Kingsolver and current events

almost six months ago, my attention was drawn to all the conflict in Palestine more than it ever had been before. a house down the road from us began flying an Israeli flag all of a sudden. half of all the social media posts are still imploring everyone to speak up, to choose a side or else by default choose complicit cowardice. the news of October 7 and all the terrible news since has been rightly hard to ignore.

since December, my old land acknowledgements post from the summer of 2020 has been oddly popular. the basic stats in blogger tell me it's gotten more than 100 views within the last 30 days. by comparison, a typical post here in this random collection of internet musings gets fewer than 20 views and that's it. but this old post has consistently seen around 30 hits per week for several weeks now-- I'm still not sure why. is it because phrases like "colonial ruin" "violent displacement" and "racist horribleness" are highly topical these past months? I've let my proper Google analytics account languish without updates for too long, so I don't really have a way to find out.

also about six months ago, I was reading Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. a lush and lovely novel--a braid of stories all about our relationships with land, trees, animals, nature, and each other. biology. ecosystems. extinction or conservation, and all our efforts inbetween.

there is plenty I've so far remembered about this novel, but the thing I've most wanted to blog about here is a pair of sentences in the middle of it. they are sentences about Jewishness and prejudice and history.

Lusa, one of the three point-of-view protagonist characters in this story, is half Polish, half Arab. she marries blissfully into a struggling-but-resourceful family of appalachian tabacco farmers, too soon loses her husband, inherits his parents' old farm house, and faces various tensions and pressures from her local, white, rural in-laws as a result. 

I keep thinking about this line of dialogue from one of Lusa's chapters. she's talking earnestly with the one in-law, a nephew, she feels closest to. 

"That's what I was thinking, too. Families lose their land for a million reasons. My dad's parents had this wonderful farm in Poland, which they lost for being Jewish. And my mother's people got run off their land for not being Jewish. Go figure."

this pair of contradictions struck me, as I read it for the first time in fall of 2023, so much more definitively and potently than it might have at any other time.

and when did Kingsolver write this? my idle curiosity is easily answered: Prodigal Summer was published almost a quarter-century ago. in October, 2000. 

from devouring her other early novels (Pigs in Heaven, Flight Behavior, Unsheltered), I know Kingsolver has a deft way (sometimes subtle, sometimes less so) of commenting on potentially controversial political realities-- like this seemingly endless conflict in the middle east, or like the relative failings of public education, or like the impact of settler colonialism on indigeneous families, or like the nonsensical state of US healthcare systems. 

in October of 2000, I was an almost-17-year-old. what on earth did the words "Israel" or "Palestine" mean to me then? the first I only knew from a bunch of biblical prophecies and hymns, the second from Laurie R. King's A Letter of Mary (1997) and O, Jerusalem (1999), if indeed I'd really heard of Palestine at all. in neither context did I think very critically about what these stories meant. honestly, I was probably quite detached from both versions of the place. their respective peoples. they all may as well have been equally, ineffably, untouchably fictional.

halfway between then and now, I must have seen this rather haunting animation make the rounds on the internet. you've probably seen it, too.

unsurprisingly, there are dozens of new comments on that page since the events of last October.

looking into the piece again this past week, I realized that a full-length film version was produced and likewise donated to the public domain in 2018. do I have the time and spiritual energy to watch it? hopefully someday. (I've also now realized that the artist, as generous as she has been with her artwork, seems to have some not so cool opinions about the social construct of gender, so there is that to grapple with too.) 

{ the Palestinian flag, as if made of butterflies, borrowed from this kind soul on deviantart }
 

being Jewish. 

not being Jewish. 

we might say Lusa's ficitonal comments here are oversimplifying things.

and yes, I'm usually the first to say (to myself if nowhere else) there must be more to it there's so much we don't know how can anyone have a truly worthwhile opinion what's the use in trying to fully understand it anyway it's so complicated and what can I do about it or about anything, little me with my little blog and my little comfortable life?

what's truly oversimplified is any inkling of a thought that this single roundabout post regarding my country's rather terrible, rather unconscionable involvement in the horrors of this geopolitical situation is anything like enough to counter my general day-to-day silence on the topic. 

no matter how many times I might ponder bringing it up to my students or asking all the ROTC cadets how they feel about Aaron Bushnell or posting something to instagram with a hashtag like #CeasefireNow or #GazaWillBeFree... thinking about a few lines from an old Barbara Kingsolver novel and mentally wringing my hands about all the knotted historical roots of this conflict aren't enough at all. 

I don't know what could be enough. write to congress? to the president? just once? or every month? every weekend? with a few pleading letters or phone calls to these more-powerful-than-me people, can I then say I've done my part? 

I don't know. it doesn't seem like it. no number of letters or public protests, and certainly no ocean of hashtags, no matter how many, seems like enough.

so for now, current events continue to sweep across the world, sort of but not really dragging me with them. even so, we are all connected. we are all somehow jointly creating this world. the fact that I'll never be able to single-handedly fix anything on the other side of the planet doesn't mean I can safely give up, right? even if I don't-- or can't-- truly know if my impact on the sprawling web of the universe is leading to more preservation and less extinction of light and goodness, I have to keep trying. 

is it up to me to decide which side of the scale my feet are on? to judge my own quotas of light vs. dark?

for now, it is. I'm the only one who can. am I doing my best?  

and spring semester 2024

eleven years ago, back at the very beginning of my academic career, I trekked 6 hours west from Lubbock, Texas, in my very old leper of a car (the paint was all but totally peeled way from its poor hood), to attend my first ever academic conference in Albuquerque.

this week I'm gonna trek 6 hours east and attend the same conference, this time in a rental car, with way more academic experience, an institutional credit card for travel-related purchases, and a significantly different research agenda. I'll be presenting this Saturday all about how I designed and get to teach a fun little class on podcasts. 

 {the title slide, so far anway}

 

and I'll get to see some of my old professors from USU. very excited for that bit. 

it'll be fun, hopefully. I hope I'll meet some other cool new interesting fellow scholars along the way, too. we shall see, given how sunny and warm it looks to be in Albuquerque this weekend, how much of the conference I actually sit through.

in the more normal weeks of this semester, I'm teaching a couple sections of technical writing. the same old basic tech writing course, only slightly different every time by virtue of new students and a new me and a new world.

besides teaching, I'm also working on a book chapter about podcast transcripts and leading various faculty from various other programs through a series of mushy but important assessment adventures. friend Caroline and I are still working on soliciting content for a new issue of the campus literary arts magazine (the second since we took charge of it last year). maybe we'll have an official reading event at the library with the creative writing class-- fingers crossed. 

it's all nearly haflway over, this set of 16 work weeks called spring semester. at the moment the halfway point feels encouraging. time ticks onward. work gets accomplished. knowledge is made and shared and reinforced. skills are modeled, practiced, learned, forgotten, re-learned.

in other news, I'm also finally getting to see some work from the past year come out in official publication! perhaps the coolest online academic journal of all, Kairos, made space for my multimedia oral history-ish interview piece all about two colleagues who recently retired.

and then colleagues and I have a co-authored piece in the most recent issue of Programmatic Perspectives (the differently cool but still very awesome journal from the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication). some awesome Purdue colleagues have an article in the same issue, which is quite cool to see. 

time ticks onward. I've been here 4 years. 2 more until hopefully they give me tenure. 

in the meantime, age and experience accumulate. some days I feel older and other days not at all. 

next January, in the auspicious year of 2025, it'll be 20 years since I started this blog for a class. how will we celebrate that, I wonder?

goodbye, January

since the eve of 2024 one month ago, it feels like so much has happened. some of it too fast, too soon, too painfully. 

the grief of losing the first little doggo that I ever really shared my longterm day-to-day life with... I cannot describe it. as much as I'd like to keep trying to, the feeling altogether and gargantuanly transcends words. the whole experience is impossible to talk about in any satisfying, accurate, indubitable way. "losing"? "letting go"? that we "had to" say goodbye? what kind of stupid, broken euphemism circus is this? everything about our language-cloaked expressions of such pain just feels utterly inadequate.

{ I suppose we can't have sunrises without some sunsets. }

{ and nothing lasts forever; dog-years are too extra short. }

it is probably irrational to think no one else could ever know what I mean, even if the words and metaphors feel so flimsy. it's not like I'm the only person to ever experience this sort of sadness. nor is this the first unexpected loss in my life. but it has been the closest and the sharpest. so far.

on new year's day I wrote something about how the world (a world so embroiled in hate and genocides and ugly senseless conflict!) is an absolutely crushingly horrific mess, how my heart hurts and hurts and hurts, and how this loss seems to prefigure and to threaten-- or, even more, to promise-- every other inevitable loss I will ever have to face for as long as I live.

it's one thing to philosophically observe, in general, that nothing can last forever. okay. of course. to confront and deeply feel it-- specifically-- as one solitary ending to the life of a inimitably cuddly goofy fuzzy little domesticated animal... that is different.

other aspects of this January were plenty normal, whatever that means. most of my activities seem to come with rather suitable words with which to sketch them into sharable imagery: going to bed early and sleeping in. checking out library books. reading and ignoring and sorting and replying to emails. seeing friends. enduring snow and rain and cold. demonstrating crafts at the museum. putting birdseed in the feeder in the backyard. talking with family on the phone. eating quiche. drinking tea. making soup. needing a haircut but not yet ever managing to go out and get my hair cut. sweeping the floor. running errands. craving hot chocolate. writing lists and syllabi and assignment sheets. spending money. making things. existing. 

{ eclipse shadows from October, 2023. Wesley's last weekend camping trip with us. }

sure, nothing lasts forever. change is nature. this too shall pass: all of these phrasings alternatingly as full of solace as they are of tragedy, representative of a fact more solid than perhaps any other so-called fact. death and endings are, from one point of view, more normal, more mundane, more irrefutable than any of the other relatively comfortable, unassuming, smoothly proceeding lifestuff I might casually document and remember about this particular month of the year. that's what feels so difficult and impossible about it.

the vortex of this heartache felt immeasurable, indescribably vast and infinite, from the inside. 

even so, from a day or two or ten beyond, it begins to shrink and fade. all future moments frame it into something more manageable.

but again the words seem to balk and fail me. "manage"? is that what we are meant to do with these feelings? this grief? is that actually possible? the stringy, endless paradoxes curl up inside of each other, confounding my basic little human brain with ineffability.

{ classic pug-under-the-table photo, new year's eve 2023 }

January, perhaps fittingly, seems so very long. all the transitions it spans-- all the shifting, deepening of the dark season, the post-holiday recoveries, the shiny new beginnings of a calendar year and of an academic semester-- all of that is a lot for 31 average winter days.

I don't know if it really did feel longer for me this year, or if I'm only saying that because it seems like an appropriate thing to sigh into this semi-bleak and impermanent world. 

one month ago, as the cold moon began to wane and the spinning earth began to tilt just barely back towards the sun, our little old dog ate his last breakfast and went on his last stumbling walk and took one final car ride, sitting on my lap. I only knew him for half his life. I wasn't sure if I'd get along with such a beast at first. but we did get along, so well. I loved that pug and I'm glad he was here to share so much of the too-short day-to-day of my life for a while.

the tournament of TTRPG books, final round

the final round:
Dungeons & Dragons (5e) vs The One Ring (2e)
 

in the beginning, along with a lot of scribbly scattered notes and spreadsheets of metadata on each RPG book, I mapped out my relative prior experience with each of the 16 systems, like so:  

None-- The One Ring (2e), Cyberpunk RED, and A Song of Ice and Fire
    
Barely any-- Wrath & Glory, Scion: Hero, and Exalted 

Some-- Pathfinder (2e), Shadowrun (5e), Mage: the Awakening, and Changeling: the Lost

More than some-- World of Darkness, Star Wars: Force and Destiny, and 7th Sea (2e)

Lots-- Vampire: the Masquerade (5e) and Dungeons & Dragons (5e) 

there were some idle thoughts about coming up with a color code to go along with this, even. maybe it would've started with grey, then blue, yellow, green, up to a nice purple for the ones I've played most, or something like that? not important, I suppose. arbitrary distinctions to signify some slightly less arbitrary.

in any case, The One Ring has already vanquished one of my most-played RPGs. does it have what it takes to beat the other? 

either way, it will feel like Tolkien wins.

we recently finished listening to The Fellowship of the Ring narrated by Andy Serkis. so excellently done-- all the voices and the singing. I loved it. at least 20 years have gone by since I last read the book myself. I still mean to reread them all at some point, but who knows when. there is such a richness in that story. it is beautiful, touching, deep, and timeless. I'm not saying anything here that hasn't been said a hundred times.

last week, we gathered friends at our table to begin another D&D campaign. I'm still working on putting the finishing touches on my first-ever bard: Ennagold Lindenrill, a wood-elf from somewhere near-ish Waterdeep. the rest of the party shall include a couple of wizards, a couple of clerics, and a paladin. it's exciting to be gearing up to play once again after about a year and a half spent in other game systems.

judging these two against each other is as expectedly challenging as most of the last few matches have been. which do I value more? the focus, simplicity, and artistry of the newer book, or the flexibility, openness, and mainstream appeal of the older? which deserves this more? the world-changing system that paved the way for pretty much all the others, or the beautiful latecomer based on a world-changing fantasy that paved the way for it in the first place?

SYSTEM	Dungeons & Dragons (5e)	The One Ring (2e)
cover tagline =	"Arm yourself for adventure."	"Enter the world of Middle-earth..."
publisher =	Wizards of the Coast	Free League Publishing
pub. date =	2014	2020
original cost =	$49.95	$49.85
length =	11 chapters / 320 pages	10 chapters / 240 pages
my exp. level =	very much lots	none prior

---

 

the easy part is judging these two on aesthetics. The One Ring will probably never lose on that count. I bet the designers of this book put as much attention and effort into its appearance as Tolkien himself put into the elvish language. it seems to me almost as perfect as any functional book could ever be (semi-garish cover notwithstanding). beyond the surface of the pages, too, the aesthetics of this epic storyworld come with all the depth and richness of their source material. it's lovely.

and while The One Ring is soaked in the vibes of deep green-grey forests and cozy, semi-lit hobbit holes, D&D injects all that with a little more brightness. the saturation is turned up, the gleam of adventure a little more polished against a grab-bag stage-set of fantasy. they aren't opposites, but we might say they are different shades of the same hue: The One Ring a deep piney dark-olive, like those magical woven elf-cloaks in shadow; D&D more like new grass, or spring-time oak leaves in the sun, or a green leather satchel freshly polished. you can tell serious, weighty stories in either game, but D&D will always feel lighter to me.

judging on mechanics, I have a harder time choosing which I like more. The One Ring is simple and unique. it's character creation options are very focused, its gameplay processes similarly so. destiny and heritage and lore combine to draw strong lines around the possible story arcs. player characters rotate through adventuring phases and fellowship phases. journeying, counseling, and resting are given just as much attention (if not more) than combat.

D&D divides its gameplay slightly differently into exploration, social interaction, and combat. it's close enough to the same ingredients, but used in a significantly new recipe. and much like an easy, endlessly-adapatible recipe (like this one-- so easy and so fun to mix and match with), D&D feels infinitely flexible. dial down the combat and add more exploration or skill challenges or socializing if you're feeling like it-- it'll still taste awesome. it will still be exciting. 

in terms of approachability, do these games come out equal? as I've said before, D&D has the advantage of being very well known, with an established fan base and a widespread community to help ease new players into it. practically, playing D&D can be as basic or as convoluted as you choose.

without the same relatively longstanding advantages, The One Ring does just fine. I like its organization and approach a bit better, and that beautiful simplicity earns it plenty of points here.

if we wanted to get quantitative about it, we could tally things on a rough scale like so, dividing a pool of 10 points per category between the two systems...

SYSTEM	Dungeons & Dragons (5e)	The One Ring (2e)
points for aesthetics =	2	8
points for mechanics =	6	4
points for approachability =	6	4
total =	14	16

 

a close match if there ever was one, eh? and honestly, I keep wanting to fudge the points further. (full transparency: I have fudged them up and down and back already a few times. this is my tournament, so it's allowed, right?) I mean, are the aesthetics of D&D so very lackluster in my eye? and maybe shouldn't the mechanics be weighted more heavily, given that's what the game is essentially built out of? 

but beyond my trusty old three-pronged rubric... I wrote last time that I value vividness, simplicity, and consistency in these forms of interactive art. I seem to have the most imaginative fun with a clear framework in which to invent freely, wildly, with all the power of the game's limitations to help me build something cool. 

so which of these truly offers me more of that feeling?  

in another prior match-up, I also wrote that compared to D&D, The One Ring's character creation process seemed so limited, so relatively constrained. this remains pretty much my only grasped-at disappointment with The One Ring, I think. a barely-there complaint. and yet I concede that there is a nice structure to it and to everything else in the game, though. it's fitting, given the game's setting and all that. it's a great framework for narrative gameplay, narrow and vivid in its scope.

on the other hand, D&D has a bigger, wider frame. just as sturdy and serviceable, if far less technically beautiful. 

I think what really makes the most sense, to me today, is to add a fourth category and do a little bit more math. so here we go-- along with aesthetics and mechanics and user-friendliness, I'm going to look quantitatively at flexibility. 

and there, using this arbitrary system I've suddenly applied across this match, I'd give D&D a whole 7 and The One Ring the remaining 3. it's still awfully close, but D&D ekes out the higher score. 21 to 19. 

 

imagine approximately three seconds of a low and subtle drumroll for us, please?

the 2023 champion of the Tournament of RPG books: Dungeons & Dragons (5e)

two more very unfair comparisons: the semifinals

the semifinals: 
The One Ring vs Vampire: the Masquerade (5e)
and
Star Wars: Force and Destiny vs Dungeons & Dragons (5e)

initially, I imagined this could be a short post, even with the two matches put together. I'll do my best to be concise. it may not be easy.

for most of the prior match-ups, I had decently strong feelings about the winners. all that changes now. these are the four best RPGs I've ever played. to decide between them is going to be an arbitrary, subjective, and pointless endeavor. that is what it means to model a summer-autumn-almost-winter writing project on the Tournament of Books. (sidenote: the 20th annual ToB itself is very nearly underway! the shortlist of 16 was just recently posted.)

as I pondered this next step in the tournament (inbetween grading final projects and exams and such earlier this week), I thought back on my approach during the opening round, to my not-really-a-rubric, and I tied my brain into knots figuring how to quantify my sense of these games' mechanics, aesthetics, and user-friendliness. while I'd sketched out the rubric categories, I never gave them a metric. am I measuring out of 5 stars? percentage points? some other nice round number of cute somethings?

I re-read my past reviews, hoping to distill the elements I most value in an RPG and build some useful yardstick out of it. obviously, design is important to me, both aesthetically and in terms of user-friendliness. overall style and world-vibes are important, too-- I clearly go more for fantasy than for sci-fi, more for glowing heroism than for grim dystopias. (Vampire seems a glaring exception on this though. hmm...) 

additionally, I value vividness, simplicity, and consistency (not just in games but in most art, now that I think about it). I have the most fun in games that gives me nicely-defined frameworks, clear rules, and then practically infinite freedom to invent within that space. is there a more apt way to describe that? not just the logistics of it all, but the feeling? a feeling of sinking all your imagination into a marvelous, immersive vision but also having the power to make it new and yours? I hope that makes sense to at least somebody.

RPGs are especially tricky to judge because they are more than the sum of their published material. they are not static boxes; so much depends on the storyteller, the game master, not to mention the other players. if I were to judge these four in terms of how much I loved my past gameplay in each system, that might be somewhat easier. but that's not exactly what I'm trying to do here.

nor am I comparing them merely on which story or world I might like best. it is interesting that three of these four are games live solidly within circumscribed gameworlds based on pre-existing lore. D&D is the exception, and even it has more than half its roots in the fantasy of Tolkien, so. that these four have come so far mean that such specific worldbuilding feeds into the sense of vividness and definition I value so much.  

alright, alright-- I'll quit stalling. here we go.

 

The One Ring vs Vampire: the Masquerade 5e

for months I have worried that Vampire would end up against The One Ring in the final round; both were strong contenders all along, but now here they are, one fated to force the other out of the running.

Vampire has years ago earned my steadfast affection, for whatever reasons (see its prior match-up reviews for more on that), and contrarily The One Ring is a newcomer in my life.

they are so different, aesthetically and mechanically. for approachability I'll rank them as equals. both have plenty of depth and complexity, all made passably navigable with lovely book design. isn't it interesting their covers match so well? black and white and red, with barely-there serifs on those elegantly bold all-caps titles. not many RPG books come with fancy bookmark ribbons, but these both do.

The One Ring sells itself as "rules-light," which is a point in its favor given my preference for simplicity. skimming the book the other day, I did question this label a bit though. there are plenty of rules and guidelines for an epic, detailed, highly-managed roleplaying campaign, even if those rules are designed to sit in the background and let narrative take the stage. 

the striking style of Vampire feels incomparable to me, which is a point or two in its favor. but you all heard me gush about The One Ring's design. that's what makes this so difficult a match. which artfully drawn style is the best one, for me, today? the glossy, bloody, immortal danger of the urban fantasy plot? or the warm, antiqued, semi-rustic valor of the high fantasy adventure?

I still can't decide.

-

now I've written the rest of this post and proofread it twice, still struggling to make up my mind. The One Ring is gorgeous, and simple, and it ticks so many boxes for the kinds of stories and worlds I love to consume. I really hope I get to play it again in the near future, to explore it more as a full game. 

and Vampire is so evocative and unique. as I've explained before, how often do we get a framework to fight against ourselves, to struggle for a lost humanity? it's so interesting and novel to me, despite (and because of?) the potential discomfort and challenge of its dark, gritty, violent settings.

in a truly infuriating Tournament-of-Books-esque manner, I think I'm going to give up on reaching a judgement via all these relevant, fundamental aspects of the two, and grasp desperately at something-- anything-- for which I can easily pinpoint an obvious preference. if I had to choose just based on the two books' covers, for example, Vampire would win. that faux marble look and the shiny embossed title-- it's perfect.

but doesn't that seem so cheap and superficial? I don't hate The One Ring's cover, even if its use of red strikes me as garish. almost to make up for that stark and somewhat depressing first impression, The One Ring has buckets of marvelously good art in the rest of its pages-- all those chapter spreads, the little ink-scraped edging around the call-out boxes, the sepia sketches here and there. it's so neat and fitting and cohesive.

so. 

I think that's it-- the deciding factor. after helplessly trying to compare blood-red apples to elf-grown oranges all day long, I'll choose The One Ring for its artistic and stylistic consistency. that, and the timeless allure of high fantasy.

 

Star Wars: Force and Destiny vs Dungeons & Dragons (5e) 

where to begin? I love both of these games. I've played the one more than the other in terms of hours at the table, but I'm tempted to say my Star Wars roleplaying took on a quality that could easily outpace the more casual kind I have often tended toward in my quantity of D&D gameplay.

how much does that matter? 

it matters as much as I decide that it does, I suppose.

in terms of aesthetics, neither of these games knocks my socks off entirely. the on-paper designs of each feel equally solid, good but nothing exquisite.

D&D has the simpler mechanics, I think: simpler character creation, fewer charts to reference, and more straightforward dice. altogether it's not more than a few fractions of a point simpler, but it's something.

on the other hand, Star Wars has the more defined world. playing as a Star Wars character has been some of the most vivid, immersive roleplaying I've ever done. perhaps the existence of all the films helps with that, providing my brain with so much visuality to remix. perhaps it's "limits are possibilities" at work once again. Star Wars is a certain kind of story with preset rules and rhymes. that framework and direction help my style of creativity a heck of a lot.

so how do we weigh the merits of a whole multiverse of magical realms and adventure against those of a vast galaxy full of pseudo-magical, destiny-rich alien interactions? which one, for me, today, should win?

relative simplicity and fantasy win again, it seems. if I must-- and in this case I must-- I pick dragons and treasure and potions and spells over any number of futuristic laser swords and spaceships. it isn't fair, but it is my verdict.

next up, the final finals:
The One Ring vs Dungeons & Dragons

fantasy sprawl

quarterfinals match 4:
The One Ring vs A Song of Ice and Fire

as much as the authors behind these two worlds may match each other for ambition, scope, and nuanced historical detail, the two worlds themselves feel vastly different. both may be vast, rich, strikingly realistic fantasy lands, with some very cool linguistical inventiveness threaded through, but Tolkien and Martin do not tell the same kinds of stories with anything like the same kind of tone, do they? 

I did find the two RPG versions of these literary works equally immersive games, at least. in terms of their layered, evocative gameplay and vibes, the two are very well matched.

in response to my opening round review of The One Ring, friend Chris commented that in no other match thus far had my preference been quite so blatantly obvious from so early on. at the time, I didn't realize how thoroughly, one-sidedly gushing I'd become, even if I did acknowledge that The One Ring had swept me off my feet.  

likewise, the opening round performance of A Song of Ice and Fire may have been just as imbalanced. it certainly didn't have to do very much to beat out Shadowrun (though my one-sided-ness that time ran in the opposite direction).

and now, how does the adventurous-but-still-somehow-cozy epic of Middle-Earth fare against the cut-throat political dances of Westeros? 

I can't say it's quite as simple as it might seem. both games were delightful to play, uniquely engaging, and satisfyingly substantive. the story moments of both felt meaningful, plot lines perfectly in tension among our characters' colorful backstories, current circumstances, and murky reached-for futures.

thankfully, in real life, we don't have to choose between Tolkien and Martin; we can be fans of both stories and make time to play both games. but this is an arbitrary tournament set-up where only one of these sixteen RPG systems can win the prize.

SYSTEM	The One Ring	A Song of Ice and Fire
back cover tagline =	"Enter the world of Middle-earth..."	"Adventure, war, and intrigue in George R.R. Martin's World of Westeros"
publisher =	Free League Publishing	Green Ronin Publishing
pub. date =	2020	2014
original cost =	$49.85	$49.95
length =	10 chapters / 240 pages	13 chapters / 320 pages
my exp. level =	none prior	none prior

---

and so the cozy version of adventure is going to win. me being me (aspirationally part hobbit, after all), how could I not choose the gameworld where extra meals, singing, and warm baths can be part of your character advancement? 

the only thing I found to mope about with The One Ring is that its character creation options feel so relatively minimal. I mused aloud to Jeremiah the other day that if we could mix just a few more of the classic Dungeons & Dragons classes and races and stats into the simplicity of The One Ring, that might be a perfect combination for me. but upon further thought, I don't think it would actually work that well. it would muddy the beauty and integrity of the game's design just a bit too much. 

likely the only reason I imagine myself wanting such a combination is because I feel so familiar with D&D character creation processes. my brain is latching onto it for comfort more than out of any true preference. and that means the real answer here is to do more character creation using The One Ring, to get familiar with it, and to trust that I'll fall further in love.

 

semifinals match-ups (coming soon...): 
The One Ring vs Vampire: the Masquerade
Star Wars vs Dungeons & Dragons

certain shades of darkness

quarterfinals match 3:
World of Darkness vs Vampire: the Masquerade 5e

since opening match 1, our zombie-plagued World of Darkness chronicle has ended. my stubborn, workaholic Andi Garcia did survive, somehow. in the end, wrapped in a metaphorical shroud of mourning and dampened ambitions, she held on to just enough hope for teaching the younger survivors everything they could want to know about the technologies of the past. given the campaign's Lake Michican setting, Andi's epilogue has some real Station Eleven Museum of Civilization vibes-- in my imagination anyway. a little bit like that. but different.

sadly, I have not played any more Vampire this year. but I do think about the world and the system fairly often. driving past a self storage compound on the highway, I wonder how Anarch vampires could use such a space for hiding their renegade plans and secrets. hearing news snippets about a rapper on trial for drug trafficking, I wonder what kind of vampire story that might be, if the drug dealers were in thrall to vampires, or if the rapper himself were undead, using a late-night partying lifestyle to disguise his sun allergy. it would definitely be depressing to be a vampire in real life-- but isn't it interesting to ponder the logistics of living in darkness for decades on end? I can't be the only one who thinks so.

mechanically, these two games are almost identical. the one system encompasses the other entirely, pretty much, and the other is a sharply focused specialization of the first. on that point of my rubric, I cannot really distinguish them. 

in terms of relative approachability, there are perhaps some differences but not substantive ones, for me. World of Darkness can stand alone, just as this version of Vampire can. the possibilities for branching out or remixing other subsets of the world don't take away from that.  

so does that mean my only meaningful axis of comparison, other than past gameplay experience, is aesthetics?

I initially summed up the vibes of World of Darkness as "film noir–artsy" and "alternatingly grunge/emo/punk," with a heavy tinge of romance and mystery. then, in Vampire's opening match 6, I wrote, "let's take everything I said about World of Darkness in opening round #1, but add a few gallons of flawlessly immortal elegance and deep red, viscous blood."

so... which is more worthy of this arbitrary prize? the artsy black-and-white film noir? or the highly polished, classic gloss of black-and-white-and-blood? which one looks best posed against the backdrop of a perfectly staged alleyway at night?

 

SYSTEM	World of Darkness	Vampire: the Masquerade 5e
back cover tagline =	"Your greatest fears aren't make believe; they're real."	"Death is not the end."
publisher =	White Wolf	White Wolf
pub. date =	2004	2018
original cost =	$24.99	$55.00
length =	8 chapters / 223 pages	13 chapters / 400 pages
my exp. level =	more than some	lots

---

 

it is a difficult choice. both of these styles please me. both games and gameworlds have helped me experience visceral, intense struggles and tell sweeping, tragically beautiful stories. 

my decision comes down to a fairly small nuance, I guess. for all that these two systems share, the one is by design very broad and open-ended, accomodating of plenty fairly typical man-vs-monsters adventures. World of Darkness will most likely have you roleplay a communal struggle against encroaching supernatural evils from who-knows-what great beyond. and while that is is awfully heroic and awesome, it is a bit less unique. 

to instead struggle against a persistent, internal, irreversable corruption inside your own blood... that is different. it feels... more, somehow. less trite, less bounded by the rules of a proper hero's journey and all that. the focus of it, the individuality of it-- it makes the struggle a lonely, desperate, mostly hopeless one. how much more romantic can we get than that? and with the focus of Vampire, we get to fight-- for whatever idealistic or misguided or prideful reasons-- against something our own fallen selves have become. that dark conflict gives this game a more unique and interesting trajectory for stories than any other game I've ever played. so far.

 

next match-up review (the last before the semifinals!): The One Ring vs A Song of Ice and Fire

long ago and far, far away

quarterfinals match 2:
7th Sea 2e vs Star Wars: Force and Destiny

if these two were movies or television shows, I would for sure pick 7th Sea. why? because oceans, rapier duels, and period costumes are just miles more to my taste than blasters, laser swords, and hyperspace. 

but these are not movies. they’re games: two fascinating RPGs that have beaten out their prior competitors by relatively slim margins. allow me to once again honorably mention Changeling and Cyberpunk RED as I marvel at the chances that have paired two strikingly different alternate/imaginary/far-far-away histories up against each other here. 

when I wrote about these two in the opening round, I noted that both have a pretty straightforward aesthetic of heroism and villainy, light side and dark side, goodness triumphing through even the thickest tangles of temptation. those aren't the only kinds of stories you'd be limited to telling in each system, but the game design lends itself to happy endings, mostly. both worlds ask for brave and impetuous, good-at-heart characters. both types of stories might be highly action oriented, or highly political, or most likely some of both. 

it's easier than anything to see a poetic resonance between the vibe of sailing ships into pirate-infested waters and that of piloting spacecraft through dangerous asteroid fields. and we absolutely must admit that the dashing, caped Lando Calrissian would fit gorgeously in either setting-- just swap those blasters for a pair of revolvers and we'd be set. 

since my earlier review of Star Wars: Force and Destiny we've acquired a brand new copy of Star Wars: Age of Rebellion and are waiting on Edge of the Empire to show up in the mail. then we'll have the whole trilogy of game books, ready for our in-person gaming group to use in the new year for a new collaborative story. so that’s something awesome to look forward to. I think I'll create and play as a human rebel this time... a refugee of Alderaan running headfirst into the difficult question of how far we should go in the fight against the empire...

in plain old down-to-earth reality, Star Wars is actually also a movie (okay, many movies, and shows, and, and, yes, yes, etc.)— but that and its relatively unique and pervasive cultural footprints are not why it's more likely to win this match. I wouldn't call myself a Star Wars fangirl by any means, though I do enjoy plenty of Star Wars media and find much of it quite touching in its way. recently, one of my new favorite podcasts released a really interesting in-depth materialist critique of the whole Star Wars franchise and (to a lesser extent) its fandoms. it's a great episode-- check it out if you have an hour to spare, or at least skim the transcript if you are at all curious and tolerant of such scholarly exuberance. the "behind the episode" bonus content is pretty neat too. there is a Star-Wars-y chart for us at the bottom, even. 

(materialist cultural critique is the coolest. and okay fine, I'll admit to being a hopeless Hannah McGregor fangirl if nothing else.)

SYSTEM	7th Sea 2e	Star Wars: Force and Destiny
back cover tagline =	"The roleplaying game of swashbuckling and intrigue."	"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."
publisher =	John Wick Presents / Chaosium Inc.	Fantasy Flight Games
pub. date =	2016	2015
original cost =	$59.99	$59.95
length =	9 chapters / 304 pages	13 chapters / 444 pages
my exp. level =	some	a bit more than some

---

Star Wars as an RPG has been a formative sort of game for me— it was one of the first really long and epic stories I got to be a part of with other really dedicated engaged roleplayers (big shoutouts here go to Kay and Shaun and Rhett; y'all were great players for Vampire and Star Wars and bits and pieces of other stuff too). playing as Yahla, being part of her whole story arc and seeing how she faced a dozen dark challenges that I can barely imagine facing in real life, was so cool. it was a chance to play and experience and really lean into what roleplaying games are all about. so it has to win.

7th Sea does deserve plenty of honorable mentions, so let that be known (shout outs to friend Chris and Alyssa for their parts in that campaign, too). Zetallia could've perhaps been something like what Yahla was, if she'd had more time to unfold. hmm... maybe an epilogue to this tournament could be a showdown among all the most formative player characters I've been a part of. that could be interesting.

but for now, may The Force be with us all. the penultimate quarterfinal match is going to be really, really difficult.

next match-up review: World of Darkness vs Vampire: the Masquerade 5e

gateway dungeons

quarterfinal match 1: 
Dungeons & Dragons 5e vs Pathfinder 2e

does the result of this one seem obvious?

it feels more and more obvious to me the more I think about it. honestly, as much as I keep saying to myself, 'okay let's revisit this properly-- fairly-- as evenhandedly as anyone possibly can...' it just seems to tip the scales further to one side.

after all, there’s a whole chorus of 7 years of games and beloved roleplaying characters on one side, with just a single, simple, half-finished duet on the other. what else are we to expect? 

I will say, however, that there is plenty I do like about Pathfinder. its flexibility and openness, plus the more-pleasing-to-me organization of the book’s sections all come together to give it a bit of an edge in this fight. if I'd met this version of Pathfinder sooner, before pandemic times, and had the chance to play even half a dozen more sessions of it, this match would be much less unfair overall. I can see myself liking the system a lot. 

unfortunately, all these alternate universes of what-if maybe possibilities are not the one I'm sitting in right now.

right now, in this universe, I miss the reliable, accessible fun of D&D. I'm intrigued by all the Baldur's Gate 3 chit chat flying around (including the chit chat from these colleagues of mine who have a podcast all about video games). I have epilogues of three or four past games percolating in the dusty creative sections of my brain. I'm seriously pondering the idea of wrangling friends and family in various batches to run or help run a short one-shot adventure during upcoming holiday breaks. 

so it just has to be D&D that wins. it's not so popular for no reason, even if its general popularity does seem like a fairly self-perpetuating engine at this point. if we need a particular RPG system to serve as a gateway into the hobby as a whole, this one serves fairly well. 

which of the other 6 quarterfinalists will D&D have to face next? we shall see.

SYSTEM	Dungeons & Dragons(5e)	Pathfinder (2e)
cover tagline =	"Arm yourself for adventure."	"Advance your game."
publisher =	Wizards of the Coast	Paizo
pub. date =	2014	2019
original cost =	$49.95	$59.99
length =	11 chapters / 320 pages	11 chapters / 638 pages
my exp. level =	very much lots	some

---

 

any predictions? I have plenty, but the rules say I have to keep them to myself for now.

as an end note here, I speculate that Nyva the half-orc paladin and Damlyn the snow goblin bard would make a very interesting pair. and their systems of origin are similar enough that we could have them adventure together easily enough, couldn't we? perhaps I'll write a little vignette about them one of these days-- a short story evoking some Good Omens meets Daredevil meets The Witcher vibes, where the pure-hearted tough one and the more cynical artsy one are mostly able to follow a shared vision, but not without plenty of amusing conflict along the way. 

 

next match-up review: 7th Sea vs Star Wars: Force and Destiny

tournament of TTRPGs: opening round review

here we are, at a midpoint in this somewhat random tournament of roleplaying games. in this post, I'll summarize the opening round matches and finally, unequivocatingly, declare winners for each.

this all started almost six months ago with a tournament introduction. since then, I've played half a dozen new RPGs and tried to articulate my opinions about them all. it's been fun. 

Jeremiah asked me which of the new one-shots we played were most enjoyable, and at the time my answer was Cyberpunk RED. looking back now, I'd want that one to share a three-way tie with The One Ring and A Song of Ice and Fire. Cyberpunk was certainly the most fun in a wild hijinksy way. The One Ring was fun in a simply beautiful and heroic way, and A Song of Ice and Fire was fun in a  sweeping, majestic way.

the others were fun too, in their ways-- just a little bit less for me: Exalted in an almost frighteningly epic way, Werewolf, in a mystical have-we-bit-off-more-than-we-can-chew sort of way, and Scion, in a extremely bombastic and colorful way.

making final decisions about all these pairs has not always been so fun or easy. a few were really very hard to choose, but I had to. for the tournament. so without further ado, here are the winners--

match #1 "Dark vs. Grimdark"
(World of Darkness vs. Wrath & Glory)
I haven't changed my mind about this one-- World of Darkness still wins for its artsy storytelling approach and flexibility. but I will say, we've played a bit more Wrath & Glory since May, and it has grown on me a little.

match #2 "Power Fantasies"
(Dungeons & Dragons 5e vs. Werewolf: the Forsaken)
I thought this might be a close one, and while Werewolf was a great experience and I'd love to play more of it, the thrills of Dungeons & Dragons pulled ahead for me in the end. is it still unfair? yeah, it kinda is.

match #3 "So Much Potential"
(Pathfinder 2e vs. Mage: the Awakening)
given than neither of these systems left me with the greatest first impressions, it was hard to choose between them, but Pathfinder wins out for thus far having provided more enjoyable gameplay overall.

match #4 "Fatefully"
(Changeling: the Lost vs. Star Wars: Force and Destiny)
this one was absolutely the most difficult. the enchanting style of Changeling still holds plenty of sway over me, but ultimately I couldn't let it win just on vibes and potential; thus, Star Wars takes it.

match #5 "Two Flavors of Epic" (Scion vs. The One Ring)
at least we can't say this one is so very unfair-- as limiting as first impressions may be, The One Ring wins for simply being so thoroughly cozy and inspiring and marvelous.

match #6 "Masked and Unmasked"
(Vampire: the Masquerade 5e vs. Exalted 2e)
not many RPGs, in my view, could stand up against V5 and expect to do all that well. both it and Exalted are intense games with some complex elements, but I find Vampire more engaging.

match #7 "Once and Future Risks" (7th Sea 2e vs. Cyberpunk RED)
this one was so, so close as well-- I had the hardest time weiging the epic historical adventure against the flashy futuristic excitement, and 7th Sea does kind of win for mere stylistic preference, all else being way too even.

match #8 "Here there be Dragons"
(Shadowrun 5e vs. A Song of Ice and Fire)
A Song of Ice and Fire truly does deserve to win here for deftly evoking a really neat and engaging world and providing mechanics for a truly sweeping game; I promise I'm not only using this as a chance to snub Shadowrun.

and a few honorable mentions:
Changeling and Cyberpunk RED earn my top tier honorable mentions. I love them both quite a lot despite the less-than-perfect-fit I feel with their mechanics. one tier down, Exalted and Werewolf earn some brownie points for just feeling really cool to roleplay in. it is not their fault that they got matched up against the two games I've played the most and have the fondest memories of.

and so we continue on into a new round. here are the new match-ups--  

Dungeons & Dragons 5e vs Pathfinder

7th Sea vs Star Wars

Vampire: the Masquerade vs World of Darkness 

The One Ring vs A Song of Ice and Fire 

I almost do want to play them all again for the quarterfinals. wouldn't that be fun?

for the sake of time, however, I'm afraid we'll have to imagine all the gameplay we can and work with the experience I've been able to glean so far from these 8 potential champions. only one pair of the lot includes systems that were brand new to me when I started this thing. those two being matched together seems fair enough. 

how will I approach this second round? I think I'll revisit each book directly and reconsider aesthetics, mechanics, and approachability in context of the new contrasts of each match. I'll likely draw on my prior reviews a bit as I do so, but I'll avoid as much repetition as I can possibly avoid.