Sam Chupp Media Presents

Reading Caoime Snow’s blog, I noticed that she was asked if The Queen’s Cavaliers is a “Feminist Egalitarian Text” in much the same way as say, the movie Aliens.

For many years I played what we called “D&D” with my friends – it wasn’t really Dungeons and Dragons. I think of it as loosely based on the fantasy world that was created to deal with a vague concept of D&D. At first we utilized only a few of the aspects of the system.

Slowly but surely, even the dice functions were left by the wayside as we turned the game into a diceless freeform. This was fine because by that point we had learned each other’s style, and had learned to trust each other, and had learned to balance success and failure in the story.

The content in this story was what others might have considered a “feminist egalitarian text” in that the story reflected our own values and mores. It was just a story to us – something that reflected our ideals.

Love won out over hate. Women and men were treated equally. Just because a female character got pregnant, or had kids, didn’t mean they had to stop adventuring.

Women and men, men and men, women and women, transgender and shape-changing people all met, fell in love, made love, and enjoyed the fruits of their relationships. Monogamy existed, but so did polyamory.

What a person did with their body was considered their own to do, and when others broke this rule it was a terrible crime. There were female and male deities, and people who worshiped no deity.

There were people in the story who allowed hate to rule their actions, prejudiced people, angry people, people addicted to rage, drugs, spiritual energy.

There were people who made bad choices, or who were so broken by the things that happened to them as to be nearly nonredeemable. But healing, forgiveness, and the power of hope was emphasized as means against these beings. Some antagonists were just people with conflicting goals and agendas.

It wasn’t always fluffy bunnies and white light. Sometimes evil had to be ended with violence, and sometimes mistakes were made, bad choices were decided by the characters. Sometimes what was broken could not be healed. It made the triumphs sweeter, and kept the story grounded in something more realistic.

But these stories I collaborated on weren’t a part of anybody’s political agenda, except in Carol Hanische’s classic concept called “The personal is political.” They were just for our personal amusement and edification. It was as if tailor-made movies or TV shows were created and projected on our personal Cartesian theaters.

And that’s exactly how I like to play RPGs. It’s just nice that a game like The Queen’s Cavaliers already takes for granted the sort of values I’ve always had and always promote in my everyday life. I don’t feel like I have to “file off the serial numbers” or “shoehorn” my version of things into the fiction of The Queen’s Cavaliers.

BTW if you missed the Kickstarter and want to pre-order The Queen’s Cavaliers, it’s available here.

You may have heard that I’m interested in The Queen’s Cavaliers, a kickstarter project currently funding. I am enjoying reading the beta / playtest version posted for backers, and one thing that is of interest about the mechanics is that a character starts with two “classes.”

This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder about the setting-reflected issues of the system. The classes are literally dripping with setting meaning: Barrister is one of them, for example. Mechanician. Charmweaver, yes but even “Provincial.” The whole idea of a “Provincial” character class takes me back to games like Warhammer, Runequest, or more recently Burning Wheel, where you have life paths and you can create a character who comes from humble beginnings.

Right now the game simply states that you have two, but doesn’t explain, setting-wise, why you have two. To come up with setting-reflected reasons for the two classes part, you could be as literal as to say “every Cavalier has two classes because only those with a panoply of competence and talent are ever chosen to be a Cavalier.”

Or one class is your birth-class, the class your family is involved in and the other is the class you chose upon your adulthood, when you were emancipated from your family and set forth into the world. This would seem to hold true since the classes you choose reflect the Social Rank you’ll eventually hold.

One of the things I love the most about stories like Brust’s The Phoenix Guards and its companion Five Hundred Years After (and hence, almost every Musketeer story ever) is that the characters are approachable and full of life, they will dice and drink and brawl in taverns, but you come to realize they are Persons of Import back home, Baronesses and Counts and the like. So this is another way the character creation system rings true.

The friction between the two classes create an interesting frisson in the setting as well. That friction can feed the drama of the story, for characters such as the Provincial/Provocateur or the Alchemist/Virtuosa. How about Barrister/Fusilier (if you don’t win in court, you can shoot someone?). In every case, the combinations bring the question, “How did you get this way?” which helps spur interesting answers.

I think I’ll continue to write about The Queen’s Cavaliers some more in the near future, but I wanted to say “thank you” to the people who sent the Kickstarter over $9,000. Because of that, I will be writing a 16-page adventure for the game! I’m excited to be a part of the project while at the same time I’m a backer / bystander / player like everyone else.