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The World Geek'ed Upside-Down
Jan. 9th, 2012 12:39 pmhttp://humaniterations.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/letter-to-the-undead-of-geekdom/
Well, it's not always the same. I'd geek out because I wanted to set things right, I'd geek out partly because I wanted to know what was wrong and how and what could be right and how, but also, because I wanted to know for its own sake. I delight in stories. I delight in exploration. I tend to back away from judgement.
I designed a game of protest tactics in the Battle of Seattle, but the situation has changed, and the lessons seem out-of-date. And I never figured out how to cover practical day-to-day activism, pre-protest organizing, street theater, except abstractly, getting food and shelter and enough bike locks, street medicine, or coping with police harassment and/or post-traumatic stress, each of which is just as important.
I want to design a roleplaying game, tentatively titled 'Every Empire Creates its own Resistance,' on trying to make do as people find themselves on the edges of a steadily-narrowing society in a self-destructive Empire.
But it's pretty dark, and I'm coping with other stuff.
Once my hands heal I'll finish some of my historical games.
I doubt I'll design a hard-core activist roleplaying game in the next few years. I am more likely to try to create an escapist fantasy where, for example, certain parties have slipped lesbian concentrate into the water supply, with more dramatic effects than they had dared to expect. It wouldn't be about our-world activism, it would be about escape, but in such an escape, I hope to create a healing space, and heal, and regain the strength to help heal the world.
Well, it's not always the same. I'd geek out because I wanted to set things right, I'd geek out partly because I wanted to know what was wrong and how and what could be right and how, but also, because I wanted to know for its own sake. I delight in stories. I delight in exploration. I tend to back away from judgement.
I designed a game of protest tactics in the Battle of Seattle, but the situation has changed, and the lessons seem out-of-date. And I never figured out how to cover practical day-to-day activism, pre-protest organizing, street theater, except abstractly, getting food and shelter and enough bike locks, street medicine, or coping with police harassment and/or post-traumatic stress, each of which is just as important.
I want to design a roleplaying game, tentatively titled 'Every Empire Creates its own Resistance,' on trying to make do as people find themselves on the edges of a steadily-narrowing society in a self-destructive Empire.
But it's pretty dark, and I'm coping with other stuff.
Once my hands heal I'll finish some of my historical games.
I doubt I'll design a hard-core activist roleplaying game in the next few years. I am more likely to try to create an escapist fantasy where, for example, certain parties have slipped lesbian concentrate into the water supply, with more dramatic effects than they had dared to expect. It wouldn't be about our-world activism, it would be about escape, but in such an escape, I hope to create a healing space, and heal, and regain the strength to help heal the world.
