Fist of Besilmer

So, now that everybody has their patch, I can post about this! Art had learned to play D&D at an afterschool program in middle school in the spring of 2015, and he’d been keeping up at our local game shop, the Wyvern’s Tale, over the summer.

I was excited when he invited me to come, because it was an activity we could do together, but also because it was something I really enjoyed as a kid. My friend Rob Shroyer’s older brother was into the game, and I guess he taught us to play in 1979, because that was the Christmas I got the Basic Set (in the box with chits instead of dice because TSR couldn’t source enough dice for the holiday season). I played whenever I could harangue people into playing (I was almost always the DM). In 5th or 6th grade I got Sean Osner into the game, and in 7th and 8th grade Rob and Shane Ander and Jason Smith and I played a ton. In high school I would get Shane and my brother Michael and his friend Chris and I don’t remember who else to play, and I DMed some for my brother Doug and his friends.

When I went off to college I decided I was going to be a more Serious Person and be less of a nerd. But I’ve found out over the years that a lot of my friends were also closet-D&D players. What a waste!

Anyway, Art & I played the introductory chapters to Out of the Abyss in the fall of 2015. Fifth Edition D&D was a revelation for me. It felt like the old game I remembered, but with improved mechanics. The rules were much simplified, without endless tables to look up. Characters were created more carefully, with backstories and interesting abilities (and most of all, without the likelihood that they will die before reaching 2nd level–AD&D 1e was a brutal, deadly game at low levels!).

Then in January 2016, my friend Ian Gould started running Princes of the Apocalypse every Wednesday night at Wyvern’s. I played a dwarf wizard named Khagnarr Deepfire. Art started at a different table, but soon joined us. A kid Art’s age named Will played another wizard named Fumblemore (who we’d played with in Out of the Abyss). Ian really hooked me early on by giving my character a book about a lost Dwarven civilization that was supposed to be located in the vicintiy.

Because it was an open table, we had lots of different players week to week. Sometimes one of the other DMs (like Jason or Reuben) would play. Sometimes a regular named Andrew was there, sometimes with his adult daughter Becca. Sometimes friends of Ian would sit in. But I tried to be a constant presence and give the adventure some shape and continuity. There were enough people trying to show up regularly that the table was always full.

But in May, Ian had to go back to Chicago to finish his doctoral work. The campaign felt like it had barely started (when you only have 2 1/2 hours a week, and not always the same characters, progress is slow). I volunteered to take over as DM, because I wanted to discover the secrets of this buried Dwarven realm; I wanted to keep playing. Ian gave me great advice: figure out what is fun for each individual player, and make sure to give that to them.

I was really rusty, having not been a Dungeon Master in 25 years or more. The first week was a bit of a disaster, really. But I quickly got better. One of the new regulars, Michael, was a rules prodigy who helped keep the table running smoothly. Plus, his character was a dwarf, so I was able to pass along the plot thread of discovering the ancient dwarven kingdom of Besilmer.

Summer of 2016 brought some new regulars: Ivan, a really creative player from Venezuela, and Alan and Jo, a father-daughter team who were brand new to D&D. And then one of our regular players, Mark, stopped showing up. Turns out he took a bunch of pills, held his family hostage with a gun, and overdosed. He’d seemed like a normal guy. I turned his character into a backstabbing villain.

With the coming of fall, our table was always full, and we had so many regulars that it became a problem when new people came wanting to take slots of regular players. Preston was the last player to become a regular. After that, we talked it over and decided to stop playing Adventures League and become a closed, private game. Me (as DM), Art, Will, Andrew, Becca, Jason, Michael, Ivan, Alan, Jo, and Preston. Not everyone made it every week. At this point, I think Becca was mostly in Savannah. Will would go through spells of regularity or not. After the Mark incident, we all felt the need to get to know each other better in real life, and we made a real intention of being friendly and supportive toward each other.

Right at this turning point, the party decided to leave the adventure and go visit the city of Waterdeep for supplies. I had to admit their plan made sense, but it was way outside the scope of the reference materials I had. So I did a lot of quick studying about Waterdeep and a bunch of related stuff. And I figured out how to make stuff up and follow my players’ interests and priorities. I started seeing into the future, how different plot lines could connect. And I started to have SO MUCH FUN.

As an aside, I have always been the sort of person who makes up stories in my head constantly. People, places, plots … I’m just always daydreaming them. For a long time I thought that meant I ought to be a writer. Like the old saw “you know you’re a writer if you HAVE to write.” But I never liked the solitude of writing, and I never had much desire for the selling of writing, especially after having seen how the sausage gets made. But role playing games are PERFECT for what my brain just naturally loves to do. I can’t believe I went so many years not understanding that and eschewing the very thing that practically harnesses my daydreams.

It was in Waterdeep that I named the party “the Fist of Besilmer.” Since then we’ve created 2 more parties of characters in a web of interconnected campaigns. We’ve kept playing every week for four years, with no end in sight. Ivan moved to Florida, Art moved to Durham (and now Raleigh), and Jo will be off to Vermont this fall. But Becca and Will are back as regulars. We don’t see much of Michael these days, but I hope his schedule will allow him to rejoin us eventually.

I had these patches made to give all the party members. Jason designed a coat of arms for Besilmer years ago. He said: The script reads, in Dethek: “ULLEN BURAKIN AR XOTH UNDIVVER” which roughly translates to “walk the passageway from lore to the future”. The colors of the bridge are Purple and Gold (justice/sovereignty and good will/generosity) while the shield is Red (military might) and Blue (strength and loyalty).

I could go on and on about my D&D campaigns, but they are more exciting to me and my comrades than to anyone else, because we lived through them. We created those cinema-perfect moments. We walked the passageway from lore to the future. And the real treasure we found was the friends we made along the way.

D&D&S

I’m DMing a Spelljammer campaign converted to 5e. After half a year playing the party finally has a decent ship and are taking on their first jobs as a delivery service.

Which is delivering 5 tons of shrimp cocktail to a casino asteroid. The halfling mafia boss on Rock of Bral hired them to do this job and provided a mage to cast Cone of Cold on the shrimp periodically during the 4 day journey. Along the way they only got a little distracted rescuing a survivor from a beholder attack and exchanging news with a salvage ship.

When they got to the casino asteroid, they found it was all decked out for “Shrimpfest.” The famous bard, James Buffay and his fans, the Shrimpheads were all lined up for all-you-can-eat shrimp. Hundreds of ships were parked everywhere, just crowds of people drooling for shrimp. But the halfling owner of the casino refused delivery. “My FUCKING cousin stole my magic ring and I don’t want his FUCKING SHRIMP!” was the direct quote. (There’s a bunch of backstory with the party having semi-colluded with the mafia boss’s friend who was escaping from this same casino leading up to a whole earlier shipboard murder mystery that we played through twice due to time travel.)

They couldn’t get the casino owner to sign for the shrimp (though he gave them a letter to deliver to his cousin) and he warned them against trying to sell the shrimp at shrimpfest, but the halfling mage had disappeared, and they did not like the prospect of hauling around 5 tons of spoiled shrimp.

So they loaded it all up into the shipboard catapult and launched free shrimp over everyone until it was all gone. BEST SHRIMPFEST EVER. It was an epic ending to the session, and one of my players commented “That is the most shrimp-centric session of D&D I have ever played.”

Schell Stereo Cabinet update

The Sony stereo receiver is conking out. The right channel is going all mucky. It’s 15 years old or so, so I guess it’s no surprise. Before I order a $150 unit off Amazon that I can’t really afford right now, maybe I’ll hit Goodwill and a pawn shop or two. Stereo units are hard to find in this brave new world of 2.1 and 5.2 and 7.2 and all kinds of surround sound. Two channels are enough for me, with A and B speakers for two rooms (I drilled holes through the wall and replaced the molding to put the wires in, I don’t give up easy!).

Waiting for Peri

Much as I have enjoyed the new Steven Universe Future and its rejection of the “happily ever after” narrative, I have mourned the lack of Peridot, my favorite Crystal Gem. Okay, not just my favorite, but the one I most identify with. If you take the Diamond Authority as a stand-in for patriarchy and its various follow-on oppressions, Peridot is the character we most see travel the arc from privileged enforcer to woke revolutionary. That’s where I want to get to.

One of the things I admire about Peri is her willingness to stay in the background. She can rise to leadership when called upon, though she is comically bad at it (she is no “the Garnet”). Mostly she stays out of the picture, growing her garden and supporting Lapis, but she’s always ready to step in when her skills are needed.

Of course, I can’t be a side character in my own life story, but I do think as a straight white cis man who is a home- and business-owner I have to work to not take up too much space, to find more background and support roles and let other people take leadership positions that have traditionally been reserved for people like me. It’s funny to see a goofy green cartoon as a role model, but there we are.

So while I wish Shelby Rabara were getting more screen time, I totally understand why she isn’t. Meanwhile it makes no sense that Connie is getting similarly sidelined, except that it probably points to something big yet to come. We don’t know how many episodes this “limited series” will have, but it’s not over yet.

Ununited Methodist Church

I was a Methodist from 1996-2006 or so. Back before any of the mainline denominations were really officially ordaining or marrying LGBTQ folx. We worked to try to change that, but conservatives poured a lot of money into changing the UMC from a social gospel church into something more authority-driven. Between those changes and generally having less and less interest in a literal god or constant re-interpretations of stories from thousands of years ago, we eventually left the denomination.

It was sad to see so many other denominations modernize and adapt and see the UMC stuck in a morass of bigotry. I know people who have stayed in that denomination, and I find it hard to understand why, just as I’ve always found it impossible to understand why a feminist would stay Catholic. Religion doesn’t exactly promote consistency, I guess.

Now it seems there is finally a plan to split. I am pleased that it is the bigots who have to walk away. It’s indicative of the change in our culture that theirs is the minority position overall. Of course, mainline Protesant denominations are bleeding membership anyway; whatever message they are conveying is not bringing new people to the pews.

Institutions tend to grind down individuals. That’s just the nature of large groups, I don’t think there’s a structural way around it. So maybe our religious tendencies should not be played out primarily in institutional settings. Jesus certainly never intended to set up an institution, and his teachings pretty well contradict any kind of institutional authority. But I guess we’ve learned precious little over the last two thousand years. Good thing Jesus isn’t really coming back or he’d be mighty disappointed. I think we’d all be going with the goats, considering his fabled bad temper.

Free to Be…

Elizabeth grew up with this record as a little girl. I never heard it till I was in high school–I think it was Suzanne who spearheaded its resurgence. I listened to it a lot as a teenager, and for a teenage to listen to a dumb kids’ album, it must have been revelatory. Gender roles were so pervasive growing up, and so corrupting to the soul. This album was such a weapon in the battle against patriarchy, conscripting children into the fight, using humor and logic and emotion and story and song.

Of course, it’s terribly dated now because it buys into the gender binary even as it blows up gender roles and gender expression. It’s a hand drill in an age of power tools. What is today’s Free to Be … You and Me? From my experience, I’d say it’s Steven Universe. All the humor and kindness, celebrity appearances, and catchy tunes, plus a deep story, great animation, and an expanded outlook, all in the service of recruiting people of all ages into the fight against conformity and oppression.

It’s amazing when deeply countercultural works can spread through networks that exist to support the status quo. Here’s to the miracle of Marlo Thomas and the miracle of Rebecca Sugar. Part of what I can do is listen and signal-boost positive messages. We haven’t reached that land where the children run free yet, but we’re still growing in our understanding of what that freedom looks like.

The Empire Strikes Back?

I was talking to my therapist last week about the sort of person I want to be. “Assertive rather than aggressive, with compassion toward other people.” And he noted that the big difference between being assertive and aggressive is emotion. That caring less about outcomes on a personal level will help me stay more in control of my behavior. To remember that concepts like fairness and justice are not the natural order of things; they’re human constructs, very delicate and fallible. As the Buddhists say, suffering is caused by attachment. And as I heard on a podcast this week, the Universe is a shithole. (If you were dropped anywhere in the Universe, even most places on this planet, you would die immediately. Very inhospitable.)

The thing Jedi training gets right (by swiping it from Buddhism, mostly) is that fighting out of anger (even righteous anger) is a recipe for losing. Killing out of hatred (even well-deserved hatred) poisons the one attempting to bring justice. Calmness and compassion are mandatory weapons to win any battle.

Why do I so easily jump to the conclusion that I’m being attacked? Partly, surely, because I was bullied a lot as a child. It’s late in the game, but I’m trying to retrain my brain not to immediately take that leap. So, yes, it’s a stupid kids’ franchise. But it’s also important for me to see Luke and Rey in that same struggle, training and working to control their emotions and open their minds to compassion while continuing to fight to make the world better.

Star Wars

Went to see the “last” Star Wars movie last night. I was expecting to be disappointed on the level of 11-year-old me on seeing Return of the Jedi. (It had some great space battles and a great Final Confrontation, but there were so many ham-handed elements that were less good than what my imagination could produce. Bikini Leia? Luke and Leia are twins as a cheap resolution to a love triangle? Another Death Star? Ewoks? We deserved better.)

It exceeded my low expectations. While the first half was kind of scattered all over the place, the end pulled it together enough to work for me. Ben got to have a change of heart without erasing all the damage he’d done and die not as a hero, but at least as an ally. Though the kiss was totally stupid. Rey got to be tempted by hatred and overcome it to find her own path. Fin got to stop being the doofus he’d become in the last movie, and Poe got to grow up more than Han ever did. And we got just enough Lando.

There were plot holes a-plenty (this is Star Wars, after all), and it suffered from wanting to out-do its predecessors in scope, but that all comes with the territory. The biggest missed opportunity (even bigger than the Stormpilot ship which Abrams aggressively batted down) was to bring balance to the Force. Lip service is always paid to “bringing balance to the Force,” but when it comes down to it, everything is painted a simplistic good and evil where of course good has to triumph in the end. This new trilogy has teased at the potential for the end of Jedi and Sith, and some kind of coming together of the dark and the light to form something more sustainable than constant war. I was left at the end with, “well that ended THAT episode, but it didn’t really solve anything.”

And I could do without anything being solved if the creators admitted that the conflict is never over, we have to keep working together bringing justice always, and the story never really has an end. But I guess that’s too much to expect from a juiced-up fairy tale. The whole meta-story of the saga is about creating something that becomes bigger than you ever imagined, trying to sustain it with total making-it-up-as-you-go seat-of-the-pants bullshittery (with mixed results) then bringing it back as a love letter to inhuman villainy, then having it taken over by a new generation and problematically redeemed in spite of itself with more total making-it-up-as-you-go seat-of-the-pants bullshittery (with mixed results). The cycle is complete, and I feel free to ignore the rest of the Extruded Disney Product on tap for the next 100 years.