Making the Right Statement with Art

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Black Lives Matter.

Get involved wherever and however you can to help support people fighting oppression and pushing for societal reform. Visit the official Black Lives Matter homepage, donate to the bail funds, donate to the street medics, but also look to the Black voices in your community, offline and on, asking for help. Scroll through your Twitter feed and see who you can help with a gofundme or ko-fi donation, or even a simple share. Still unsure? Check out this card.
Change is not a sprint, it is a marathon; so get involved now, pace yourself, and see the challenge through.
The rest of this post will be me talking about myself, so feel free to move on – you’ve already experienced the most important part.

The Author is Alive

Making sure our work sends the right message is a challenge to creatives. Unless we are explicitly obvious we run the danger of someone misinterpreting, or even misrepresenting something we’ve created. In the past I’ve very much espoused the “death of the author” as an attitude regarding role-playing games. Once the writing is out of my hands I’m helpless to control what players do with it. In the years since then, a lot of important and impactful articles and posts have been shared that challenge that assumption, so I’m making a pledge to do more with Tears of a Machine 2nd Edition.

• Sensitivity editor – As soon as there is enough text to review I will be hiring a sensitivity editor (or two!) to help me assess and correct my flaws.
• Content guidance – In the previous edition content and setting were left open-ended or at the Director’s discretion. The new rules include steps for all players to collaborate on the subject matter at the start of play.
• Less prescription of the setting – I want players to see themselves in the world and shape it to become a place where they belong. I’m loosening up some of my world building, rather than building in possible stereotypes, and hopefully countering some existing ones.
• Language choices – There are some vocabulary words that are charged with meaning that I want to avoid in the new edition. “Alien” for example. While we default to have it mean “space aliens” when writing science-fiction, it’s real-world meaning shouldn’t be overlooked.

There are other changes as well on the way, but they are more specific to the content itself, such as emphasizing the role of the Preservation Force as an emergency response effort, rather than an army. I may share more about them as writing progresses.
Thank you for your time, and thank you to game writers such as James Mendez-Hodes and Meinberg for articles that have challenged me to reassess my own messages, and for designers like Sean K. Reynolds and Shanna Germain for Consent in Gaming, published by Monte Cook Games.