to talk about therapeutic gaming. We need to figure out what this presence will be – a booth? Table? Games? Seminars? The nice thing about Origins is that it is a much more local convention than GenCon – I see people here I recognize from 2007 and 2012 when I’ve been here in the past. Lots of folks from OH and the adjacent states, from what I can tell. This means that we can attend once, or maybe periodically, but don’t necessarily have to be here each year in order to have a Bodhana presence.

Epilogue: Be A New DM

My friend Wendy is thinking of DMing for the first time. She’s been playing D&D for years and is familiar with a number of twitch/streaming D&D folks. She was at Origins playing Adventurer’s League and going to seminars for new DMs.

Folks: be the new DM. DM for your friends. As long as everyone at the table is being nice and trying to have fun, you almost cannot fail, and you will never become great at it until you practice a lot. Running a game is the most fun way to engage with it. At least that’s my experience.