My Knee vs. Drama(System): A Guest Post

A GUEST POST FROM MY WIFE SHERRI...

I fear drama.

I don't mean the extra-exclamation-points-to-make-my-life-seem-more-interesting-than-it-is drama that floods the social media landscape. That'd be like being afraid of professional wrestling or book clubs.

No, apparently I fear drama as a game concept, specifically as a game concept finally possessed of cohesive and workable mechanics thanks to Robin Laws and his DramaSystem. I can't get any more specific about this fear—I just know the fear is there because I keep trying to come up with reasons that the DramaSystem won't work at the table.

I know the signs of a knee-jerk reaction—the dismissal, the sneer, the desire to gather together the “everyone else” who must certainly agree, the ever-so-convenient definition of a “real” game that just happens to fit one's own safe place. And the number one sign that some part of me is panicking: I simply have an incredibly difficult time getting the nuances of how it works. I keep returning to the familiar models, trying to shove DramaSystem onto them and saying, “See? See?! It's not working.”

I'm smarter than that. I mean, clearly I'm not BRAVER than that—but I'm smarter than that. My brainy brains, however, are not half so good at pinning down why I vacillate between fight and flight as they keep me just aware enough of my knee-jerkiness to feel great shame.

This might not be a huge dilemma if I lived in uncontested territory.  I could ignore the scary idea that’s out there, cling to the familiar and, if so inclined, shout out passive-aggressively engineered insults to those who refuse to chain themselves to the same rock.  But the thing is, I’ve already tramped off into the lands of narrative gaming, ignoring the shouts echoing from the valleys and mountaintops “I’m only an expert on what I like, but that seems like gamism,” “Player control is coddling!,” “Real gamers love TPKs,” “I own guns and that’s not how they workkkkkkkkkkkkkk!”

I understand the shouts.  I was there once and sometimes I circle back.  Some days I’ll give credibility to the idea that what is familiar and habitual is ‘natural’—but I have learned and relearned that other systems and mechanics quickly become just as familiar and habitual.  I like dice and complex mechanics and randomness deciding the outcomes—it is fair, right?  But I’ve played with newbies and realized that my expertise gave me a huge advantage, and that the mechanics themselves shaped the type and pace of the game. And simulationist thinking….gods, it creeps back up on me all the freaking time.  My brain knows all of that is self-protective thinking—designed to maintain my sense of expertise and my comfort and to enforce the level of trust I feel inclined to offer.  I KNOW this. Still, my knee gets a word in edgewise on occasion.

At least self-protective thinking doesn’t slide by for long; I’m not alone in choosing my game path.  My husband is there too—and he’s thinking about games a lot harder than I am most of the time.  That’s good.  He’s one of my GMs.  I like brilliant GMs.  They can keep up with me and my brainy brains and my speedy knee of ultimate jerkitude.   And my husband, he is not about to let me count myself out of the fun.  I could pretend there’s some tough love routine that goes on– but actually, he can pull me along pretty easily just by dangling a game planning discussion in front of me.  

In fact, it was a brainstorming lunch that revealed to me the sheer bulk and dangerous nature of this invisible new foe called DramaSystem.  My husband was trying to come up with a playable idea for a Christmas-themed DramaSystem Series Pitch.  We met with the agenda of just tossing some ideas out there.  Brainstorming can be a difficult dance—it’s about generating ideas with the critic turned off, certainly, but there has to be at least a germ of a functional idea in there.  He started out with an ancient struggle to define the rituals that would shape modern Christmas—my eyes glazed over; I recognized it was a BIG idea but I couldn’t see the hook.  That’s standard with brainstorming—lots of themes with still-unarticulated handles for the PCs.  I’m cool with it. 

We went back and forth a while—he’d shake his head at my ideas: “Too procedural.  There needs to be drama between the player roles.”  What?  But I don’t get what’s going to happen in any of his.  They all sound concept-y but…not sure what you’d be doing.  Ok.  Ok.  Ummm.   How about there’s a time-travelling organization—but they can only insert themselves into a time-frame on Christmas Eve and have to return before the end of Christmas Day?  I like this one.  I’m expecting at least a nod.  And again, he says, "Too procedural.  The game would center on the goals of the time-travel, not on the drama between the players." 

“So a Christmas soap opera?”  I wince when I hear the tone of voice that comes out in.

“Yes.  No.  Each player has an agenda, things are happening—but the system is not focused on competencies for completing those activities, it’s about negotiating advantage from the outcome of those activities and negotiating which things are even undertaken. It’s…”

“So…the player is not doing …things?”  My brain reeled—and that’s when the knee was free to grow in power, in this instance like the Grinch’s heart expanding three sizes.

Now, the rest of the lunch I remember primarily as a struggle to smile and somehow keep the knee under control.  I remember my husband realizing where I’d missed the point and backtracking.  He carefully spelled out the difference between resolution systems (what I mistook DramaSystem for—just another narrative resolution system) and a campaign framework. Essentially, while DramaSystem could be bolted on to a procedural framework for the purposes of resolving negotiations, it actually was designed specifically to allow campaigns that were about power struggles and, well, drama—but character-driven drama as opposed to situational drama.  Instead of tension mounting as we fought wave after wave of goblins and we finally feared for our lives as the last hit points were reached, the tension would be about how we faced the goblins, what we chose to defend most diligently from the goblins and how we negotiated with the goblins if we couldn’t slaughter them -- all hard decisions made in order to preserve what was important to us.  It was Game of Thrones as opposed to a monster-of-the-week show.  And the resolution system within Drama System could be used for social dynamics AND the success of procedural actions as well.

My husband believes.  He really does.  He’s ready to get started.

And I find that I tell myself I want to preserve that procedural nature of the games.  But really, deep down, what I want to keep is my comfort level and my expertise and, most of all, the cherished notion that I can deliver a win-win solution to any problem presented in game if only I am clever enough.

With DramaSystem, I’d have to choose. 

Maybe that’s it. 

Or maybe it’s that, with DramaSystem, I’d have to give up the last vestiges of my Mary Sue leanings. 

Or maybe it’s that Drama like that is my enemy at work—that I work constantly to defuse the emotional responses and territorial behavior in order to define the actual project needs requirements.   Maybe Drama generated by what I perceive as selfishness just happens to be the Enemy in so many parts of my life.  I like this explanation—it sounds semi-heroic.

Maybe it’s that the game table is the one place where I can wrangle an illusion of consensus.

Maybe DramaSystem is a threat to those all these things that I hold dear. 

My knee thinks so. 

My husband disagrees.

My brain is not helpful.

I predict an epic battle.

Guest Post: The Best Thing to Happen to RPGs

A couple of friends in my gaming circle generously offered guest posts for this month, to help me round out the year with some different voices and ideas. Today's post comes from Sherri Stewart, my wife and fellow gamer. She brings a different set of tools to thinking about games- as a woman and as a DBA. In discussions about rpgs she inevitably manages to clarify my thoughts about rpgs or turn me towards something I hadn't considered before.

The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Tabletop RPGs

MMORPGs.

What was not to like? Online RPGs had it all:
*...continuous incremental reinforcement and accrual
*...instant calculation of complicated “simulation” formulas
*...loot and quests and and tons of content—always something new and always something for any mood—player's choice
*...constant reassessment of class balance and additional skill improvements. No one strives harder for “fair” than the MMORPG designers
*...whatever versions of “social” worked for each player—be it guild leadership/politics, anonymous assholery & griefing or just chatting with acquaintances on a friends list
*...visual reinforcement of player achievements
*...strategic planning with others for epic battles—cooperative play that required strict roles and orderly implementation of a plan
24/7

Everquest took the first toll at our table—and World of Warcraft stole away a lot of the fence-sitters. Once the dust cleared after all the desertions, things looked different. And with every passing day, they look better.

We seem to have permanently lost a few players—most were problematic--needy for the constant continuous reinforcement or to have the content revolve around their whims. MMORPGS really were a better fit for them than tabletop.

A few players who left later returned. Some people, even among the tabletop stalwarts, still play MMORPGs. There's plenty to like there. But when they sit down now, they know better why they are there. Appreciation for the games is at an all-time high.

And we've gotten some new players—wives & sisters & friends of friends who would never have considered sitting down at table if they hadn't gotten sucked into the MMORPGs; these 'novices' come to the table with a vocabulary of strategic cooperative battle and the desire for something ...more.

These things are merely anecdotal evidence. Still, when I look around the table and I see how much things have changed, I'm amazed. There is more to it than just the passing years. I imagine these phenomena have occurred elsewhere. Certainly, the RPG industry seems to have changed. To my eyes, RPG designers began thinking harder about why people were at the table—or maybe just the RPG communities did- paying increased attention to products that delivered that 'something more' and thinking hard about what did make the hobby fun.

I haven't seen a lot of discussion of the MMORPGs in the RPG community– what I have stumbled across treats MMORPG players as an entirely separate customer base or hobby community. But they're not. MMORPG players are RPG players—past, present and future.

What the industry response has been, whether a direct response to MMORPGs or not, is a boatload of really amazing and satisfying RPG material and some interesting back and forth about what RPGs really are.

In the last few years, we've seen some the corporate RPG houses take a distinctly business-like tact. The Old School community, on the other hand, is keeping their chin up and throwing some punches (and a lot of insults). Indie gaming has deployed their agents to every lecture hall, three-ring circus and performance art venue in the industrialized world. Different responses, each of them—but ones that each distill a distinct set of essences from the RPG paradigm and proffer it as the 'more' that fills the MMORPG voids.

It's The Real Thing
Some MMORPG players came out of those games expecting 'fair and balanced' systems of some complexity, lots of skill options, strong roles with important duties assigned to each role, and constant updates. If they came back to RPGs, they came back because they wanted more of the same at a slower pace and in a less-populated (and possibly as less-competitive) setting. Corporate RPGs sensibly filled that need. It was an established (and large) consumer base—why ignore it?

THE Corporate RPG, D&D 4e, opted for video-game simulation. Weird, huh? It's popular with the kids after all. And they're right. A great deal of what drew tabletop players to MMORPGs is in 4e. What's the difference? It's much slower. It's not 24/7. Players get all the crunch, but don't need the reflexes or the attention span or the patience for organizing a guild raid. And no one can get ahead by playing more hours. The balance, the strict roles and the constant changes/improvements...nerfs?...to each class—as well as a ton of mechanics to allow players to leverage their every experience point—still gleam with promise. But the pace is so much nicer. And 4e has all the usual tabletop charm—socializing, a little story, a character to call your own. Like all the best-known brands, it's got a comfortable universality too—lots of other people are playing it.

Now I'm also going to categorize Paizo's Pathfinder as corporate. Don't hate me. I know they're not WOTC. But they took the old corporate package, cleaned it up, tied a bow on it and taught the RPG community all over again about what's important to have from a corporate RPG system: good packaging, familiar system, large user base, steady stream of new product including new options & modules, and the ability to maintain a semblance of concern for customer feedback. They share the same feature list as 4e for post-MMORPG appeal. Just by virtue of not being entirely new (because we all know it's 3.5 in a better tailored suit), they've acquired a thin coat of attractive sepia-toned nostalgic lacquer that the the Old School revolution claims as their own.

Of course, not all corporate RPG designers joined the revolution. GURPS, for example, is still the same old attempt at a blow-by-blow simulation of everything under the sun. It has it's niche and it's loyal players and those don't seem to be going away—but GURPS hasn't changed nor has it's community. White Wolf blew it's setting up and rebooted with more mechanics on top of their old system—and while a few of the new lines were strong, they lost a lot of their loyal fans by changing their heavy hitters. They seem to be responding more to changes in the publishing industry than to changes in the RPG community. Plenty of other true-to their-tradition RPGs are still out there treading water.

And while neither exactly traditional or corporate, D20 did manage to become the Linux of the RPG world; it inspired a bunch of DIYers by giving them an open-source version of a less-than-cutting-edge system. It's had it's heyday—but the overwhelming number of mediocre products undermined it's credibility. If it tapped into anything that resonated with the post-MMORPG crowd, it was the joy of creating—but this was at the level of the publication and not a process that occurred at the table. Some interesting content was created—and some of the best thinkers about that system (or minor variations thereof) put together very good materials. Mutants and Masterminds remains the greatest standout for me—one of the best superhero systems yet made. But I don't see it or any of the other d20 products/offshoots as being a response to MMORPGs. It was more a reaction to the idea of open-source than to MMORPGs.

Nostalgia Makes Everything Prettier
The Old School community responded to MMORPGs by digging their heels in. They knew what was good—and if you couldn't see the charm of the Old School RPG, you weren't right in the head or one of the club or something. And they were correct enough. No MMORPG offers the experience of the Old School canon (or their new stuff). And curiosity has a purpose.

The Old School movement maintains that the charm of RPGs lies in the very quirkiness of the old mechanics and settings and the shared experience of playing those modules. Balance be damned. This is about gaming history and the fun of mining a pre-designed setting and doing it by the book. These are the champions of the funhouse dungeons and the Runes of Death. And, frankly, it's the province of something that MMORPGs are definitely not—this is where heroes, loners and munchkins all bow to the inscrutable failure. Old School knows the dice will kill you—and if they don't, a single bad choice can. Did you look in the chest? You die! Or are possessed! Or find the key that you absolutely need to leave the dungeon! And there were no hints! Okay—maybe it's not all like that. But it's there. Sometimes it's about 'rolling a character'-- where there are clearly better and worse options—and you are stuck with what you roll. The sickly, ugly, unskilled beggar and the handsome, well-trained noble start out in the same group—and, yes, the beggar is truly a wretch in all ways—no hidden talents or secret organizations...

And the fun of it is that every group who plays the module or the setting has to survive the same hazards. Failure is okay. It doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't get you kicked out of the guild. After each untimely death, you just roll up a new character and get back in there. Who knows, maybe this time you'll be to be a pit fighter or a circus acrobat. And hopefully you laugh a lot and rejoice in your hard-won triumphs. That idea is pretty gorgeous.

It also stinks of old-timey fun that isn't always all that fun. Like a croquet game in whites on a too-hot summer day, the stories afterward may sound intriguing and a little romantic. But if you are truthful, the pleasure of the game was 9/10s the company you were in and only 1/10 the game and the costumes and the setting. Still, there's value in re-visiting the old stuff—there were snatches of brilliance. And the ability to laugh off a horrendous outcome for a fictional character that you enjoyed playing is invaluable to enjoying all the rest of your RPG years. So if I'm not convinced that nostalgia is actually the response to MMORPGs that fills any need except for the wish to draw a line in the sand and establish us/them on experiential grounds and bragging rights, well, that's probably because I don't have a great many fond Old School memories. Maybe I didn't play the right Old School game.

There! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's ...
An Indie game? Hoo boy. Here's where the theorists are at work. It's a feast, if you're in to that sort of thing..and by that sort of thing, I mean any sort of thing. There's an Indie game that's just as in to that sort of thing as you are. The ones that seem to me to have gained currency due to the MMORPGs involve a few core concepts: 'the RP stands for roleplay', genre simulation, shared creation and increased player control. There's too many to even get close to listing all the note-worthies—so I'm going to point to a few examples.

I tie these to MMORPGs because they are exactly what no MMORPG can give anyone in satisfying measure. A MMORPG player is an insect in swarm—a well-served insect, but still, a mere insect. Sometimes the MMORPGs come up with some system to respond to the behavior of the swarm in a permanent and world-changing way—but a single gnat never makes a difference. And there is no roleplay—you can blather all day in your character's 'voice' but you can't really do anything outside fighting/crafting/questing/sightseeing the same things everyone else can and does fight/craft/quest/sightsee.. And no amount of creativity will allow you to turn WoW into a shared spy caper. You can't trump the random-number generator of the MMORPG engine no matter how important the situation is to you. You can't make up your own city and have any meaningful content there.

And here's the thing. RPGs are a form of creative play. There's the creation and acting out of a character. There's a story that is being told—but who's telling it and how that's arbitrated decides what's getting told and how. There's a setting and a reason the group is in the same place—maybe that's decided by genre, maybe by the GM or maybe by the players. MMORPG players have got their constant continuous reinforcement—but that doesn't mean they have found satisfaction. They come away from the swarm wanting experiences that are unique, stories that they can get involved in right away, characters free to do what makes sense...and they want to have some control when the random number generator betrays them. After years of grinding their characters up to max level, they've been rewarded with ...the opportunity for more grinding? No—there must be somewhere their devotion pays off.

This is not to say that corporate RPGs or Old School RPGs don't have anything for some of these issues—but the majority of those systems consist primarily of extensive mechanics for skirmish. The roots of war-gaming is apparent. And so, if the antidote for a malaise borne of hacking your way through a dungeon online is to hack your way through some other whatsit at the table at a slower pace and with fewer people, then you're definitely okay with one of the above. But it might be time for something a little different.

What about horror? Don't Rest Your Head
What about hard-boiled action? Hollowpoint
What about dark comedy? Fiasco
What about drama? Dogs In The Vineyard

What's interesting is that these are NOT just setting books plunked on top of a system...these are games that build the genre conventions into the mechanics. The games are engineered to deliver the mounting suspense and the inevitable (and often tragic) endings of their genre—and to do it fairly, logically, evenhandedly and ruthlessly. These are genre simulations. First time players are going to come out of these games amazed at what has just happened that they willingly helped happen.

It doesn't take a degree in Drama Engineering to make an RPG that can simulate a genre. The time-honored method of using a good rules engine and altering it to fit a genre lives on. The trick is to choose a rules engine that features some of the desired qualities. FATE gives the player quick access to an interesting playable character and control when the dice play hard-ball—and the system has been beautifully adapted to a range of genres. For instance, Diaspora, a FATE adaptation for sci-fi gaming features player-created clusters that serve as the home base for the players, mini-games for different conflict types and an array of interesting ways to use the simple FATE mechanics to drive dramatic scenes—ways available to both GM and players. A FATE adaptation of Kerberos Club actually delivers a surprising amount of the Steampunk you may have been wishing for and never finding elsewhere. GUMSHOE was built for investigative games and has been adapted to multiple genres--and it has able handlers in Robin Laws and Ken Hite. Burning Wheel has a couple variations—including it's own strange fantasy setting and Mouse Guard (which is one gorgeous RPG book)--and it has a unique method of sharing control between GM and player that may be exceedingly palatable to players coming from the absolute GM-control world—Burning Wheel is not at all loosey-goosey.

There is no game that more clearly reveals the honest pleasure of shared creation than Microscope. Further validation of the players' efforts by incorporating the results in a standard RPG campaign just keeps the good feelings rolling. The game itself is simple enough that people want to argue that it's hardly revolutionary—but they are crazy-wrong. Try it. Play it with people you've known for years—especially ones you think you know backwards and forwards. Play it with mere acquaintances. You will come out of the experience with a completely new appreciation of your gaming circle. They're brilliant people, it turns out. At least, I hope for you it turns out that way.

And then there are the Indie games that put the roleplay back into RPG. I do think these are the ones the haters are most afraid of. Kagematsu is certainly a fearsome beast—and Love in the Time of Seid is not for the faint of heart. But dang, even if I never get to play these games, I need to be thinking about these types of games and surrounding myself with people who would play these games so that I can remember that roleplay is more than funny voices and awkward explanations when you choose to do something suboptimal. Because if I want to be heroic, I've got to learn to risk being foolish or tragically wrong...

So I wrote this.

Next year: more games, more risks.

Guest Post: Two Influences on my Gaming Life

A couple of friends in my gaming circle generously offered guest posts for this month, to help me round out the year with some different voices and ideas. Today's post comes from Steve Sigety, who blogs at Kaijuville. Steve and I have played together since- I think- the mid '90's. He's run Call of Cthulhu & AFMBE for me, and I've run CoC, GURPS, M&M, d20 and our homebrew for him.

Two Influences on my Gaming Life

Like most people I'm a product of my influences, and that is particularly true of my gaming hobby, whether it means video games, board gaming or tabletop role-playing games. The experiences I've had with elements of popular culture have affected how I play and run RPGs. These various cultural properties have taught me many lessons, and represent many different attributes. In this post, I'll discuss what a novel and a television series taught me about gaming.

If you delve deeply into Robert E. Howard fandom, eventually you will encounter the arguments about L. Sprague de Camp and his role as editor in charge of Conan and other Howard characters and stories. While I understand the fervor -- and when looking at his role in changing and adapting stories in order to gain ownership, I agree with the reasons -- it has to be acknowledged that de Camp played a vital role in popularizing Howard's work in the mainstream of popular culture. One reason that I will give de Camp a pass on this score that he is partially responsible for one of my favorite books, Conan the Conqueror.

Howard didn't necessarily plan to write a Conan novel. Initially, he has submitted some short stories to a British book publisher. Denis Archer returned the stories because the British market wasn't at that time conducive to a collection of short stories, but if he had a novel... After reading that letter, Howard went to work on a manuscript. Archer went out of business before Howard could send it, and it was later printed serially in the pages of Weird Tales from December of 1935 to April 1936 as "The Hour of the Dragon". Published as a novel by Gnome Press in 1950 under the title Conan the Conqueror, it later became part of the Conan series of paperbacks edited by de Camp, starting with Lancer in 1967 through to Ace in the 1980s.

It wasn't until the Berkley Putnam edition of The Hour of the Dragon, shepherded by fantasy author Karl Edward Wagner in 1976, that Howard's version from Weird Tales saw print as a novel. This or the recent Wandering Star/Del Rey edition are the preferred texts, but I can't help but have a special spot in my heart for the Ace paperback. It became one of my favorite books growing up -- I'm fairly certain that I picked it up from among the shelves of books with similar Frazetta covers at the Waldenbooks on the second floor of the local (now demolished) mall. The paperback is comfortable and fun to read -- each page is jammed from header to footer with text but it never seems crowded. The font appears to be plain Times Roman, although a little more rounded and easy on the eyes. I've put books back on the shelf because of an uncomfortable text font. This paperback just seems like the perfect way to read pulp fiction.

A frequent criticism of Conqueror is that it's too derivative. It used the basic plot and some scenes from "The Scarlet Citadel" and ideas from "The Phoenix on the Sword", two early Conan tales. Certainly if an idea is successful once, Howard might use it again in his work. It also seems fair to think that Conan would have faced multiple challenges to his throne. Another criticism is that it's too episodic. While that may be a valid observation, I think it's one of the novel's strengths. This isn't a book full of meaningless dialogue and scenes where nothing of consequence occurs. Leave that for the multi-volume fantasy epics. This book moves. Things happen, and they're directly related to the plot. Al Harron recently discussed some of the plot elements of The Hour of the Dragon on his blog, specifically the motivations of the characters involved in the betrayal. Those were some points that I didn't really think about before.

Conan the Conqueror taught me several lessons about gaming, one of the first being about the episodic nature of events in a campaign game. I frequently try to plan and pace my games with a TV or movie feel, and thinking of each session as a TV episode can help. The scenes in Conqueror feel like different sessions of an RPG. Each separate scene could be fleshed out as a short story, but here they all tie together into the events of the novel. Another point is that the scenes are distinctive and the atmosphere is visceral. The Ace paperback was without illustrations, but they were unnecessary. From Howard's descriptions I can clearly visualize the back-alleys of Tarantia, the hills of Poitain, and the haunted catacombs of the vampire Akivasha under the pyramids of Stygia. The descriptions vividly brought these places to life for me. Finally, this was one of the first books outside of Dungeons & Dragons where I discovered vocabulary words like hauberk, cuirass, poignard, and burgonet. The only other work of popular culture that did more for my vocabulary was the Fantastic Four.

"Risk is our business! That's what the starship is all about!" -- Captain James T. Kirk

As someone who grew up in the late 70s and early 80s, I'm part of the Star Wars generation. I like Star Wars but I've always considered myself more of a Star Trek fan. As early as I can remember, my family and I would watch the syndicated reruns of the original series on TV.

Maybe it's because of my love of history, and Star Trek portrayed "future history". The crew of the Enterprise were real people, (mostly) from Earth, just like us. There was a chance that humanity would make it out of the 20th century and into a future of space travel, exploration, and contact with new life and new civilizations. Despite the dangers being faced, Star Trek shows us an optimistic vision of our possible future.

What Star Trek taught me, with respect to RPGs, was optimism in the face of danger and the value of cooperation. Those could be life lessons as well. It portrayed a future where competent professionals went about their business, doing what they do best, together as a team where each member had value as a person and skills that were valued. They were judged on their expertise and not who they were or what they looked like. The Medusan ambassador Kollos in "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" is from an alien species that is so mind-bendingly different in appearance that humans cannot look at them directly without going insane (a very Lovecraftian idea).

One of the best and most obvious instances of this philosophy occurred in the 3rd season episode "The Savage Curtain". After the alien "Abraham Lincoln" is beamed aboard the Enterprise there is this exchange between Lincoln and Lt. Uhura:

"What a charming Negress. Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know that in my time some used that term as a description of property."

"But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, in our century we've learned not to fear words."

Even though there are moments where it flared up again, at least in most of the Original Series prejudice is a thing of the past.

It is also worth mentioning that Star Trek was among the first dramatic TV series to have B-plots that directly impact the A-plot. S. John Ross referred to this in the Star Trek Original Series RPG Narrator's Guide and Ken Hite has mentioned it when discussing Star Trek in interviews. Will the crew discover the vaccine for the aging virus in time to re-start the engines before they spiral down into the planet's atmosphere? That's a great multiple-plot race-against-time trope of the sort you might see in an RPG scenario.

These are two pop culture influences on my gaming life that immediately came to mind. Others would include H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, giant monster movies, Star Wars and many more. What are your influences and how do they manifest themselves in your gaming today?