Warframe Concept

There's often been a discussion about the place for wheelchairs in fantasy games. Personally, we're all four it, but what about in science fiction? Christopher Pine (Star Trek) was wheelchair-bound. Hell, he was completely paralysed - not even having facial expressions. Could they have fixed it?  Quite probably, actually. But... not the point, now is it?

This got me to thinking about Warframe, with their space ninja. And of all the types out there, there's only one or two which could be considered 'different' - there's the one that's a composite of other Warframes. There's the one who's had her face blown through. But honestly, that's about it. Every single one of them is a super-agile killing machine.  But what about a concept for one that isn't - in the conventional sense?

See, I'm picturing a Warframe that doesn't have the ability to use her legs. She's in effect paralysed from the waist down.  And what happens is that the transference spark effectively carries her, holding her (often in a seated position, with her legs stretched out some), and guiding her around as she does her missions. The "ghost" is the one that has the mobility, bringing her along and giving her the means of travel.

What's the Warframe's power? Effectively Gravity Control.  She has a sword out? It hovers in front of her, lashing out and cutting anything in her path. She has kunai? They hover and twirl in front of her, then lash out, flinging themselves across the room at her enemies. I'd consider her passive to be a bonus to damage when using thrown / kinetic weapons (bows, crossbows, kunai, glaives, etc).

So what's her active powers?

1) Exalted Kunai.  Channelled Energy blades that hover and twirl around her that she can launch. Much like Ivara's Exalted Bow, or Excalibur's Exalted Blade, or Titania's Dex Pixia. Much as with these weapons, the exalted kunai are moddable.

2) Apportation. Pick a destination, and she gets 'flung' to that location. It's similar to a teleport, but you have to be able to cross the distance normally and you will physically move from one spot to the other.  The way I see it is that your WF hangs suspended as your apparition crosses the distance as per normal bullet jumping / wall running, etc, and when you activate the power again the WF is flung to your location. The way I'd deal with this is that your apparition doesn't have a 'cling limit' to walls and such, and can do literal wall-running to get from point to point - pretty good for some of the Corpus stages with the huge drops. You could also 'cancel' and go back to your WF body.

3) Poltergeist. Used with Exalted Kunai - you unleash a barrage of kunai against all enemies within an area, peppering them with multiple hits.

4) Haven't thought this far yet.

It'd be significantly different, but I like the idea.

SJW RPG And Other Acronyms

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness is coming out again, released by Palladium Books. You know, TMNT&OS was the first Palladium game I ever played -- even before I got into Robotech. It was a Palladium game, which means the mechanics were ... ehh, but it was fun, and really - that's all that mattered at the time.

They picked perhaps one of the worst streaming groups to announce this, however -- it's a group that's veering heavily on the Right, and is definitely not LGBT friendly. I won't go into too much detail, except to say that it's enough I'm not going to back the Kickstarter, and I won't be picking up the book.

Palladium, of course, has had a history -- between calling gays and trans folk 'sexual deviants', and being fairly racist in some of their game books (RIFTS Africa being an example), there's a lot there to keep people away from Palladium if they care about that kind of thing.

In the 80s, when I was a teen?  I didn't know better.  AIDS wasn't an epidemic yet, and there wasn't much to tell you about being gay, or trans, or anything else for that matter - sex ed wasn't still way behind, and I was pretty damn naive. I didn't really know what being 'gay' meant, and had no idea what 'trans' was - didn't know what a lesbian was, and had no idea what being bisexual meant (let alone non-binary, gender fluid, or anything else for that matter). There were the odd gay jokes - but the fact was I didn't 'get' them that much, either. All I knew was being gay meant kissing people of the same sex -- and really that's about it. Adults in this day and age really have no excuse, and there's enough out there that proper sex-ed should be taught in schools.

So what's this got to do with gaming?

Let's start with something simple: there's certain communities that make people who enjoy OSR look real bad. They the kind of people who complain about people who want to allow wheelchairs in D&D (why not? They existed as far back as ancient China). They complain when women are given positions of power in games and aren't treated as cheesecake. They complain when there's 'too many' people of colour in fantasy games, or the games focus on groups that aren't your typical European White groups. They're the people who complain when a company makes a game and says 'what if Europe failed to colonize the Americas?'

They complain about SJWs 'ruining' gaming. As if allowing for the full spectrum of the human experience in gaming is, somehow, 'bad'.

These are the people who made 'the red list' -- a list of gaming companies who 'put politics into gaming' - by, you know, making gaming about more than white guys. They come up with all these excuses as to why gaming shouldn't open its doors to other groups -- that it's checking off the list, that it's taking away from real roleplaying, that it's 'SJW nonsense' or catering or whatever.

Here's the thing. Gaming's come a long, long way from its roots in the 70s. That's not a bad thing. And you can totally go old school with dungeon crawls and whatever. I like old school gaming to a certain degree -- where you have to be on your toes, where insta-death can be a thing, where you roll your attributes and hit points and there's no 'death saves' or whatever. Where a Level 1 PC group can run into a nest of 100 goblins.... to me that's fun.

However, I also think the table should be open to everyone, and the game should reflect that diversity. A campaign setting that puts you in Africa and has you deal with the different cultures and mythologies of that continent? Sure. Not a single white guy to be seen? No issue. Oh, how about black people in middle-ages Fantasy Not-Europe? Sure, why not? That's not far-fetched. Oh, there's gays? Non-binary? There's trans folk? Sure, why not? There's people missing hands, or blind, or confined to a wheelchair, and don't want to have this simply 'fixed'? Why not?

What's wrong with running the gamut, and allowing everyone to feel welcome at the table?

"Politics has no place at the gaming table."

I'm sorry, but it's always been at the gaming table. It just happened to be politics you agreed with.

Dungeons and Dragons. Had Christian Saints and had Devils and Demons named from Christian mythology. (Yeah, Baalzebub, etc? Totally mythology). They had holy knights, and cleric spells which pulled from miracles. That is political -- it puts Christianity into the game and sets it above anything else.

The vast, vast, vast majority of characters were white, and male. The women were in chainmail bikinis or were the damsels in distress needing to be rescued. And let's not forget that in AD&D 1e, women were not allowed to have more than 17 Strength.

That's political.

And the main goal in gaming? Going into other lands, slaying the natives en masse, and taking their stuff, if not outright conquering the region and setting up shop there as a ruler. The opposition? Primitive, backwards, evil creatures that breed like rabbits and who are inherently evil and the anathema of civilization.

That's political.

And these people wonder why that's called racist? They don't see the parallels? They say 'it's just fantasy' and that people are reading too much into it?

D&D, from the get-go, was a colonial RPG. Humans were the best, the majority of the characters were white, and male, there were strong Christian symbolism in the game, and you went out and crushed other civilizations who were too barbaric to live and took over their lands.

We've come a long way from that, but too often I can still see the roots. And when a game company veers away from that baseline, people scream about the company giving into SJWs or bringing politics into gaming.

It's always been there.

Those people who 'can't identify' with non-white or non-male characters in a game? How about the people who can't identify with playing white, male characters? Aren't they allowed to feel represented too?

I had the excuse in the 1980s that I didn't know better. Palladium had less of an excuse, but again 80s, not much education out there. In the modern age? There's absolutely no excuse for dealing with a gaming mentality stuck in the 80s and 70s when it comes to representation and accepting minorities and the LGBT community. Simply acknowledging these people exist and that it's okay shouldn't produce this kind of hue and cry.

That's my beef.
And if you don't want it at your table -- fine. Don't have it at your table.
But shut the fuck up about it existing, and other people wanting representation.

Just because these people don't want it doesn't mean 1) it shouldn't exist, and 2) nobody else should have it, either.

Or, on the other hand - sure, tell us. It tells us what games we shouldn't be buying - because any company that supports that kind of mentality doesn't deserve to be in the business.

The "Problem" With Diversity

Interview with Patrick Stewart:
Q: Did they hold your baldness against you?
PS: That came up at the very first press conference. A reporter asked Gene Roddenberry, "Look, you know, it doesn't make sense, you've got a bald actor playing this part. Surely, by the 24th century, they will have found the cure for male pattern baldness." And Gene Roddenberry said, "No, by the 24th century, no one will care." It was one of the nicest things that have ever been said about men like me.

In a perfect world, diversity wouldn't be an issue. It would be accepted that people can be different, and there's nothing wrong with being different. That's the goal -- that people can be different and celebrate that difference, and it wouldn't make even a ripple in society -- you could celebrate with them, or just go about your life.

But here's the problem.  It's the difference between small-c conservatives and small-l liberals, but it's a very significant difference. With conservatives, conformity gives a feeling of safety / security. The people around you are like you, hold the same values, the same interests - that's 'secure'. Small-l liberals are a bit more open to things being different - the people around you aren't always like you, and can even be different - but it doesn't trigger that insecurity as much.  Does it go away completely? Of course not - everyone has their tolerance limits.

But that security thing is the big thing.
A 'fight or flight' instinct kicks in once in awhile when a person feels threatened - so a person with a strong conservative mindset runs into something which challenges their values or mindset - which doesn't 'conform' to what they feel is 'right', they try to either retreat from it, or they attack it.

And that sucks.

And to note: You can be Liberal and still be conservative. We've got relatives like that. For example, they'll comment on a person's tattoos, or hair colour / style, or their clothing, or whatever - when it's not their business. They act Liberal in a lot of other ways - but diversity is the hard one for them to swallow. "Well, yes, black people should have equal rights, but do they have to act so black?"

And our response is 'why does it matter to you?' Should you charge rent for that living space in your head you've built for them?

The thing is, that mindset -- that feeling challenged by people not acting the way you want them to act, or looking the way you want them to look -- it's very hard to 'fix' that. Part of it is education, part of it is acclimation -- but that's only part of it.

Education is: This is who they are, this is what it means to be them.
Acclimation is: They can be themselves in public, they can celebrate their culture and lifestyle. This is normal.

The big problem is this: that doesn't get rid of it. That only quietens it down. You see that from when Trump came to power. All those people who would normally stay quiet or internalise their dislike were suddenly free to speak out and act out and push back.  It went from 'flight' to 'fight'.

There's no real cure for this, that we can think of. Education and acclimation, is all we can do. The rest is up to the individuals -- they don't have to like it (though that would be nice) but they need to accept it's normal to be different.