Go to Part 1

Every piece of evidence surrounding the authorship of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock points to one of two truths:

(1) If the play was written in the early 1590’s, then Shakespeare must have written it. (If not, then its deep similarities to later Shakespearean plays would indicate that Shakespeare spent the bulk of his career cribbing from the work of an anonymous and apparently forgotten playwright.)

(2) If the play was written after 1600, then Shakespeare probably did not write it. (The relative crudity of the play coupled to such a late date makes it unlikely as the sequel to the polished Richard II, and makes it far more plausible that the play’s similarities are the result of someone cribbing from Shakespeare’s mature works.)

But in the absence of any certainty regarding the play’s authorship, why should it be included in the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare?

Partly because we believe that staging the apocrypha gives a unique and exciting opportunity to see plays which are rarely or never performed. If an apocryphal play like Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock was, in fact, written by Shakespeare, then it’s an important part of the project’s goal to include it. But even if it is not, such plays are an important part of the American Shakespeare Repertory’s mission to provide the rich, Elizabethan context in which Shakespeare’s plays were originally staged.

Which is the other reason we believe it’s important to stage Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock. Amidst all the uncertainty, there is one thing we can be sure of: There was a play on the London stage dramatizing the events surrounding Thomas of Woodstock’s death. If it wasn’t Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, then it was some other play covering the same ground.

Whether or not that play was by Shakespeare, it would have been fresh in the minds of those who saw the premiere of Richard II — a part of the cultural gestalt created by Elizabethan theater. It’s a context which has been largely, if not entirely, inaccessible for the past 400 years. But it’s a context which the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare is uniquely suited to restore.

Originally posted September 18th, 2010.

The Human Concordat was originally conceived and pitched to Shadis magazine as the first “AlterWorld”. My idea was to create a new “mini-setting” that would nestle into an existing setting and then develop that setting over the course of 12-18 issues of the magazine with more detailed articles and adventure scenarios. Additional AlterWorlds would have followed. The two ideas I remember being discussed were a city for the World of Darkness (which would have included material for all the different World of Darkness games) and an isolated planet in the Mechwarrior universe.

The idea was that the extended focus on a single campaign resource would create a unique audience for the magazine. What I found appealing about the AlterWorld concept was that it would allow me to explore radical ideas for settings that the original creators weren’t interested in: For example, when I first read Fading Suns I was fascinated by the idea of a gate connection opening up that would lead not just to one world, but to an entire lost civilization of worlds. And, thus, the Human Concordat was born.

Shadis folded in 1998, however, and the Human Concordat got shelved. About a year later I repackaged the pitch for Pyramid Magazine. They weren’t interested in the AlterWorld concept, but they expressed interest in the “Human Concordat” as a stand-alone article.The only problem was that it was too long for their budget: They asked me to cut it down to roughly half the size so that they could afford to pay me. I made a counter-offer: They would pay me for the article length they wanted and I’d give the rest of it to them for free.

In order to see the material realized the way I wanted it, I also personally commissioned the artwork for the various religious and political symbols. (The gorgeous jumpweb map by Keith Johnson I can take no credit for, however.)

Part 1 – The Fall
Part 2 – Government & Religion
Part 3 – Worlds of the Concordat
Part 4 – More Worlds of the Concordat
Part 5 – The Concordat as Campaign Setting

As a young author, I secretly held the hope that the article would prove to be such a huge success that Pyramid would come back and ask me to develop more material in the setting. Unsurprisingly, that never happened.

One thing that never got executed properly: The symbol for the Seven Pearls was supposed to be varied for each of the Pearls. This is what it ended up looking like:

But the original conception was that each planet in the Pearls would have a variation in which its corresponding circle-star would be the largest on the string. (So Lyonesse would have the first circle-star larger than the others, while Leicester would have had the second circle-star larger than the others.)

Reading through The Human Concordat today, I can also see that the setting comes across as significantly more utopian than I’d originally intended: The “culture of universal acceptance and emancipation” should have its dark side. (You might also note the number of terraforming engine problems found throughout the setting. The bit about terraforming technology being “the one true secret which remains, as yet, unmastered by Concordat scientists” was also unfulfilled foreshadowing.)

As a final point of miscellaneous interest, here’s my original rough draft of the Concordat jumpweb map:

Which you can compare to Keith Johnson’s superb work:

(click for larger version)

Tagline: Let us review the review policy.

Okay, this one needs some explanation. On January 25th, 2000, John Wick gave an interview at the Gaming Outpost. (Although now defunct, the Gaming Outpost was a major online RPG nexus at the time.) As part of that interview, John Wick issued “The Official John Wick Review Policy”. This notably included stuff like claiming that reviewers should never say they didn’t like something. That no one should ever read a review. That no one should ever write a review. And then a strong suggestion that nobody (including fans) should express an opinion about an RPG unless they had personally published an RPG.

There were also a couple pieces of advice that weren’t complete shit.

This “review policy” came out shortly after Wick’s game 7th Sea had been inundated with bad reviews. The “Official John Wick Review Policy” poured gasoline on the fire: Wick was trying to tell an entire community of people who were disappointed with his game that they literally weren’t allowed to have an opinion about it because they hadn’t put in the “blood, sweat, and tears that make up the creative process”. I decided it would be particularly clever if I couched my own commentary on the “thou shalt not write a review” review policy in the form of a review.

So this particular review was written very much in a historical moment. I’m uncertain that it has any real meaning 15 years later, but if I’m archiving all of my historical content here on the Alexandrian, then I guess I should archive all of it.

(This is a review of The Official John Wick Review Policy, which was included as part of a Gaming Outpost interview which can be located here. You might want to go there before you read this – or after. Then again, you might not.)

John Wick’s Review Policy sucks.

What else can I say? The very idea of Wick dictating the policies people will be using to review his own material is nauseating. He seems to think that his opinion has some sort of relevance to the rest of us. I just didn’t like it.

And you won’t like it either. I guarantee it.

Not that that matters, because if you’re reading this you’re a brain dead asshole. Didn’t you read Rules #5 and #6? What part of “never read reviews” didn’t you get? This is clearly being written by someone who has no idea of the blood, sweat, and tears that makes up the creative process (as if that somehow has some relevance to the merits of a product; as if the Cleveland Browns should have been in the Superbowl because they really, really wanted to be good and worked really, really hard). And I definitely have a personal agenda to condemn the product in question, considering that I am – by default – one of those evil reviewers. I violated Rule #7 (“never write a review”) right off the bat, so why are you paying any attention to me?

Of course — don’t blink now! — Wick has definitely written reviews before (some of which can be found in his columns right here on RPGNet) – so he’s a hypocrite. I can’t testify with absolute certainty that he has ever read a review – but I suspect so, which makes him a hypocrite twice over. And if he hasn’t, then he’s speaking from ignorance.

Which just makes him an idiot.

Which brings us to Rule #9: “Before you buy a book, read a few pages first.” A good point. Feel free to go check out the policy itself before continuing. I’ll wait.

Dum de dum. Ho de do. Dum dee-dee.

…

Ho, ho, ho!

…

You’re back? Great.

You may have realized that I’m not showing much restraint here. Initially I was worried about this, but then I realized that: (1) According to Wick there is no such thing as an objective review. (2) He was going to be “pissed off” about a negative “slam”/review no matter what it said. I’d feel sorry that I was causing him so much mental anguish, but if he’d stop putting together diatribes like this then it wouldn’t be necessary for others to tear them to pieces.

We’ll have to skip Rule #10 because this isn’t a roleplaying game we’re reviewing.

And we’ll have to skip Rule #11 because Wick is repeating himself.

Which brings us to Rule #12, in which Wick reviews Pendragon, Over the Edge, Ars Magica, Conspiracy X, Call of Cthulu, Champions, Twilight: 2000, Delta Green, the James Bond RPG, and Brave New World. See Rule #7 and draw some conclusions about Wick.

Then go back and read Rules #5 and #6, in which Wick bizarrely tells you that you shouldn’t even be reading this Official John Wick Review Policy.

Oh well, I was ignoring him anyway. On to Rule #13!

“Rule #13: If you’ve never gone through the grueling process of writing, designing, developing and publishing a roleplaying game, you don’t have the knowledge necessary to properly critique one.”

First off, if a bridge collapses the first time someone walks on it you don’t need to be an engineering major to figure out that there was something wrong with the bridge. Second, I find it truly bizarre that you need all that expertise to be qualified – in Wick’s opinions – to critique them (for example, why are only self-publishers allowed?). Finally, this whole thing leads to the oddity where it’s all right to critique a game, but you shouldn’t review it.

Rule #14 tells us that we have the right to express our opinions and the right to not express our opinions. Quite right. Rule #14.5 tells us that if we choose to “disregard these rights” (by both expressing and not expressing our opinion? by half expressing our opinion? what?) “anything you say can and will be used against you”.

Ah, poetic justice.

Rule #15 tells us that you need to defend your opinions – you need to justify them. Again, quite right. Pity Wick never seems to follow his own advice. Despite Rule #16: “All of the above rules apply to everyone. Including me.”

Style: 2
Substance: 1

Author: John Wick
Company/Publisher: Gaming Outpost
Cost: Free!
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 2000/01/28

Kaboom! Unsurprisingly, my caustic and ironic response to Wick’s diatribe provoked fierce responses. Wick himself notably failed to see the humor in a review of his review policy which systematically violated every single one of the absurd “rules” that he had proposed for reviews. We exchanged a number of heated comments back and forth across a variety of online forums.

The interesting thing is that, within a few weeks, John Wick and I had gotten over it: We had our argument and then we moved on. When I went to Gencon later that year, John was releasing his truly excellent Orkworld game. I shook his hand, we talked briefly, and he signed the book, “You review this and I’ll break your legs!” We laughed, chatted some more, and then I wandered off to read the book.

For a large number of people, though, John Wick and I were arch-enemies locked in an eternal feud. When my positive review of Orkworld appeared, I got several e-mails from people who were wondering if I’d “sold out” or if RPGNet had “forced” me to write a positive review. Some of it completely bizarre stuff; most of it just confusion.

It should be noted that Wick’s handling of the situation stood in marked contrast to the attitude of Sovereign Press at the same convention. (Which I describe at the end of my review of Sovereign Stone.)

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Go to Part 1

The Empire of the Known Worlds, the established setting of the Fading Suns game, is described by HDI as “a futuristic passion play”. As they say, it is primarily a science fiction game, but one indelibly painted with broad strokes of fantasy, sociopolitical feudalism, horror, and ancient mystery. It is a world in which stories of “varied and exotic themes” can be told, but those stories are – by the very nature of the setting – of a dark tone. It deals with “grand themes of the human experience” with a main theme of “Seeking”, the “mythological role all heroes play: the knight on quest, seeking power to vanquish his enemies or the secrets of self-discovery. Success or failure on this quest is not as important as the insights learned while on it.”

In expanding the setting to include the Human Concordat I have been careful to maintain that central theme of “Seeking”, but I have also been reticent of the fact that the Concordat shifts the way in which that theme is conveyed. It is a brighter, better place than the Empire. Where the Empire operates in shadow, the Concordat is a place of light.

But both share the exploratory spirit. Where Emperor Alexius is dragging his feudal empire into a new age of renaissance and exploration, the Human Concordat is engaged in its pacifistic mission to reunite humanity (and using that term to not only include humans, but all intelligent species). The exploration of the Empire is a renewal, the exploration of the Concordat is a cleansing. The exploration of the Empire is focused on the individual and self-improvement; the exploration of the Concordat is focused on society as a whole and unified improvement. There is a difference of means, but not ends.

In choosing to add the Human Concordat to an existing campaign, or starting a new campaign using the setting, it is important to remember that you are shifting the focus and feel of the Fading Suns game. In doing so you will find that the Concordat, although changing the feel of the setting, also complements the Empire. Use not only the thematic similarities, but also the thematic dissonances between the Concordat and the Empire to your advantage in designing and supplementing your campaign.

Reflections on the Human Concordat

When I launched my Patreon campaign a couple days ago, I was overjoyed when it took less than three hours to hit our first milestone goal of $10 per blog post. I immediately sat down and started work on an article discussing what I refer to as the Principles of RPG Villainy. I said that $10 per post was the point where I could start dedicating more time to the Alexandrian and it was an absolute truth.

By the time I finished writing that essay, we were just $0.50 away from hitting our second milestone goal and banishing advertising from the Alexandrian forever.

I really can’t tell you how excited I am about what this means for the Alexandrian. We are on the road to nifty, and everybody reading this will benefit from that whether you can afford to become my patron or not.

Patrons pledging $1 or more per post already have early access to the Principles of RPG Villainy. The rest of you will see it on January 5th following the conclusion of the Human Concordat series.

$0.10? $0.25? $1.00?

… even the smallest of pledges can add up to wondrous things.