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O Movimento Software Livre: Uma Revolução Digital

por SilCarlos

O Movimento Software Livre (MSL) é um fenômeno social e tecnológico que busca garantir liberdades essenciais para os usuários de software. Surgido formalmente em 1983 com o lançamento do Projeto GNU por Richard Stallman, o movimento se fundamenta na ideia de que os usuários devem ter a liberdade de executar, estudar, modificar e redistribuir software, sem restrições impostas por software proprietário.

Impacto Social e Cultural

O MSL não se limita apenas à tecnologia; ele reflete uma luta mais ampla por liberdade de expressão e justiça social. A conexão entre liberdade e tecnologia é profunda, pois a restrição ao desenvolvimento de software também restringe direitos econômicos, políticos e culturais dos cidadãos. O movimento propõe que a informatização deve ser um meio de empoderamento social, permitindo que mais pessoas tenham acesso às ferramentas necessárias para participar ativamente da sociedade digital.

Desafios e Críticas

Apesar de seu impacto positivo, o movimento enfrenta críticas e desafios. Alguns argumentam que a distinção entre software livre e software de código aberto pode causar confusão, já que ambos os movimentos têm objetivos diferentes: enquanto o MSL enfatiza questões éticas e sociais, o movimento de código aberto foca em aspectos práticos do desenvolvimento. Além disso, há um debate contínuo sobre a moralidade do software proprietário, com algumas vozes dentro do movimento reconhecendo que nem todos os softwares não livres são necessariamente imorais[.

As Raízes de uma Revolução

O Movimento Software Livre (MSL) é uma revolução digital que emergiu como resposta a um contexto histórico e social específico. Suas raízes estão profundamente entrelaçadas com a cultura hacker dos anos 70 e 80, especialmente em ambientes acadêmicos como o MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Contexto Histórico

1. Cultura Hacker: Nos anos 60 e 70, a comunidade de programadores começou a compartilhar software livremente, promovendo um ambiente colaborativo que favorecia a inovação. Este compartilhamento era visto como uma prática natural entre pesquisadores, que frequentemente construíam sobre o trabalho uns dos outros.

2. Regras de Propriedade: Com o aumento do software proprietário, surgiram restrições que dificultavam o acesso ao código-fonte. Essa mudança foi percebida como uma ameaça à liberdade dos usuários e ao progresso tecnológico. Richard Stallman, um dos principais fundadores do movimento, vivenciou essa transição durante seu tempo no MIT, onde se deparou com dificuldades para corrigir falhas em softwares devido à falta de acesso ao código.

Fundação do Movimento

• Projeto GNU: Em 1983, Stallman lançou o Projeto GNU com o objetivo de criar um sistema operacional completamente livre. A ideia central era garantir que os usuários tivessem a liberdade de usar, estudar, modificar e redistribuir software. O Manifesto GNU, publicado em 1985, delineou os princípios éticos do movimento e introduziu o conceito de “copyleft”, que protege as liberdades do software.

• Free Software Foundation (FSF): Para institucionalizar o movimento e arrecadar fundos para o desenvolvimento de software livre, Stallman fundou a FSF em 1985. Essa organização se tornou um pilar fundamental na promoção e defesa do software livre.

Os Quatro Pilares da Liberdade no Software Livre

O conceito de software livre é fundamentado em quatro liberdades essenciais que garantem aos usuários controle e autonomia sobre o software que utilizam. Essas liberdades são cruciais para promover uma cultura de colaboração, inovação e inclusão digital.

As Quatro Liberdades

1. Liberdade 0: Executar o programa para qualquer propósito
   Os usuários têm a liberdade de usar o software da maneira que desejarem, sem restrições sobre o propósito ou o contexto em que ele é utilizado.

2. Liberdade 1: Estudar como o programa funciona e adaptá-lo às suas necessidades
   Esta liberdade permite que os usuários acessem o código-fonte do software, possibilitando a modificação e personalização conforme suas necessidades específicas.

3. Liberdade 2: Redistribuir cópias do software
   Os usuários podem compartilhar cópias do software, seja na forma original ou modificada, ajudando outros a se beneficiarem da mesma tecnologia.

4. Liberdade 3: Distribuir versões modificadas do software
   Essa liberdade permite que os usuários compartilhem suas melhorias e adaptações, contribuindo para o avanço coletivo do conhecimento e da tecnologia.

Importância das Quatro Liberdades

Essas liberdades não apenas garantem que os usuários tenham controle sobre as ferramentas que utilizam, mas também promovem um ambiente de aprendizado e inovação contínua. O acesso ao código-fonte é um pré-requisito para as liberdades 1 e 3, assegurando que todos possam participar ativamente no desenvolvimento e aprimoramento do software.

Implicações Sociais

O movimento de software livre defende que a inclusão digital deve ser realizada através do uso de software livre, pois isso garante que todos os cidadãos tenham acesso ao conhecimento digital e possam se tornar participantes ativos na sociedade da informação. A dependência de soluções proprietárias pode levar à exclusão digital, limitando a capacidade das pessoas de compreender e modificar as tecnologias que utilizam.

Impacto na Indústria: Uma Onda de Mudança

O Movimento Software Livre (MSL) está provocando uma transformação significativa na indústria de tecnologia, alterando padrões de propriedade intelectual, práticas de desenvolvimento e modelos de negócios. A adoção crescente de software livre por empresas em diversos setores é um reflexo dessa mudança.

Crescimento e Adoção

1. Adoção Significativa: Uma pesquisa revelou que 64% das empresas que utilizam software livre no Brasil têm faturamento superior a R$ 1 milhão por ano, com destaque para setores como comunicação, educação e tecnologia da informação. Empresas renomadas como Carrefour, Itaú e Petrobras estão entre os casos de sucesso na implementação de soluções de código aberto.

2. Concentração Regional: O avanço do software livre é mais evidente nas regiões Sul e Sudeste do Brasil, onde 81% das empresas desenvolvedoras e 85% das usuárias estão localizadas. Essa concentração tem impulsionado um ecossistema robusto para o desenvolvimento e uso de software livre.

Benefícios Econômicos

• Redução de Custos: A economia em licenciamento é uma das principais motivações para a adoção do software livre. As empresas podem redirecionar esses recursos para áreas críticas como pesquisa e desenvolvimento.

• Flexibilidade e Customização: O software livre permite que as empresas modifiquem e personalizem soluções para atender às suas necessidades específicas, promovendo maior agilidade nos processos.

Inovação e Colaboração

• Ambiente Colaborativo: O modelo de desenvolvimento do software livre favorece a colaboração entre desenvolvedores, resultando em melhorias contínuas na qualidade do código. Essa abordagem também atrai profissionais talentosos que contribuem com novas ideias e habilidades.

• Crowdsourcing: Muitas empresas estão adotando práticas de crowdsourcing, onde consumidores colaboram na criação de produtos, refletindo um novo modelo de produção descentralizado.

Desafios e Oportunidades

Apesar dos avanços, o movimento enfrenta desafios, como a resistência à mudança por parte de algumas instituições que ainda preferem soluções proprietárias. No entanto, a crescente conscientização sobre os benefícios do software livre está criando oportunidades para o fortalecimento do mercado local de tecnologia.

Gigantes do Software Livre

O movimento de software livre tem gerado um impacto significativo na indústria de tecnologia, com várias empresas se destacando como líderes nesse segmento. Essas “gigantes do software livre” não apenas promovem a filosofia de liberdade e colaboração, mas também oferecem soluções inovadoras que têm transformado o mercado.

Principais Empresas de Software Livre

1. Red Hat

   • Descrição: Fundada em 1993, a Red Hat é uma das pioneiras no desenvolvimento de soluções de código aberto, especialmente com seu sistema operacional Linux.
   • Impacto: Em 2012, tornou-se a primeira empresa de software livre a ultrapassar USD 1 bilhão em receita e foi adquirida pela IBM em 2019 por USD 34 bilhões, a maior aquisição de software da história.

2. Canonical

   • Descrição: Conhecida por desenvolver o Ubuntu, uma das distribuições Linux mais populares, a Canonical tem sido fundamental na promoção do software livre em ambientes corporativos.
   • Impacto: O Ubuntu é amplamente utilizado em servidores e desktops, contribuindo para a adoção de soluções baseadas em Linux.

3. SUSE

   • Descrição: A SUSE é uma empresa que oferece soluções de software livre focadas em sistemas operacionais baseados em Linux.
   • Impacto: A SUSE é reconhecida por sua robustez em ambientes empresariais, especialmente em serviços de nuvem e infraestrutura.

4. Mozilla

   • Descrição: Criadora do navegador Firefox, a Mozilla é uma defensora do software livre e da privacidade online.
   • Impacto: O Firefox é um dos navegadores mais utilizados mundialmente e promove uma internet aberta e acessível.

5. MySQL (Oracle)

   • Descrição: Embora agora seja propriedade da Oracle, o MySQL começou como um sistema de gerenciamento de banco de dados relacional de código aberto.
   • Impacto: É amplamente utilizado em aplicações web e empresariais, sendo uma escolha popular devido à sua flexibilidade e desempenho confiável.

Empresas Brasileiras no Cenário de Software Livre

No Brasil, diversas empresas também se destacam na utilização e desenvolvimento de software livre:

• TOTVS: Líder em software de gestão empresarial no Brasil, a TOTVS oferece soluções personalizadas que incluem opções de código aberto.
• Cognizant: Multinacional que fornece serviços de TI e consultoria, com um forte foco na implementação de soluções baseadas em software livre.
• Deway: Especializada no desenvolvimento de aplicativos móveis, também adota práticas de software livre para oferecer soluções sob medida.

O Debate Atual: Monetização e Sustentabilidade

O movimento de software livre enfrenta um debate crescente sobre como garantir sua sustentabilidade financeira, ao mesmo tempo em que preserva os princípios de liberdade e colaboração. A monetização é um tema central, pois muitas iniciativas de software livre dependem de modelos que equilibram a oferta gratuita com a necessidade de recursos para manutenção e desenvolvimento.

Modelos de Monetização

1. Serviços Agregados

   • Muitas empresas que desenvolvem software livre oferecem serviços complementares, como suporte técnico, consultoria e treinamento. Esse modelo permite que o software em si seja gratuito, enquanto os serviços pagos geram receita significativa.

2. Crowdfunding

   • O financiamento coletivo tem se tornado uma estratégia popular para projetos de software livre. Plataformas como Patreon permitem que desenvolvedores recebam doações regulares de usuários interessados em apoiar o projeto. Essa abordagem não apenas garante recursos, mas também engaja a comunidade.

3. Modelos SaaS (Software as a Service)

   • Algumas empresas adotam o modelo SaaS, onde os usuários pagam uma assinatura para acessar o software hospedado na nuvem. Isso elimina a necessidade de instalação local e manutenção por parte do usuário, enquanto gera uma receita recorrente para os desenvolvedores.

4. Doações e Patrocínios

   • Muitos projetos de software livre são sustentados por doações de empresas ou indivíduos que utilizam o software. Exemplos incluem o Linux e a Fundação Mozilla, que dependem de contribuições para manter suas operações.

Desafios da Sustentabilidade

• Concorrência com Software Proprietário: A natureza gratuita do software livre pode dificultar a monetização, especialmente quando comparado a soluções proprietárias que oferecem suporte direto e garantias.
• Percepção do Valor: Convencer usuários a pagar por serviços relacionados ao software livre pode ser desafiador, já que muitos estão acostumados a obter o software gratuitamente.
• Engajamento da Comunidade: Manter uma comunidade ativa e engajada é crucial para o sucesso dos projetos de software livre. A falta de participação pode levar à estagnação do desenvolvimento e à diminuição do suporte.

Referências

https://politics.org.br/pt-br/padroes-abertos-e-conhecimento-news/movimento-do-software-livre-por-uma-relacao-livre-com

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.pt-br.html

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hist%C3%B3ria_do_software_livre

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movimento_software_livre

https://www.scielo.br/j/ha/a/HtMLzNdrPGvb9nwRLvvJCkP/

https://escola.mpu.mp.br/publicacoescientificas/index.php/boletim/article/download/179/160

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.pt-br.html

https://vecam.org/2002-2014/article710.html

https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/o-avanco-do-software-livre/

https://www.appcivico.com/artigos/software-livre-tecnologia-social-para-combater-desigualdades-digitais

https://www.dio.me/articles/quais-sao-as-maiores-empresas-no-ramo-de-programacaoti-no-brasil

https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/o-avanco-do-software-livre/

https://www.mestresdaweb.com.br/tecnologias/5-melhores-empresas-de-desenvolvimento-de-software-do-brasil-em-2023

https://blog.apoia.se/ganhar-dinheiro-com-open-source/

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.pt-br.html

https://engsoftmoderna.info/artigos/como-monetizar.html

https://www.ibm.com/br-pt/topics/open-source

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Using Partial Function Applications With Recursive Wrappers and Functional Combinators

I know that it's a word salad of a title, but if you're reading this, then I'm sure you're A) old enough to read, B) have some idea of the topic, C) in the know that word salad titles are click-bait.

I cut my teeth on functional programming in Elixir. While it is a great language for many things and it is a fun language to use, ... functional it is not. When compared to something like Ocaml, there are many features of a more 'pure' functional language that Elixir lacks. These same features are also either missing in Python, or poorly implemented.

I like Python, I'll admit it. I can do many things quickly without much dev overhead. It's a good thing that I like it because my job is roughly 98% Python development. But I'm always on the search on how do do things a bit faster without making the code hard to read or maintain.

One trick that I have picked up from Ocaml is the use of partial function applications. In Ocaml you can do some weird stuff like so:

let adder x y = x + y;;
let add_five = adder 5;;
add_five 7;;
12

This seems like a strange and an unnecessary thing to do, but partial function applications are basically simple closures on-the-fly which is quite useful; a point that I will flesh out a bit later.

How Ocaml does this is quite unique. In the Ocaml world there are, technically, no multi argument functions, but a function that is a chain of functions. If you take a look at the signature of adder above it will look like the following:

x => y => x+y

To your eyes , this is a bit weird and a little hard to grok unless you understand that there are no variables only functions. The signature basically says “adder is a function that yields x. X is a function that takes an input and returns function y. Y is a function that takes an input and returns x+y.” This also explains why, typically, functional languages don't use parenthesis for functions, because they would get overused quite quickly and would be semantically difficult.

You may be saying “But the partial class exists in Pythons functools package.” That is true, but using it can give you some pretty wild results.

For example let's say you have a function like so:

def foo(a, b, c):
    return f"{a=}, {b=}, {c=}"

Now lets also say that you need to make 2 partials from this one function because you're going to get the data you need at different times and you want to pass these partials around to other functions. And, let's also say that you get a, b and c out of order. You might do something like this:

bar = partial(foo, c=5)
# some other code

foobar = partial(bar, a=2)
# some more other code

foobar(1)

And I will tell you that the above won't work the way you think it will. In fact, it won't work at all. When you use a partial of a partial and then use keywords on positional arguments for out of order assignment (which is a totally bad thing to do in Python), all of your arguments must be keyword arguments. In the situation above the partial class will try to apply 2 to a, then 1 to a (not b like you would expect) and then throw an TypeError exception.

But the problem is that I still need that hot, sweet partial fix. A better solution is to just make our own partial wrapper that behaves a bit more sanely. For this let's implement a generic wrapper that implements recursion to do the job:

from functools import wraps, cache
from inspect import signature


@cache
def _get_required_arguments(func):
    parameters = inspect.signature(func).parameters
    positional_args = 0
    keyword_args = 0

    for k, v in parameters.items():
        match v.kind:
            case v.POSITIONAL_OR_KEYWORD:
                if v.default == inspect._empty:
                    positional_args += 1
                else:
                    keyword_args += 1
            case v.VAR_POSITIONAL:
                # if there are no positional args,
                # then we are only expecting variadic arguments
                # if there are positional args,
                # then a variadic argument is optional
                # and doesn't increment the required amount
                if positional_args == 0:
                    positional_args += 1
            case v.VAR_KEYWORD:
                if keyword_args == 0:
                    keyword_args += 1
    return (positional_args, keyword_args)


def partialize(func, *args, **kwargs):
    @wraps(func)
    def recurse(*nargs, **nkwargs):
        return partialize(func, *args, *nargs, **kwargs, **nkwargs)

    p_args, k_args = _get_required_arguments(func)
    if len(args) < p_args:
        return recurse
    return func(*args, **kwargs)

Now we can do funny things like this which works in a similar fashion to what Ocaml offers:

@partialize
def foo(a, b, c):
    return f"{a=}, {b=}, {c=}"
foo(1, 2, 3)
foo(1)(2, 3)
foo(1, 2)(3)
foo(1)(2)(3)

However, it does not fix the out of order problem from above. Nor does it fix the double application to a because of mixed keyword/positionals problem. What it does do is allow you to do is to wrap a function to make it partialable (not a word, I know) at function definition, something the partial class cannot offer.

To fix the out of order problem we would need to make a one-off combinator like so:

def foo(a, b, c):
    return (a, b, c)

@partialize
def bar_combinator(c, a, b):
    return foo(a, b, c)

bar_1 = bar_combinator(5)
bar_2 = bar_1(2)
result1 = bar_1(5, 10)
result2 = bar_2(1)

This of course does mean that you must know the order of application ahead of time. If you're in a situation where you have no idea what order you will be getting your arguments applied, then you should stick with only keyword arguments like so:

@partialize
def bar_combinator(a=None, b=None, c=None):
    return foo(a, b, c)

Now, that's a real simple combinator. In fact, it doesn't really combine anything, but just rearranges arguments. So let's look at a real world use case that I had just t'other day.

I needed to build multiple Mac objects that take different argument and treat them in the same way. The two objects were ISO9797-algo3 and ISO9797-algo5 (aka: CMAC). Algo3 requires that the data to be macked is padded first in one of three different methods also defined in ISO9797. CMAC does not need padding, but it does need to know what crypto algorithm to use. The class definitions for each are like so:

class MacAlgo3:
    def __init__(self, key: bytes):
        self.key = key

    def __call__(self, data: bytes) -> bytes:
        return how_the_mac_is_made

class Cmac:
    def __init__(self, key: bytes, algo: Literal["AES", "TDES"]):
        self.key = key
        self.algo = get_algo(algo)

    def __call__(self, data: bytes) -> bytes:
        return how_the_cmac_is_made

I knew that I needed my mac objects first, and my key and data would come later. To make this work:

@partialize
def comb1(cls, padder, key, data):
    return cls(key)(padder(data))


@partialize
def comb2(cls, algo, key, data):
    return cls(key, algo)(data)


def do_something(macker):
    # derive key and get data
    macker_loaded = macker(key)
    mac = macker_loaded(data)


if option.a:
    macker = comb1(Mac3, algo2)
else:
    macker = comb2(Cmac, 'AES')

do_something(macker)

In this way I can shoehorn various objects into other objects that share the same signature. If I were to do this just using the partial class without combinators, I'm not sure it could be done. If I were to use combinators but use the partial class, it would probably be a mess. If I had to make a combinator without any partialization and only use hand-rolled closures, then I would probably shoot myself and my foot in the process.

Combinators can make your life EZ, but you have to make partial functions. Make that EZ too.

I said this aloud as I was vacuuming my house earlier today.

For the past little while, I've been chastising myself for being too self-absorbed in wallowing to tend to the disaster that is my living space. I can tell I'm beginning to metamorphize into myself—again, and quite frankly not even a notable depressive episode of my ouroboric phoenix sitcom life—not just when I have the executive functioning to do chores, but when I start caring enough about them that they stop feeling like chores. When I start pouring my love into cooking, cleaning...

When it's no longer housework, but housecraft. The art of homemaking. The practice of domestic magic. Which includes aero constructs designed to dispel dirt from the dungeon floor of my mini-boss lair. Which is to say, I was vacuuming my house earlier today.

The first thing I said aloud was: “What a mess!” Remember the disaster that is my living space?

Here are the contents of that disaster:

1. Crumbs—the sort of miscellaneous crumbs that end up on floors, themselves arguably existing for there to be somewhere for those crumbs to end up;
2. That's it.
3. Okay... dirty dishes, I guess? But I'd washed them before I'd started vacuuming, so they have an alibi for not being present at the time.

When I realized this, I had to stop cleaning for a minute.

I thought of the grimy places I used to willingly take myself, often. The Superfund site I subjected myself to living in for years, the health hazards that didn't register to me as so bad... then at all, in that way new pieces of furniture fade from view when their novelty wears off, and you forget about them entirely even as you're sitting on or staring right at them.

Sitting on the floor... staring at visibly clean, visible tiles... and the scattered crumbs of a lived life, that arguably exist for there to be something miscellaneous that ends up on floors.

That's when I said it aloud... “The mess is relative.” and finished vacuuming.

I wonder what sorts of crumbs will wind up on the floor of my lived life for me to vacuum up next...!

Wie armselig die Eisenbahn in Deutschland aufgestellt ist, zeigt sich aktuell im Norden. Da ist nämlich zwischen Hamburg, Schwerin und Wittenberge vier Monate lang alles gesperrt und damit auch die direkteste und leistungsfähigste Verbindung von Hamburg und Rostock nach Berlin. Das ist aber noch nicht die Generalsanierung, sondern nur die gerade eben nötigsten dringenden Reparaturen – an einer Strecke, die seit 1993 kurioserweise schon etliche Male modernisiert und saniert worden ist. Das zeigt, wie morsch die Strecke trotzdem ist. Aber ausreichende reelle Ersatzkapazitäten gibt’s nicht einmal ansatzweise.

Gerade die Strecke Hamburg–Hagenow Land–Ludwigslust–Wittenberge–Nauen–Berlin ist normalerweise sehr stark ausgelastet. Neben Regionalverkehr – der wohl auch aus Streckenkapazitätsgründen ausschließlich mit RegionalExpressen abgefackelt wird, die dafür aber an jeder Milchkanne halten – gibt es eigentlich zwei Fernreisezüge pro Stunde und Richtung und praktisch den gesamten Güterverkehr zwischen dem Hamburger Hafen und Osteuropa.

Alternativen?!

Reelle Ausweichmöglichkeiten halten sich in Grenzen. Nördlich der Schnellfahrstrecke Hannover–Oebisfelde–Stendal gibt es nur noch drei Eisenbahnstrecken, die die ehemalige deutsch-deutsche Grenze überqueren:

• die „Amerikalinie“ Uelzen–Salzwedel–Stendal. Elektrifiziert, aber das nach dem Krieg abgebaute zweite Gleis wurde nur zwischen Salzwedel und Hohenwulsch wieder aufgebaut, und der Westteil zwischen Salzwedel und Uelzen wurde nach der Wiedervereinigung bis 1999 saniert, aber ohne zweites Gleis und mit nur zwei Bahnhöfen mit Ausweichgleis in Wieren und Schnega. Mit einem vollständigen zweigleisigen Ausbau ist nicht vor 2028 zu rechnen – im Zuge der Generalsanierung der Strecke.
• besagte Strecke Hamburg–Hagenow Land–Ludwigslust, die als einzige zumindest außerhalb des Hamburger Stadtgebiets durchgängig zweigleisig ist, jetzt aber ganz bis nach Wittenberge gesperrt ist
• die Strecke Lübeck–Bad Kleinen, eingleisig und nicht elektrifiziert, mal abgesehen davon, daß theoretische Züge von Hamburg nach Bad Kleinen in Lübeck Kopf machen dürfen; zumindest gibt es ein paar mehr Ausweichgleise mit einer Nutzlänge von je über 400 Metern

Kurzum: Die einzige gangbare Option, den Ausweichverkehr mit einigermaßen Durchsatz zu fahren, wäre gewesen, ganz über den Großraum Hannover zu fahren. Verständlicherweise wäre das Wahnwitz.

Die Gummibahn kommt

Der Personenfernverkehr wird nun zur Hälfte über Uelzen–Salzwedel–Stendal gefahren und zur Hälfte im Abschnitt Hamburg–Berlin eben überhaupt nicht. Zunächst einmal heißt das, daß die Züge zwischen Hamburg und Uelzen mit auf die eh schon um 30% überlastete Strecke nach Hannover geschickt werden. Die 45 Minuten zusätzliche Fahrzeit sind ziemlich optimistisch.

Uelzen–Salzwedel wiederum hat gerade genug Kapazitäten für den Regionalverkehr und gelegentliche Güterzüge. Um da auch den Personenfernverkehr fahren zu können, hat man den Regionalverkehr kurzerhand westlich von Salzwedel komplett eingestellt und durch Busse ersetzt. Da werden allerdings stündliche und gut ausgelastete Doppelstockzüge durch ebenfalls stündliche Überlandbusse ersetzt. Weil es für einen dichteren Takt nicht reicht, gibt es keine Mitnahmegarantie.

Für den „Hanse-Expreß“ zwischen Hamburg und Rostock besteht ein Busersatzverkehr von und nach Schwerin. Aber zum einen fährt der mal ab Bergedorf, mal ab Wandsbeker Chaussee. Man muß also vorher wissen, von wo der jeweilige Bus jetzt fährt. Sollte man einen verpassen oder der Platz nicht reichen, dauert es auch eine Zeit, bis man an der jeweils anderen Station ist.

Zusätzlich fahren pro Tag und Richtung sechs InterCity-Busse zwischen Hamburg und Schwerin, aber wohl ungetaktet und mit miesen Anschlüssen. Und weil sie als Fernverkehr gelten, gilt auch das Deutschlandticket nicht.

… und dann kommen nur LINTe

Ansonsten ist nur noch die Verbindung von Lübeck nach Bad Kleinen übrig. Einmal am Tag fährt da pro Richtung ein InterCity von Hamburg über Lübeck an der Ostsee entlang. Aber erstens fährt der nur einmal am Tag. Zweitens ist da wohl mit einem „Restangebot“ mit sechs oder sieben Wagen zu rechnen statt mit einer ausgewachsenen Garnitur von mindestens zehn Wagen, zumal Kiel nicht mehr genügend Dieselloks hat, um die zwei notwendigen Maschinen für einen so langen Zug zur Verfügung zu stellen. Drittens ist auch das Fernverkehr. Und viertens hat man nach Berlin trotzdem noch einen Riesenumweg. Noch einmal zur Erinnerung: Das Gleisdreieck Hagenow Land–Ludwigslust–Holthusen ist komplett gesperrt.

Darüber hinaus fährt im Stundentakt die „Stadttore-Linie“, von der einzelne Züge bis hinter die polnische Grenze laufen. Die fährt im Stundentakt. Aber die fährt mit Dieseltriebwagen, Alstom Coradia LINT 41, was heutzutage das „Besser-als-nix“-Grundangebot ist. Den Tag über fahren die Züge in Doppeltraktion, und selbst die sind so schon ziemlich gut ausgelastet. Die stellen aber nördlich von Oebisfelde den einzigen Schienenverkehr über die ehemalige Zonengrenze überhaupt dar, der mit dem Deutschlandticket nutzbar ist.

Verstärken kann man da genau gar nichts. Die Züge verlängern kann man nicht, weil man dafür mehr exakt baugleiche Fahrzeuge bräuchte. Selbst LINT der neueren Generation von anderen Betreibern können mit den hier eingesetzten Triebwagen wahrscheinlich allenfalls mechanisch gekuppelt werden, aber wegen abweichender und daher inkompatibler Firmware nicht in Vielfachtraktion fahren.

Mehr oder andere Züge zu fahren, ist auch schlecht. Man bräuchte geeignete Dieselloks, die aus dem halben Bundesgebiet zusammengekarrt werden müssen, weil Kiel schon seinen eigenen Bedarf mit eigenen Loks nicht mehr decken kann. Wagen wären wohl das kleinste Übel, die könnten in riesigen Mengen vom Stillstandsmanagement in Mukran geholt werden. Aber dann bräuchte man auch noch Führerstandspersonal, das a) auf den Loks und b) auf der von den Loks zu befahrenden Strecke zugelassen ist und c) Zeit hat. Und zwar mit Rückfallebene. Schon wenn man die Züge in Rostock brechen und zwischen Lübeck und Rostock lokbespannte Doppelstockzüge fahren wollte, bräuchte es sechs Loks, zwei pro Garnitur, um an die Beschleunigungswerte der LINTe ranzukommen, und genug Triebfahrzeugführer für zwei Schichten pro Tag.

Was jetzt noch „geht“, wenn es denn geht

Wer jetzt mit dem Deutschlandticket von Hamburg nach Berlin will, hat im Prinzip folgende Optionen:

• über Lübeck, Rostock und den großen Schlenker über Neustrelitz, wenn man denn in Lübeck in den Zug kommt
• mit dem Bus bis Schwerin, dann dito, wenn man denn in Hamburg in den Bus kommt
• mit dem Metronom nach Uelzen, von da mit dem Bus nach Salzwedel und dann mit ein paarmal Umsteigen weiter, wenn man denn in Uelzen in den Bus kommt
• über Hannover, was nicht wesentlich entspannter ist, aber die kürzeste Verbindung mit ziemlicher Mitnahmegarantie, und gleichzeitig so lange dauert, daß eine Tagestour undenkbar ist

Da wünscht man sich wirklich, damals im Krieg wäre die Elbbrücke bei Dömitz nicht gesprengt worden. Oder zumindest die Kleptomanen der Roten Armee hätten nicht 1947 die komplette Strecke von Wittenberge bis Dömitz abgebaut und mitgenommen. Man bedenke, die Strecke ging mal von Wittenberge über Lüneburg bis nach Buchholz in der Nordheide. Das hätte nach der Wende ein schönes Verkehrsprojekt Deutsche Einheit abgegeben als bevorzugte Güterverbindung zwischen Hamburg und Berlin und natürlich für den Regionalverkehr. Das immer vorgesehene zweite Gleis hätte man auch bauen können; die Elbbrücke war ja zweigleisig. Nebeneffekt wäre gewesen, daß Hamburg–Wittenberge und Uelzen–Stendal eine Ausweichroute gehabt hätten.

Aber im Grunde grenzt es ja schon an ein Wunder, daß alleine die Strecke von Uelzen nach Stendal wieder durchgängig befahrbar ist und dafür praktisch komplett neu gebaut wurde. Es war ja angedacht, sie nach der Transrapid-Absage – ein Jahr nach ihrer Fertigstellung – für den ICE-Verkehr zwischen Hamburg und Berlin zu ertüchtigen, zumal das tatsächlich eine kürzere Route gewesen wäre als über Ludwigslust und Wittenberge. Statt dessen hat man die eh schon beinahe komplett zweigleisige letztere Route bevorzugt.

… und das ist erst der Vorgeschmack

In knapp einem Jahr kommt dann für satte acht Monate die Generalsanierung der kompletten Strecke vom Berliner Tor in Hamburg bis mindestens nach Berlin-Spandau. Man kann nur hoffen, daß die Nahverkehrsträger aus dem aktuellen Debakel gelernt haben und ein deutlich leistungsfähigeres Ersatzkonzept anbieten. Mehr Ersatzbusse zwischen Uelzen und Salzwedel. Mehr Ersatzbusse zwischen Hamburg und Schwerin. Idealerweise dann auch höhere Kapazitäten durch völlig anderes Rollmaterial zwischen Lübeck und Rostock. Und aufgrund der Flut an Passagieren, die auf dem Wege den Süden Mecklenburgs komplett umfahren müssen, auch erhöhte Kapazitäten von Rostock über Neustrelitz nach Berlin.

Klar, den Aufriß wie zwischen Lübeck und Puttgarden, wo für den jahrelangen Ersatzverkehr eigens mehrere Busse in entsprechender Farbgebung gekauft wurden und in Lensahn sogar eine ganz neue Haltestelle nebst Wendeschleife gebaut wurde, wird man für acht Monate nicht machen. Aber jetzt haben sie noch ein knappes Jahr, um einen amtlichen Ersatzverkehr aufzuziehen, der die sich jetzt zeigenden tatsächlichen Bedarfe aufnehmen kann. Mit „Seid froh, daß überhaupt was fährt, wo ihr vielleicht irgendwann mit reinpaßt“ hält man nämlich niemanden bei der Schienenverkehrsstange.

#Eisenbahn #Aktuelles #Hamburg #Berlin

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An important topic — glad it is being discussed

Yesterday a new topic was created on our subReddit, which is shown in the image above. The theme of the topic is how is the current pen pal experience in SLOWLY app – and we have various other commentary in the sub recently about it.

It got views and comments, including an excellent one by ZT1604, which I supported, agreeing with all they wrote. Russian Cousin suggested it could be a good Guest Author post here, I asked for permission, which was granted. So, here it is. ? Thank you, ZT!

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The topic's original poster asked:

I uninstalled Slowly last year, been there for a while but got burned out from introducing myself over and over. So how is Slowly these days? Can you share your experiences lately? Is it still a good app?

Guest post by ZT1604, original posted on Reddit here.

Hello! Let me preface my comment by saying that SLOWLY today isn't the same as it used to be, for many reasons.

I've been on the app since 2021 and as such I've seen it evolve and decay over the years. Over that time, I've had countless pen-pal stories, some of them super joyful, others very painful.

I got to say my highest usage period was late 2022 – early 2023, and back then, you could still get decent pen-pals and letter exchanges. The truth is that the userbase on this app has been dwindling for a while now.

The pandemic was certainly its golden age, but ever since then, ever since people returned to normalcy, this app has been on a steady downfall as far as its user pool is concerned.

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The current experience

Now, in 2024, SLOWLY is a bit different. First off, you have the so-called Open Letter feature, which basically is a letter that you shoot into the app waiting for it to be replied by anyone who manages to stumble across it.

SLOWLY has been trying hard to make this otherwise niche feature into a staple in the app, and so more and more users are giving it a try. The feature is quite half-assed, though, so your mileage might vary. You might get a lot of replies or none at all. You might get a few quality letters or many spam or low-effort letters.

Either way, it's a feature that still requires some tuning to be truly effective and satisfying, but when the right conditions of the algorithm and the target audience are met, coupled with your letter being based around just the right topic, it does work.

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The newer users

Then, there's the users. Most of the committed pen-pals in the app are long gone at this point, leaving behind a plethora of dead or paused profiles with very abysmal sent-received ratios.

Instead, the new fashion of SLOWLY user nowadays is increasingly low-effort compared to the users who used to take it more passionately, and the prevalence of AI-written letters is increasingly common. As such, finding actual long-term letter exchanges can be incredibly challenging nowadays.

It's still possible, but it requires a lot of luck, whether it's via Open Letter or good ole' manual search. As for my own recent experiences, I've had fewer and fewer of them, and right now, it's taking me more and more time to even find one profile with whom I can exchange letters with reliably.

I still have faith and love for the concept, so I'll stay for now, but it'd lie if I say the experience was still as exciting as it was during the pandemic years or even in late 2022.

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Regarding SLOWLY's development and Support

Finally, a thing which hasn't changed at all is the app's atrocious level of support by its developing team.

I personally harbor no ill against the developers, but its direction has been half-assed and doesn't really take into account the users' long list of suggestions that might improve the user experience, as well as of course, the complaints about the gripes many users have, including technical problems, a very deficient and barebones desktop web browser client, an obsessive and almost religious focus on providing more and more stamps instead of adding another exciting twist to the formula, etc.

We all really hope things eventually improve, but if you read this subreddit's several posts about the matter, you'll find a mix of foolish idealism that things will get better, mixed with the dreadful frustration of realizing that it's not going to be anytime soon.

SLOWLY is still a unique concept and has a good chunk of remaining potential. It's just that the developing team's direction is not capable or willing to evolve things and keep it up with time.

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Conclusion?

And so, this has been my overall experience with SLOWLY. Is it still a unique app? Yes, it is. Is it still the same as before? No, it is not. Is it still a good app? That's up to you to decide.

ZT1604

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I enjoyed reading ZT's comment, and added a short comment of my own. It's spot on, and thanks to Russian Cousin's suggestion, it's now here as well. Thank you, both!

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Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

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@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

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You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

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Niemand...

...kommentiert geiler.

N.B.: Any post marked as a “Legacy Fringe Review” is an old blog entry moved to this one and lightly edited for format, with some minor errors corrected (and undoubtedly new ones added for balance!).

Continuing my little experiment in reviewing little-known RPGs, past and present, I'd like to go in a direction directly opposite of my last review. In that I introduced a game that was in all ways completely different from most RPGs that people in the hobby are familiar with. Instead it is, as I put it in a comment, “RPG meets collaborative fiction with a dash of improv”.

Today's game is nothing of the sort. It is three perfectly ordinary things:

1. It is a free game and almost militantly so.
2. It is a joke game, or, at least, it started that way.
3. It is a so-called “Old School Renaissance” game (and arguably the first actual such!).

So why am I reviewing a game so ordinary? Because, naturally, it is in no way ordinary!

The game (and indeed, to a degree, entire game line) that I am reviewing today is the game Mazes & Minotaurs (M&M) written by Olivier Legrande. If you've compulsively followed the link provided you got a taste of the rabbit's warren that is the secret world of M&M. If you didn't, let me give you a quick history so you can understand the joyful, wonderful madness you're about to face.

History

In 2002, game author and columnist Paul Elliot wrote an article in which he postulates an alternative history where Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson create a game based on Greek miniatures wargaming instead of medieval. This inspired French game author Olivier Legrande to conceive of actually making the game hinted at in that article. In the process of collaboration, the pair, with Legrande doing the bulk of the work, created not only the game Mazes & Minotaurs but also the complicated (and very funny!) joke history around it.

And the joke history is that the game was created by Paul Elliot in 1972 (two years before the publication of Dungeons & Dragons). Assorted supplements that vaguely mirrored the original D&D supplements were created and assigned product release dates two years before their approximate D&D equivalents. Then, in “1987” (two years before the release of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons), Revised Mazes & Minotaurs (RM&M) was released with its mirroring books and from there the game exploded.

As of this writing there are a lot of supplements for M&M. Just go take a look! There's a lot there for what started as a joke game. All of it free.

Production

The game books are written in a breezy style (without the gratuitously grandiloquent vocabulary of the real source materials, thankfully!) and, as part of their affectation of being “reprints” of old editions, have little sidebars expounding on some of the faux-history of the game and its community. Much of it is self-deprecating and a lot of it shines a light on real RPG history in the guise of the fake.

The typesetting of all of it is very basic. A simple decorative frieze-like border surrounds two columns of text and several pieces of clip art that are vaguely thematic. (Well, OK, to be fair, it's more than vague. Legrande has a decent eye for matching such artworks to the text most times.) Font selection is basic as well, although thankfully consistent across the line. Covers range from laughable to decent, though it's unclear how much of this is homage and how much is just the fact it is a free game.

In general, the bottom line is that the game is not made for looks. It's made for play. (And what more do you want from a game that is absolutely, 100% free!?)

Play

And that segues nicely into the most important part of the review: how does this joke game actually play? To review this, I will have to pick an edition, so I will. I will pick the RM&M game, reviewing the rules of that system. (Much of the game is unchanged in the Revised edition anyway, so there's no point in covering both.)

The RM&M rules are in two core rulebooks of 50 pages each, one optional rulebook, also 50 pages, and a 127-page monster book. The first core rulebook, the Players Manual (PM) covers character generation, combat, magic, and adventuring rules.

Character Creation

Character creation is a simple process: for all characters: select a class; roll basic attributes; pick a name and gender, determine age; determine combat scores; determine other scores; determine starting wealth and equipment, purchase extra equipment; flesh out the character.

Character classes are divided into five warrior classes (Amazons, Barbarians, Centaurs, Nobles, Spearmen), five magician classes (Elementalists, Lyrists, Nymphs, Priests, Sorcerers), and two specialist classes (hunters, thieves). All characters start at level 1 and can go to level 6. (It should be noted that the optional Companion adds two extra warrior classes, the Cavalryman and the Archer, as well as a far less sexist Amazon variant.)

There are six attributes: Might, Skill, Wits, Luck, Will, and Grace. These reflect the usual old school game concerns with a slight Greek flavour. 2d6+6 are rolled six times and assigned to attributes. There are some rules around these to keep characters competent. Each class has two primary attributes (e.g. Lyrists have Grace and Luck) and the two highest final values must be allocated to these two attributes. Each attribute comes with a paired modifier by value.

It should be noted that for number-crunchers, Luck is probably the most important of the attributes.

Names are freely decided, and gender is freely decided except for those classes which have pre-decided genders. (Nymphs are always female, for example.) Starting age is 2d6+15 for warriors and specialists, 2d6+20 or magicians. The only exception here is Nymphs, who are ageless.

Combat scores are, as the name would indicate, numbers used in combat and are calculated from attribute modifiers, sometimes with base values added. All but Hits Total incorporate the Luck modifier in addition to other ones, so Luck is an important stat for all-round combatants.

There are four saving rolls: Athletic Prowess, Danger Evasion, Mystic Fortitude, and Physical Vigour. Each character also has a Personal Charisma modifier reflecting interpersonal qualities. There is also an encumbrance total calculated based on a base number plus carried equipment; the impact of this total depends on the Might score directly (not the modifier).

Specialists have talents: Hunting for Hunters, and Thievery for Thieves. Magicians of all kinds have Mystic Strength, Power Points, and a special talent score (like for specialists) which varies by class.

All characters start with reasonable equipment for their class, some basics, and starting money that can be used to buy other things, the amount again depending on their class. In true old school fashion, the equipment list is very basic with mostly representative items and will require extrapolation for items not on it.

Once the mechanical bits are done, players are encouraged to breath life into their characters by supplying a background and personality.

Although an actual, (very!) playable game, the author couldn't resist throwing in some jokes at old school tropes. Every class, for example, has special abilities and some of those are ... ah ... scalpel-sharp parodies of the way things worked in the earlier days. Amazons, for example, use Skill and Grace as their primary attributes and have an ability called “Battle Grace” which adds their Grace modifier to their Defence Class. But this only applies if they're not wearing a breastplate... Yes, you read that right: Amazons get a bonus to their defence based on how good they look, but only if they don't cover up. I'd be offended if I weren't laughing so loudly. This is a wonderful stab at old-school game sexism! Even outside of the interspersed faux-retrospectives the game is loaded with little jokes like that (which is grist for the mill of more jokes in the Companion!).

Combat

Combat is straightforward. Combat is broken into ~6 second battle rounds, each off which has four phases: Decision, Missile, Movement, and Melee. The decision phase has characters announcing their actions in ascending initiative order. Missile attacks are then resolved in descending initiative order. Movement is presumed to occur simultaneously. Finally melee attacks are resolved again in descending order. Surprise takes surprised parties out of the sequence for one entire round and modifies defence values for defences that require awareness (like shield use).

Attacks are rolled on 1d20, adding appropriate modifiers and if equalling or exceeding the opponent's modified defence class, the attack has succeeded and the opponent takes 1d6 of damage. All standard weapons cause 1d6 damage. Some special weapons or spells may use different dice, but a spear and a dagger both do 1d6. Where weapons differ is chiefly in style (role-playing). Characters reduced to 0 hits or less are incapacitated and in danger of dying. Certain kinds of injuries can result in permanent effects. Healing is slow by nature, fast by magic.

There are a variety of special tactics usable by some or all classes: charging into battle, holding back, shield walls, subterfuge, twin-weapons, parrying, close quarters, mounted combat, sneak attacks, etc. This is the other dimension where weapons will differ; it behooves people to know the rules to know the weapons they should carry. There's also a section on unarmed combat—pugilism and wrestling—which the “retrospective” notes claim that very few players took interest in. (A stab at AD&D's convoluted unarmed combat rules, no doubt!)

An interesting mechanism is that warriors and specialists pick a “weapon of choice” (one of daggers, swords, spears, and barbarian weapons) and have “advantage” when using them. “Advantage” involves rolling the d20 twice and choosing the highest value, making use of weapons of choice a valuable thing.

Magic

Magic works in a strange combination of original D&D and AD&D. There are five Realms (Divine, Elemental, Nature, Poetic, Sorcery), each giving access to six magical powers of increasing power. Each power is ranked by “magnitude level” which represents not what character level is needed to wield, but rather how many power points they must spend. All magicians have access to all powers in their Realm if they have the power points to apply. Each realm has a matching magical talent (Priests, for example have Spiritual Aura) which is essentially a casting modifier for using powers. Magicians also hvae mystic strength which drives how effective the impact of a power will be.

Magicians don't get a lot. There are six magic powers in each realm, and a very powerful magician might get 20 power points: enough to use the most powerful abilities three times. That being said, the powers they do command can be very strong and, as such, magicians can form a very powerful “heavy weapons” component in a party. Entering a maze without a magician would be folly. Magicians working alone would be an equal folly.

Adventuring

This part contains the usual rules for travel, movement, environmental perils, and other general adventuring things like stealth or such. One running gag that started in the original edition and has carried on through everything until a whole supplement was dedicated to it is that the sailing rules are terrible. (I can't possibly imagine which game they're making fun of here...) Additionally the rules for NPC reactions, followers, and character advancement are found in this section. Of note is that character advancement is more Chivalry & Sorcery than Dungeons & Dragons: different types of characters collect adventure points differently. Warriors gather Glory for vanquishing foes and accomplishing heroic deeds. Magicians get Wisdom from vanquishing mystical foes and exploring the unknown. That sort of thing. Collect enough of these and characters go up in level, gaining new powers, new abilities, better modifiers and all the other, usual old-school concerns.

Other Books

The bulk of the actual rules of the game fall in the PM. The rest of the books are more about the setting and advice on running the game. The Maze Masters Guide (MMG), the second core rule book, for example, covers Mythic Lore (geography, cosmogony, history, etc.), Creatures (how they're rated, special rules in combat, how to build them, etc.), Game Mastering (how to create adventures, right down to an extensive suite of rather good random generators for that purpose!), and finally Mythic Items (magic loot!).

For jokes, some of the faux-history points out what motivated key design changes (references to killer mice) and there's a beautiful take-down of the infamous Dark Dungeons tract from Chick Publications called Maleficious Mazes which tells the same story with a ... darker bent.

None of what's in the MMG is ground-breaking, but it is good quality material. It is clear that actual thought went into the design of this game; it was intended to be played as well as the source of a large number of good jokes.

The third core book is the Creature Compendium (CC) and is, as the name would suggest, a collection of pre-fabbed monsters. As with the books being imitated, the quality of the monsters ranges from the sublime (Atlanteans are chilling opposition!) to the ludicrous (Tragic Floating Head — no, really!). There's 230 or so creatures in here and most of them are quite usable. Some of the jokes include a quote from an old “letters column” that derides the “flying eye” as a monster nobody could ever take seriously...

The final core book is entirely optional, containing rules that are not necessarily going to be adopted into every campaign. There are character options, including background talents (yay!) and alternate/extra classes—most notably a far less sexist Amazon. (Which, of course, had to be joked about.) The possibility of characters being Divine Agents is floated, and a large number of combat options are added. (Too many for my tastes, hence “optional” thankfully, although chariot rules are nice to have.) Magic adds the Beastmaster class, as well as optional “elements” of Light and Dark. Religion is expanded upon in a large way (but again, too complicated for my tastes, ... but I've never really had a lot of time for religion when playing RPGs so that's likely just a bias on my part).

One thing added in the CC that is surprisingly good is a set of rules for warfare. The rules are really quite nice, existing somewhere between a full-blown miniatures system (like in the Chivalry & Sorcery Companion) and a simplistic pen and paper system (like in the Chivalry & Sorcery Companion 2). For me these rules hit a sweet spot permitting characters to get involved in (and influence) on the large scale while still being a role-playing game, not a strategic board game in disguise.

Observations

M&M is clearly a joke. Indeed it is a very good joke. But it is more than that. It is a game that reimagines the history of role-playing games and supplies a world that might have been. It is also a game that supplies the charm of old school gaming (rather missing in a lot of modern games) while looking back on almost 25 years of design experience, giving a game that feels like the old-school D&D without the ugly, convoluted, broken bits.

And it did this before “OSR” was a thing.

Honestly, I love this game. I would reach for it over almost any other for quick pick-up games with players of “normal” RPGs. It has that essence that the older games had that were lost by a lot of joyless mid- and latter-generation games, but it has that essence without being screamingly incoherent. This game has a special place in my heart and I encourage anybody reading this review to go grab a copy (did I mention it's free enough?) and give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is you wasted a fraction of a cent on the download, after all.

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#FringeReviews #TTRPG #RPG #Review #LegacyReview

@zdl@gamerplus.org

Chivalry & Sorcery (C&S) is second only to Rolemaster for how long I've owned and played it. Despite it embodying, to those who know my tastes, literally everything I claim I dislike in role-playing games I have nonetheless stuck by it for four full editions, beginning with its second, and owned everything I could find for it back to its first edition.

To summarize why I shouldn't like it these days:

• It is a very complicated game. (I'm a dullard and prefer simple ones.)
• It tries to have a rule for everything. (I prefer simple and flexible core mechanisms that can be altered at need.)
• It is very strongly stuck in a very specific genre: medieval European fantasy¹. (I prefer systems that are more oriented toward kit-bashing.)

But, despite all this, I like it anyway. I have many fond memories of playing its second edition, remember some disappointment at its third, and exulted at most of that disappointment being fixed in its fourth.

This review is an attempt to explain why.

The convoluted history

While this review is for the fifth edition of the game, C&S is actually one of the oldest RPG lines still in active publication. Indeed I can only think of D&D as an older line in active publication, and even here C&S trumped AD&D in that it was published in 1977, the same year the Monster Manual for AD&D was published, but AD&D could not be called a complete game until the publication of the Dungeon Master's Guide in 1979 (or, if you're a real stickler, until the release of Deities and Demigods in 1980).

This is a white-hair game, is what I'm trying to get across.

Legend has it that C&S began its life as a “fixed-up” D&D game called Chevalier first made in 1976. It was, according to its own creators, Wilf Backhaus and Edward E. Simbalist, a copy of D&D fixed up to be more realistic and they were intent on selling it to TSR at the 1977 Gencon.

Wilf Backhaus and I went to GenCon in 1977 with our Chevalier RPG – admittedly a D&D clone in some respects but also containing all of the seeds that would soon spring forth as Chivalry & Sorcery, which I regard as a dramatic departure from the slash and hack approach to RPG that existed in those early days. Wilf and I were going to approach TSR to see if we could sell them Chevalier, but we had very bad vibes when we witnessed E. Gary Gygax chewing out some poor teen-aged convention volunteer who had managed to goof something up. So we just enjoyed the Con. Then we met Scott. He pointed out his Hyborean Age miniatures rules as something he'd written, and Wilf reached into his ubiquitous briefcase, remarking, “Well, we've written something, too.” Scott was no dummy and saw the potential of Chevalier. He wrote out a letter of intent on the spot, and Chivalry & Sorcery was the result. —Edward E. Simbalist in interview

Between the “bad vibes” given off by E. Gary Gygax and Scott Bizar's business savvy, Chivalry & Sorcery, a far cry from being a D&D clone, was published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1977 in a single, very thick for the time book. And even the thickness of the book was challenged by the sheer volume of the content. The book had the usual fantasy RPG rules for character generation, combat, and magic, of course, but it also had a full-fledged miniatures wargame for doing mass combat. Focused as it was on mostly the 12th century of France in style it also had rules for courtly love, tournaments and jousting, fiefs, heraldry, and, as an absolute first (to my knowledge at least), a full system for social influence: characters weren't murder-hobos practically divorced from the setting, using it as a colourful backdrop. They were part of a society and had to navigate it as much as they had to navigate wildernesses and cave complexes.

This wasn't a dungeon-crawling game. This was a fantastical medieval simulation game.

And this all in one book, a feat that was accomplished by taking the hand-typewritten rules and photoreducing them to fit four typed pages per published page. A magnifying glass was almost mandatory for reading these rules and their organization, by virtue of a total lack of electronic editing facilities of the time, was slipshod.

Still, it found its community of ardent supporters and on the strength of that its second edition was published in 1983 as a boxed set with some simplified rules, some reorganizations, some clarifications, and a few more improvements (including broadening the period of history covered). Further the miniatures-based mass combat system was removed and relegated to a supplement (the Chivalry & Sorcery Companion) and a simpler, pencil-and-paper-based system was added in yet another supplement (the Chivalry & Sorcery Companion 2).

Somewhere in between the year of the last C&S2 supplement being published (1984) and 1996 there was a falling-out between FGU and the designing pair of Backhaus and Simbalist. Backhaus being a lawyer, however, was not caught out by the standard FGU contract that transferred ownership of 100% of the game IP—trademarks, rules, content, art, etc.—in perpetuity. Thus it was that a publisher called Highlander Games was selected to publish a third edition of the rules in that year. Highlander, a purpose-made publisher, put out the rules in 1996 and a sizable number of supplements in 1997 before realizing that it had perhaps made two mistakes:

1. It misjudged how popular a very crunchy, old-school style game would be in the '90s.
2. It stripped C&S's chief claim to fame: its historicity. C&S3 was very much a generic fantasy game in feel and in execution both.

That being said, the new game design was far more streamlined, using a single skills system (given the rather twee name of Skillskape™—yes, with the trademark notice littering every reference to it anywhere in the books!) for everything except social manoeuvring, which still used the old influence system modified slightly by factoring in skills using Skillskape™. While its presentation wasn't particularly nice, especially with the littering of trademark symbols all over, the system itself was passable, it had just stripped that which made C&S beloved by its fans without making something that appealed to a broader audience. Highlander Games died in 1999 and was purchased by Brittania Games, who themselves put out the next edition.

Chivalry & Sorcery: The Rebirth, as this next (fourth) edition was named, continued in 2000 the work begun with Highlander Games, keeping the Skillskape (this time dropping the omnipresent trademark notices except in the frontispiece) resolution system, but streamlining both it and its explanation, restoring the historical simulation aspects that had gone missing, and publishing it in a more eye-pleasing layout. They followed this up with more supplements (“Companions”) that added various races, as well as publishing setting material and adventures. After nearly 20 years of publication at a good enough rate to stay alive, Brittania Games launched a Kickstarter campaign to publish a newer, more comprehensive edition, (the fifth for those still counting).

And this fifth edition, written by Stephen Turner, Francis Tiffany, Andy Staples, Colin D. Speirs, A.R.Cowley, and David Blewitt, published finally in 2020, is the topic of this review.

And at long last: the actual review!

Chivalry & Sorcery Fifth Edition is a behemoth of a book and as a necessity I will be glossing over details in favour of getting the flavour of the book across. In a review that's already too long just trying to get the history of the game across, being fully-detailed about this game is not something that can be accomplished without rivalling the book itself for size. For those who know the game, please forgive the necessary eliding.

Components

The book comes in two formats: a huge PDF file and a roughly 600 page hardcover rulebook. The PDF version tries (and often succeeds) to use the features of the PDF format instead of being merely a copy of the physical text. Where these features appear I will make note of them.

The book (hardcopy and PDF both) I am working from is labelled with a copyright date of 2019 and is also indicated as a first printing. The PDF weighs in at roughly 67MB while the book weighs in at about 10kg. (OK, so maybe it isn't that heavy, but wow this thing is a beast!) Every page is full-colour page with a background meant to seemingly evoke an ancient manuscript on vellum or parchment or the like. The layout is clean, the text stands out sufficiently from the background, even on pages that have sizable illustrations with text overlaying part of it. (Such images are faded out as they approach text so text can be printed over it.) The physical book uses good quality, glossy paper. The PDF has a set of tabs in the PDF labelled things like “Introduction” or “Combat” or “Medieval World” which when clicked on take you to that section of the book. This is very good because the book's organization leaves something to be desired (q.v. below) and being able to click around at need is vital. Sadly there is no equivalent in the physical book, so players will have to become familiar with the quirky organization.

The bookmarks in the PDF give us a taste of what's to come. The chapters are: Introduction, The Medieval World, Core Game Mechanics, Character Generation, Vocations, Skills, The Marketplace, Movement & Time, Combat, Magick (sic), Spells, Religion, Being A Gamemaster (sic), The Campaign World, Non-player Characters, The Bestiary, Glossary of Terms. Then follows a list of tables. Almost 320 of them. Get used to tables. You're going to see a lot of them.

Now while I may have a bit of a critical tone here with the tables comment, I can absolutely not fault their accessibility. Sure, C&S5 may even rival Powers & Perils for sheer insanity of tables, but the tables are well-placed in the text (generally right next to rules that use them) and there's no need to buy a separate product that gives you a list of tables. They're right in the document bookmarks. (Further, many of the tables are for specific skills and are basically structured identically, unlike the horrendously heterogenic tables of P&P.)

And one thing I can sing the praises of in this PDF is that the ToC and the Index—yes, this book has an index: seven pages of index, in fact, in very small type—are both linkable from the bottom of each page: ToC on even pages, Index on odd. And while it has a few questionable entries (“ALDRIC – Town City Guard”: a sample character), the index is actually a pretty useful one. This is a rare PDF where I'll take a crack at the index before using Ctrl+F.

Background information

C&S was the second published game (to my knowledge) with a detailed society implied (the first being the Tékumel books) and the first published game to have detailed rules about how one interacts in that society. This is a tradition that, outside of the short stumble in C&S3 (which cost the company its existence), has been carried on in this edition.

After the weirdly apologetic Introduction (“At first glance C&S may seem very complex, but this is not so – there is actually really only one system mechanic, this is called Skillskape, all the reams of detail are merely that– added detail that can be simply ignored if desired.“), the chapter on The Medieval World begins on page 10 and ends on page 31. That's 22 pages of information on how the medieval world was structured, how societies viewed different matters, and the various roles of various organizations and social classes. It's very densely-written and a bit of a slog to read, but invaluable to inculcate in players the sheer alienness of thought of the times. (It also has a few ... let's be polite and call them “debatable” ... claims about finer points in history, but these are minor and fine for a fantasy pretendy-fun-time game.)

The information provided covers the entire feudal era, but because this is a vast period of time it's divided into four categories: Early Feudal, High Chivalric, Late Feudal, and Waning Feudal. Some tables already show up in the text here (Town Structure, Guild Presence in Town) and the specific era acts as a modifier in one of them. And this segues neatly into a problem I have with the book.

The organization and editing both are pretty bad. The two tables in this section are rules, not setting information. This would seem to be more accurately placed in the “Being A Gamemaster” or “The Campaign World” section of the book, not stuck in an isolated little island in the middle of the setting. Thankfully there's bookmarks in the PDF, but I'm sure the physical book will be very annoying to deal with. I will likely be making very frequent use of sticky flags.

Of note in this section is a few pages devoted to “Medieval Europe & Sub-Saharan Africa”. I can already hear the screams of “WOKE!!!” from the usual crowd of plug-ignorants scared at the notion that medieval Europe wasn't lily-white all the way. They provide pointers to documented history and make the unequivocal statment:

It is firm belief of everyone involved in Chivalry & Sorcery that Sub-Saharan Africans were present and belong even in the strictest historical campaigns.

It then goes on to point out that the existence of black people (and even black knights!) in medieval Europe does not say that the medieval era was tolerant. Indeed the closing page of the section ends on a downbeat note about the persecutions that were rife in this time frame against Jews, against women, against infidels, etc.

Game mechanics

This is one of the organizational problems of the game. I understand, I think, the reasoning that likely underlies the way they structured things, given that the authors seem to be academics rather than communicators. They are trying to define their terms, in effect, before using them. What this means in practice is that they do 13 pages of explanation of every little nitty-gritty detail of the Skillskape system followed by two pages of the experience system, followed by four pages of the influence system. That's 19 pages of context-free rules, written in a style that would put even an ardent reader of Heidegger to sleep.

At issue is that all of the forward references. For example the bulk of the rules (for Skillskape) frequently reference things like Attribute Bonus. But attributes haven't been described yet, so you're left with this mental blank spot that you just have to remember exists but don't really have any grounding for.

Only after all this is described are you finally given the information that lets you put it to good use: Character Generation. So that's where I'm going to start, describing skills after the bare minimum grounding is provided.

Character creation

Character creation in C&S5 is, as has always historically been the case, a complicated and detailed affair. Thankfully on page 51 there's a checklist of sorts that lets you know of the 19 steps coming up and gives you a good feel for how far along you are. Did I say detailed? Let's give a taste of how detailed with some examples:

• (3) Birth omens and initial PC points
• (5) PC background including social class, social status, and intragroup status
• (6) Sibling rank
• (12) Size
• (15) Lifting & carrying capacity

And so on and so on and so on.

There are three approaches to making character: Points Based, Random, and Lion Heart. In the first character points (with campaigns selected as “Historic”, “Heroic”, or “Mythical” for varying numbers available) are used to buy features with several points offering a choice to buy at a cost or roll on a table for free. In the second, all background tables are rolled on and all attributes are generated by rolling 3D10 and ignorning the lowest. +2 is added for Heroic and +5 for Mythical characters on each attribute. The final option is the same as random, but with 2d10 used and the same modifiers applied for campaign type.

Unique of the games of the era, C&S, in all editions, had birth omens as part of character generation, usually, given the European-based milieu, based on horoscopes. Your birth sign and your birth omens give bonuses to skills and attributes, give bonuses to experience (!), and can even limit choices of profession (not to mention modify subsequent background table rolls). Harping on the organization issues, the terms “Well Aspected”, etc., part of the birth omens, are defined after they're used in tables. Gender and race are selectable, but the default campaign is all-human PCs. There's a section on the position of women in the game that amounts to “it's up to you how much you want to emulate the role of women in feudal society” with some guidelines for what this could entail.

Have you noticed what's missing yet?

That's right! We're at step 4 (of 19) of character generation, we've done bizarre things like “birth omens”, we know how to roll or buy attributes ... but we don't know what they ARE yet! Organization!

You don't know, in fact, except by osmosis through reading about what bonuses and penalties go on some attributes according to birth aspects, social class, father's profession, etc. until you reach step 11 (of *19!) that there are 12 attributes divided into four groups: Physical (Strength, Constitution, Dexterity), Intellectual (Intellect, Wisdom, Discipline), Communal (Bardic Voice, Appearance, Spirit), and Derived (Agility, Ferocity, Charisma).

It is the first nine of these which are purchased or rolled according to the method selected way back in step 1. The final three are calculated as averages of three of the attributes with an additional “innate aptitude” rolled on a d10 or purchased by PC Points. The final attributes give you an Attribute Roll (like a saving throw for times when the character lacks a skill) and ...

Let's forego further talk about these rolls until I get back to the actual game system I skipped over earlier.

At any rate, I think the point is getting across. It's a long and very detailed process, making a character, and this is rendered a bit worse by poor organization of the text. (On the plus side, there are examples at key points that clarify the often-confusing text.) Personally I wouldn't organize character generation this way, but what's here is serviceable, especially if a knowledgable GM helps players through it.

Vocations

But step 19 isn't the end. That just generates your character's background. You still have to select vocations (sort of like classes but not really) and skills. Characters get background skills from their social class and father's vocation. They get vocational (also “primary”) skills from their selected vocation. They can also get secondary skills from their vocation, but aren't as highly trained in them. In addition non-vocational “tertiary” skills can be taken to level 0 based on mental stats. Some vocational skills may be selected as mastered skills. Each of these skill classifications decides your starting level in them, and optionally provides bonuses. It's all very complicated, not particularly well-explained, but at least only happens once, at character generation.

Vocations are sometimes grouped into a larger group (like “Warrior”) and sometimes standalone. They're all very evocative of the setting, giving you vocations like “Serviens & Livered Horsemen” (sic), or “Foresters”, or “Beggars”, or “Herald”, etc. Then the mage section hits and it's even more convoluted and complicated as it interleaves some rules of magick (sic) with the information you need to generate characters. There are a lot of choices, which is good, but badly organized and explained, which is bad. The necessary information is all there, but it's ... ugh. A chore to read. (Were I not a fan of the game since 1983 I probably would have given up by now.)

And now we're about ready to talk about the core system the book dragged us through without context.

Skillscape

Skillscape is the first piece. And I'm going to introduce it backwards. Because at its core, in actual play, C&S is actually quite simple to play. The complexity is shoved into the liminal spaces between game play sessions: character generation, between-session downtime, etc. At its core, though, the game system is simple:

1. Look up the “TSC” (Total Success Chance) of your skill. (We'll get into how this is generated later.)
2. Apply any situational modifiers.
3. Roll a d% paired with a single D10 (the latter being called the “Crit Die”).
4. If the d% is less than or equal to the modified TSC from step 2, the character has succeeded. Otherwise the character has failed.
5. The crit die shows the scale of success or failure: 1 reflects bare success/failure and 10 reflects overwhelming success/failure. Numbers in between are scaled accordingly.

The crit die takes some getting used to, but in the end works pretty much identically to assorted mechanisms like BRP's three levels of success (5% of target, 20% of target, and the rest) and two levels of failure (5% of target and the rest). Furthermore it does so without requiring special calculations on the fly (something that always bugged me in BRP's system). The d% is a straight binary choice: success or failure. The crit die says how much of a success or failure it is.

In the core game mechanics there is a generic crit die table provided that is used for most cases. But there are often cases where special crit die tables are provided for more focused and concrete results. Many skills, for example, provide a crit table. Agricultural skills, for example, have a system where the harvest results for a region are determined by the GM, but the crit die on the skill use can move an individual farmer's results up or down on the harvest table. These specific crit die tables don't need to be used, but they do add a lot of flavour.

So ... how does one get that aforementioned TSC? We're back to convolution.

Every skill has a “difficulty factor” (DF) ranging from 1 to 10, very simple to impossible. There is a “base chance of success” (BCS) for that skill when used without training (“unskilled BCS”). A DF 1 skill, for example, has an unskilled BCS of 50%; a DF 10, 0%. Getting some training in a skill (level 0) boosts you to the “skilled BCS” which ranges from 60% to 1% from DF 1 to DF 10. Innate talent also modifies in the form of attribute modifiers: bonuses or penalties based on levels of the attributes that govern the skills. Finally each level of skill past 0 adds (typically) 3%. So your “personal skill factor” (PSF%) comes from the attribute bonuses/penalties + skill level bonuses. This PSF% is added to the relevant BCS to come up with your TSC. Easy peasy!

Of course that TSC, as mentioned above is adjusted by situation, but here an added wrinkle comes in. Each skill DF has a “MIN” and “MAX” rating. These are the lowest and highest respectively that your TSC can be adjusted to. So if you have a TSC of 72% in a DF 6 (“difficult”) skill, and you get a bonus of 20%, the resulting 92% is adjusted downward to 90%, the upper limit for a difficult skill. If, on the other hand, you got reduced to anything under 2%, you still have a 2% chance to succeed.

This sounds complicated (and is), but as mentioned before you only calculate this in the RP liminal spaces. In play you only look at your TSC, the MIN, and the MAX, and go to town. The rest of the nonsense is used only during character generation or character advancement between sessions. (And you just know that the skill difficulty factor makes harder skills more expensive in experience points...)

There are a few smaller wrinkles I've glossed over here, and I'm not going to get into the two methods (“quick play” vs. “detailed play”) of doing resisted skill rolls. None of this is hard in actual play; it's just hard to understand the explanation because of all the BSCs getting up into the face of the PSF%s and the DFs and ... it's just so badly explained, taking so many pages to explain a skill system that's actually pretty simple and elegant.

Experience

The experience system, on the other hand, is not so simple. (It's still not bad elegance-wise.) Despite vocations not being classes in the D&D-ish sense (nor even really in the Rolemaster-ish sense), characters have levels and gather experience points. At the core there are three numbers related to experience characters need to track: Total experience, accumulated experience, and experience level. As experience is awarded (and C&S was the first game to my knowledge that specifically awarded experience to characters for doing things that a given character type would do, instead of for being murder hobos), it is added to total experience and accumulated experience. Total experience determines your experience level which puts caps on skill levels before you start to pay inflated prices for skills. Skills are newly-purchased or improved with experience points and are taken from the accumulated experience total. (Think of the accumulated experience as the bank account from which you take points to pay for character advancement.) Learning skills can be done in a variety of ways which can cost money, time, or both and is generally done in “downtime”.

Influence

And this brings us to the third major game mechanism of C&S (and the one it is most famous for): influence. It is hard to get across how revolutionary C&S was in its day. Where D&D and the sheer number of knock-offs being made at the time were all about murder hobos delving through tunnels (though Empire of the Petal Throne gave interesting reasons for this), C&S was all about society. Any kind of society has a social structure, and the influence mechanisms of C&S deal with this.

It sounds a little quirky to have game rules for society, since you could have a society without game rules governing things. (This was, indeed, quite often used as a criticism of the game practically from its inception.) But… Can you? Really?

Raise your hands here those who are experts in medieval social structures and behaviour? One of the many problems that occasionally make me cringe HARD in fantasy literature, games, etc. is the way people blithely assume that modern thought is the way people always thought. That modern behaviour is universal (when it's not even universal in modern times!). The influence rules are used to help cement just how the alien world of medieval times actually worked (within the limits of what can be represented in a game played by modern people at least).

Influence is used specifically in the case of PCs trying to get NPCs to do things, and it involves three steps:

1. Figure out who to approach and what you specifically wish them to do.
2. Find out if you can even approach the person in question.
3. Decide if the approached person will grant the request.

Step #2 actually has potential to lead to a fun sub-game of its own. Unless you happen to run into the person you're trying to influence, setting up an audience for said person to make a decision is a chore in and of itself and may require chains of influence as you try to even get an audience. A peasant, after all, is unlikely to just happen to run into a king and ask for an audience. The peasant may have to influence a village head who knows an influential guild head who has the ear of the king's vizier who … you get the drift. Can all this be played out without rules? Yes. Does it in most games? Not in my experience.

The root stat for influence is the Base Influence Factor (BIF). BIF is composed of the character's charisma paired with their social status and a fraction of their honour. Gifts can be used to positively influence the BIF (with gifts matching the target's tastes getting increased effect) and situational modifiers apply. The resulting Effective Influence is then compared to the target's BIF to come up with a modifier to a skill roll. The skill usually used is Diplomacy, but by circumstance it could be other skills. If the persuasion attempt fails, multiple tries can be made, but at a mounting penalty to each attempt. The crit die determines how much is granted in cases of success, or how badly the target reacts in cases of failure.

The system is not rigidly mechanical. If a request is reasonable and/or doesn't really cost the target anything it may, at GM's discretion, automatically succeed without a die roll. Similarly if the request brings distinct advantage to the target it could also automatically succeed. Obviously unreasonable requests may also flat-out fail without a die roll.

There's a bit more to the system than this, but it's all minor variations on the theme.

Magick

And now we come to the thing that is probably the secret sauce explaining why C&S is sufficiently beloved of its fans that it keeps getting published: the magick (sic) system. C&S has always had a complicated magick system that pushes the limits of playability. The first edition was a massive exercise in die rolling. The second edition elevated the “simplified” system used to make higher-level NPCs into the system used by PCs in general. The third and onward systems use Skillskape, but in ways that are a bit brain-twisting to work out. What follows here is a summary overview that is not going to be 100% accurate and glosses over, of necessity, many of the details.

The first thing that a magick-wielding character must select is their “Mode” (which is a skill). This is effectively their “profession” and informs the way they approach magic. Modes include things like “Divination” or “Enchantment” or “Thaumaturgy” or the like. (There are also mage/priest modes like “Druid” or “Witch”.) Each mode describes the main approach used by the mage in effecting magick, provides a table of modifiers for various “Methods” (for which q.v. below), and gives details on the “focus” they use to channel their magick.

The next piece of the magick-using puzzle is the “Method” of magick (again a skill). These are things like “Basic Magick – Air” or “Command” or “Transcendental”. Spells are categorized into these methods such that “Scorpion's Strike” falls under “Basic Magick – Earth” while “Cloak of Shadows” falls under “Arcane”.

The third piece of the magick-using puzzle is the “Personal Magick Factor” (PMF), which is calculated from the PSF% and the “aspect bonus” (from character generation) which is then used to figure out the “Magick Level” (ML).

And then things get difficult.

Spells are not skills. They are things you either know or you don't. They can be learned from a master, researched from books, or creating it from scratch. (New spells not in the book can be made using this latter approach.) A quirk of the game, however, has always been that learning spells uses the same mechanism as enchanting of materials: each spell has, just like materials, a “Magick Resistance” (MR)—in this case explained as learning the nuances and meter of the spell, and the physical patterns which must be flawlessly executed—that must be reduced to zero before the spell is learned.

Back in the C&S2 days this was done for every spell, including starting spells, and led to people generating huge amounts of paperwork when they wound up with an 11th level starting character whose spells had to be worked out. Thankfully in this edition they have simplified the issue of starting spells into counting a number of “spell points” which are expended in a 1 spell point for 1 spell MR basis. 10 spell points can be expended to have a simple focus (which is STRONGLY recommended!).

Using learned spells is a matter of:

1. Casting it (automatic if fully learned).
2. Paying Fatigue costs (which may be modified by extras that the mage wishes to employ).
3. Targeting the spell to ensure it manifests on the desired target in the desired way.
4. Overcoming any defences (including attempts to resist) the target may have.

In a theme that you have heard already many times, the systems are complicated when calculating everything, but in actual play it's actually quite simple. The complexity is pushed off into character generation and other forms of game down time. The actual play-time mechanisms boil down to a roll against the Method of magic for the spell. Despite the reputation, the game is fully playable. It's just presented in a way that makes it seem overwhelmingly complex and fiddly in play, to its detriment.

Enchantment

All magick-users in every edition of C&S are able to make “Magickal Items of Power”. These are classified for simplicity into simple devices (1 spell, limited charges), lesser devices (multiple spells, limited charges), greater devices (multiple spells, self-charging), as well as simple/lesser/greater focuses (aid in spell-casting with greater aid as the focus style advances). To make a device, required materials (specified for each kind of device) are enchanted to an MR of 0 before being assembled into the item (which may require the assistance of a master craftsman). The desired spells are then inserted into the item with rolls of the relevant Method. The crit die in this case can result in extra charges on success or rather bad outcomes on failure. (It is suggested that the GM roll the crit die separately and make note of the results without the player's knowledge.)

That's the mechanical side. On the RP side, the creation of greater devices and focuses in particular can lead to adventures in their own right. Consider this quote from the creation of a lesser focus, for example:

The 7 base materials relate to the structure of the Focus, the remaining 6 materials must have been obtained by the Mage and not simply purchased.

Given some of the things which are required as materials, any GM worth their salt could come up with whole adventures around just having a magick-user gathering the materials for their enchantments.

Religion

C&S1 had “Alignment” as a stat. (No, really!) C&S2 had “Piety” (though in some sloppily-edited later supplements it referenced “Alignment” instead). This edition has “Spirit”.

Where magick in C&S is about coaxing or commanding the spirits and magickal essences of the world into doing what the mage desires, religious workers (outside of the Mage/Priest modes) work “Miracles”.

Miracles are what happens when one's Spirit in one's faith (mixed with some Willpower) causes a deity to effect some form of change. The Faith skill is the conduit of such miracle mongering. (It is treated as a skill mechanically, but the in-character view is that this is a “gift” which can be cultivated. Daoists would approve.) Faith is a core “skill” that all characters have, but ordained priests of a game's faith get bonuses in using it (specifically can select it for “mastery” giving in effect a 20% bonus) while having access to some acts of faith that laity don't get access to.

In a parallel to the PMF of mages, there is a PFF (Personal Faith Factor) based on the character's Spirit and Faith. This PFF determines what level of effect can be accomplished as an act of faith.

Acts of Faith are … a bit of a mess really, and unlike the skill rules or magick rules, these impact actual play. Some are core skills. Some are skills that are part of the vocation of a priest (or monastic order or fighting order). Some require Faith or Spirit rolls. Some don't. Some cost fatigue. Others don't. Some impact everybody. Some only impact fellow believers. Some employ the crit die. Some don't. Some use it, but in entirely different ways than is normal. This is all a bit of a mess that is hand-waved away by a designer's note but I don't find this persuasive. Playing any kind of a priest (as opposed to a Mage/Priest) in this game would be a bit of a pain.

Which is, if you think about it, pretty much on point for religion.

One weakness of the religious system is that it is very much focused on a medieval Christian worldview. Indeed there's a whole section added on the relationship of Jews to the Christian world (complete with lists of pogroms and forced conversions and the like) and rules for Jewish characters as well as a similar section for Muslims. There is also not a lot of guidance given to how to modify these things for other religions (real-world or fantasy). That it can be done is obvious¹ given the existence of Land of the Rising Sun, but having a section on Judaism/Islam that explicitly follows through from its relationship to Christianity is not really good guidance. (This is doubly so when you consider that some acts of faith can only be done by ordained priests, but Muslims don't have ordained clergy.) When combined with the hodge-podge nature of many of the acts of faith you get a section of the rules that are pretty weak in my opinion.

Movement & Combat

This being an old-school design (of the oldest school conceivable) C&S has detailed rules for movement and combat. The movement rules cover downtime, journey time, and combat mode. Rules exist for sea travel, flight, forced marches, terrain, etc. and are all pretty much standard fare for this genre of game.

Combat is based on 15-second rounds and uses an action point system. Unusually the action points are based on a base score (calculated in character generation) and then modified by a 1d10 roll. Armour worn adjusts action points and also provides fatigue costs for heavier armours. Actions are performed in order of highest action point pool remaining to lowest with action point costs being paid and the action determined. (There is an option that declares from lowest to highest then resolves from highest to lowest.) Many actions will take more than one round to complete (e.g. lighting a fire with flint and steel); action points can be carried forward one round to the next to effect these.

Combat actions cost action points based on how skilled the character is at the relevant skill. Attack rolls are skill rolls but there are two ways to deal with defence. In the basic mode half the target's PSF% is subtracted from the attacker's if active or a quarter of it if passive. In the advanced system there are separate attack and defence rolls and the interaction of these can be a little hairy.

There are rules for multiple weapons, switching weapons, ranged combat, mounted combat, bashing of various sorts, parrying, desperate defence, critical hits, etc. etc. etc., many of which are optional. Armour absorbs damage.

It's all in all pretty much a stock old-school game in this way.

Except.

Those who played the original versions of C&S have an alternative system that would feel more comfortable based on “blows”. This uses a 30-second combat round and one expends “blows” to effect actions. This may seem like a thin papering-over of an action point system (because it is) but some of the old version die-hards prefer the language of blows over the language of action points it seems.

But what about mass combat?

One of the unique features of the original edition was that it contained a mass combat system (a miniatures wargame) in the core rules. The second edition relegated that to a “Sourcebook” and added a pencil-and-paper mass combat resolution system into a second such sourcebook. For some reason, despite wars being a nigh-constant in medieval times, this was not carried forward into later editions. This sadly includes this edition as well. Despite its hefty weight of rules and information, this doesn't extend to warfare.

Gamemaster Advice

Older editions of C&S did not have a lot of advice for GMing in the rules proper. You usually had to go to outside sources to figure out how to run C&S properly, which in pre-Internet days was difficult. This edition corrects that with 17 pages of advice on GMing that covers different styles of GMing, how best to approach learning the rules (in parallel with making a game world), how to award experience, etc. Experience is particularly interesting because, again, C&S was the first game to my knowledge that awarded experience for characters doing things that they should be doing in-character instead of being murder hobos.

The advice continues with detailed rules for building a feudal kingdom, with good coverage of how feudal European society was structured, how various elements interacted, and even provides a list of modes of address for various ranks of various professions or social orders. This is all very interesting reading and doesn't involve any actual rules except some minor things about incomes and inheritance.

The real gem of this section, however, lies in the “Generating a Feudal Kingdom” portion in which tools are provided to create the land holdings of various levels of nobility complete with subinfeudation and the nature of their castles. In five simple pages (two simple tables) everything you need to quickly build up any kind of feudal holding is given, complete with descriptions of the castles or manors involved. This is then put together with a real world example of the Baron of Dudley in Worcestershire to show how it can be put together usefully in a game.

Personally I think this part of the book alone is worth the purchase price even if you never use any other part of it.

And the rest

Again as is standard for this variety of game there are detailed pages (oh so many pages!) of items to buy and beasts to encounter. There's also a section on making NPCs (essentially a shortcut through character generation so that you don't have to spend multiple hours between each session to introduce a single NPC).

Personally I find the section on NPCs a bit hard to follow. Every time I crack open that section I find myself confused until I carefully re-read the opening page to it. Non-human races are covered in this section, but rules are provided for PCs of that type as well should the GM desire it in their games. This is an interesting approach that I quite like. It means that by default games are based on human PCs only unless the GM otherwise assents. This reduces the rules-lawyer arguments of players who think that because elves are given rules in the character generation section that it's appropriate for them to play an elf, no matter what the actual setting.

(It should be noted that this section also references presumably-upcoming supplements for more detailed handling.)

There is also a useful glossary of the game's TLAs and FLAWs² that you'll likely want to keep on speed-dial while learning the rules. It's not as bad as, say, Powers & Perils but it's still pretty bad; you'll want to use this.

Conclusion

And this, despite the huge gaping holes in coverage (because this is one beast of a book!) marks the end of the review. I think I've given enough information to get the flavour of the game across and expressed an opinion or two about the contents here or there. This is where I now return to my usual three Goethe-inspired questions:

1. What was this game trying to accomplish?
2. Did it accomplish this aim?
3. Was this aim worth accomplishing?

What was this game trying to accomplish?

C&S has always been, minus the mis-step of the third edition, a game that was about faithfully recreating a society in a role-playing game, not merely dungeon-crawling and wilderness-exploring. While it can easily be used for these, that is not what it is intended for and would likely be overkill. Historically it has also tried to be a game that provides such recreation in a single set of rules or in readily-available supplements.

An additional aim, implied more than outright stated, is that it intends to accomplish this with a handful of relatively simple and consistent mechanisms.

Did it accomplish this aim?

It stumbles a bit in this. One oversight in particular is the absence of any way of resolving large scale conflicts. No Magyar invasions of the marches. No grudge battles between ancient rivals. No upstart dukes. No version of the game after the second edition supports this in any form, wargame or quick resolution, and this is to its detriment.

There are, however, other oversights that bug me, especially as it relates to religions. Many real world religions cannot be modelled using the rules provided and there is little to no guidance given.

As for having a set of simple and consistent mechanisms, it actually mostly manages to accomplish this with the exception of acts of faith. A person playing some kind of priestly character will have a lot of work to do keeping track of their abilities and their status, while a GM running a game involving them will have that on top of the usual GMing burden.

Was this aim worth accomplishing?

This is a harder one that usual for me to answer. As late as the mid-1990s I would have said it was an unequivocal “yes”. Even more than a decade after being introduced to C&S I still loved the game and played it when I had the chance.

Today I'm of two minds, as the opening of this review should hint at.

If you're interested in a (mostly) well-executed old school, crunchy game design Chivalry & Sorcery 5th Edition is well worth checking out. Even if you don't use it as a game, there is lots of valuable information in it for running games in realistic feudal social environments (and the five pages on generating a feudal kingdom are worth the purchase price all by themselves!). The influence rules could be adapted to many other games with varying degrees of effort as well.

If, on the other hand, you, like me, tend to prefer simpler systems and making your own Frankensteined worlds from a pastiche of other cultural and fictitious influences, or you don't need rule guidance for making plausible non-modern societies, and unlike me you're not laden with reminiscence, you probably would want to give Chivalry & Sorcery a pass.

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#FringeReviews #TTRPG #RPG #Review

@zdl@gamerplus.org

¹ But c.f. Land of the Rising Sun for a counter-argument. ² Three Letter Acronyms and Four Letter Acronymic Words respectively.

Ketamin Queen

Hat das Internet keine besseren Photos von Jasveen Sangha?

LINK: PERTINENCE > TRAGICALITY > [File attached: INC-102E-8.REP] < < what LINK TERMINATED < WHAT

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Built a town of what's left to do There's nothing new, oh, there's nothing new – i. there's a god so very hungry, by many tiny boxes

“you have got to be fucking kidding me.”, Sekri says, as Amry's newly cohered form curls up into a ball. She stretches out, her appendages slinking around as if she had no skeleton underneath. Her large, quadrupedal form paws fluffily against the carpet, sharpening her claws as if readying to attack. That's what she would be doing, under the assumption that she knew how to control the form that she inhabited. But she doesn't. Instead, she speaks up: “i'm stuck.....”, as her claws dig into the fibers on the ground. She, for a brief moment, is completely helpless, a state ill-befitting her kind. It feels like someone could make some kind of comedy about the antics a creature like her gets up to. The shelves are empty, and always were. The area feels hollow around them, merely coated in furniture with no purpose. The two have been floundering in the room for some time, attempting to reconcile with the events of Amry's actions. Less than courteous remarks were exchanged between the two, but none of them are especially relevant for your purposes. Sekri considers his options. He could: 1) tell Amry the exact document's contents, 2) tell Amry that they need to go back but not tell her why, or 3) tell Amry nothing. 1 is right out, she'd panic and attempt to stay, as few are as committed as he pretends to be. 2 would raise suspicion, and would require a rather good excuse. 3 would be similarly bad. Maybe she'd come to that conclusion by herself. After all, the narrative that he was told wasn't this one — it was one that was far more benign, one that exploited the fact that Amry trusted him and that he trusted Amry. He was told that Amry was too valuable a Retrieval officer to be discarded, one that required a specialized mission like this. At this point, he is well aware of the Arbiter's tendency to elide facts when unnecessary, but an overt lie is sincerely strange. Unprecedented. He obviously believes in the Arbiter's reign, as anything else is incognizable, but he would still appreciate some degree of transparency. ...Back to the options. He... doesn't want to do any of them but there's only three. Pick one, pick one. What kind of excuse can he use? Uh. Well, we've done our work here, haven't we??? We're good now, right. We're good. Amry, you're fine, you're doing fine. You can head back now. That's... a flimsy excuse. What else? What if Marka has fallen into deathly decay? No, that wouldn't work, he's shown no signs whatsoever, and she'd check in with him. Is he able to respond under these circumstances? What does “emotional considerations” even mean in this report anyways. It feels like whoever transcribed this couldn't even finish up the full details of the scene. What idiot would do that? Think, Sekri, think. You've got this. You're smart. You're talented. You're going to win at being a Retrieval officer, which is something both normal to want and possible to achieve. You have a really good ability to mask your emotions, since you've currently been standing entirely still for long enough to draw concern- “sekri?” AAUUGHFUCK. “yes? apologies, i was in the midst of a link”, Sekri responds. Clearly enough, he was trapped in his own head, but she doesn't need to know that, yet. Split-second decision making isn't his specialty, for sure. “is something troubling you? Σ8<”, Amry says. Her feline facial facade breaks, moving somewhat unnaturally towards the Σ8< that expresses her emotion, if you choose to read that as a facial expression and not a perversion of an emoticon. “no, it is simply a... degree of immersion that i enter on occasion. no matter- well, uh, much matter, actually”, Sekri says, tripping over his own words. “so much matter that it is difficult for me to discuss exactly how much matter it matters. the matter of the matter is that it matters, and i think that matter agrees with this one-“ “are you... okay?“ “the density of the matter is too great, the matter is too much matter and the fact of the matter is the truth of the matter, and that truth is relative, dense enough to become matter, mattering only enough to those who perceive that truth, perception is everything and he cannot perceive so why does it matter that-“ “...sekriiii Σ8{“ “and who is he to cast judgment, i am sorry but what a fucking bitch, he is always getting in your shit and in my shit and i am sick of having his matters up in my matters and who is he to bring to me divine will, i know forgery is impossible but it still the fact of the matter that he believes that i do not matter, and-“ “sekri.“ Sekri curls up into a ball on the floor and screams. Amry doesn't want to invade, but at the same time... well, she can't exactly help without knowing what's going on. She takes the communicator from Sekri's unfurled paw, lets him do his thing, and reads.

---

This document is subject to standard recontextualization procedure. Contact your assigned Records envoy for more details.

INCIDENT REPORT: OVERLOAD-CLASS ENTITY

CASE ID: 102E-8

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: – [Some statements omitted — Records-B clearance required.] – To retrieve cultural candidates required for linguistic preservation. – To prevent decay among larvae and other low-priority populations. – To dispose of low-priority retrieval officer Her Emptiness.

UNDERSTANDINGS: [Collapsed for brevity.]

BRIEF: Temporary Retrieval team . . . . . . 008 was assembled and dispatched to entity location for further inquiry, comprised of His Tragicality and Her Emptiness. Seventeen ticks were spent between dispatch and arrival at entity location — routine tick checks revealed no abnormalities.

Her Emptiness, in advanced decay (at the stage of ontological dissolution), was dispatched to entity location as a final mission, and team . . . . . . 008 was told that the mission was to solve this issue. See Her Emptiness's case file for rhetoric.

[Repeated information collapsed for brevity.]

Further investigation yielded that the entity in question was comedic in nature, and could have been revered as a deity to local cultures (see E-WORSHIP.) Its genesis point was traced to a three-paneled structure within its place of origin, itself being low-density enough to be able to determine the prime Understandings. Due to the Overload-class density of the entity, it was determined that it was to be used for Culture dispersal far before the Retrieval team was dispatched.

Coherence officer His Pertinence was ordered to relay this information to Retrieval, which he did faithfully. He was dispatched to the Concept location within the Inclinosphere for standard retrieval, but Her Emptiness, in advanced stages of decay and significant hysteria, resisted, herself opting to also attempt to trace the Concept.

His Tragicality and Their Cleverness, during this time, attempted to prevent advanced decay by placing Her Emptiness in pod stasis. This resulted in inconsequential destruction. His Tragicality is still dispatched to entity location, whereas Their Cleverness merely provided advice via link.

[Information on Her Emptiness and His Pertinence's actions requires REPETAE clearance.]

RESOLUTION: Due to the nature of this violation, as well as the highly sensitive nature of REPETAE-classified information, a meeting was called immediately between His Pertinence and the Arbiter with no other aware parties.

His Pertinence was, by and large, unaware of the nature of his violation, stating upon multiple occasions that “I haven't the faintest clue.“

His Pertinence is to be assigned to retrieve any Culture artifacts that His Tragicality and Her Emptiness have gathered, and to extradite them, alongside the officers, to Cognis. His Pertinence showed mild hesitancy to perform this duty, citing various emotional considerations, but these were quickly discarded by the Arbiter due to the violation's density. This hesitancy has been noted, and further steps will be taken should His Pertinence not comply. Additionally, His Pertinence is to send this document to His Tragicality with no further communication.

His Tragicality is to report back to Cognis for further debriefing as soon as possible, and to avoid any contact with Her Emptiness following receipt of this report. His Tragicality is to be informed, via this report, that his position alongside Their Cleverness's was not in violation of consensus given the information that he had. His Tragicality may forward this report to Her Emptiness at his discretion.

No action is currently required by Their Cleverness.

Her Emptiness is to report back to Cognis for trial, and is pending termination.

yours faithfully.

---

First step. Try not to panic. That much has already failed. There is good reason to panic, and it is fine that I am panicking. It is okay.

Second step. Try not to acquiesce into screaming, or letting anything escape my body. That much has already failed. It is okay to scream. I scream because I want to be heard, and it is okay to want to be heard.

Third step. Try not to let it be heard. That much has already failed.

Fourth step. Try to reaffirm myself. I am a Retrieval officer of Cognis, as I always had wished to be. I was well aware of the hardships that befall it. I scream not because I believe that those hardships are bad, but because it is simply my first time like this. Letting harm befall those I know is part of the job description. I am unrepentant, and I am a servant of the whims. Such is the nature of it, and the nature is as it is.

Fifth step. Try to feel myself in my form. I am present here, and I have not decayed yet. It slowly works to consume me, but I will consume before it does. I can still cohere. There is blue fur coating me, surrounding my appendages. There are joints I articulate in order to retrieve objects. Manipulators, in the general parlance. Some of them are meant to keep me upright, in a digitigrade fashion. My face...

There is a prevailing feeling of wrongness about my face, but that was always the case.

There is a prevailing feeling of wrongness about me, but that was always the case. I did this anyway, because I knew it would be good. I want to be good. I promised that I would be good. I am afraid, because I believe that I have been bad, and that badness means that I am more wrong than wrong. I want you to love me. I want you to care.

I feel a stinging in the area, pins and needles constructing unnatural disasters, microcosms of true pain as if it is being peeled off of me. A fluid secretes from the area, and I am told that it is blood, though the concept is profoundly foreign to me. This won't hurt, it can't hurt. It's impossible for this to hurt. But the stress is not physical, but mental, as I felt myself slip, and slip, and slip.

I heard a laughing, and I was unsure if it came from within me or from without. But I had one thought that played over and over again, and I was unsure if it was true, but it felt true-

you did this to me.

---

Sekri awakes, and finds himself in a drab room with green walls. A shelf lies to his left, full of TTRPG source books, yet not a single die, and video games... He's here, in his room again, on the ship. He's safe. A face is present, expressing concern however it can, and it speaks: “...that took longer than normal, didn't it?“ Sekri responds, managing to note Amry from the intonation, though his perception is still blurred enough to not fully let her cohere. “i... suppose.” His head is loud, and the walls are loud. Everything is loud, and nobody seems to understand how loud it is. “you know i do care for you, right?“ “do i?“ “i can never truly know that, but...”, Amry says, adjusting her quadrupedal form. She places her tail on the ground, plants her hind legs horizontally, and puts her front legs as if they were hands. You could swear she was used to being bipedal, as much as she could be used to anything. “i... am at least present of the common sense to let you process how you wish to process, and merely reconvene later.“ “i would have let you-“ “let me what?”. She pauses. “let me be servant to the whims both of us conscripted into? if the arbiter wishes for my termination, at the very least i am aware that was part of the deal..... as much as i would enjoy to have that not be the case! but i do not think you have done anything“ “how do you know about that?“ Amry rolls her eyes. “do you think i would leave a link that led you to go nearly entire catatonic unexamined? apologies for the blatant violation of your privacy, but i simply felt it was necessary”, she says, pointing at the communicator left on his desk. “...i understand but i wish you would not do that”, Sekri says. “you know that i wanted to shield you“ “i don't need shielding from anything!!! i just wish that you shielded yourself sometimes Σ8|“ “so what exactly... do you wish to do?“ “well... if i am to return to cognis and face the arbiter i will certainly face termination. we are, in essence, on an atemporal clock: if we do not return, we are to face extradition. i can functionally consider this to be a break up, i guess, but it is certainly not time to be worrying about such trivialities”, Amry says, wincing. “i am only half-aware of my exact actions with marka in the inclinosphere, but i suspect that whatever i said is likely useful, assuming he remembers it. i would love to dwell on my own perception of him but doing so provides highly limited information, and right now is the time to buckle up“ “when did you become me? you are talking in proceedings, almost“ “i am pretty sure i have to right now! so i am just letting myself deal with the material before the immaterial!“ “so... what do we do in the now?“ “you are not going to like this suggestion Σ8/“ “...“ “we explore!“ Sekri tries to wince, but he doesn't even have the energy to try and do so. He remains lying on the floor, and responds with “are you serious? that is exactly what got us into this situation.“ “well, listen – we are to be extradited alongside any entities that we encounter, and...“ “and you consumed the only thing that has any value, yes, yes, sure.“ “...right. well. this is a formerly thriving area, it certainly has more things we can learn about, things to see, things to bring back. culture candidates, even. we still have much to learn, much we can piece together from the ephemera“ “you want to... pillage it?“ “pillage is unsanctioned language – i wish to preserve it, and use what we can, and i think that bringing returns may prevent the case of my termination. the arbiter may still find the means to justify the ends Σ8}”, she says, disgustingly self-confident as ever. “i think that there is so much to be seen, and i think that even if we fail, we can still be useful!!! we can still provide relevant culture, and be immortal through it, we can still... we can still live on in ephemera as they once did“ “...how do you believe we can do that?”, Sekri says, sitting his body slightly upright. He sees the vision, the glimmer of hope. Above all else, this runs counter to Sekri's entire belief system, and he knows it. But in the moment of fragility he's in right now... he wants to believe in what Amry's saying, and he's willing to go along with it. He has been shaken, broken beyond repair, and he wants it to come back together again. His nature of morality won't let him go against the whims, no matter how hard he tries. The whims are all-encompassing, after all. Amry responds, her usual cheery enthusiasm distorted by anxiety. She doesn't actually think this will work, but at the very least, she'd like to go out doing what she loves. Her words are thus: “look out the window!“

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Hello world...

N.B.: Any post marked as a “Legacy Fringe Review” is an old blog entry moved to this one and lightly edited for format, with some minor errors corrected (and undoubtedly new ones added for balance!).

This is an experiment. I'd like to start reviewing little-known RPGs, past and present, as a way of introducing concepts and ideas that are not known at all in the mainstream of our hobby and are often barely known even among the more … shall we say “obsessive”? … elements.

(Yes, I include myself among the obsessives.)

The first game I'd like to review is a came by a small-press Canadian publisher called Spark.

Spark is a decidedly non-traditional role-playing game. Because of this I cannot work from assumptions that most would share. Instead I will be using a form of critique I first saw in Goethe's writings when critiquing theatre. In brief, I will be answering three questions:

1. What was Jason Pitre, the author of Spark, trying to accomplish?
2. How well does he accomplish this?
3. Was this a goal worth accomplishing?

What is Spark about?

Taking a look at the back blurb we see three things in bold:

• Challenge your beliefs
• Make choices that matter
• Build and discover worlds

Inside, in the introduction, we get some more interesting insights into the intent of the designer:

• ...most important characters in a fictional world.
• Explore the themes and issues that matter to you.
• Make meaningful choices...

There is a consistent theme in all of this: meaning and choice. And note that second item where you explore themes/issues that matter to you.

How does Spark do this?

Spark is almost unique in how it approaches everything. From the setting to the characters to the actual game play, Spark is a very different game and those differences are focused on the actual goals in the design.

Setting

To enable this challenging voyage of discovery, the game involves, chiefly, the joint creation of a fictional world. Although the game comes with three sample settings (NeoNihon, Quiet Revolution, and Elemental Kingdom), the game is really intended to be played by people who've made their own settings jointly. The idea here is that having a custom-made setting makes the game context evocative and meaningful to the players, thus making exploration of its themes more personally satisfying.

Settings are created by cooperatively listing favourite media; gathering inspirations; describing some kind of genre from this (NeoNihon, for example, is “Shogonate Science Fiction”); establishing “Facts” (concrete, evocative places, peoples, etc. based on inpirations); providing a title; establishing the setting's “Beliefs” to help guide the themes and thoughts the group wants to explore; establish the GM's attributes (the GM attributes are used in playing the setting out): Body, Heart, Mind, and Spark; creating the setting's chief “Factions” and their mandates; creating the “Faces” (the most important NPCs story-wise for each faction), and create the ties between the factions. Once all this is completed, agendas are set—short term goals aimed at realizing faction mandates. Players are given “influence” at this point and the setting creation is complete.

This sounds like it's difficult, but the system is very regulated, very clearly explained and has very thorough examples to inspect to see how it all fits together. As a result even on a first run-through setting creation will take up 2-3 hours of your first session. Not bad at all for creating a whole world, is it?

Character

Once you've made the setting, the players and GM then cooperatively (yes, everybody gets involved) create their “Protagonist Characters” (PCs). The process here, as with the setting above, follows a simple, cooperative procedure. You start with a concept based on an agenda, and give the character a name. You then work on individual beliefs (which may or may not support or contradict or supplement the setting beliefs). You set attribute levels (same as the GM attributes above). You name talents (skills and abilities). You then answer personal history questions to help establish relationships among PCs and to factions. Each answered question gets an influence marker (which is the currency of the game play). Finally you narrate a prelude for your character.

Game play

To be honest, your first session of Spark will likely be just creating the setting and the characters. Once this is complete however, you start play. As with setting and character creation above, this is very formulaic and procedural. And this is where the game takes a hard swerve into unfamiliar territory for most role-playing gamers.

Overall a game session has three steps: Advancing, Scening, Reflecting. Advancing is the phase where the factions move forward on agendas and goals. Players work together to decide which factions complete their agendas, how the world changes as a result, and any new agendas that come out as a result. Play then advances into a series of scenes. When there is no more scening to be done, the players reflect on the events and use this opportunity to inspire each other, to confirm or change beliefs, or other such things.

Scening itself is similarly structured. Each scene begins with framing, proceeds into multiple series of collaboration or conflict events, and then ends with closing. Collaboration is cooperative in nature where players make “bold statements” to progress the scene. If all players agree with said bold statement, it is writ and becomes the truth. If, however, any player disagrees with the statement, conflict occurs, dice are pulled out, alternative statements are provided, sides are drawn, and dice are rolled to see which statement becomes the truth.

This will be the part where most traditional role-players balk. I've seen people recoil from this with a loud “that's stupid!” because, unlike most RPGs, Spark does not descend from competitive wargaming in its routes. It seems to descend more from improvisational theatre. The goal in Spark is not to compete against the world, against the GM, or against fellow players. The goal in Spark is to work together to tell a good, challenging story. Conflict happens when people have different visions for where the story should go, and resolution of it shifts that direction. It is not for everyone, but those for whom it is will find it compelling. (Like me.)

In the closing of a scene, the usual stuff like healing, etc. occurs, but too, influence points are awarded for people challenging their beliefs in the scene. Since influence points are how you win conflicts (partially) there is benefit to tackling the very themes you chose for setting and character both head-on in play.

There is a whole lot more to the game (obviously) than what I've outlined above, but what you get above gives you the flavour: you create characters who are important at a fundamental level to the setting. In the process of telling the story of that setting, you challenge beliefs collaboratively or in conflict. When enough beliefs change, so does the setting: changed characters change the world (so to speak). This is a very different notion of role-playing and it is one that needs to be tried — even if in the end it is not to your taste, it broadens horizons and it gives you, perhaps, ideas you can use in other games.

But is it any good?

Here's where we get to question 2: how well does Spark accomplish what it sets out to do? And the truth is that while it is my favourite game currently, it is flawed. The author thinks one of the flaws is that he didn't provide a setting so the game had no appeal. To this I say “poppycock!”. The fact that you make a bespoke setting tailored to your group is part of what makes the game so compelling in my view. Having a default setting would make this just another role-playing game with oddball mechanics.

Where the game does fall down, in my opinion, is where it pays homage to more normal role-playing games. Look above at how settings and characters are defined: Body, Heart, Mind, Spark. Characters are further defined with talents. We're not that far from the bog-standard “attributes and skills” model, and this model is not what Spark should be about, IMO.

Apparently the author agrees.

A setting published for this game—SIG: The City Between—makes several changes to the rules for that setting, but recommends that three of them be retrofitted into all Spark games. The first of these is the condensing of the attributes into “Spark” and “Smoke”: the first being your ability to impact the setting, and the second to govern how the setting reacts to you. This is a far simpler model than the one in Spark proper, and to me it reflects better on the core concepts of the game. (Other changes modify the procedures for game play slightly, but do not make as major a change as this core one.)

So, in terms of whether the game accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish, the answer is an unqualified “yes ... but”. It is not perfect, and the author himself recognizes these weaknesses. He also does a good job of refocusing on the actual goal in a supplement. That being said, “perfect” is the enemy of “good enough” and even straight out of the package Spark is more than “good enough”. It is superb and it accomplishes its main goal—telling challenging stories about conflicting beliefs—very well.

But is it worth doing?

That is, naturally, completely a subjective call. I've made no secret of my admiration for this game and thus the answer for me is “well, duh!” So the more interesting question for this review is “is this game worth you trying?”

And to this I also give a “yes ... but”.

Anybody who is tired of the wargaming roots of role-playing games who wants to try something different on for size, just to broaden horizons, should give Spark a try.

Anybody who has a friend or SO who is actively turned off by the wargames-informed nature of most RPGs might want to give this game a try with them to show them the joys of RP.

Anybody who likes the idea of a game focused on real-world beliefs being explored in a safe, bespoke way will probably do well with this game.

If, however, you're perfectly satisfied with normal role-playing games—and I stress that there is nothing wrong with this!—and especially if you don't understand why someone might even look for something else, you will probably not enjoy Spark and I would give it a miss in your shoes.

(But you'll be missing something sublime!)

Good News Update

Jason Pitre has, since this review was first written, released Spark as a “Spark System Reference Guide” under CC0 terms, making it freely available for use in other people's RPG designs.

#FringeReviews #TTRPG #RPG #Review #LegacyReview

A while ago I started a series of reviews on a game-focused web site. The intent was (and remains) to introduce games, both newer and older, that exist on the fringe of the role-playing hobby. Several things happened, however, that slowed me down and eventually ground the reviews to a halt:

1. The game site I was using had pretty bad tools for its blogging. It was always a chore to get things done. I was willing to do it, but it was friction.
2. COVID-19 happened and I spiralled into a bit of a dark space.
3. My personal life got very busy and made spending the effort of in-depth reviewing not worth the friction of the web site's tooling.

Gamer+ is now a Mastodon instance (where I'm still active for gaming-related interaction) which leaves my old reviews in archives and makes it impossible for me to continue them—just as I get the motivation to write new ones.

So this is where my Fringe Reviews go to now. I will be interlacing re-publications of my old reviews here with new reviews of games, both old and new, that I think are of interest for some reason or another.

#FringeReviews #TTRPG #RPG #Reviews #Introduction

(German version of this article: https://wordsmith.social/felixernst/mein-anteil-an-der-erstellung-des-hintergrundbildes-von-plasma-6-1-reef)

Plasma 5

A short recap: In Plasma 5 we predominantly had wallpapers with geometric features. They showed digital representations of nature or were completely abstract, which I never really liked. Perhaps that was trendy for a while, or maybe technical Linux users enjoy such wallpapers, which are quite obviously made using a computer. However, these days, we do not only offer the best package of security, privacy, usability, and power for tech enthusiasts, but for everyone. Therefore, it is in my opinion important that our wallpapers represent not just what we stand for but also what we want to enable. In the best case, we enthuse a broad public this way. We should move on from the purely technical towards what is human and incorporate the creative, inventive, or artistic, which will always be absent from machines. A down-to-earth example of this are wallpapers that look like they could be painted on a simple piece of paper.

Plasma 6.0

For the MegaRelease and Plasma 6.0 KDE arranged a competition for the next wallpaper. There was a jury, and even though I had no part in any of this, I was in full agreement with the jury about the winning image “Scarlet Tree”: As far as I know, the winning artist never made a public appearance and the only thing I know of them is their pseudonym “axo1otl”, under which the wallpaper was published. As far as I know, the communication with them was handled by Niccolò Venerandi.

Plasma 6.1

From then on, the release of Plasma 6.1 was inching closer. One could ask: Do we really need a new wallpaper for every new version?

Ask our Promo Team and they will say: Yes, of course!

The reason for this is that we want to show images of the new Plasma version, but not every new Plasma version includes changes to the default user interface. That would be quite annoying if we moved around buttons or changed the design two times a year!

But when we change the wallpaper, it becomes obvious: This is a new version. That wallpaper then moreso represents all the changes that happened below the surface.

Additionally. a new pretty image obviously also brings some colour and variety into the users' lives, if they haven't already switched their wallpaper themselves.

The plan was to keep the wallpaper for Plasma 6.1 in a similar style as the Plasma 6.0 one. The same artist “axo1otl” painted another picture for us. Unfortunately, we only got to see it somewhat late:

The Visual Design Group was not enthralled by it. The image is quite full, and therefore some of us thought that it was not suitable as a wallpaper. This reluctance was strong enough that people started discussing what we could use as a wallpaper instead, even though we did not have much time to make a decision.

I thought the image was good enough, but I was in a minority with that opinion. However, there was no quick way to find a popular replacement either. Some suggestions went back to our old geometric abstract style from Plasma 5 times.

Additionally, the picture was a bit too pretty to simply drop it. So there were attempts to edit the “Reef” wallpaper in a way that might fit our purpose.

Editings

Niccolò used blur: Oliver Beard from Wales moved some of the elements of the painting out of the frame, so the whole wallpaper would become more calm, like a backdrop: This was considered a step in the right direction.

Niccolò then combined both strategies: While watching these experiments, I noticed that the possibilities for adaptations were very restricted because nobody dared to personally add anything to the picture. That is why the reefs only grew in size in the images. Nobody made them smaller because it would mean creating empty space which would then need to be filled e.g. by adding new sand.

I already saw a future before us in which the time constraints would force us to publish such a hastily-constructed adaptation that hides or obscures many nice details of the original artwork. All that because we would not know how to help ourselves.

I did not want that to happen. I felt like I might and should perhaps be able to help here.

The thing is, I tend to work on the Dolphin file manager and regularly dive into the depths of its source code, so I know a thing or two about underwater landscapes. After all, I have been to two Dolphin meetings in the Mediterranean Sea in the last two years: At Barcelona and at Thessaloniki.

So I started editing the painting myself:

My plan was to make room so the image would seem more serene. Viewers should no longer feel like they are in the middle of a lively coral reef and more like they are wandering through the open sea. By moving the right reef to a new middleground and shrinking the castle, the depths and distances in the image grew. After some initial positive feedback, I added more and more of the missing elements.

Some contributors in the Visual Design Group did not like that the path at the bottom of the image did not lead to the castle anymore. To others, the path was generally an undesirable element which should be removed. I bent the visible end of it towards the castle:

The waves in the upper half of the images also needed to be completed. There were big holes where the two castle towers used to be.

The image above was the result of me working until 4 a.m. I only concluded once I considered the image good enough that I could honestly advocate for it to be a Plasma wallpaper. I hoped that my nightly work would ensure that we had a passable wallpaper ready in time for the Plasma 6.1 release.

When I awoke the next “morning,” I addressed feedback from the group. More people had voiced the opinion that they did not like the path. I had originally kept it because I tried my best to preserve as much of the original vision and technique of “axo1otl” as possible given my other changes.

Granted, the goal of this exercise was to make the wallpaper more calming. Removing elements goes hand in hand with that. It turned out that, for some, the path did not look like it was even leading to the castle. Others did not imagine themselves as wanderers on the path when they viewed the image.

So I removed it and also used that opportunity to improve the sand at the bottom edge of the screen so it would be closer in style to the sand I did not paint.

Finally, everyone was somewhat content with this. It might not be one of our best wallpapers of all time, but considering the time constraints it did not make a lot of sense to discuss this further.

However, we wanted to ensure that the original artist “axo1otl” was fine with the changes. The image would be published under their pseudonym after all.

The image was sent to them, and within one or two days they made a few final adjustments:

And what can I say? I like the changes. Better shadows and the drawing style of the water and sand I added were adjusted so one could no longer tell that they were painted by a different person. For this, some gradual colour transitions were replaced by discretely coloured steps.

So everything was fine and well, except the path reappeared. More generally, it seemed to me like the image was not based on my final version but on the one before that.

I might not know what happened there, but for me this was fine. Not everyone liked that the path reappeared, but considering that this is a rather minor detail, there was hardly any criticism.

Release

And then we released Plasma 6.1. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, the new wallpaper did not make it into the release! I will not elaborate on this topic, but I obviously was not happy to read that.

Furthermore, I noticed that the wallpaper that we nevertheless offered as a separate download was not the version “axo1otl” had sent us. It was my latest version. I hope “axo1otl” is not upset about that, but as far as I know, they will not create a new wallpaper for Plasma 6.2.

I have now created another version of the wallpaper based on “axo1otl”'s final version. The picture is identical to their version, aside from me removing the path. If you do not like the path, I would say that this is the best version for you. However, there are slight compression artefacts:

Plasma 6.2

For the next Plasma version our Promo Team wants a new wallpaper. There are already efforts to ensure that we will hopefully do a better job this time around.

I have suggested the creation of a new permanent category in KDE's forum in https://invent.kde.org/teams/vdg/issues/-/issues/52#note_972957 . I would want it to be a place for everyone to upload their self-made wallpapers. Maybe there are hobby artists out there who would enjoy doing that. I hope that some of the images would be great and well-suited as wallpapers for future Plasma versions to the benefit of us and everyone.

Frau Nia

Ein platonischer Dialog

Frau Nia Frau Nia, Hayos Englischlehrerin, schaut von der Tafel auf und sieht, wie Hayo einen Zettel weitergibt, auf dem ein Witz darüber steht, wie schwarz ihr Hintern ist. Sie reißt ihn Hayo aus der Hand und liest ihn.

“Willst du der ganzen Klasse erzählen, was auf diesem Zettel steht, junger Mann?” fragt sie in einem strengen Ton.

Hayo “Oh Verzeihung, Frau Nia, ich habe das gar nicht so gemeint. Es war dumm und gemein von mir. Ich bitte sie höflich, diesen Zettel zu vernichten.”

Frau Nia Frau Nia sieht Hayo an, ihre Augen werden leicht weich. Sie legt den Zettel auf ihrem Schreibtisch ab und geht zu ihm hinüber.

“Ich schätze deine Ehrlichkeit, Hayo”, sagt sie leise, “aber lass mich etwas klarstellen. Ich dulde keine Form von Rassismus oder Respektlosigkeit in meinem Klassenzimmer. Jetzt lassen wir diesen Vorfall hinter uns und konzentrieren uns auf den Unterricht.”

Hayo “Selbstverständlich, Frau Nia. Lieben Dank!”

Frau Nia Frau Nia nickt, ihr Gesicht ist immer noch streng, aber in ihren Augen liegt eine Wärme, als sie seine Entschuldigung anerkennt.

“Dann wollen wir mal wieder an die Arbeit gehen”, schlägt sie vor und wendet sich von ihm ab, um die Kreide wieder in die Hand zu nehmen. Sie beginnt, an die Tafel zu schreiben, aber ab und zu wirft sie einen Blick zu Hayo, um sich zu vergewissern, dass er aufmerksam ist und nicht wieder abgelenkt wird. Sie weiß, dass sie ihn im Auge behalten muss, denn sie will nicht, dass sich dieser Vorfall wiederholt.

Nachdem sie den Unterricht beendet hat, entlässt Frau Nia die Klasse in die Mittagspause. Als die Schüler nach draußen gehen, geht sie auf Hayo zu. “Hayo, kann ich dich kurz sprechen, nachdem alle anderen gegangen sind?”, fragt sie leise und versucht, trotz der anhaltenden Spannungen zwischen ihnen ein professionelles Auftreten zu wahren.

Hayo “Ja, natürlich, Frau Nia! – Ich weiß, dass ich etwas falsch gemacht habe.”

Frau Nia Frau Nia sieht zu, wie der Rest der Klasse nach draußen geht und nur Hayo und sie in dem ruhigen Raum zurückbleiben. Sobald sie allein sind, dreht sie sich zu ihm um, die Arme vor der Brust verschränkt.

“Du hast mehr als nur 'einen Fehler' gemacht, Hayo”, sagt sie mit fester Stimme, die einen Hauch von Enttäuschung enthält. “Was du geschrieben hast, war verletzend und inakzeptabel. Es ist wichtig, dass du das verstehst.”

Ihr Blick ist intensiv, und doch liegt eine gewisse Zärtlichkeit in ihren Augen, während sie spricht. Sie möchte, dass er aus dieser Erfahrung lernt und sich nicht nur entschuldigt.

Hayo “Beim Schreiben des Zettels war mir das nicht bewusst, Frau Nia, aber jetzt verstehe ich es.

Wissen Sie, jeder weiß, dass Sie eine Lehrkraft diese Schule sind und ich einer ihrer Schüler. Diese Tatsache definiert unsere Beziehung zueinander. – Für Sie bin ich zweifellos dieser Schüler. Für mich sind Sie seit einiger Zeit aber nicht nur eine Lehrerin. Es ist da eine andere Ebene entstanden, in der auch – bitte entschuldigen Sie – Ihr Hintern eine Rolle spielt, nicht jedoch dessen Farbe. Der Bezug auf die Farbe diente mir nur als Aufhänger, als Anlass, mich zu diesem Thema zu äußern, das mich sehr beschäftigt. Er war also gar nicht rassistisch gemeint... – Ich hoffe, ich konnte das irgendwie verständlich... – es ist nicht einfach für mich, glauben Sie mir...”

Frau Nia Frau Nia hört aufmerksam zu, als Hayo versucht, sich zu erklären, und ihr Gesichtsausdruck wird ein wenig weicher. Seine Worte sind herzlich und aufrichtig, und sie kann nicht umhin, einen Anflug von Mitgefühl für ihn zu empfinden.

“Ich weiß deine Ehrlichkeit zu schätzen, Hayo”, sagt sie sanft, “und ich verstehe, dass du nicht absichtlich Schaden anrichten wolltest. Aber es geht nicht nur um die Absicht hinter der Nachricht, sondern auch um die Wirkung, die sie auf mich hatte.” Sie hält einen Moment inne und sammelt ihre Gedanken, bevor sie fortfährt. “Die Wahrheit ist, Hayo, dass diese Situation für uns beide nicht einfach ist. Du hast eine Grenze überschritten, und ich muss dafür sorgen, dass das nicht noch einmal passiert. Wir müssen einen Weg finden, das Vertrauen wiederherzustellen.”

Hayo “Einiges an der Situation kann ich sicherlich ändern, Frau Nia. Welches wäre der erste Schritt, den Sie vorschlagen würden?”

Frau Nia Frau Nia seufzt leise und fährt sich mit der Hand durch die Haare, während sie über seine Frage nachdenkt. Sie lehnt sich an ihren Schreibtisch und sieht nachdenklich aus.

“Der erste Schritt wäre, dass du echte Reue zeigst”, sagt sie langsam. “Das bedeutet, dass du die Verantwortung für dein Handeln übernimmst und dafür sorgst, dass sich solche Vorfälle nicht wiederholen. Du musst Grenzen respektieren, sowohl meine als auch die der anderen.”

Sie stößt sich vom Schreibtisch ab und tritt näher an ihn heran. “Zweitens würde ich gerne sehen, dass du einige proaktive Schritte unternimmst. Wie willst du verhindern, dass du in Zukunft ähnliche Fehler machst?” Ihre Augen suchen sein Gesicht nach Anzeichen von Aufrichtigkeit und Entschlossenheit ab.

Hayo “Zunächst würde ich gern einige Dinge feststellen. Wir reden hier von einem einzigen Vorgang. Es gibt aus meiner Sicht keinen Grund, in diesem Zusammenhang von 'Handlungen' oder von 'Fehlern' zu reden. Die Annahme, ohne eine echte Zerknirschung meinerseits müsse es unweigerlich zu weiteren Fehltritten durch mich kommen, lässt sich durch mein bisheriges Verhalten nicht rechtfertigen. Zu dieser Einschätzung könnte man demnach nur dann kommen, wenn man eine problematische Grundhaltung bei mir voraussetzt, der mit geeigneten Maßnahmen begegnet werden muss, etwa Rassismus oder Sexismus oder dergleichen. Diesen Verdacht wollte ich aber gerade durch meine Selbsterklärung entkräften. Dass Sie dennoch daran festhalten, zeigt mir, dass Sie mir nicht glauben. Das macht mich ratlos.”

Frau Nia Frau Nia holt tief Luft, um sich auf das vorzubereiten, was sie als Nächstes sagen wird. Ihr Gesichtsausdruck wird härter, ein klares Zeichen für ihre wachsende Frustration.

“Hayo, ich verstehe, woher du kommst”, beginnt sie mit ruhiger, aber fester Stimme, “und ich schätze deinen Wunsch, die Dinge zu klären. Aber deine Taten sagen mehr als deine Worte.”

Sie deutet auf die Tür. “Du hast eine Notiz geschrieben, die rassistisch, erniedrigend und respektlos war. Das ist eine Tatsache. Ihre Leugnung oder Erklärung ändert daran nichts. Auch wenn du vielleicht glaubst, dass du zu Unrecht angegriffen wirst, muss ich auf der Grundlage der tatsächlichen Geschehnisse Maßnahmen ergreifen.”

Ihr Blick wird wieder etwas weicher. “Ich möchte dir helfen zu verstehen, warum dein Handeln falsch war, Hayo. Aber jetzt muss ich erst einmal überlegen, wie ich das am besten anstelle.”

Hayo “Frau Nia, ich schätze Ihre Klugheit und Autorität. Ich habe unter Ihrer Anleitung schon viel gelernt, sowohl schulisch als auch menschlich. In einigen Punkten bin ich jedoch anderer Meinung als Sie:

Tatsächlich glaube ich nicht, dass Sie mich zu Unrecht hier zur Rede stellen. Ja, es ist etwas Dummes geschehen, für das ich verantwortlich bin.

Dass meine Notiz rassistisch sei, ist jedoch keine Tatsache, sondern eine Zuschreibung, die in der Zeit, im kulturellen Kontext und in Abhängigkeit von handelnden Menschen verschieden ausfallen kann. In dieser Frage eine Deutungshoheit zu beanspruchen, finde ich nicht angemessen.

Tatsache ist dagegen ganz offensichtlich, dass diese Notiz auf Sie erniedrigend gewirkt hat. Dafür möchte ich mich hier noch einmal in aller Form bei Ihnen entschuldigen. Ich habe diese Situation falsch eingeschätzt und ich habe beim flüchtigen Kritzeln nicht damit gerechnet, dass Sie diese Notiz lesen werden. Ihre Verletzung ist also nicht vorsätzlich geschehen. Ich bitte Sie, das bei ihrer Bewertung zu berücksichtigen.

Dass ich mich von meinen Gefühlen habe hinreißen lassen, diese Notiz überhaupt zu schreiben, ist zweifellos rücksichtslos von mir. Ich habe selbstbezogen gehandelt und die mögliche Wirkung auf andere ausgeblendet. – Dass diese Notiz jedoch der Ausdruck meiner Respektlosigkeit Ihnen gegenüber wäre, dem widerspreche ich: Sie haben meinen allergrößten Respekt – das versichere ich – als Lehrkraft dieser Schule, als Mensch, als Frau und – nun ja, seit einiger Zeit – auch als Persönlichkeit mit einer Ausstrahlung, die mich beschäftigt. Das passiert unweigerlich. Diese Energien kann ich vielleicht verschieden bewirtschaften, was Übung erfordert. Aber eliminieren lassen sie sich nicht.”

Frau Nia Nia nickt nachdenklich, als Hayo spricht, und hört seinen Worten aufmerksam zu. Ein Teil von ihr versteht seine Sichtweise, auch wenn sie ihr nicht zustimmt.

“Deine Entschuldigung weiß ich zu schätzen, Hayo”, antwortet sie, ihr Ton ist immer noch fest, aber irgendwie weicher. “Und ich erkenne an, dass du nicht die Absicht hattest, meine Gefühle zu verletzen. Dennoch hast du etwas geschrieben, das mich sehr verärgert hat.”

Sie sieht ihn unverwandt an, in ihren Augen liegt ein Hauch von Traurigkeit, gemischt mit Entschlossenheit. “Ich versuche nicht, irgendeine Art von 'Deutungshoheit' zu beanspruchen, wie du es ausdrückst. Vielmehr tue ich einfach meine Arbeit als Lehrerin und als jemand, dem die Schaffung eines sicheren Umfelds für alle Schüler sehr am Herzen liegt. Und ja, das schließt mich ein.” Sie holt tief Luft und fährt fort.

“Lass mich das anders erklären. Stell dir vor, du hättest statt 'What's up ebony queen?' geschrieben 'What's up white queen?'. Würdest du das als rassistisch ansehen?”

Hayo “Ich verstehe, dass eine abwertende Bezugnahme auf körperliche Merkmale diskriminierend ist, nicht aber die Bezugnahme als solche. Das Wort 'ebony' kann in einem bestimmten Kontext abwertend verstanden werden, hat aber meines Wissens nach keine historisch kolonialistische Konotation.

Eine rassistische Interpretation meiner Äußerung ist aber schlicht ein Missverständnis: Es gibt viele PoC-Frauen und -Mädchen an unserer Schule, doch keine von ihnen ruft die Empfindungen in mir hervor, die Sie hervorrufen. Das heißt jedoch nicht, dass Ihre Hautfarbe für meine Sehnsüchte gar keine Rolle spielen würde. Ich sehe Sie als Persönlichkeit mit vielen sichtbaren und spürbaren Eigenschaften, zu denen ich mich hingezogen fühle...”

Frau Nia Nia hört Hayos Erklärung aufmerksam zu, ihr Blick ist nachdenklich. Seine Worte lösen in ihr eine Mischung von Gefühlen aus, darunter Verwirrung und ein Hauch von Verärgerung.

“Ich schätze deine Ehrlichkeit, Hayo”, sagt sie und wählt ihre Worte sorgfältig. “Aber wir sollten nicht vergessen, dass Sprache Macht hat. Worte können verletzen, ob beabsichtigt oder nicht.” Sie hält inne und sieht ihm direkt in die Augen.

“Stell dir vor, wie du dich fühlen würdest, wenn dich jemand wegen deiner Hautfarbe beschimpft. Oder deiner Religion. Oder irgendetwas anderes, das dich einzigartig macht. Es wäre egal, ob es als Kompliment gemeint wäre. Tatsache ist, dass es auf die Wahrnehmung ankommt, die man von dir hat. Und wenn diese Wahrnehmung negativ ist, dann wird das Auswirkungen haben.

Ihr Blick wird etwas weicher. “Ich weiß, dass du kein schlechter Mensch bist, Hayo.”

Hayo “Sie haben Recht, Frau Nia. Wenn jemand mich z.B. einen 'Flachskopf' nennen würde, weil er sich abends im Bett mein blondes Haar vorstellt, oder schlimmer 'Bleichschwänzchen', weil er unterstellt, dass ich wegen meiner Hautfarbe weniger potent sei als andere, dann würde mich das auch kränken. Genauso wie es kränkt, wenn Schüler aus dem Namen eines Kameraden einen despektierlichen Reim machen, den sie ihm hinterher rufen. Oder die besondere Sprechweise eines Mitschülers hässlich nachäffen. Oder sich über den sozialen Status der Eltern abfällig äußern. Es gibt viele Formen und Möglichkeiten der Diskriminierung. Jede ist zutiefst kränkend. Es passiert täglich unzählige Male.

Es sind die Dornenhecken, durch die wir in unserem Leben hindurchgehen. Natürlich können wir unsere Wege planieren und säubern, um unverletzt zu bleiben. Wir können auf verbliebene Dornen hinweisen, immer mit einer Heckenschere im Gepäck. Dabei wird unsere Haut immer zarter und empfindsamer, was wir zusätzlich befördern durch Sensibilitätsschulungen und Safespaces: – eine allgemeine Mobilmachung der Sensibilität, die jede Resilienz gegenüber unvorhersehbaren Verletzungen verkümmern lässt. Am Ende steht unsere absolute Vereinzelung, weil der Mensch seinen Mitmenschen nicht mehr erträgt.”

Frau Nia Nia nickt langsam, ihr Gesicht ist ernst, während sie über Hayos Worte nachdenkt. “Du hast einige gute Argumente, Hayo”, gibt sie zu, ihre Stimme ist sanft. “Es ist wahr, dass wir in einer Welt leben, in der Diskriminierung nur allzu häufig vorkommt. Wir sehen sie jeden Tag, in unzähligen Formen und Situationen.”

Sie seufzt und reibt sich sanft über die Schläfen. “Aber das heißt nicht, dass wir es einfach hinnehmen sollten. Wir müssen uns selbst und andere über ihre schädlichen Auswirkungen aufklären. Und wir müssen uns dagegen wehren, wann immer wir sie sehen.”

Als sie Hayo wieder ansieht, schenkt sie ihm ein kleines Lächeln. “Wir sind alle Menschen, Hayo. Wir haben alle unsere eigenen Kämpfe und Herausforderungen. Lass uns versuchen, uns gegenseitig besser zu verstehen, okay?”

Hayo “Danke, Frau Nia. Daran werde ich arbeiten, das verspreche ich!”

Frau Nia Nia lächelt Hayo warm an, aufrichtig erfreut über sein Versprechen. “Danke, Hayo”, sagt sie aufrichtig. “Das bedeutet mir sehr viel.”

Sie hält inne, ihr Blick verweilt auf ihm, bevor sie weiterspricht. “Vergiss nicht, jeder verdient Respekt. Unabhängig von seiner Herkunft, seinen Überzeugungen oder seinem Aussehen. Das ist etwas, wonach wir alle streben sollten.”

Hayo “Das werde ich mir zu Herzen nehmen, Frau Nia!

Würde es Ihnen etwas ausmachen, in diesem Zusammenhang noch über einen anderen Gedanken mit mir zu sprechen?”

Frau Nia Nia legt den Kopf leicht schief, neugierig darauf, was Hayo als Nächstes besprechen möchte.

“Natürlich, Hayo”, antwortet sie in einem einladenden Ton. “Ich bin hier, um zuzuhören und zu helfen, wo ich kann.”

Hayo “Wenn wir uns einig sind, dass wir uns alle immer wieder darum bemühen müssen, respektvoll miteinander umzugehen, stellt sich die Frage, welche Aktionen in diesem Sinne wirklich zielführend sind.

Wirklichen Einfluss habe ich nur auf mein eigenes Handeln, das Handeln anderer Menschen kann ich ohne Manipulation oder Zwang – beides Formen der Gewalt – nur begrenzt kontrollieren, nicht wahr? Um Andere gewaltlos zu einem Wandel ihres Denkens und Handels zu veranlassen, bleibt mir wenig mehr als mein eigenes vorbildliches Verhalten. Manipulationsversuche oder Zwang, ob offen oder subtil, bewirken dagegen oft das Gegenteil und wecken Widerstände, die kaum zu überwinden sind.

Sie werden mir sicher zustimmen, dass ein Junge wie ich nur äußerst selten die Chance hat, einen Vorgang wie diesen im Gespräch so tief auszuloten, wie wir das gerade getan haben. In fast allen anderen ähnlichen Fällen bleibt unentdeckt, dass es eigentlich um persönliche Schwächen und Sehnsüchte, vielleicht um Gedankenlosigkeit und ein gewisses Maß rücksichtsloser Selbstbezogenheit ohne amoralischen Kontext geht.

In fast allen Fällen werden dagegen die stark moralisierenden Labels des Rassismus und der respektlosen Diskriminierung unwidersprochen an den Menschen haften bleiben. Ich rede von einem erwartbaren Verlauf solcher Vorgänge, nicht von bedauerlichen Einzelfällen. So bleibt selbst bei den am meisten einsichtsvollen Beklagten ein Gefühl, unverstanden geblieben zu sein. Wenn sich das häuft, entsteht ein Aufbegehren gegen solche Zuweisungen, welche wie sich selbst erfüllende Prophezeiungen schließlich einen substanziellen Rassismus sogar stärken können.

Daneben entsteht durch eine massive Präsenz dieses Themas in der Gesellschaft der Eindruck, überall könne mit etwas Aufmerksamkeit Rassismus entdeckt und bekämpft werden. Der Rassismus-Vorwurf inflationiert und wird stumpf, tatsächlicher Rassismus verschwindet in der Masse der Vorwürfe. An Rassismus zu denken und rassistisch zu denken sind dann kaum mehr noch als zwei Seiten derselben Medaille.

Ganz schwierig wird es schließlich, wenn dritte Unbeteiligte sich moralisierend einschalten. – In unserem Fall haben immerhin Sie selbst Ihre Kränkung thematisiert. – In den meisten Fällen aber sind es vor allem Nichtbetroffene in akademischen Milieus, die sich über das Studium entsprechender Literatur kenntnisreich wähnen und unterstellte Kränkungsvorgänge äußerst offensiv bekämpfen wollen, bevor sie überhaupt passiert sind, jedoch das Urteil von potentiellen Opfern weder abwarten noch überhaupt hören wollen. Ihnen geht es ums Prinzip, um den aktuellen Stand der Wissenschaft und um ihre Ideologie. Ob ein solches Vorgehen noch als gewaltfrei bezeichnet werden darf, mag bezweifelt werden, ganz sicher aber wirkt es zutiefst polarisierend, spaltet die Gesellschaft nach bestimmten Profilvorgaben in fest definierte Opfer- und Tätergruppen und stärkt damit die Gegenkräfte, die von rassistischen Ideologen instrumentalisiert werden können – und werden.

Auf mich wirkt die Rassismus-Zuweisung deshalb zwar leicht zu handhaben, doch im Sinne eines ehrlichen Antirassismus kontraproduktiv. Da ich aber auch sehe, dass rassistisches Verhalten nicht unwidersprochen bleiben darf, ergibt sich für mich und mein Handeln eine Zwickmühle. Wüssten Sie einen Ausweg aus diesem Dilemma, Frau Nia?”

Frau Nia Nia hört Hayos Worten aufmerksam zu, ihr Blick verlässt seine Augen nicht, während er spricht. Als er fertig ist, atmet sie langsam aus und denkt über alles nach, was er gesagt hat. “Hayo, du hast dir viele Gedanken gemacht”, sagt sie schließlich und nickt. “Und auch wenn ich nicht mit allem einverstanden bin, was du gesagt hast, schätze ich die Tiefe deiner Analyse.”

Sie lehnt sich nach vorne und stützt ihr Kinn auf ihre Hand. “Ich glaube, dass jeder von uns seinen eigenen Weg in diesen Fragen finden muss. Was für den einen funktioniert, muss für den anderen nicht funktionieren. Aber ich glaube, dass Verständnis und Einfühlungsvermögen der Schlüssel sind. Wenn wir lernen können, die Dinge aus der Perspektive des anderen zu sehen, können wir vielleicht einen Weg finden, um gemeinsam voranzukommen.”

Hayo “Ich habe verstanden, was an meinem frechen Verhalten so verletzend für Sie war. Und nun danke ich Ihnen, das Sie ebenfalls bereit waren, die Dinge auch aus meiner Perspektive zu betrachten. Das war mehr, als ich in dieser Situation erwarten durfte.”

Frau Nia Nia nickt und weiß Hayos Dankbarkeit zu schätzen. “Es ist meine Aufgabe, die Perspektive jedes Schülers zu verstehen”, erklärt sie sanft. “Und es ist wichtig für mich zu wissen, wie mein Handeln auf andere wirkt. Wir lernen hier alle, Hayo. Das ist ein Teil des Erwachsenwerdens.”

Sie schenkt ihm ein warmes Lächeln und versucht, ihn zu beruhigen. “Aber konzentrieren wir uns jetzt darauf, vorwärts zu kommen. Du hast dich verpflichtet, dich zu verbessern, und ich glaube an dich.”

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