Quote from: Consonant Dude;226584There's a picture of each contributing author at the end of the book.

The "About the Author" page over at Hitherby Dragons used to include a photo of her before the site was redesigned, too. I wonder if it's the same one.

I concur with the opinion that whether you have a dangling modifier or a past participle doesn't mean shit when it comes to writing skill or design acumen.

Quote from: Warthur;226025What's next? Threads about Gary Gygax's choice of underwear? Discussions of what Steve Jackson had for breakfast this morning? Please. Surely we are better than this.

I choose to believe that Gygax rocked a leopard thong whenever he could.  And I heard a rumor that Jackson eats babies!  But that could just be scuttlebutt.

There´s a great deal of hypocrisy about this.
Man, if somebody changes his sex, that´s a seldom and major thing. So, if it comes out that any known game author did something major and seldom, that also touches sexuality:

It´s human nature to chat about it. To pretend it doesn´t peek you curiosity in one way or the other, is the same as lying.


So, regarding the elephant in the room:

Do the themes of her writing match that fact?

I know my reaction when I found out:
"That explains a lot."

When I read she was a computer science person, I also thought:
"That explains a lot."

So, are we going to discuss this, or will the unwarranted hypocrisy coontinue? It´s perfectly normal and a regular technique in critiquing works to at least consider the impact of an author´s personal situation.

EXAMPLE ADDED: If you know about Gary´s Swiss heritage, Chainmail will reveal different & additional layers of meaning.

Quote from: Settembrini;227034Do the themes of her writing match that fact?

I know my reaction when I found out:
"That explains a lot."

How so? With enough squinting, I could conceivably see some of what you might be getting at in how Nobilis is set up to ensure conflicts between free will and natural constraints (or responsibility, or indoctrination), or between liberty and security. As she put it in a snippet of discussion a few years ago: "It's canonical that everyone (and everything) has a road charted for them by their nature and being, and that everyone can struggle against it. Sometimes you can jump off the road. Sometimes you can't, and have to figure out how to use the road to get to where you want to go instead." But I'm not really convinced that's a prevalent theme throughout her other work, especially considering how much of it consists of contracts to develop new mechanics and embellish setting details for someone else's original creations.

You're far from the first to remark that her background in computer science explains a fair bit about the actual writing, though, even if it still occasionally surprises folks who until then had assumed that she's an arts major of some sort.

Also, it's tricky to try to pick out specifically transgender themes in roleplaying works because of the performative identities of PCs generally. A male player who plays female characters (or vice versa) is not considered transgendered.

Presumably, whatever criteria we use to establish why that is the case will be the ones we should look for in RSB's work to identify whether it is transgender-themed, or just roleplaying as usual. So far as I can tell, the only distinction between the two behaviours is that one occurs in ordinary life, and the other one is bracketed within a specific context - playing a game - and involves verbal description instead of say, actual behaviour.

RSB's work does not advocate actually dressing up as your character, nor violating the ordinary bounds of gameplaying, so I can't see why we should take it as expressing any sort of transgender theme.

GrimGent: That´s exactly what I´m talking about. I´m totally not advocating a simplistic interpretation.* But someone who has undergone such identity changing/re-adjusting processes, surely is bound to have experienced specific struggles that´ll leave a mark. Whether this influences a specific part of the oevre is up for debate.

*Stephen Kenson OTOH did some simplistic one-to-one agenda/Mary Sue driven stuff with his Shadowrun shamanistic writings. At least that´s how the story goes.

Quote from: GrimGent;227039How so? .

Actually, I can see Settembrini's point.  Let us assume that RSB is, in fact, Transgendered. Having never met the Borg to discuss matters over tea, I won't speculate beyond idle gossip but that is neither here nor there.

Now, let us review at least three samples of RSB's work in gaming.

In Noblis, the characters are embodied concepts, minor gods, and may not even be human, much less retain their original gender.  In short, whatever they may have  been in life does not necessarily reflect what they are now. Playing a 'transgendered' Noble is presumptively easy, if not assumed to be a default possibility.

In Exalted Fair Folk you play largely androgynous creatures of amorphous chaos. Exalted is well known for its rampant (ha ha) pansexuality, presumably attractive to a certain type of personality.

In Weapons of the Gods, RSB wrote the Loresheets, which included, among other things, an excessively long section on sexual kung fu for either flavor of homosexual, to include (featured in a long, and reasonably well written for gaming fiction) 'short' story that involved a permanent gender swap.

In all three cases we can show how the works of the author definitely focus on roleplaying as a means of escaping the bounds of the flesh, even as a transformative expirence.  We could continue by exploring the 'typical' psychology of the transgendered, their behavioral patterns, but in the current clime it might be viewed as politically incorrect, and thus a distraction.


I could comment on your knee jerk defensiveness, Grimgent, as I believe you have previously expressed that you are utterly asexual. If this memory is not in error, I could point out that transgenderism, and the responses to the transgendered, are rooted deeply in sex and sexuality, and someone with a clinical detachment from sexuality would be poorly placed to notice or comment on themes of the transgendered. If I am mistaken, and it was some other poster who was asexually oriented, my apologies.

Quote from: Spike;227487I could comment on your knee jerk defensiveness, Grimgent, as I believe you have previously expressed that you are utterly asexual.

I'm just not particularly interested in having sex or treating that as some manner of a vital pursuit in life: that doesn't render me any less qualified to comment on the psychology of sexuality, thank you very much.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, the overarching theme of "free will versus natural constraints" in Nobilis, the one game among Borgstrom's works which consists entirely of her own writing, does lend itself to that kind of a reading, in very loose and general terms. However, in the book not a single character's sex or gender is in any way affected by the Commencement, nor is the possibility of that happening later in their lives raised anywhere in the text, even when it would be ridiculously easy for any Noble to shape themselves as they will while within their realms. Quite the opposite: for instance, Idony Saint-Germain had her soul stashed into an actual rag doll when she was elevated into Nobility, and yet she still thinks of herself as the girl she used to be even as she plans to rebuild a new and better body. The players themselves must bring any potential transgender issues into play, in much the same fashion as they might decide that a PC in, say, Changeling: The Lost was hauled Beyond the Fields We Know as a man and escaped as a woman. Any game of modern fantasy in which the characters effectively begin a new life offers the same options as Nobilis in that respect.

Discussing the game 'In Play' as you stress, is rather pointless when discussing the influence of the author's own nature upon the work.

Again too, restricting oneself to just Noblis may not show a trend. Its a single sample, by itself meaningless.  This is why I pointed to similar data points using mutliple works.  True, Exalted:Fair Folk is somewhat difficult, WW does not, to my knowledge, give authors free reign, but I did point out that a Transgendered Person may be drawn to White Wolf and Exalted in particular, thus it isn't lacking relevance either.

However, I find the more explicitly illuminating example to come from Weapons of the Gods.  RSB wrote specifically the Loresheets and short stories upon them, and included a story of 'kung fu' creating a permanent gender change (involuntary) of one half of a gay couple. If memory serves, from male to female. I won't speculate on chicken and egg questions (did the existance of this 'Fu power' predate the short story, or did it's use in the story lead to it being written as a rule), nor will I speculate on the influence (or lack) of RSB on the creation of multiple loresheets focused on homosexuality in a game about Kung Fu Shit... because of course, RSB was merely writing on someone else's project.  The only relevant data points are what RSB specifically wrote and hir presence in a project that could be termed as 'alternative lifestyle friendly'... a point only nominal value at best.

When looked at through the filter of 'RSB=Transgendered Author' the points are interesting, certainly of potential value in evalutating, as any extreme and personal bias is useful in evaluating written works.   The difficulty is: Without confirmation, acting on such evaluations may prove foolish and even destructive (if you are inclined) if contra-evidence is presented.

Taking the rumor at face value, and contrasting it with the data points we have available to us, suggests that RSB may be so caught up in this one facet of humanity (namely sexuality and gender identity) that it strongly influences everything she writes. This isn't inherently bad, but may suggest that if gender identity is not something you wish to explore, that hir works may not be for you, just as knowing that Danielle Steele writes predominantly tepid romances and family dramas suggests that as an author she isn't for you if you prefer to read about manly men doing manly things in manly ways.  

Of course, given the lack of visibility or discussion of RPG authors, it is rather harder to make that call without first having spent time and money on RSB works (or books where the Borg wrote but isn't slathered across the cover...) only to find that they do not appeal.

Personally? I prefer my authors to be mostly anonymous, both in person and in technique. The more the Author's Issues influence the work, the less likely I am to enjoy it.  On a more neutral point: I read an exerpt from a book a few years ago where only people with 'blue eyes' were 'really real'. Everyone else (a la the matrix) were merely creations of a vast angelic supercomputer simulation.  Now, say I lack the 'vital trait' of Blue Eyes? This book is, while fictive, suggesting I am not 'really real'... which makes it hard to immerse myself in the narrative.  

More relevant: If my personal philosophy of life is accepting and living within my own skin, and as a gamer my tastes are to play characters that could be reasonable fantasy versions of myself, RSB's works are presumed to be less than appealing, being nearly polar opposites of my personal philosophy as presented above.

I find an increasing tendancy for people to treat any form of judgement as inherently bad. We are 'not allowed' to use RSB's rumored Transgenderism to judge the works of the author.  I find this attitude frankly rediculous and based on non-sense 'feel good' philosophies, and most proponents of it are hypocrites.

Ryan or Rebecca?

Neither.

It's Jenna now.  

QuoteJenna Katerin Moran, previously Rebecca Sean Borgstrom (Born: March 3, 1972) is a roleplaying game writer. She is the author of Nobilis and The Game of Powers (the LARP version of Nobilis), as well as co-author of several source books for Exalted, the Weapons of the Gods RPG, and other works. She currently resides in Seattle, Washington.

Moran recently legally changed her name. Rebecca Sean Borgstrom was, she says, her legal name, but she did not consider it her 'real' name. She is also credited as R. Sean Borgstrom, Rebecca Borgstrom, and Sean Borgstrom. In contexts where she is well known, such as mailing lists centered on games she has authored, she is often referred to simply as "RSB."

Edit: via Wikipedia, of course.

Quote from: Spike;227517However, I find the more explicitly illuminating example to come from Weapons of the Gods.  RSB wrote specifically the Loresheets and short stories upon them, and included a story of 'kung fu' creating a permanent gender change (involuntary) of one half of a gay couple.

WotG includes three Loresheets for Taoist techniques of sexual alchemy: heterosexual, homosexual (male), and homosexual (female). Focusing on only one of them strikes me as a little contrived. In Mage: The Ascension literally all mages capable of healing others through the Sphere of Life could also switch their own sex around, but you don't see that detail quoted anywhere as some sort of an insight into the designer's psyche.

That is, WotG's system is based on the transference of male and female energies exactly like the historical practices of Taoist alchemy. Omitting any of the three possible combinations of yin and yang simply wouldn't make any sense, although the possible effects have been filtered through fantasy and embellished for the sake of the gameplay, of course.

Quote from: GrimGent;227519WotG includes three Loresheets for Taoist techniques of sexual alchemy: heterosexual, homosexual (male), and homosexual (female). Focusing on only one of them strikes me as a little contrived. In Mage: The Ascension literally all mages capable of healing others through the Sphere of Life could also switch their own sex around, but you don't see that detail quoted anywhere as some sort of an insight into the designer's psyche.

I'm sorry if you don't feel three loresheets dedicated to sexuality (out of how many loresheets?)  is a bit excessive in a game about beating the living shit out of man, demon and god in four color ancient china is a bit excessive.

One? One 'sexual kung fu' loresheet that encompassed all three might be a tad excessive but otherwise understandable... if you really needed to include rules for super-sex in your kung fu game.   Were this the forum, I could make a very strong case that, aside from social rules and roles, homosexual eroticism and techniques are not at all different from heterosexual eroticism and techniques.

Which makes me think I should alter my statement just a bit: If you simply need multiple 'loresheets' for sexuality, there is no need for more than two: one where the target is a man, one where the target is a woman.  Even that is excessive, like insisting that the technique used to use a sword against a man is different than the technique used against a demon.

As for your secondary arguement: I would expect to find rules for 'magic' body changes in a 'sphere' or 'lore' governing life and the body in general. Finding it in a 'lore' governing sexuality, and a very limited, narrow, scope of sexuality at that just highlights how out of place it was, again suggesting that the author is overly focused on 'personal issues'.

Though I must say, your knee jerk defense is rather amusing.

Quote from: Spike;227531Which makes me think I should alter my statement just a bit: If you simply need multiple 'loresheets' for sexuality, there is no need for more than two: one where the target is a man, one where the target is a woman.

Well, if the magic in your game is based on Generic Egalitarian Shiny Power that operates identically regardless of the character's sex or gender, then yes. If you want to base it on Taoist beliefs about how chi functions, however, then no, because men lack the necessary feminine principle to engage in the same techniques as women among themselves, and women lack the necessary male principle to engage in the same techniques as men among themselves. If you just want to know whether your character has enough mana points for another fireball, all that is naturally enough irrelevant, but it's going to be a different kind of a game.

I'm sure if we were to bring in a real Taoist Alchemist from Ancient China (hey! Look what I have right here in my Desk Drawer! Imagine that!)...

... THey'd point out that when you mix two likes (yang and yang, or yin and yin) you get... the same thing.  Thus, there IS no ancient chinese taoist alchemy for homosexual relationships (of EITHER flavor) because as far as yin/yang mixing go, they are a wash.

Its a baloney defense. Its creating a false justification for pushing your own personal issues into the work, not really any different than making Katana that will cut a tank in half! And still slice tomatos... only slightly less palatable to 'Joe Blow, Gamer dude on the street'.