RPG's and TSA and Body Cavity Searches

 I had a decade when I traveled a lot for work. Airports and Hampton Inns were my life. It had its ups and downs, but mostly ups: a perverse, secret monkey inside me likes being lonely and guzzling beer and reading weird books in anonymous hotel rooms. And I wrote a ton of RPG stuff, working on maps and voluminous histories and obscure pantheons, burning through Coors Lights and #2 pencils. If I was digging into a new system, a work trip was a great way to dive deep and immerse myself. I remember one project, six months of trips back and forth to Pittsburgh, that were solid, neck-deep immersions into Savage Worlds. In hindsight, it was pretty great.

But then came the trip to Huntsville, Alabama and Zweihander. If you're unfamiliar with Zweihander, it's basically a Warhammer Fantasy RPG clone made as a labor of love by fans who missed the early editions of WHFRP and loathed the newer iterations. It's a voluminous, monstrous, sprawling system, full of both crunch and fluff, awesome maps, and gritty illustrations. I found it a little clunky in practice, but fell madly in love with the setting and style and illustrations and overall vibe.  And girth. Did I mention girth?

Zweihander has a "Starter Box Set" out now, but when I got into it, it was a single book. A BOOK. Six hundred and eighty-eight pages and (according to Amazon) 5.4 pounds. You read that right: 688 pages.

So I'm slogging through security at terminal B in Norfolk, Virginia, when the TSA agent waves me aside. My carry-on bag is in the middle of the x-ray machine. I notice the conveyor belt is stopped.

"Sir, do you have anything prohibited in your bag?"

Racking my brain...nope. But, you gotta understand, I'm the kind of guy with a weird, paranoid guilty instinct. I start panicking: did I somehow, in a dissociative fugue state, pack my Ruger? Did I sleepwalk into the garage and stick a chainsaw in my carry-on?

"I...don't...think so?"

"Step out of the line, please."

I step out, and I see Burly Dude come over from the main security desk. He and the other agent talk quietly, her explaining, him nodding, both glancing up at me every few seconds. I know in my heart that this burly dude is named Officer K.Y. Blueglove, and he's going to take me to a quiet room and stick his large finger in my butt. And I'm still frigging baffled. I glance back, and the X-ray conveyor is inching forward, then back, like they're scanning something mystifying.

Finally, Officer Blueglove motions me over to them and points to the X-ray screen. "Can you tell us what this object is, sir?" I see the ghostly overlays of the X-ray readout: gray-scale silhouettes of my toothbrush, a bottle of aspirin, all nestled in a cumulonimbus cloud of nearly-transparent jeans and t-shirts. But there, right in the middle, like the alien Monolith in 2001, is a solid black chunk: a rectangle of obsidian, something that eats X-rays and leaves nothing but a void in the screen. To security-minded TSA eyes, I'm sure it looked like a lead-lined box full of uranium

"Uhhhh...that's a book."

Officer Blueglove trundles my bag over on the conveyor belt. Looks at me. Slowly unzips my bag. Pulls out Zweihander 4th Edition (with an audible grunt of exerted biceps), all 688 pages. Gives me a look of utter what the ever-loving fuck is this? He holds it out with both hands, like it's an extremely heavy, extremely gross, dead animal.

"It's a book. For a game." Man, I was glad they hadn't dug out my Crown Royal bag full of dice.

Skeptical look, raised eyebrow, solid *thump* as he dropped it into the rat's nest of no-longer-neatly-folded t-shirts and underwear in my open bag.

I just shrugged, relieved that my nether regions would remain mostly inviolate. I grabbed my bag (with some effort), and sidled over to put my shoes back on. 

My flight didn't leave for an hour, so I went to the airport bar for an $8 beer, and imagined explaining to my Guantanamo cell-mate that I was doing time for smuggling RPG's on a plane. He'd look at me, all impressed, and be like, "Wow, like rocket grenade launchers?" and I'd be like, "No way, man. Books." And then I'd start an awesome Zweihander campaign for the other detainees and it would be really cool.

'Broken' PC? Awesome PC!

First off, I  like playing characters that many would consider 'broken'. I'm never the guy who uses the concept of the 'dump stat' at character creation. It's tempting to give your dwarf fighter maxed out Strength and Constitution at the expense of Intelligence, Charisma or whatever (I'm using D&D stats, just because they're familiar to everybody), then you just kind of hand-wave the fact that you've created a functional moron who exists only to chop things up and take damage.

But if you were to actually role-play this kind of character, he'd be almost pitiful: he'd be noticeably stupid, or horrifically inept with people, depending on what you picked as your dump-stat. Easily tricked, quickly confused, total avatar of derpitude. I know when I see the kids down at my FLGS rolling up the XP-machines they call characters, they don't see them as these moronic meat-head axe-swingers; then again, I don't think they even see them as stalwart Gimli-types, or Conan, or Kull, or whatever. I think they see them as XP-machines, with only the fuzziest of concepts behind them.

That's annoying. That's what you do in video games, where your character is, even in the best of them, still mostly pre-defined.

INTRUSIVE NOTE: links have died since I wrote this back in the day. This post is a near-nothing. But I still believe in the basic premise, so I'm updating it a bit.

If you're gaming to kill shit and accrue experience points, go ahead and click off right now. But if you're looking to make collaborative stories that you'll remember for years, stick around.

All I'm saying is this: play to your character's weaknesses. One thing I absolutely adore is the Savage Worlds mechanic of writing weaknesses and faults into your character, and getting role-play hooks for doing it. Go ahead and roll up a character that's seventy years old: she might be shaky in a fight, but she'll be wise...and, most importantly, that's a hook you can use to play that role. Lean into it. It's a gift, I promise.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: don't gimp yourself in whatever your role is. Don't be a wizard with low intelligence, or a fighter with low strength. Be good at your role. If you do that, you're just boning the rest of the adventuring party (your fellow players). But take that 'dump stat' and use it for playing a role in the story, for standing out from the crowd. Don't be an XP machine. If you max Strength at the expense of Charisma, play an awkward, socially inept meat-mountain. 

This is old advice, and wasted on them what most needs to hear it, but remember: you're playing a character, not an optimized machine. Play to strengths and weaknesses, and you'll end up with stories that'll have you laughing years down the road, "holy shit, you remember that one time?" stories that make the hobby more than just leveling up and killing monsters.