Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
So, no names, no packdrill. This is one of those rare personal experience posts I do for POCGamer, concerning a recent experience and the realities of being Black and a content creator.
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Tag Archives: SF&F
Three Scifi RPGs Everyone Should Try
Most of the time when someone brings up old or out of print RPGs, it’s time to cue the eye-roll, and then put on your helmet because it’s time for war stories about how awesome things used to be before the d20 system or rules made for people who didn’t want to spend a lot of time doing math or memorizing obscure tables. This is a bit of a disservice though, since there are legitimately a lot of older games that have retained their playability and still have a lot to offer. This is especially true of the often neglected science fiction and related genre games. So here’s three old science fiction games that are worth checking out.
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Cyborg Re-humanized
Let’s start this one with a full disclosure. By the time I was old enough to read comics and understand them as more than just really cool pictures, there weren’t a lot of POC characters floating around. The first one I saw in print was Cyborg, and honestly, I think it affected me a lot more than I probably thought. Cybernetics and robotics remain some of my favourite things in comics, games, and in my own artistic dabbles. And as with so many things, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve looked back to examine things I liked in the past. Now, recently, partly in response to the DCAU’s Justice League animated features, Robert Jones Jr. wrote an interesting piece on the emasculation of Cyborg as part of a larger trope of neutering male POC characters. [1] I agree in parts, and disagree in others (for example, in the movie he cited, Batman, the Flash, and Cyborg do not call “dibs” on Wonder Woman), but things have changed since the original pre-Crisis Cyborg and the stumbling start of the New 52 Cyborg.
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The Hugo Affair
Recently, the Hugo Awards have been in the media a lot more than they usually are, even though it’s coming close to the announcement period for the year’s winners in science fiction and fantasy. [1] Unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong reasons. [2][3] As io9 points out, the Hugo Awards have always been political, but now they will never be anything else. As seen on Slashdot, the current state of affairs has some very familiar roots and apologetics at work. [4] Now, I’ve talked about this sort of thing before, but this requires an examination, if for no other reason than the fact that its an international award system that is being perverted. [5][6]
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Missing the Point pt.2
This has been a long post in coming, and has undergone several rethinks and adjustments along the way to improve coherency, make it less angry, and to really get the core or this portion. What I’m discussing over the next raft of words are the topics of perception, tokenism, and the creative process. These three areas are often misused and misunderstood by many people who argue for the maintenance of the status quo in SF&F gaming and media.
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