PC Manifesto

A) Fuck White Nationalism, National Socialism, and that ACKS guy. Also, Zak.. Fuck Zak. But that's not the kind of PC manifesto I mean. Provacateurism seems de rigeur these days, though, so let's get some eyes on this thing and make some cold hard ca$hes. How do you monetize a blog, again? Conflict? Great. I'm on it.

B) I want lots of variety in my PCs. I don't mean like "THIS HALFLING 3/3/3 Bard/Sorceror/Barbarian can dual-wield with Power-Hammers and has 12,000 Psi-Points with all metasciences, and is half-tiefling on his mom's side". I guess if that's the way your game goes, then that's cool but not my cup of T. Variety in PCs does not necessarily mean like 1000 different classes to choose from. They all tend to look like handsome anime types once I get the sheets in my hands. Like: sexy brooding thief. Sexy brooding swordsman. Sexy brooding wizard. This is not what I want. I want like the Wizard of Oz team. I want a telepathic dog, a robot brain in a spindly mechaunit, a migo technician, and a beleaguered time traveller. Shit - you don't need classes for all that. Maybe some HP and saving throws.

I fell in love with Into the Odd a few years ago when it came out, and it goes a long way to making terrific PCs who are not fleshed out in the least, except with the most rudimentary strokes. The magic is that it happens WHEN THEY PLAY. Your sombrero and great axe and sassy parrot do more than feats, specializations, skills, perks, flaws, any of that GURPS metagaming shit can do. I see an awful lot of "BUILDS" and you know what? Save builds for Dark Souls and then it's easier for me to mercilessly slaughter your character in session 2 - because (as in ItO) you toss dice three times and you're off again. Being from the old days I don't give a fig for your snowflake builds, bro, and no guarantee that your PC will live. The DCC funnel has been freeing in this sense. The only way to stay alive is to make a memorable character that you play well at the table and Tiamat can come for us all

They say the OSR is an undead thing. It's true. They do say it. Tainted by racism, sexism, barbarity, elitism. I'm thinking of doing 5e but in the manner of Old Skewl early next year at a local convention. Trying to coordinate it with friendly similar-minded DM's so as to infiltrate the tedious land of 5e organized play. I don't know how well my philosophy and/or lack of tact will play out or be received, and the organizer of the thing (a casual friend from the club I frequent) has a great deal of stuff on his plate. (post script: I did do it, and the 5e Basic Rules make for a decent old school 'feel' if you polish it up with moldvay, but that could be said of any rules set)

C) I don't give a fig for your backstory. Seriously. take it and cram it

D) PCs ought to accrue scars, changes, and storyhooks as they play. I guess this is C, part 2. A great thing about DCC is the corruptions table that steadily turns your humanish Wizard into a slithering pile of eyes and urges. That's like, Magic, Man. Lost eyes and hands lead to bionics and Vecna-pieces and so there.

E) Spend dat money. Carouse carouse carouse (and be pious and do research) You're not chasing paper in the bowels of the Oerth for no reason! Carousing leads to hilarity and the relative poverty of PCs. Also, if you're spending loot and selling Magic items, then those cultists at the local Cthulhu temple are going to get powerful As F*dge, and the Omniqueen wants her taxes, subhumans!

F) I seriously don't give a fuck about your backstory, dude. Almost always dudes. We're here to make backstory via the hilarious, spooky, exhilarating process of making a session and then promptftly forgetting those sessions and then recalling, later, those sessions which is, uh, the backstory

G) I mean, yeah, your game is your game but I am never ever ever looking to incorporate your backstory into the game. That;s on you. I prompt players ALL THE DAM TIME to give me juicy morsels of worldbuilding since I am lazy and this is a better way to invest investment into the game than some sad sack Conan/Edward Scissorhands/Blade the Vampire concoction you've got going on

H) there needs to be mutants, robots, secret robots, synthmen, psionicists, elves (but not Tolkien elves unless we are counting the Rankin Bass Mirkwood kind), sigh I guess Dwarfs too, fuck it no hobbits sorry James, Red Martians, Tharks, whatever. The more the merrier. I guess I'da gotten into Talislanta if it weren't for all the half-dressed weirdos, but like, all the PCs in my groups are half-dressed weirdos anyways. Even the humans ought to have some weirdness about them. Extra digits, antennae, quirks, mutations, whatever. All rolled pseudorandomly. Like, if I could get a chart equivalent to the Arduin Grimoires (uhh, note, I have this chart) weirdo character traits, or like the PC equivalent of DCC's spell quirks, then we wouldn't need Elves, or (blech) Hobbits. Everybody'd want to be a undisclosed Star Trek style humanoid with blue skin and retractable arm-membranes and bionic eyes

I) I don't know why but Tieflings and Dragonborn really burn my cheese, since they happen to be the lamest, most accepted weirdos at the table these days. Also, I grind my teeth at Half Elves since that's some bullshit. It's a tiefling. A tiefling is literally a half-elf. I don't give a fig about the origin story of your mom or dad or whatever. It's all halfelves all the way down

J) If you can pull in an Unearthed Arcana mockup or (gods forbid!) a 3rd party or homebrew murderhobo class, do it. I probably won't even read it. I hope you're not slipping a build in there or trying to rules-lawyer me

K) there's like 27million gods, like in Anomolous Subsurface Environment. Fuck it, make it up, I don't care. Apollo? Great. Zargon? Awesome! Zardoz! More awesomer. Some twenty-handed aspect of Kalima, or Faceless Patron of Orphans! WHOOOOHOOO now we are talking. Be a priest of a whole pantheon, IDGAF. I think DnD focused too early on on some jealous Monotheism. Fuck it, have 9 patrons and 27 different conflicting goals going on. That's on you - just remind me to drop the negative consequences on you when you let 8 of them down

L) magic is hard to come by at the beginning, but AFTER THAT, it represents ways for the universe to incur chaos/kaos and randomness on your ass, and then you'll find that opportunities to mutate yourself, or curse your line down to 7 generations, well, you'll find they are ubiquitous since Those Who Wait And Watch At The Threshold are going to try to make doors in to hasten The End of All Things

M) I feel like I could go on like this all night but the coffee is making me have some GI distress

N) more later

As Above, So Below: Tron, the Matrix and Margaret St. Clair

Happy Birthday, you basement-dwelling grognard!

I was watching Disney Plus, as you do these days, and I hit up Tron: Legacy which was put on the screen practically like 10 years ago (pretty mind-blowing), and since it's the holidays and The Henchman's Mom is coming up for the Deromas in which we erect the corpse of a tree festooned with entrails and baubles, I was cleaning off my dresser. On the pile on the dresser, there's a couple of Margaret St. Clair books and some other stuff. The Shadow People (read it twice, somewhat work-y read), Dolphins of Altair (I never finished it), Sign of the Labrys (once, pretty fun). Tron Legacy was like the opposite of maybe what I was hoping another tronthing would be and maybe has the worst iteration of Uncanny Valley Bridges, ever, except maybe for Rogue One princess Admiral Leia

And so, there are some corollaries, there. There is a "levels of reality" thing going on. The under-world, wherein a hostile reality that contains baleful entities but you can master it. There's an over-world, too. We start in the middle, but you can get dDown There, and They can get Up Here, and people from Up There can get Down Here, too. A dreary quality in St. Clair is replaced by glowing wonder in the Grid. Special heroics when you cross the boudnaries of layers of margins and rivers

I note that the Elfs in the underworld have a leader who can come up, and in Tron: Legacy, Quorra is a special case of a natural-being (not a created Program) who is native to the Grid but who can eventually (spoilers) get Up Here to our reality. And there is Merlin, who came Down Here from the Overworld. He's a Tron User, but for our reality. Merlin is to Humans as Reality Hero is to under-elfs. Lay waste to the underbeings, get their loot, and come back up. Or maybe start down there and bring your crazy DNA and cure cancer or whatever or get up to shenanigans (I wish they had squared off with Dillinger's kid and the jerk of a CEO from the enticing open heist, but whatevs)

When Quorra arrives in the Midworld, she brought a fetish-choked parody that I've not got the yarbles to watch

There are a lot of great messages in The Shadow People, not just the interesting Wicca flavored stuff, but also about drug use and dependence which I guess whas pretty rampant in 60's Berkeley. Also, negotiating sexual relationships without guilt - a la Summer of '69/Age of Aquarius. Pretty blase about shacking-up and romantic attachment. The lady Carol who is rescued comes back from the underworld a hollow PTSD-filled shell, yearning for attercorn but unarguably better off for not being in the dismal, dark, joyless place where she was going to be somebody's lunch, eventually. Flynn goes Down There to the Grid, and his heart is captured. He foregoes life in the "real world" and fatherhood and family and success in order to be a User in the Grid. Sort of like Neo and the hackers in The Matrix, moving down (or Up) a meta-level, unlocks some special quality in you...

Tron and Flynn, I think. Great way to enhance your potential, at least on paper

There are some interesting messages about reality, illusion, reality, enlightenment, drug use, love, human potential. I'm too tired from poor sleep to elucidate, and will let you think on it

Not to mention, when aldridge comes back up from the underworld, he comes back in the same time, but not in the same reality-place! There's no way that all that stuff could happen in 3 years (robots, drone-dozers, fascist secret police, uh wait). Somehow, they are unhooked in reality and float around land in some Other track.

I have a minigame of The Shadow People which is a bit of a slog, and you go down to the bottom and come back up changed, and things around you are different. The time you spend down there will cost you in terms of stats and scars, but you will gain in terms of magic and weirdness

There could be a subcampaign in all D&D-type roleplaying where you could get into the fae underworld OR you could get into the bottled-city/Grid in the cpmputer

Will post the thing when I am motivated to finish it (maybe tonight!) - maybe I will just post the skeleton to get it off the docket