Jess Banks schools you.

Last Sunday, I attended a training for white folks who do racial equity work. The organizers called it “Solidarity Training,” and that’s as good as anything, but what it really meant was this: “How not to be a racist asshole as you try to improve things for people of color.”

You’d think that would be easy—every person in that room was there because they have the very best of intentions. We were all pretty far along our own personal journey from ignorance that white is even a race, toward leveraging our privilege to help dismantle systemic racism. Many of us had been doing that work for years, some even for decades.

But the hardest thing for people who are in the group in power is to realize that intention is not enough. Just because you *meant* it to be flattering when you tell a woman she’s sexy as she walks by doesn’t make it so to the women who experience unwanted street harassment every day. Just because you *meant* it to be a compliment when you tell a young black man that his speech was “so articulate and inspiring” doesn’t mean that won’t feel condescending to men who meet with surprise every day when they show that they’re educated. Intention does NOT get the job done.

But it can be surprisingly difficult to tell the difference between fighting the system and benefitting from the system. One of the trainers, the inspired and inspiring Ricardo Levins Morales, used an analogy out of the physics world to explain how we can be oblivious of something so pervasive. When you jump out of a plane at 30,000 feet, he says, you feel like you’re falling at first. But after a bit, the feeling changes to be something closer to floating, because you’re falling at the speed of gravity.

So it is with racism. White people are born onto a nice, big, comfy raft that floats atop the stream of racist oppression. Because we’re on the raft, we don’t feel the constant pressure of the water that wears down the hearts and souls of our brown and black siblings. We don’t feel the struggle. And even if we climb off that raft and join hands and weather the stream together for a bit, somehow—maybe it’s with a job referral from a friend, or a previewed house listing before it’s really “on the market”—we find ourselves back onboard, despite our best intentions.

The raft ride has been particularly bumpy at various points in history—now, since Ferguson, is one of them. It happens because some people in the water try to climb on the raft. At the same time, some of the raft’s riders are trying to dismantle the raft itself, or jump into the water in solidarity. And the people who never even knew they were on a raft of history and privilege get nervous and frightened at having why they thought was a solid, level surface become so unstable.

Naturally, this made me think of GamerGate.

See, sexism is another river, and patriarchy is another raft. Movements like GamerGate and the MRAs (Men’s Rights Activists) exist in a moment where the rather splendid vehicle created by cisgendered, heterosexual, white patriarchy is under attack from all sides. Its riders didn’t notice that the river around them was rising, or that the ship’s own crew was changing. The new crew wants to park that vessel for good, and move everyone to a bigger ship with room for all the groups who’ve had to struggle upstream for centuries. That must feel terrifying to people who thought they were on solid ground, riding as they were at the combined speeds of so much privilege.

The fact is, though, that the river’s already flooded its banks. There are too many oppressed people, and allies who prefer to be in the water, to float along in ignorance anymore. Women have been in games for a long time, and all the yelling and threats in the world can’t make that river flow upstream.

Toward the end of the training, Ricardo announced that he would be distributing cards. I could see the little deck in his hand, but I had no idea what he meant to do with them. A surprising, somewhat unnatural ripple of excitement spread through the crowd, though; I wondered if they knew more about the cards than I did. When I got mine, it had a piece of art on one side, with a slogan from the disability rights movement: “Nothing about us, without us, is for us.” On the other side were some check-in questions to help us stay grounded when we feel compelled to act in a racially charged situation: “Why do I feel an urge to act/not act?” and “Who will benefit from my action/inaction?”

The ripple quieted down as people examined their cards, and I wondered if the people who’d been a-flutter with excitement were disappointed by the card they got. I wondered if the one they’d wanted would’ve just said, “I’m one of the good ones.” That’s what white people doing racial equity work really want, after all—a card that credentials them as not racist, as a proven ally. The problem is, it doesn’t work like that at all. “Ally” isn’t a title you earn; it’s a status you have to prove over and over again, mainly by just continuing to show up for what matters to communities of color. And nobody’s going to give you a cookie for doing the right thing, just like nobody’s going to give you a free pass when you mess up (and you WILL mess up, over and over).

I know a lot of guys in the world of games who probably wish they had that a “One of the Good Ones” card too. If I had them to give out, I can think of dozens of people who deserve them for living and working and playing by the guiding principles of inclusion and equity.

But that’s not how it works. Nobody gets a free pass; nobody gets a laminated card that’s good forever after. We climb off the raft, and we join hands with the people in the water and weather the current for as long as we can. At the same time, we accidentally get back on, and sometimes even block others from climbing aboard with us.

Maybe the card we really need is the one that says, “Time to get in the water again.”

Social media is afire after the latest Anita Sarkeesian video resulted in renewed rape/death threats against her. Sarkeesian makes the seemingly uncontroversial statement that women’s bodies are abused and killed for little or no reason in video games. As a result, some men are so enraged that they’re driven to hurl sexist, violent abuse at the very idea of women who come within fifty feet of a game.

The problem with that is that I am a woman gamer. So are many of my women friends. Many of them run games for their friends, and a growing number are designing their very own games. I am wildly proud to be included in all this. Many of those friends have written wisely about the unfettered misogyny and racism that plagues the electronic and tabletop game industries at the same moment when we see more women and people of color entering the hobby than ever before.

So I don’t have much to add to their insightful commentary. But I do want to say this to my fellow women in games:

Play whatever games you want.

Yes, of course that means the button-mashing robot invasion game, or the minmaxed mecha pilot, or the Napoleonic cavalry officer trying to win Waterloo. War games and LARPs and Minecraft and Burning Wheel–all of it belongs to you as much as anyone else in the world, and don’t let a soul tell you otherwise.

But you can also play the magical space princess romance game. You can play a game where the only measurable objective is to get the boy (or the girl). You can play a game that’s all about middle school gossip. You can play a game with no boys allowed.

You can play games with fluid, barely there rules, and super-crunchy tables of staggering detail.

You can play games of scientific discovery, and life in the military, and the pursuit of katana mastery, and young love.

You can play games of death-defying feats and fearless daring, where you do everything you can’t ever imagine doing in the real world.

You can play games with sex: grand, towering, chandelier-swinging heights of passion that include superhuman flexibility and magical potions of endurance.

You can play games where you get to hunt down and beat the shit out of your rapist.

You can play games that capture a perfect, impossible childhood with nothing scary at all.

Because games contain everything we are–right now, fragile, flawed, unfinished–and everything we could possibly be–brave, magnificent, powerful, unstoppable. So nothing is beyond the scope of games. If you use a game to tell your story, there’s a very good chance that it’s a story others want to play too.

Because these games exist in the dimensions of ourselves and our world, the dark things do creep in: racism, sexism, ableism, bullying, abuse. Some of that is unintentional, but we’re coming to grips with the reality that others don’t always see these things as a problem. Some even see it as a solution, a boundary fence to protect an imagined definition of games that’s confined only to their tiny vision.

Games are bigger than these people. Protecting our games from criticism smothers them until all the fire goes out. Improving games improves us all, and the world we play them in.

And nobody gets to say your game is less worthy because of what you want to play. You are participating in one of the oldest common human experiences in the world. Play it all, women. Play all the games, then make your own.

There’s finally a decent volume of literature out there about how women experience games–especially RPGs and video games–different than men. It helps all of us who’ve struggled to put words to the perspectives that we bring to the gaming table, many of which result in very different interactions with the rules, the stories, and the other gamers. And it provides writers and designers with insights that have changed the way games are written, so they allow more kinds of gamers to contribute to the collective interaction.

So I’d like to attempt to do something similar with another piece of myself that I bring to the gaming table. I have Asperger’s Syndrome, a difference in brain-wiring that places me on the autism spectrum. This part of myself is a relatively new discovery, but it’s undeniable and incredibly enlightening about things I could never otherwise explain. Many of these features affect how I experience creativity, social interaction, and collaborative work, three central pieces of the act of tabletop gaming.

The most important factor for me is my visual memory. I’ve written about my odd filing system before, but until the HBO movie about the life of Temple Grandin, I’d never seen my memory process outside my head. Because I have that visual catalog in my mind, I get incredibly vivid pictures from a multiplicity of contexts whenever someone invokes a place, a person, a costume, and a piece of equipment.

Practically speaking, this manifests for me in gaming in a number of ways. I have virtual battlemats in my head, and I can examine them from any vantage point, without needing minis or land/cityscapes (though I do enjoy the physical objects very much, too, for different reasons). I have pictures of characters and settings in my head that I literally inhabit. I know the size of my character’s bodies, how various features affect the way they move and sound. I assign them sensory features as well as hair and eye color, so I know how they smell and the close-up feel of their skin and clothing. They’re live, vivid people in real, textured places.

Another factor is my tendency to seek out patterns. It’s not compulsive, like someone with OCD might be; it is, though, automatic. For many autistic gamers, this allows them to understand RPG systems and make them do fantastic tricks, like a lion tamer making a beast jump through hoops. They see game systems as just another coding language that can be manipulated to perform the desired action.

Sadly, this is not me. I cannot grok systems unless the rules are so basically logical and self-evident, with a minimum of math, that they’re labeled “Ages 7 and up.” (No, I can’t explain this at all. I can at least read 10 different languages, so systems aren’t the problem, but math and I have a beef going back to 7th Grade.) As a consequence, character generation is agony unless it’s basically a single-step process, and I almost never play magic users. I vastly prefer cinematic, story-driven systems in which dice are only employed to give an edge of chance to the action I propose.

My pattern recognition talent gives me a different edge. First, I’m hell on carefully planned mysteries and adventures. One friend calls me the “storybreaker”–you can practically see the tire tracks where I went offroad, revealing options that never occurred to the author, in the ones that were eventually published. I don’t mean to circumvent plot devices; it’s a function of my autistic tendency to rapidly play through consequences to the Nth degree, thus eliminating options which I know will end in failure and generating other possibilities from that birds-eye view.

Second, I love pregens, even in systems that are entirely new to me. The words and numbers assemble themselves into 3D constructions in my mind. The closest I can come to a visual representation of this experience comes with the virtual reality models Tony Stark uses in the Iron Man movies to analyze maps, machinery plans, and crime scenes. (Here’s an example.)  The alchemical process of “blowing up” a character sheet combines with my sensory memory to conceive a fully formed person almost instantaneously. I really wish you could see what this looks like–it’s pretty amazing from the inside.

The final factor I’ll mention in this post is my relationship with words. I’m hyperlexic (in short, far too many words for any and all things that pass through my head or mouth) and I’m a terrible show-off. Just as words form lifelike people and places in my mind, I love to craft my own contributions to the game with descriptions and dialogue, as vividly rendered as I can manage. Back in my days of MUSHing, the whole game was nothing but words on a screen, but I have scenes lodged in my memory that are so thoroughly illustrated and acted that I have difficulty remembering whether I saw them in a movie. And when I’m at the table, I can use the additional tools of vocal inflection, accents, gestures, and expressions, so my love of acting, connected to that vivid character in my head, can lead me to overplay my parts to a degree that might make other players uncomfortable. At least I don’t insist on staying in character while we take pizza breaks.

I know the Internet is designed to inspire fury. That hasn’t been the majority of my experience with it, but lately, it seems determined to correct my underestimation of its rage-inducing qualities.

So before I proceed with this post, please go read this article about why Mattel thinks moms don’t “get” toy cars. Go ahead–I’ll wait for you.

Thanks for taking the time to do that. You may or may not be seething with anger right now. If you’re not, that’s okay, but I’m going to explain why I (and several other mothers I know) are. Let me put on my sherpa hat.

PROBLEM #1: THERE’S A VP AT MATTEL FOR “BOYS’ TOYS AND GAMES.” I’m the mother of two boys, and I’ll be the first to say that they play with different toys, in different ways, than many girls would. Griffin was about nine months old when he distinctly said “Vroom” to a squishy car toy which none of us had yet bothered to introduce to him by name or sound.

But I’ve been told I “play wrong” for a girl since I was two years old. Imagine that: TWO YEARS OLD. That’s the year I saw Star Wars on a drive-in movie screen and was hooked for life. All my friends in preschool were boys, because they would play what I wanted to. In sixth grade, my teacher introduced me to games of war and strategy, and I was hooked once again. I went on to be the only girl among 23 boys in the Strategy and Tactics Club in high school, and I was very happy there. I never felt left out or isolated because I was doing what came naturally to me.

Even as an adult, I’ve mainly played games with men, but the many women gamers I’ve played with over the years were as viciously cutthroat as they needed to be to succeed. If anything, we were more terrifying because we collaborated to do awful things, and we needed to set down our needlework or knitting to wipe out whole parties of monsters or even the roof of a building once. “Knit one, purl one…natural 20…I kill it. A lot.”

There’s no such thing as “boys’ toys” and “girls’ toys.” There are just boys and girls who play with toys. Whichever ones they pick, they’re doing it right. It’s okay to appeal to some of the differences between the genders, but the pink-and-blue-washing needs to stop NOW. If you want to see how a company can tailor toys for greater appeal and accessibility to one gender or another, consider the upcoming “girls’ line” of Nerf toys, which feature ergonomic adjustments to make them easier to use, as well as styles that correspond to popular culture models like Katniss and Merida. Disney should follow their advice with the Marvel line–I know a whole lot of girls and women who will happily fork over for some good Marvel toys, games, and apparel.

PROBLEM #2: HE FELT THE NEED TO EXPLAIN TO A ROOM FULL OF MOTHERS WHY THEY WERE DOING THEIR JOB WRONG. There are many ways mothers do do their jobs wrong, and society isn’t shy about telling us so. We know we’re not perfect, but unless you’re the sort of mom who’s likely to end up in court, you’re trying very hard to do your best. The days of the pretty moms who won’t lie down on the floor in their crinolines and frilly aprons to play with kids of both genders are past. I play with my boys, and I play hard. I certainly don’t need a toy executive to tell me how to make my kids happy or have a good time.

Moms are bad enough on themselves and each other. Tiger Moms, Princess Moms, Geek Moms, Stay-At-Home Moms, Working Moms…we’re all being told we’re doing it wrong, that our kids will end up in therapy for sure if we don’t buy them the right things and hover over them like paranoid black helicopters every second of the day. Petersen’s voice shouldn’t be in this discussion at all, let alone lecturing a room full of “mommy bloggers,” whatever the hell that sexist, reductive label means.

PROBLEM #3: HE THINKS THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO PLAY WITH TOY CARS. This one particularly burns my ass, because I know from experience that he’s wrong. When I was a kid, I played with toy cars by lining them up in perfectly symmetrical, parallel rows, sorted by shape, size, and color. Then my sister would walk through the lines like Godzilla, kicking them to kingdom come. And then I would line them up again in different patterns. I picked my favorites by the way they felt in my palm, my closed fist.

I realize that much of this comes from my autism. But I know I’m not the only one who didn’t play smash ‘n crash all the time. In fact, most of the boys I knew didn’t play with their favorite cars at all–they set them on a high shelf where they’d be safe and beautiful. Petersen’s model of play is a marketer’s one, not a player’s one. If you smash your cars all the time, your parents have to buy you new ones all the time. Planned obsolescence is not a game.

PROBLEM #4: HE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND WHY KIDS WOULD RATHER PLAY WITH OTHER TOYS. Finally, Petersen doesn’t understand why toy cars are less relevant today. The problem lies in a few areas. If a kid wants to pretend with cars these days, why would you want to drive a four-inch replica across the berber carpet when you can boot up the XBox or Playstation or 3DS and actually feel like you’re driving a real car? Why play with a pre-made car when you can build your own models?

Cars have the same problem I see occasionally with “action playsets”: they’re single-use toys. There are only so many ways you can play with a toy car, or with the Spiderman 3 Sandstorm Action Playset. You basically get to recreate one storyline, and then you’re done. The reason action figures and dolls are more popular is because you can tell infinite stories with them. An imaginative kid (i.e., all of them) doesn’t even need every action figure, because one character can be many characters. LEGO offers another solution to this problem by offering single-use builds with infinite rebuilding potential. Who wouldn’t rather play any story you can think of, rather than “They drive somewhere. Along the way, they crash into something”? According to child development expert Penny Holland, single-purpose toys are far more damaging to our kids’ minds than toy guns. Think about that for a second.

The graph in the Bloomberg article suggests an even more interesting quandary to consider: There’s a gender gap in board games too. According to their statistics, 46 percent of girls between ages 6 and 12 list board games as their favorite toy, as opposed to only 33 percent of boys. I’d be interested to know which games girls are playing, because we’re past the days of the Barbie Dreamdate Board Game (which I played, I’ll have you know, and ended up marrying Poindexter in real life). 

Board games aren’t even strongly marketed, as far as I can tell, for one gender or another. RPGs (tabletop, video, and online) are, though, and I’d be interested to see a more nuanced breakdown of a wider variety of games. I’d also like to know whether the gender gap among young girls and boys who play board games correlates to the education gap–there may be room for board games to help boys catch up on certain academic and social skills that they aren’t getting enough support for in schools that have to teach to the test.

All this fury has direction. We don’t have to settle for executives trying to sell our kids crappy toys. We know what our kids like, and we should put our money where their preferences are. Play has the capacity to teach and to heal, as well as to entertain. As parents, we shouldn’t settle for anything less.

As I mentioned in my last post, my plans to attend Gen Con this year have derailed, but I’m determined to see the sights all the same. Like any discerning nerd, I don’t want to see everything, but I want to see everything I want to see.

But the Darling Husband will be on the clock 24/7, so he can’t be my virtual tour guide. Besides, while he is a Paragon of Manhood and an Amazing Font of Miraculous Amazingness, he can still only be in one place at one time, at least until our children perfect that technology for next year’s science fair.

But YOU, darling Gen Con attendees, you can be everywhere.

So I’m asking you to be my eyes in Indy, and I’m willing to reward you well. I have swag and I have skills, and I’m not afraid to dish them out to the people who take my favorite pictures in each of the following categories. But I’m a cruel and whimsical benefactress, so the only way to make sure you win something awesome is to take lots of pictures. I’m trying to work out a way to post them all on Tumblr, so everyone else can enjoy them too, but for now, the only solution I have is posting them on Twitter with the hashtag #ProfBanksScavengerHunt. If you’re a friend on Facebook, you can also give me links there.

Want to appeal to my greedy, materialistic self? If you find something extra-nifty that I simply cannot live without, you have two choices. If it’s free, you could grab one for me and give it to my DH. If it’s not free, you can tell him where you found it and how much it is. (He’ll be at the Margaret Weis Productions booth #1519 in the Dealers’ Hall for most of the con.)

So here’s the list. Be sure to respect the people whose faces, costumes, and products you intend to photograph, first and foremost by asking permission. Ask nicely, too, just like I would. And say thank you.

1) Cool Doctor Who people and stuff. People in clever costumes, uncanny look-alikes, nifty tie-in products, RC Daleks, or even just a particularly creepy stone statue in the downtown that might be a Weeping Angel in disguise. All Doctors, companions, and feature characters are fine by me.

2) Kids in costumes. Let me stress this: get permission from the parent or guardian.

3) Men in kilts. I’m going to assume this is self-explanatory. No, I don’t want to see what’s underneath. Unless it’s Spanx–then DEFINITELY take a picture.

4) You with one of my favorite games: 221B Baker Street, Circvs Maximvs,  Run Out The Guns!, FVLMINATA, Nobilis, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Spirit of the Century. The first two are out of print, and relatively hard to find, so especially with those, if you find a copy somewhere, please tell my Darling Husband about it.

5) Anything with Alexander Skarsgård on it. He’s best known as Eric Northman on HBO’s True Blood, but I’m happy to see him anywhere, in any role, or au naturel.

6) People in costume outside the convention center. I love the absurd, so the more incongruous the costume and the place and/or activity, the better.

7) Your favorite piece of swag this year. Free or cheap, it’s got to be exclusive it is to Gen Con 2012.

8) Obscure literary/math/science jokes. I like them in art, on t-shirts, anywhere you find them. Extra points if they’re entirely unintentional.

9) Games happening in unusual places. I define “unusual” as NOT in the convention center or hotel rooms and lobbies.

10) Same-sex kisses in front of the mall food court Chick-Fil-A. Extra points if I know one or more of the people involved in the kiss. ABSOLUTELY ZERO POINTS if anyone catches you being an asshole to a Chick-Fil-A employee or customer while you’re at it.

11) Random acts of kindness. See someone holding a door, or giving up a seat, or boosting up a kid or kender for a better look? Snap a picture. If you miss it, stop the person, thank them for what they did, and ask them to dramatically recreate it for immortality.

12) Typos, bad apostrophes, and other grammatical catastrophes on signage. It doesn’t have to be official Gen Con signage, or even Gen Con signage.

Remember, there are prizes on the line, and I’m inclined to be as inventive and extravagant as my participants, so please join in if this sounds fun. I really appreciate your service as my remote operatives. I can’t wait to see you there next year.

–Points OFF for food pictures

–Points OFF for negative geek or gender stereotypes

One summer day when I was about 10 years old, my grandma was driving us down to catch an old movie in the blessedly cool interior of the old Oriental Theater. We came to stop at an intersection, not far from the MECCA Arena.

And a man in full plate mail and medieval tabard walked over the crosswalk, right in front of our car.

I was in the front seat (it was the ’80s–seat belts, wha?), and my jaw dropped to my lap, where it remained for the rest of the car ride. When I finally achieved intelligible thought, my one focus was: “Wherever he was going, I have got to get there too.”

When I was 16, I finally got there: Gen Con. I’d been playing AD&D in our church library on Sunday afternoons for a few years, and tabletop strategic wargames for a few more years than that. So when some of the guys said, “Let’s go to the big game convention in Milwaukee,” I was all in. Of course, I didn’t know that’s where the guys in plate mail were from, but I found out fast enough.

I was too uncertain to assert myself at the big tables, full of miniature mecha-robots and World War I dogfighting planes, surrounded by very intense, slightly malodorous young men. And I wasn’t ready to ask questions, to invite myself into the pick-up roleplaying groups scattered throughout the convention center and the labyrinthine guts of the arena building. I was a young woman, and there weren’t many of us there.

Instead, I just took it all in. Dice, in numbers and colors and polyhedrons and sizes I’d never dreamt existed. Men, like carnival hucksters, hawking their models or settings or must-have game accessories. T-shirts with slogans and jokes I mostly didn’t get (though I loved the Douglas Adams references; I’d never seen those in America before). And enthusiasm–so much enthusiasm, everywhere.

I came again the next year, and the whole world had changed. TSR was under siege, in their four-story castle in the center of the dealer’s hall, but there were sappers among us in the crowds, skulking around in clown white and satin capes. Vampire: The Masquerade had arrived, and with it, a small but palpable influx of female gamers, drawn to a game that made strengths of drama and emotion and relationships.

I didn’t get to all the Gen Cons during my college years, but I kept my foot in the pool. I looked at the new games, lurked and watched, occasionally sat down when invited. One year, I waited all night in the lobby of the Hyatt for someone from a scheduled AmberMUSH get-together to recognize me. Only after about three hours of waiting did it occur to me that nobody knew what anyone else looked like in real life.

I’d been married for about three years before I went again. It was a homecoming, but it was also the Darling Husband’s first trip. He’d read about Gen Con in magazines and rulebooks, half a world away, never dreaming he’d not only ever have the chance to go, but to go for the purpose of meeting his heroes. He’d earned a place on the (volunteer, but still nerd-prestigious) Whitestone Council, the organizers and fact-checkers-par-excellence of the online Dragonlance Nexus, and as a result, was invited to meet Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, authors of the groundbreaking Dragonlance novels. He was gobsmacked at every turn, and I basked in his excitement and some better-planned meetups with Amber friends.

Gen Con became an every-year thing for a while there. I mourned through the last one in Milwaukee, but did so with good friends, good (Persian) food, and hours-long sessions of a pirate RPG that cleared a good section of the under-arena area and left me hoarse for days afterward.

That was also Connor’s first trip to Gen Con, when he was six weeks old. I didn’t see another mother with an infant in arms the whole time, and I had to crouch in stairwells and on bathroom floors to nurse him. I asked Warwick Davis (Willow, Professor Flitwick, etc.) to hold him for a picture. Surprised and nervous, he acceded. (I cannot find the digital file of this picture, which is driving me crazy, and my scanner won’t work. Trust me, it’s adorable.)

Next year, I watched the con breathe and unfurl its wings in Indianapolis, expanding into the vast new spaces with a sigh of both sorrow and relief. And it grew and grew, every year–every year, more of a reunion and a blessed, brief respite from the Mommyverse. At Gen Con, I was just Jess again, not Mommy. I needed that.

But Griffin came to his first Gen Con when he was three months old, and though I still needed to find secluded corners to breastfeed, at least I no longer felt like I was the weird woman with one tit at time on display for interested passers-by. Sure, there were still jerks who thought families didn’t belong at the convention. One of them said, behind me in the crowded dealer hall, “I can’t BELIEVE someone would bring a FREAKING STROLLER in here. This isn’t the place for that. How selfish.”

To which I turned around and replied, “At least I can park the extra forty pounds I’m pushing around in here and walk away from it.”

I hear there are nursing rooms, changing stations, and child care providers now. It makes me so happy. It says to me, “Gen Con belongs to all of us, and I don’t have to grow up and give it away if I don’t want to. I’ll keep coming, I’ll keep gaming, and I’ll raise my family here.” The Gen Con community is aging, yes, but it’s maturing and diversifying too.

I hoped this would be the year I brought my boys back to Gen Con and let them get dizzy and overwhelmed and excited and exhausted by the people, the choices, the magic. But it didn’t happen. I haven’t gone for four years, and I miss the friends (family, really) I’ve made like I would miss a limb. But I know that, when the stars are right, I’ll come back, and I’ll tell my boys, “Here’s where you belong. You’ve belonged here since before you can remember.”

And Gen Con will be waiting for us with open arms.

This story was originally published in the RPGirl zine in 2010, a fine publication edited by Emily Care Boss and containing the writings of quite a few other fascinating women in the gaming community. Enjoy!

I hadn’t been in France long when I met my first foreign gamer. And it didn’t just come up casually in café conversation—I was introduced by another student who knew I’d met my then-boyfriend (now Darling Husband) in an online RPG, and grasped that the concept was related to what this student had been describing to her at a party. I agreed to meet him, knowing that, at the very least, I’d know another geek.

But she was right. Nicolas was a real live French gamer guy. I thrilled him in our first meeting by having Secret Knowledge. We were talking about TV shows, movies and books we liked, and he asked if I watched “Aux Frontières du Réel,” or “On the Frontiers of Reality.” I said I didn’t know it, was it French? “Non, non,” he insisted, and reached for a book. The cover explained it all—behind the French title was a distressed, typewriter-style X. “Oh,” I explained in French, “In America it’s called ‘The X-Files.’” “That explains everything!” he exclaimed. “I always wondered why that X was there!”

Still, scheduling kept us from getting a game together for months, though Nicolas and I would chat when we bumped into each other. Mostly this consisted of him asking me if I knew about a game that had just come out in France, and me apologetically explaining that it had come out four years earlier in the U.S. When I finally met the group, it was to play a one-shot of something I’d never played: Time Lord.

I’d only seen Doctor Who played by Tom Baker on PBS, when I was about five years old. What I’d seen, I didn’t really remember, except, of course, the scarf, and several aliens that looked like upended rubbish bins on wheels. I’ve become a rabid fan since the 2005 reboot, and there’s no doubt I would’ve enjoyed the game more, knowing what I know now.

That said, I enjoyed myself quite a lot. It took several hours to get up to full speed on the French, but that says more about the universality of gamer speed- and geek-speak than it does about my French; I’d already taken on a French customs officer over the phone and won, which I consider the height of my skills. It turns out it’s also universal to play nonstop into the wee hours of the morning.

As we moved into the climax of events around 3.00 a.m., I found myself caught up in the action. We were likely to get cooked by the savage inhabitants of the place where our TARDIS ditched if someone didn’t quickly impress the hell out of them. I chose the much-maligned classic gambit: C3PO and the Ewoks.

“I’ll start speaking in tongues!” I asserted excitedly, preparing to let fly with a steady stream of fast English. I opened my mouth as Nicolas set the scene for the natives and…

Nothing. I could not conjure a single English word to save my life. Surely this was just a late-night misfire. I opened my mouth, tried again.

Nothing.

My English was gone. It had sunk deep in the weeds of my second language, lost in hours of linguistic and narrative immersion. I was stunned by how quickly my language—something I consider integral to my personality and cultural identity—had deserted me in the marathon of collaborative storytelling and group bonding. Two more false starts, and I finally managed a reasonable facsimile of what I’d been aiming for, enough to move the action along toward its conclusion.

At least I rolled well, thank goodness.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #13: Who’s the best GM/storyteller/party leader you’ve ever had? What made him/her so great? (Courtesy of Atlas Games.)

I have been so ridiculously, stupidly fortunate in my gaming experiences, it isn’t even fair for anyone to take my idea of a good GM into account. Why do I say that?

I’ve been in the wild and woolly adventures of the Thorne Family in a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign run by bestselling author Jim Butcher; it goes without saying that he’s a master of epic storytelling, but he also makes every player feel important. I’ve been in an Amber throne war run by Fred Hicks, co-founder of Evil Hat; he’s got a keen understanding of character motivations, and he knows just when to twist the knife. I was at the first meeting of the Diogenes Club run by Rob Donoghue, fellow Evil Hat founder and one of the creators of Spirit of the Century; if you like bombast, wild theatrical play, and devlishly clever twists, look no further. I’ve played Roman Empire intrigues run by Jason Roberts and Michael Miller, creators of FVLMINATA; Jason’s historical knowledge is vast, even by my standards, and Mike is very skillful at breathing life into the setting. I’ve played in battles on the Caribbean seas run by Jason Hawkins, creator of Run Out the Guns! (as I’ve described elsewhere). I’ve played in a Black Company escapade run by Lydia Leong of Ars Magica and MU* fame; her technical mastery of systems frees the players to be as twinky as they want to be, yet she loves to orchestrate big fights and wallpaper-chewing RP. I’ve played in a power struggle for control of the Kansas City Camarilla run by Allan Grohe of Greyhawk and Chaosium Press renown; he’s got an unparalleled knack for balancing the egos and motives of both players and characters. I’ve played in Clark Valentine‘s original setting; Clark’s a wonder of creativity, and he thrives on player collaboration to build marvelous worlds. And, of course, I’ve played Dragonlance with Cam Banks, as well as countless one-shots and other campaigns of his design.

I’ll give all you RPG players just a moment to seethe with envy.

Some of this luck has been self-made. Several of my favorite games were run by the creators of that system and/or setting, so here’s my best piece of advice: When you’re searching convention programs for games of interest, look for the events where writers and designers are running their own games. In almost everything else, familiarity breeds contempt; in GMing, familiarity breeds comfort and flexibility.

Our Dragonlance campaign group in PA (L to R): Clark Valentine, Cam Banks, Paul Marcinkevage, Scott Williams, and Amanda Valentine. I'm behind the camera, where I belong.

Of all these extraordinary experiences, though, the best GM I’ve ever played with is, hands down, my Darling Husband, Cam Banks. Sure, I’m biased, but I think I’d get a fair amount of agreement for anyone else who’s been lucky enough to sit across the table when he’s running the show.

But I’ve got lots of good reasons why this is the case. First, he tends to run systems that he knows backward and forward, so he navigates the rules with speed and deftness. I know the look in his eyes when he’s crunching numbers, rules, exceptions, and sources; it’s similar to the look WALL-E gets when he’s making one of those tidy little trash cubes.

Here's that stat block you wanted.

Because he’s so facile with the mechanics, he rolls easily with whatever harebrained schemes his players develop (and by players doing harebrained things, I mean me, doing what I usually do). He also often runs games in settings on which he’s exhaustively informed, whether because they’re of his own design, or they’re from canons of work on which he’s earned his status as an authority, like Dragonlance and the Marvel Universe.

Second, he juggles player dynamics with uncommon sensitivity. This may be his counselling training and skills as an arbitrator showing through, but whatever it is, he’s got a knack for keeping all the characters in the mix, so even cut-away scenes when the party splits up don’t end up with anyone feeling bored, ignored, or slighted. He manages all different kinds of players and lets them play the way that’s fun for them, making the most of their strengths so that something that may seem annoying to different-style players under another GM ends up feeling like an essential contribution to the whole group.

Third, finally, and most important, he is the single most brilliantly creative storyteller I’ve ever known. He has a Red Phone with a direct line to the Primal Well of Story. If most people were put into a room with paper and pen and told to come up with as many completely original story concepts as possible in one hour, we would probably be quite pleased with two or three solid ideas–Cam would have ten, unique, insanely clever, out-of-the-ballpark hits. He sees stories the way Grand Masters see a chess game, infinite possibilities spooling out from every decision point. And despite this mind-boggling talent, he’s never threatened by his players’ input. I commit the most egregious mutilations of his best intentions, and over and over, he’s taken those derailments and woven narratives I could never have imagined. He even makes me, and all his players, feel like they’re brilliant for those contributions.

He runs games at conventions all the time, so it’s always worth trying to get in to one of his sessions. Bribe, beg, connive, steal–whatever it takes. He’ll redefine your image of a great GM, but even more remarkable, he’ll make you feel like you’re a great player.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #9: Have you ever played a character of the opposite sex? Why or why not? If yes, how did the other players react? (Courtesy of Atlas Games.)

I can only think of two male characters that I created and played–I’m sure I’ve played male pregens at cons over the years, but they don’t stick in my memory so much. The first was the aforementioned Wasabi Delmonico, the San Francisco Kid. He was for a pulp one-shot, a Chinese-American teenager who raced soapbox derby carts down the Bay Area hills and did other sorts of wacky stunts. I think we fought flying gorilla men. His name is clearly the most memorable thing about him; his gender wasn’t really a factor in the game.

The second male character I played was in a con game, but he’s lodged in my memory (and possibly those of other players) as firmly as any character in an extended campaign. My friends Lydia and Rob had raved about the fantastic sessions of Run Out the Guns! they’d played at Gen Con the year before, run by the game’s creator and historical-replica sailor Jason Hawkins. There’s a big focus on historicity and realism, for all that it’s a swashbuckling adventure game, so I didn’t want to introduce the anachronism of a female sailor, or deal with all the actual prejudice and liabilities that would come with portraying a woman accurately in the setting.

So I made a bosun’s mate named Hamish Macbeth, a brawny ginger Scot. I was thoroughly immersed in the BBC series based on the M.C. Beaton books at the time, so sue me for unoriginality if you must. I’m a pretty fine vocal mimic, so that same immersion meant that I could affect a mighty strong (and fairly accurate, if I do say so myself) Highland accent. Jason was an amazing GM–his extensive work on the Rolemaster system meant he could handle the technical aspects with a facility not associated with Rolemaster, and his deep knowledge of the setting and ships meant he made very complex things run with a wild, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, theatrical ease. The ship battles were epic, and it’s a bosun’s mate’s job to relay orders from the captain to the crew. I did this in a salty, broguey bellow that was, upon reflection, completely inconsiderate to every other game going on in the labyrinthine basement of Milwaukee’s Mecca Center. But, great good gods, did we have fun.

When the game was over, Jason shook my hand heartily and said, “Hamish, man, I’d follow you straight into hell with that voice!” I’ve shared that compliment often over the years, as one of the highlights of my game convention experience, but only upon thinking of my answer to this prompt did it occur to me that Jason and my fellow players referred to me and called for my attention all that night with male pronouns and epithets. I was so deeply into Hamish’s head that I honestly didn’t notice.

I’m not usually so thoroughly sunk in a character that I forget I’m not him/her, and the dissonance between my feminine self and a masculine character when I’m not completely in either world is the reason I don’t play male characters more often. I can’t possibly know what it’s like to be inside a man’s head, and I wouldn’t dare to suggest that I do, so I don’t trust myself to accurately portray a man’s motivations as I make decisions for that character. I think most game settings and GMs go out of their way to allow for greater gender balance than strictly historical mores would accommodate, so I haven’t felt restricted in my character choices by sticking with the gender I know.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #10: Have you ever played a character originally from a book/TV/movie? How did the character change from the original as you played? If not, who would you most like to play? (Courtesy of Atlas Games.)

I’ve played a lot of great characters from book, TV, and movie settings I love, but for this prompt, all I can think about are the ones I despise. I’m going to bring some flak from earnest fans, but here’s the honest truth:

I HATE Sand from The Chronicles of Amber and Goldmoon from Dragonlance.

For those not familiar with these characters, here’s a bit of background. The Wikipedia entry for Sand and her brother Delwin, introduced in Blood of Amber, says this: “Delwin (brown & black) and Sand (pale tan & dark brown), twin brother and sister. They only lived a short time in Amber, preferring to live in the Shadow worlds and keep themselves removed from the affairs of their siblings.” I think it was the Diceless RPG by Erick Wujcik that introduced the idea that Sand has power over the dreams of others, but I’m not entirely certain of this. In any case, she’s a minor character, and she’s as flat and colorless as the substance for which she’s named.

And I’ve never played Goldmoon in a run-through of the Dragonlance adventures that didn’t make me wonder why Goldmoon and Riverwind didn’t take their toy and go home. In one particularly memorable campaign, Goldmoon met the rest of the companions as they punched Flint repeatedly, in an effort to render him senseless so they could cross the river. I’ve got lots of problems with the character, but frankly, I’ve never been able to get past that first, most essential obstacle.

The cruelest thing my Darling Husband has ever done to me was to make me play Goldmoon in a Dragonlance one-shot while we were hanging out with friends in New Zealand. Halfway through the game, all the characters “woke up” to discover that they were actually Amberites, being manipulated through their dreams. And Goldmoon was actually Sand.

At which point, the words “divorce” and “green card” and “one-way ticket home” were casually thrown into the conversation.

Ironically, though Cam writes RPGs for licensed properties, I’ve only played Smallville once; I’ve never had the chance to play Serenity, Supernatural, Demon Hunters, Leverage, or Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. This isn’t because I wouldn’t love to. Rather, it’s a function of not being able to afford babysitters for game nights, and game conventions being work rather than play for us, on the rare occasions in the last decade when we can arrange someone to stay with the boys so I can attend. Hopefully, that’ll change, and I can finally find out what all the buzz is about.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #7: How do you pick names for your characters? (Courtesy of Atlas Games.)

I’m influenced quite a bit by the setting–if there’s a clear analog to a time period or ethnic culture, I like to find a name that fits in the landscape. Just Google “baby names” and you’ll find all sorts of fantastic lists, often with meanings attached; www.babyhold.com has one of my favorites, with lots of ethnic names to choose from. I also read a lot, and books are fantastic sources of names. You might even keep a list of your own, with your gaming supplies, so you can remember the nifty names you come across in odd places. I’ve been inspired by names I found in alumni mailings, historical documents, garden centers, news reports, even on menus (I once had a pulp character named Wasabi Delmonico, after a steak description at a trendy bar and grill!).

And in case you’re the kind who does keep lists, here’s an incomplete list of character names I’ve used over the years (in no particular order): Selwyn, Rebekah, Julia, Rosemary, Margaret (aka Maggie the Book), Caledonia (Callie, for short), Bethan, Mercia, Anthea, Amara, Constance, Helga (the Wonder Nurse), Astrid, Marilla, Serafina, Lysimachia (Lysa for short; it’s the Latin name for Loosestrife, which is awesome for a fairy name), Stella Cordaric, Twink (the halfling barbarian with a soup pot for a helmet), and Freya. I know I’ll kick myself for the ones I’m forgetting, but if any of you dear readers can remember other characters I’ve played over the years, feel free to post names in comments!

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #8: What’s the one gaming accessory (lucky dice, soundtrack, etc.) you just can’t do without? Why? (Courtesy of Atlas Games.)

I’m terrible at sitting still; I have Busy Hands ™. So my essential gaming accessory is a craft to work on while the game’s in progress. Over the years, I’ve crocheted, knitted, cross-stitched, and made jewelry at the gaming table; I do this while visiting, watching movies, even during church services (thank the gods for circular bamboo knitting needles; no danger of a mortifying clatter when you accidentally drop your knitting). This is what I’m working on at the moment; you can see examples of my jewelry here.

Some people–even other women–this takes aback. From the reactions I’ve gotten from some men at convention games as I took out my tools and fibers, you’d think I’d just whipped out a breast instead. Somehow, it seems, my crafting was an unwanted feminine intrusion into their macho adventure space. In other groups, it was the norm. The battlemat was littered with scraps of embroidery floss, yarn ends, wire snippings, and stray seed beads. All the women around the table were industriously working away on their blankets, quilts, or wall hangings, stopping only to roll a handful of dice and briskly announce, “I kill it.” It was like the awesomest kind of quilting bee-slash-special forces raid.

I know that not everyone can deal with someone efficiently multi-tasking in their presence; it looks to them like I’m not paying attention as they play their part of the scene. What I try to make them understand is that I’m actually far less likely to stay focused on the action if my hands are busy. That physical occupation calms the restless, seeking portion of my mind, allowing the creative part to fully concentrate in the mental task at hand. I’d be curious to know how many other gamers on the ASD spectrum function better while stimming. I’m fortunate that my stim of choice masks what it’s doing for me in a sensory capacity. And when I’m done stimming, I have pretty things to show for it.