It’s a Gas

What did ’60s people mean by “it’s a gas”?  Something like “it blows my mind, it’s trippy, it’s exciting,” I think.  Wasn’t there.  Were they thinking of inhalants, huffing gas fumes?  Or laughing gas, at the dentist’s office?  Probably the latter.  Wait, no, maybe it was just about the fuel to make a hot rod go – mostly about the excitement.

Whatever the answer, life is a gas, and it blows my mind, and it’s trippy, and exciting.  Too much of the last one, unfortunately, but one can abide.  I think of the laughing gas.  I laugh under stress sometimes, like when I was a six year old shepherd in a school play and lost it completely, or when I annoyed my husband by weirding out at the hospital.

I remember when my homeboy was trying to go on a road trip, with me and my brother, and his car gave up the ghost at freeway speed.  We were slumping to a stop while a chu-chunk sound played to the tune of “when johnny comes marching home again.”  I started laughing.  I remember when we did manage to actually undertake that road trip, and a map put us on something one would barely consider a road, with giant chunks missing and boulders in the way, in the rain in the middle of the night.  The gas tank had a “remaining miles” display which was ticking down from two to one to zero super slowly as we struggled up a gradual incline that never seemed to end.  Inappropriate jokes, stifled laughs.

We finally crested that hill as dawn broke and the remaining miles jumped up to ten, gravity helping us out.  I hope we all crest this hill together, and in the meantime, I hope my coping mechanisms don’t get too annoying.

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Pitfalls of RP: A Fistful of Eastwoods

I actually wrote this ages ago, just finishing the last bit and posting it because I have nothing else at the moment, going bonkers working on everything.  So tired and wired and yarded out…  Anyway, classic flavor me.  Enjoy.

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What happens when a tough cool guy that don’t take no guff meets another tough cool guy that don’t take no guff, and one of them gives the other one guff?  Something that is not cool, guy.  Something like the opposite of fun.

In real life, we often have to accept affronts to our dignity, minor and major, in order to avoid destructive conflicts.  So when we play RPGs – when we create a cool character to identify with – many people want their character to be a badass punk who takes no shit.  The problem is that an RPG is not a truly consequence-free environment.  Yes, you won’t necessarily die or end up unemployed or jailed if your character insults the wrong person.  But you can ruin everyone’s fun – including your own – and harm real life relationships.  RPGs are collaborative entertainment.  Your fun should not detract from that of others.

And this becomes much worse when more than one player is a hardcase.  Any disagreement can grind the game to a halt or destroy it altogether, if neither character is willing to back down or even disagree with civility.  It also serves no purpose dramatically.

When you see a character of this type in a movie, they get away with it because the Universe created by the writers is full of unreasonable people who can be put in their place verbally by the Eastwood type and his snappy comeback.  When two PCs draw swords or break up the adventuring party over a trivial matter, what does that mean, from a literary or dramatic standpoint?  Only one thing: both characters are assholes.

Neither of them can be the wisecracking guy who just keeps it real in a world of weak-willed phonies.  It was a questionable aspiration in the first place, dependent on all other PCs and NPCs to support the idea by diminishing themselves.  And once it’s put to the test, the illusion shatters.

Think about it.  Very rarely is there more than one Eastwood type per movie.  Recall times when it’s been attempted and how that went.  I haven’t seen The Expendables or its sequels.  But I can remember some cringe-worthy writing when this is the idea.  When the writer wants both of the show’s heroes to be unstoppable badasses, some plot contrivance must keep their rivalry forever unresolved.  Badass Cop One is arguing with Badass Cop Two, when their fight is interrupted by the Hardcase Police Chief, and so on.  The best way to keep this from going sour is to write both characters with a reasonable limit to their ego.

A variation on this is the snarker whose feelings are easily hurt by snark.  One of my best players had this problem to some extent in real life and imported it into (and even exaggerated it in) their characters.  I think they’re from a culture where everyone insults everyone else constantly, and they all imagine everyone’s cool with it, but inside of human heads, that culture has produced a jacked up pile of sad.  But my sample size is one, so maybe it’s just them.

The following list of traits are not necessarily bad traits in any given character, if you take off the “never” and “always” from them…  Eastwoods never take guff, always get the last word, never stop fighting, never submit, and are never afraid.  They always have someone to blame for any plot occurrence which was on any level humbling, and are aeternally spiteful about it.  They dish but they can’t take.

Anyway, this kind of shit is why I do not miss GameMastering.  I do not have to collaborate with bad writers to make my story happen.  Eastwoods, yer attitude bores the hell out of me.  It’s so played out.  Noli me tangere.

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