new games, old heartbreaks
When I was a wee little babby nerd, I haunted the library. I’d finally gotten to the part of highschool where I could spend one afternoon a week at the local public library. It was glorious.
(please understand — I lived on a small, isolated, awful island primarily inhabited by the elderly and the drug addicted, the library was a haven and a literal lifesaver)
On my haunts and jaunts I found many things; Simon R Green, Frankenstein, Sappho, non-fiction on everything from gardening to architecture. I also found, for the first time in my life, a roleplaying guide. It was green, and black, and had a single red rose.
Vampire: the Masquerade (second ed.)
It turns out that the drunken communal stories my friends and I used to weave around the fire, over cheap rum and coke, bored out of our skulls, had a name. Had a community.
Had a god damn rulebook.
We never played, the guys were too damn fussy, but my best friend and I pored over the pages for weeks and weeks. Weaving tales of our own, pondering the Clans, creating stuff. It was glorious. Years later I would finally play an rpg and it was…disappointing. AD&D didn’t scratch that itch. Oh I loved my character (badass half-elf with dual hand axes) but it just didn’t work.
It wasn’t until years after that — several boyfriends, career jumps, houses — that I played Exalted (first ed.) and that itch got scratched. I didn’t even connect the two damn games in any way, total neophyte I was. I just knew this hit buttons that other tries at this had not.
Another few years, another career, and I got more games under my belt; RoleMaster, HARP, Iron Kingdoms, aSoIaF, Cyberpunk2020, FATE, some more freeform. Then I got to playtest Ex3. Then, for a brief moment write for it. I also got to return, in a way, to those early days via the friends I made through Ex3 and play V20.
And Jesus it was fun. It went for a long time, with a brilliant ST, and we did some terrible, awful, things. I got to process some of my maladaptive coping mechanisms from previous experiences, and it was so great.
Then White Wolf started back up. I knew more now. White Wolf hired Zak S. Onyx Path banned discussion of it on their forums. I pulled the pin and reverted back to the rest of my freelance work.
I learned, back on that shitty little isolated hellhole of an island, that small communities often protect their own at the expense of everything. Every-fucking-thing. People, creativity, growth. All of it is compromised when assholes get a toehold and people take the easy road and capitulate, protect, and enable them.
And yet…I listened to a mix CD and Temptation came on and I remember, viscerally, the anarchic joy of reading V:tM looking out over the bay, crouched in an unfinished basement, perched on a bench in a rocking boat surrounded by people who were only bonded by geography. We’re in this together came on and I remember how much fucking fun it was in games to pull ridiculous stunts, to bond, to feel like I was a part of this thing.
So when V5 (alpha test) came out I gave it a read. I liked what I heard about the Hunger mechanics, I like the personal horror of vampirism, I like reading different mechanics. It turns out that was a mistake. Strike one: Brujah get “Triggered” when they are “offended” and react with “extrovert rage”. Strike two: Toreador, rapey weirdness. Strike three: describing in detail how much a pregen likes “young vampires” using the same kind of language as actual sexual offenders against young people, then giving her the feeding restriction of “children and young teenagers”.
See, I have PTSD. Like proper diagnosed PTSD that I am medicated for. I am a special snowflake triggered by words on a screen and games and books and movies and it is so tiring. So so tiring. I hate it. I spend a bunch of money and time and effort fixing something that was done to me, against my will, that periodically derails my brain in fun and exciting ways. And I watch the actual fucking term for what is happening get co-opted by edgelords, trolls, and the chronically senseless to describe being offended.
Which does, actually, offend me. As a writer be more precise, be better. Throwing sexual assault, child abuse, and drugs at a scenario doesn’t make it edgy. It makes it my teen years, certainly, but not edgy. It doesn’t make it more real, or more interesting, or more fun. You have to work harder for that.
Something interesting could be done with “Triggered” I think. Make it “a random aspect of the scene throws you back into a strong sense memory of when you were turned, react accordingly” and that could be something interesting to play around with. Something interesting could be done with the rapey Toreador power — it comes close, not gonna lie, but in the context of the rest of the game, Elricsson’s comments about people he has played with, and Zak S’s mobile game handjobs, I am not convinced it does enough.
Something interesting could even be done with the pregen. In my V20 game an NPC attacked some small children. My character, without thinking (she wasn’t the smartest), licked the wounds closed so the babies would stop crying. She was hungry. I rolled well, avoided eating them up, and it was a great scene. I could trust my ST, he could trust me. Take out the paedophilic excuses for eating neophytes, and you could make this actual personal horror, as opposed to edgelording in the dark.
What it comes down to is: I cannot trust White Wolf.
I lost video games to the dickwolves and the edgelords. I couldn’t hack the rape threats and the abuse. I don’t want to lose this too.
(edited to add a link to Violet Blue’s essay But he does good work as it informs a lot of how I talk about these issues now.)