Letter to the Homies about the Creator of the Game

Maybe you got to thinking, what are people saying about Demon City? You may then have found in a blog post or in a section of a wikipedia page or in a post on a subreddit something that disturbs.

A couple years ago, the creator of Demon City, his ex-wife accused him of being a terrible person. The theme was sex and coercion so the stakes were high.

If you had been involved in the hobby back then you might've been like:

• 1) oh no, what is going on?
• 2) oh yeah, proof of what i figured was going on 

2) boosted "this guy did terrible things". 1) did nothing and waited. And now: things are the way they are. It's a bad situation. 

What the ones who were waiting could have been waiting for --

• for the accusations to be contradicted by signed statements made by family members, close friends of the couple, a partner who lived with the couple, and a personal assistant who daily attended to the couple
• for an avowed internet troll involved in spreading the accusation as a form of harassment to be successfully sued for defamation, have to make a public apology, and pay out a fine 
• for dozens of influential people in the hobby who willfully lied about things and then participated in the dog-pile to get, over the course of the next couple years, cancelled for their own indiscretions
• for his ex-wife to perjure herself on the stand and be fired by her lawyer
• for another woman who accused him of doing terrible things to be successfully sued for defamation 
• for there to be records of harassment by those who boosted the accusation that are literally a decade long

All of which, by now, has happened.

Why the ones who figured terrible things were happening might’ve figured that:

This goes back I guess to when the hobby was a mysterious nerd thing, there wasn't yet real-time video of every kind of person playing it, or comedians using it as a vehicle for improv. Also involved was the kind of nerds who wanted to fix the hobby by making it nerdy in a more smart-ass way: hipsters, basically. 

The creator of Demon City, at the time, he had a show -- the first like it -- with his friends, where he ran Dungeons & Dragons for them, and they happened to be people of all kinds with tattoos and piercings and also they had jobs where they got naked. 

Anyways, because of that, the guy and his friends were in conflict with incel and hipster types who assumed sexy things in RPGs were either the result of or the cause of men being bad, and that the only reason to play or be interested in an older version of a game was either nostalgia or because you had serious personality flaws like racism, sexism, homophobia, et cetera. 

Aaaand it was years of the guy and his friends getting harassed. It never went away.

This is kind of a lot of game-blog lore for me

I mean yeah but the problem has been anything that supposedly substantiates the accusations is stuff on game blogs, which link to other game blogs for their sources, which end up linking to these incel-hipster type places where, it turns out, people have a lot in common by dint of avoiding questions and being willing to lie. 

So nobody working in good faith takes this stuff seriously. But for a while, nobody did anything to rectify the situation either. The result was that the scene around the hobby literally flatlined... 

Like I say -- bad situation. 

But don't take my word for it

You can at the link below read everything that was said in the accusations and how each thing is either contradicted by someone else who was there or otherwise falls apart. It's a lot of stuff but if you're unsure, it matters to look at the evidence. If theres any doubts you have, let's talk. 

link <----------------------

 

Problem Character Changelings or What to do when its your first time as Host and a Player wants to be a type of Problem Character that’s not in the game book

Say no

— unless they are cool and use she/fae pronouns and own a cool knife that looks like this:

— in which case you should come up with a Changeling-type Problem Character for them.

Charles Voss, Sandman #18

In the folklore Changelings are fairies masquerading as human babies. What happens to the baby that's replaced is nothing good -- something to build a Horror around.

So there's a crime... 

But How Can Fairies Be Horrifying?

I don't have the book in front of me but in A Red & Pleasant Land, there's a note about flavors of absurdity Alice in Wonderland figures can have for adventure role-playing. The gist I recall is

• purple cat talking nonsense: zany
• purple cat talking nonsense who you suspect has ulterior motives: creepy. 

In Pan's Labyrinth (2006), fairies are creepy. Because mundane human-engineered abominations are equally at the table, and the movie encourages the suspicion that one fictional moral universe contains both worlds, however real they are, however plausible that is. So we may be as nervous about Pan as we might be about any adult-sized stranger in a lawless place taking pains to be alone with a vulnerable child. 

A child entertaining obscure cloven benevolence isn't scary. A child in a war zone and unsure what's real is tense to observe but not Horror. Both true, both child the same child, they may start to color each other.

So -- fairies worked out from the Crime angle could be horrifying. If things are getting too High-Fantastical, I may try losing the plot in some mundane human-engineered abomination.

If obscure cloven benevolence seems cozy, I may want to focus on its cool detachment from the world the PCs act in -- a lack of discrimination. Like R&PL says for Alice in Wonderland roleplay, make the punishment never suits the offense. 

The difference though, between creepy unfair Humpty Dumpty judgement and creepy unfair fairy judgement may be that fairy judgement is old and we are separated from it by time as like a memory. There are laws. But the codices are lost to us and the courts are long out of session. 

The Rules

To start 

• PCs starting as a Changeling are in the process of realizing they are one.
  
  Calm is 0 and the PC is as if randomly Garbled
  
  (50-50 when they speak to a new NPC that they can be well understood -- the PC should know this is a possibility but the throw itself should be secret)
  
  until they steal an object that is precious to someone that if lost would cause that person to despair
  
  (an engagement ring, a child's pet, candy from a baby, etc.)
  
  Will lose 1 Toughness a day until they steal that kind of thing
  
  Cannot activate any supernatural abilities until they steal that kind of thing

Supernatural Abilities

• Regain Toughness only by stealing precious things.
• Precognitive Dreams - visions, gets to see associated cards from the Horror's deck
• Weakness to Iron - iron will harm the Fae as easily as it would a human
• Invulnerability - cannot be reduced below 0 Toughness by ordinary means
• Sense Despair
• Hoard - stolen precious things must be kept in a Hoard. Items removed from the Hoard will damage the PC, treat each removed item as one normal attack.

Fae Form

• size of a child, fur or feathers, enormous cat's-eyes, huge mouth, can speak without moving lips, weird pointed baby teeth, (cute or cartoon aspects are disturbing in the right light) throw calm checks around it
• selective invisibility: as a spell can become invisible to all but the wicked or the pure of heart
• any other acquired supernatural abilities (see downtime)

Downtime

• 1-40 Toughness +1. This benefit can be gained twice, Max 6. After that, no ability is gained on this Throw.
• 41-61 Perception +1. This benefit can be gained 3 times, Max 6. After that, no ability is gained on this Throw.
• 72-82 Appeal +1. This benefit can be gained twice, Max 6. After that, no ability is gained on this Throw.
• 83-94 Agility +1. This benefit can be gained 5 times, Max 7. After that, no ability is gained on this Throw.
• 95 Gain the ability to Lie as the necromantic spell, at an Intensity equal to Appeal. When used, the changeling must check Calm vs an Intensity of 6 or lose a point of Calm. If this is thrown a second time, no ability is gained.
• 96-00 Results in no ability being gained unless all other abilities on the table have been gained up to the maximum benefit. If they are, then:
• 96, 97 Gain the ability to Curse (as a spell, PC can throw on the Curses table in the back of the book). When used the changeling must check Calm vs an Intensity of 6 or lose a point of Calm. The changeling's maximum number of Cursed individuals is equal to their Calm. If this is thrown a second time, no ability is gained.
• 98 Animal Enslavement ability. The changeling must check Calm vs the creature’s Appeal to use this ability or lose a point of Calm.
• 99 Shadow Movement. The changeling must check Calm vs an Intensity of 6 or lose a point of Calm when using this ability. If this is thrown a second time, no ability is gained.
• 100 Transformation. The changeling must check Calm vs an Intensity of 6 or lose a point of Calm when using this ability. If this is thrown a second time, no ability is gained.

Mike Mignola, The Chained Coffin