Holy Gaming

I have a group in a religious school. Today, the school had held some function, and we were asked to relocate to a nearby synagogue. While less comfortable than a classroom, the prayer hall of the synagogue was certainly roomier and more atmospheric, with its stained glass windows and booming echoes.

I rose to the dais, placed my books on the stand and called the kids, one by one, to receive their blessed character sheets. As I called out their character names, my voice reverberated eerily in the large empty hall. Perhaps pacified with the heavy atmosphere, the group was utterly silent, a rare event indeed when kids are involved.

This is more or less how it looked...

After I finished distributing the sheets, I said, “let us recount the events of last session. And so it came to be that the PCs did evil in the eyes of the DM and he sent a great host of undead to smite them for, eh,” at this point I rolled the dice, “19 points of damage and lo! For the damage was great and even caused the wizard to bleed. And on that day the PCs knew that I am DM and I roll high. Amen. Now, consulting the sacred list of initiative, we see this is the turn of righteous elf seeker Nanoc, long may he live. Speak now in great reverence and let your words be backed by the rolling of the die as it was decreed in the Book of Laws.”

Hilarity ensued.

As always, if you enjoy my yarns either because I’m such a charming and droll fellow, or because I happen to occasionally find myself in the center of amusing events, feel free to contribute to my Levantine fantasy anthology. Everything helps!

The People vs. the Bullies and the Teachers

I watched tonight's Big Bang Theory episode about bullies (a shameful and disgusting affair) and this got me thinking, or rather, reminiscing, about bullying in schools. When I was in kindergarten, all the other kids picked on me because I was the only Russian there. One day, many kids encircled me and threw sand in my face. Blind with rage, I picked up a tube and smashed it with all my strength into the face of the first kid I saw. In the first grade, still the only Russian and also chubby now, I went up to an empty classroom on the second floor and threw chairs down at kids who were mean to me that day, didn’t hit any of the bastards but gave them a decent run for their money.

They asked me to go to a different school next year. In the second and third grades, there was another Russian in school and we got into fights with the Moroccan gang almost daily. It was war and we were an army of two - compensating small numbers with cunning. Eventually they learned - nerds or not - you don't fuck with Russians. Whenever I returned from school, my grandma would ask me, "Did you remember to kick? Your legs are your strongest weapon." And I kicked, oh how I kicked, and threw tables and choked and never shied from picking up a stick or playing some dirty trick with my friend and ally.

Bullies become bullies because the system and the other kids support them

By fourth grade, being Russian stopped being an unforgivable crime and the rest of my childhood was mostly peaceful.

Looking back, my early childhood looks like war. In war you can be either fighter or victim. There is no middle ground. And do you know why I could be a fighter? Because I had the moral support of my family, and of one true friend who wasn’t there just for the fun bits.

I think kids who're bullied are not weak or cowardly. They just don't have a strong back, betrayed by their family and the system, robbed of the tools a person needs to protect himself from those who don’t care and don’t fear. In a world where power and courage are outlawed, only outlaws have power. This mustn't be so.

Bullies stop being bullies, when victims stop being victims

One teacher told me once, "never use violence, if you're bullied come to us." I asked her, "and what will you do?" She said, "talk to them." I asked, "and if they ignore you?" She didn't have a good answer. They never do. Their hands are tied by a system that wants to castrate and debauch students, raise a generation of slaves, not fighters.

The average teacher doesn't care about justice or the kids' well-being; he cares about making his job easier. Siding with bullies is so much easier than siding with victims. The bully has nothing to lose from another black mark. The honor student has a lot to lose, thus, he’s the one who will live in fear, not the bully.

When the victim stops being afraid, it's the bully's turn to fear

The current system only exists to protect scum from good people (not only in schools btw), never the other way around. That's why a family should teach kids to defend their honor and know they're fighting two enemies - immoral bullies who only understand pain and fear and an indifferent system that would gladly sell them to grind more smoothly.

I will finish with a quote from The Crow:

We shall never forget and never forgive.
And never ever fear.
Fear is for the enemy.

Teaching Hate #1

As you probably know, racism is a very funny and lighthearted subject. It is completely harmless and highly entertaining. Because of this, I had conducted a small social experiment last year I would now like to share with you.

I had picked several older groups that had a considerable dragonborn minority and placed them in a city where dragonborn were the largest racial group, but significantly smaller than all other groups combined. Most dragonborn were honest mercenaries or craftsmen, but being honest, they never came into the PCs' radars. Instead, the PCs got roughed up by dragonborn ruffians, injured in dragonborn terrorist attacks and witnessed a bloodbath in dragonborn street riots.

The dragonborn are an ancient race of honorable warriors - what right do these soft newcomers have to force their laws on us? Oh, it's their city and we're the newcomers? Well, screw them, we're stronger, we're the offspring of dragons, they're furless apes!

Dragonborn kids want to LARP too. Also, sexual harassment suit coming in 9,8,7...

A small but vicious group called "Sons of the Dragon" was sweeping the masses and dragging the whole city into hell. Meanwhile, angered, the dictator of the city took harsher and harsher steps against the dragonborn, culminating in the Massacre in Heroes' Square in which the PCs had the dubious honor of participating.

On any side they chose.

I did not express my personal opinion on the issue even once. Instead, I gave the players total freedom and watched how they dealt with this situation. The result was... curious.

Release the girls from the Dungeon! #1.5

Surprisingly civil and fruitful discussion over G+, Twitter and Facebook had followed my previous post. For future reference, I’d much rather see it concentrated here instead of scattered all over the net. I think it's more productive this way and helps good people meet and share good ideas (evil and chaotic people are welcome too, btw). Also, I want you all present in the same place, a place under my control, so that I could-- well, never mind. Back to the quest to get young players to play...

Girl Gamers - maybe it's all the attention that scares them away?

This is a brief summary of the points raised today:

Name: Change the name of the activity from “Dungeons and Dragons” to something which including “fantasy” and implies “teamwork.” I strongly support this idea. However, the new name should be one that wouldn’t scare away boys. Any suggestions?
Flyers: When handing flyers describing the activity, have them portray a male and a female character. The female should be a nature-related character, possibly some sort of a feline humanoid. It seems most young girls favor this sort of characters and those who do not are not hostile toward them.
Girl Groups: Promote “male” D&D and “female” D&D separately to defuse the potential social pressure applied on girls not to participate in male activities. Girl game should be promoted and ran by female DMs and stress the theatrical and dramatic aspects of the game over its military aspect. While I'm not a fan of segregation of the sexes, my personal exprience shows that boys do seem to out-scream girls (at this age at least...) and that the two sexes generally get along very poor, so perhaps there is merit to this idea. Next year, we'll probably give it a shot.
Horses: One suggestion I value very highly since it was the only one actually made by a young gir: horses. There should be horses on the flyers. Horses are cool. I'm all for it because I like horses too. I like donkeys even more, but that is only because I'm an ass.

Female DMs signalling their Venus overlords

This is just an intermediate post, I’m still researching and experimenting in this field. So far with little success; today I promoted D&D in a local school. Twenty-two kids came from nine classes – all boys. Girls looked excited and interested during my visit, many had asked for flyers, many even spoke about characters they’d like to play... but not one girl came to the introductory game.

Oh well, back to the drawing table.

At the end of the day, from high above, we all look the same.

Release the girls from the Dungeon! #1

A thought had occurred to me today. A thought which I believe might be of value to educators interested in getting young girls to play Dungeons and Dragons, a task we all know is quite formidable

I don't think there are any biological, historical or even cultural reasons why girls should be averse to D&D - these games are not physically violent and not overly competitive. Quite the opposite, they are highly cooperative, social and fantastic, the latter appealing to girls even more than to boys, who always look disappointed when I explain to them that no, their character can’t have a machine gun and drive a tank. Girls on the other hand are less keen on steel and petrol. One girl, who was only mildly interested in the game, became quite passionate once I told her paladin can have a magnificent white horse one day.

Furthermore, the inherent connection of tabletop gaming to fantasy literature, a field that girls are more interested in than boys would suggest that D&D should appeal to girls even more than to boys. And yet, in every class I visit to promote our afterschool program, I hear young girls saying, "This thing isn't for girls," ignoring all my attempts to interest them in the game.

A girl having a fantastic encounter. Not in picture: blood, gloom and chain bikini.
Art by Lucas Pandolfelli

Perhaps it all boils down to the name of the game - Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons are not sympathetic places, and dragons are not sympathetic creatures. Even the trochaic name sounds aggressive and belligerent, like the beating of a drum, DUN-geons AND dra-GONS, or DEE-an-DEE. It is a name that screams a challenge at the listener, a warlike and harsh name that promises blood, pain and aggression, a barbaric quest ending with epic violence. This message is conveyed both on a conscious level and on a subconscious level. Yes, it is very appealing to the competitive and aggressive nature of young boys, but it is also antagonistic for most girls, who would love to go on an adventure, but not one based on crawling through filth and old bones and ending with the spilling of entrails in a damp and dark cave.

It is also something of a misnomer. D&D is also about exploration of fantastic terra incognita, about talking with people, about claiming treasures and buying cool stuff in the market, about meeting memorable NPCs and uncovering mysteries. It is about making friends among the denizens of the forest and thinking of ways to save your town from a plague. It is not an FPS but a grand adventure, offering all the diversity and richness of life, peppered with fantasy and the freedom to be whatever you want to be minus the paralyzing fear of failure.

So, the question which is now obvious is how the game should be called to be more appealing to girls. Let us rub brains and think...

Lawful. But is it Good?

I didn't plan to post today. I'm working on a major post right now, something that will hopefully expose some of the deeper flaws of our education system, but I hadn't quite found the words to plead my case yet. But sometimes, one just can't deny the urge to write. Please look at me with pity, graphomania is a serious condition.

Today, after I bit a dry marker in two to squeeze a little more ink from it, a boy commented, "the thing I like about you is that you don't care about manners, only about doing what you want," without the slightest hint of sarcasm. Was my action wrong? No, merely unorthodox.
Later that day a boy from a school all the way across town came to one of my classes. He said he didn't like his new instructor because, "she doesn't like noise and mess, like you do." Are noise and mess inherently wrong? No, merely unorthodox.

Some months ago, a girl had asked me if she may go to the bathroom. I asked her if this question was an inquiry as to whether she possessed the physical faculties needed to perform this basic anatomical function, or an examination of the socio-cultural norms concerning this activity. She looked at me queerly and went to the bathroom.

The point I wanted to make, and which I felt may have been lost on the polite young lady, is that I don't care if one is in the bathroom or not. There is no need to ask me. Just do it!

Now, don't get the wrong impression of me. Discipline in my classroom is not lax. If anything, I view myself as an old-school, possibly even an authoritarian, figure. I uphold the rules of the game and the rules of courtesy to the highest standards and if you don't play nice, you're not going to play at all.

However, I don't have needless rules. I don't care if a kid is sitting by the table or on the table. I don't care if he's wearing a hat in class. If the class is hot and the air conditioning is broken, I won't hesitate to go all McGuiver on the secured windows to get some air into the classroom. All these things would make a teacher faint. Why, just today a school principle phoned to scream at me that I left one of the classes in a mess. What kind of mess? The tables were all wrong, some of them were shifted almost a foot to the left.

I decided one of us must be insane. I just don't know who.

This can't possibly be fun! There aren't any perfectly aligned tables in this picture!

And yet, despite not measuring the table locations with an atomic ruler, if someone interferes in my game, I go Gygaxian on their ass. My tyranny on this subject had even earned me significant controversy in the past. The discussion of my DNDkids article on discipline had covered dozens of message boards and blogs and generated a discussion longer than longcat on the Wizards forums. But this harshness is justified in my eyes. It is needed. Needed for the game to be fun and for me not to throw myself out of the window I had just unscrewed.

And a guy standing on his head? Why, if it not his turn, he might as well climb the walls like Spiderman or fly around like Superman. He might even fight criminals like Batman - it's none of my business, now is it? He's not interfering with the game and he's not going to harm himself or anyone else, why should I rob him of his right of self-expression?

On the other hand, there is the education system. It screams at you for moving a table several inches. It screams at you for anything unorthodox. They would even scream at you for repeating the previous sentence.

This had led me to a revelation that struck me like an ACME anvil today as I drove back from my first day of work this year. Most laws are not meant to safeguard freedom or defend life or property in the schoolyard - they are meant to humiliate, dehumanize, and make slaves out of freefolk. They come from the same place as the endless and often comically absurd regulations of basic training - to show you you're nothing but a cog in the system. To make you nothing but a cog in the system. In a place which raises cannon fodder, it is right and proper. In a place which claims to create thinkers and virtuous citizens, it is laughable.

People say my classes looks like a jungle, maybe they do. I hope they do.

A jungle is such a nicer place than a prison.