Highmoon's Ponderings

Here you go, the draft character sheet for Bender. If you know how to play Lady Blackbird, you’ll understand how the pieces work. Of note, you’ll see there’s references to conflict between players; this will be a main feature of this hack, unlike in Lady Blackbird where there are no explicit rules for it. The conditions are also different to fit the theme and setting, and at least one of them can be suffered multiple times (in Bender’s case, 8 times – you figure which one out). I will keep working on the others; they are a bit harder to figure out than Bender.

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Download it today and enter a world of fantastic adventure: the imagination of a child.

Ten years ago I woke up to get ready for class. It was a Tuesday. I shuffled half-asleep into the living room and turned the TV on as I walked to the kitchen to get the coffee started. It was maybe 5-7 minutes after the first plane had struck. I’d never been to NYC, never seen the Twin Towers so the scale of the event was lost on me. When they said “plane” I kept thinking “small personal jet” at most. A replay of the events slapped me across the face into understanding. I went to the room to wake up my girlfriend (now my wife) whit the words, “A plane crashed on the World Trade Center.” I walked back to the living room in time to see the second plane crash live on TV.

Today is Sunday. I won’t be watching the litany of TV shows about that day. I have no need to. I close my eyes and I still see those images clear as day in my mind. I can remember without wallowing in it. The best way to honor those who died that day is to live. Live a normal life; live normal, regular life. It’s good to remember but it’s even better to honor by doing the one thing they can’t anymore, the one thing they wanted more than anything that day: to live.

Today I will go out with my wife and we will ride our bikes and maybe hit the beach and we will live. We will remember but most of all we will live. Do so as well.

After my last post I am due for some Githyanki Therapy, a practice I am borrowing from my friend Judd Karlman.

Judd has been playing a game of Burning Wheel (which I’ve been wanting to play for a long time) set in the Forgotten Realms (which I love) and not an update of his goes by without me wishing we had Star Trek transporters, so I could go play with him in New York and then come back home to Miami. Judd asked me on G+ if we were to play a BW game in the Realms, where and what I would like to play. My reply to him took me a bit by surprise and it leads me to my therapy post.

Hal Whitewyrm is the character that got away, the one character I really wanted to play and never got the chance to.

Hal Whitewyrm is a half-elf bard living in Highmoon^[1], in Deepingdale, in the area known as the Dalelands. He has somewhere in his heritage a trace of weredragon^[2] blood which gives him orange eyes. He’s a joyful fellow who honestly loves adventuring.

Hal is the character I created back in the early 90s, when I first started to get into AD&D in high school. He’s the character I would constantly recreate during class, the one I would write short stories about, the one who was my avatar in the world of high adventure that are the Realms. He was a shallow character concept^[3] with cool orange eyes and a weredragon girlfriend who existed mostly in my 5-subject spiral notebook in story after story. And I loved it.

I just never got to play Hal. My D&D group played Basic D&D/Rules Cyclopedia and we had a fairly regular schedule, so, little time to try out new ideas. Then we played less and less, then I moved, etc. Aside from the fact that I used the name as an email address for some time, I have not gone back to this character in over a decade. Which is why I surprised myself when I answered Judd’s question about what character I would play in a Burning Wheel Realms game as follows:

* I’d play the character I’ve carried with me for years, Hal Whitewyrm, a half-elven bard with weredragon blood in his ancestry (weredragons are a race of female-only shapeshifting wyrms from the Moonshaes – see the thread there?). He’s the guy I wrote stories about in my teens yet never got to play. Hal is all about the romantic journey (as in literary genre, not mass market Harlequin titles), facing adventure in a large world, ideally of the legendary danger kind, with fast friends at his side, a love life to look forward to, and death around him to put it all in perspective. Think Aragorn’s journey, but with a bard who also deals with issues of identity.”

Wow, I’d never really put those ideas into words before but yeah, that’s what Hal is all about for me: exploring the high fantasy romantic character arc; less about killing monsters and taking their stuff, more about zero-to-hero who saves the princess and loses friends along the way.

So, what about you? Which is your character that got away? The one you always wanted to play but didn’t? And what’s their story like?

1. ^[1] Yes, this is where my online nickname comes from. ↩
2. ^[2] In the D&D 3e edition of the campaign setting, they were renamed Song Dragons. ↩
3. ^[3] He was originally called Daniel Stephaln Whitewyrm–yeah, talk about transposition–which then changed to Daniel Whitewyrm, and eventually to Hal Whitewyrm. ↩

A link to a page called “How to stop your kids from becoming Atheists” flew around a couple times this morning on my Twitter feed. I decided to ignore it, as it wasn’t aimed at me directly, but then I thought about it and decided to actually respond to it. Or rather, respond to years of such little links and comments read and heard from people I consider friends or close acquaintances. This isn’t a rant, this isn’t a retort. This is a response.

You decided you do not believe in G-d, and I decided that I believe in G-d. Your decision does not make you any smarter, insightful, wise, accepting, or educated than me. Neither does mine make me all that in relation to you. When you say general statements about believers, remember you are including those who are your friends, those whom you respect and respect you, among them. That means me, Daniel, the guy you play games with, go to school with, chat online with, joke with, even sometimes share a true memorable moment with.

I don’t mind that you’re an Atheist. I honestly don’t care because that is your choice. I respect your choice. I will even talk about our choices, how they differ, how they may even be similar in some ways, and not have a problem with it (heck, in many cases I’d welcome it). It’s your choice and I respect it, especially if you are my friend, even if I don’t believe the same way. That goes for Atheist, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, or Pastafarians. I only ask you do the same.

I am a convert to Judaism. That means I chose my belief, and I did after a really hard and intense–painful, even–struggle with myself about belief in G-d and me as an individual (and frankly, it’s a struggle I continue to be engaged in every day). But even if I wasn’t, even if I’d been born into observant Judaism (or Christianity, etc), my point remains the same. I am not an anomaly, I am simply an example, just like how you reached your decision to be an Atheist isn’t the same as that of others.

“But, Daniel,” you may ask, “what about the Westboro people, or the Jihadists, or the [Insert Religious Extremist Group Here]?” What can I tell you, there’s shitty people in all walks of life. What about Atheists that believe all believers should be killed (I’ve actually heard this, don’t laugh)? I’m sure we’re both groaning right now. Listen, these people are out there. Let’s not be like them, then.

I don’t need you to apologize for tweeting that link today if you did, or for any comment you may or may not have made in the past. I honestly don’t. I also don’t want you to police what you say to be politically correct. Just be aware of what you say, what you forward along, and understand you might be hurting someone you actually esteem.

I’ve been swamped at work due to the start of the semester (I work at the university bookstore, so imagine the scenes of chaos) and applying to a new Nursing program, which means I’ve had little time to spend at home with my wife, let alone to write. Which isn’t to say I haven’t written, but it hasn’t been as much as I would like. What I have had time for, as I process endless textbook rentals and returns, is thinking, and that thinking has gone in great part towards the PJ&N Blackbird hack. It’s late, I’m half asleep and need to be up early in the morning, but I wanted to throw a couple of musings out there.

Building the characters continues to be the hardest part. I’ve managed to create more Keys for each character, but Secrets remain elusive. This actually ties to the other two thoughts I have to share now.

Sean Nittner, in a comment left in my previous post, brought up something that I also had noticed when I last saw the movie in prep for writing: there is very little action. The Breakfast Club is a talky movie, not an action movie, which means a lot of the events are conversation-based. That’s great for the movie, but it means there’s a distinct lack of external pressure to do anything in a game that needs to be addressed.

Lastly, I continue to vacillate between making this an actual The Breakfast Club game or an inspired one.

Answering those last two questions will make my job of building the characters easier. In terms of the external push to action, it is very easy to notice in the film how Bender is, essentially, an agent of plot: he has to find a way to keep things happening, keep the situation fluid, keep everyone moving. Bender gets a Key that rewards him for doing just this, and a clever player will use that ability to drive play and rack up advancements. In addition, I am toying with the idea of having an external force that opposes the characters and which they can only defeat by the use of advancement XPs. This could be used to simulate the overarching goal of “proving the stereotype wrong” the kids face during their day in detention.

Choosing whether I’m making a TBC game or an homage to the style will also help me in fleshing out the characters. At the moment I am leaning towards making it as close to the movie as possible and letting the players decide the events from the basic premise laid out in the film. I also would like the basic framework to allow groups to explore beyond the day of detention, like, what happens when they all meet again in school on Monday?

These are some thoughts that I have been mulling over and over in my head as I get ready to make final decisions and put the game together.