Tag: Jason Cordova

Look at these shitty, hand-drawn checkboxes. smh Grant Howitt

We haven’t had just a straight-up discussion post in awhile.

We have straight male players in The Gauntlet (they shall remain nameless) who have expressed discomfort playing gay male characters. Mostly, I just roll my eyes and get on with things, rather than point out that “Just because you’re playing a gay character, doesn’t mean you are gay.”

As a gay man, I should probably be offended, but I take comfort in the fact that most everyone else at the table finds their position embarrassing. The part that bothers me more is that their choice is often contra to the needs of the story being told. We recently played Fiasco, for example, and one of the relationship ties between Character X and Character Y was “a forbidden love affair” (or something like that), and up until that point, Character X and Character Y were men. Once that relationship tie got added, it suddenly became of paramount importance to change the gender of one of the characters to female, even though doing so made the story about 100 times less interesting (note: I’m sure there were ways to make the story more interesting with the character’s gender swapped, but the players in our case failed to do so).

Another thing that happens in The Gauntlet (I’m embarrassed to say) is discomfort by certain male players at having their character be the object of affection of a character played by another male player, regardless of the gender or sexual preference of the characters involved. It’s a wrinkle on the above problem, but many of the same issues are involved. 

I’m curious where people stand on this. Should we always be allowed to just play the character we are more comfortable with? The specific case of feeling discomfort playing gay characters is almost the textbook definition of homophobia, but should we give people a pass in roleplaying games, since the experience is more immersive/personal? 

Thoughts? 

A little off-topic, but I have never read any of the stories and books that concern themselves with the Cthulhu Mythos. My knowledge of it comes almost entirely from games (CoC, Arkham Horror, and so forth). If I wanted to dive into reading some of the Mythos authors, where should I start? Keep in mind, I have actually read a little bit of H.P. Lovecraft and found it to be a bit dry. I’m open to trying him again, but I know there are authors who came after him who might be better choice. 

Thoughts? 

Yesterday, Doyle ran Call of Cthulhu for us using the Delta Green setting. Listeners of the podcast will know that the premise of our show is more or less an exploration of how deeply we dislike Call of Cthulhu, and so it may seem odd we found ourselves playing it this week.

With that said, it was definitely fun, but that fun had almost nothing to do with the mechanics of Call of Cthulhu. Doyle is a good GM, and the story being told was an interesting one, but whenever we rolled the dice, it felt like we were doing so out of some sort of ritual obligation. Because whenever Task X needed to happen, at least one of us at the table had a high enough skill to pass the check to ensure it happened. In other words, no matter what, we were progressing along in the story. There is another game that does that same thing, but in a much cleaner and more satisfying way: Cthulhu Dark.

But like I said, the story was pretty good, and it was an interesting change of pace to engage in a detailed, forensic-style investigation, which is something we don’t often do in The Gauntlet. Doyle expressed some disappointment that the experience wasn’t scarier, but I would argue that that’s almost impossible to achieve with six players at the table. 

Thanks to Doyle Tavener for running the game, and to everyone else for coming out: Daniel Lewis Steve Mains Ferrell Riley Jeff Burke and Hunter!

We kicked off A Red & Pleasant Summer last night with a big group of happy Dungeon World players. 

Thanks to David LaFreniere for running the other table, and to everyone else who came out: Scott Owen Kristen D Jorge Salazar Russell Benner Kyle Kowalski Stephanie Daniel Fowler Kyle McCauley Ferrell Riley Marcus Centurian and Jeff Burke!