Recently got involved in a discussion about the sidebar in CthulhuTech that proudly proclaims their intention to use “he” as a gender-neutral pronoun:

THE PRONOUN GAME
Okay, here it is — we use he, him, and his when we’re talking about people playing the game. It just seems weird to alternate pronoun genders within the same book — it make it feel like the book is written for two different audiences. The masculine pronoun is the standard and right or wrong we’re used to seeing it. It may not be politically correct, but you can’t please everybody.

This sidebar has enraged some people. Other people have cheered it on. Still others (who, I pray, are the majority) are just left scratching their heads.

My personal mileage is that I’m mildly annoyed by it. But my annoyance is pretty much identical to the RPG rulebooks that include sidebars expressing how amazing they are for alternating pronouns or whatever their hobby horse of a “solution” is for the gender neutral pronoun in English. The fact that RPG rulebooks somehow became a major battleground in the gender-neutral pronoun wars is one of the truly What The Fuck?! moments of the ’90s for me.

With that being said, I can certainly recognize that for people who actually care deeply about this issue that the CthulhuTech sidebar is basically a game designer going out of his way (and unnecessarily so) to say, “Fuck you.” I would find that fairly off-putting, too, if I was in their shoes.

 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GENDER-NEUTRAL PRONOUN IN ENGLISH

Historically, “he” was the gender-neutral pronoun. Several hundred years ago, people came up with “she” to specifically differentiate women. Once women had been differentiated, the previously all-inclusive “he” picked up the specific connotations of being male.

As “he” lost its gender neutrality, however, the language reflexively adapted and “they” was used as a gender neutral pronoun. This worked fine until the the original grammar nazis of the 19th century arrived on the scene: A lot of the work they did to systematize the language was a huge net benefit to the English language, but they also had a lot of weird ideas. (Like trying to force English to obey the laws of Latin: For example, in Latin a split infinitive is simply nonsense. In English, however, phrases like “to boldly go” make perfect sense and people use them all the time. The attempt to ban split infinitives in English because they don’t work in Latin is nonsense. It’s like trying to ban people from playing Halo games on the X-Box because they don’t work on a Linux computer.)

One of the things these guys strongly objected to was the use of “they” as a singular gender-neutral pronoun. So, like split infinitives, many of them declared them to be bad grammar and insisted that “he” should be used exclusively as the singular gender-neutral pronoun. (Note that this was a choice: Either “they” could serve as both a singular and plural gender-neutral; or “he” could serve as both masculine and gender-neutral.)

Despite the grammarians, lots and lots and lots and lots of people kept using “they” as a gender-neutral singular. That made sense, of course. There was a reason that the language had evolved that way. And the situations in which “they” being singular instead of plural could cause confusion were much rarer than the situations in which “he” being treated as gender-neutral instead of masculine could cause confusion.

Fast forward to the 20th century: People begin noticing that “male = human, female = other” is really fucking problematic. And, yes, the grammarian attempt to enforce “he” as a gender-neutral pronoun hundreds of years after the language had attempted to naturally evolve away from that was part of that sexist memetic structure.

As a result, several varying efforts to introduce a gender-neutral pronoun separate from “he” or “they” have been attempted. But language tends not to work like that. Instead, “they” has simply continued merrily on its way as a gender-neutral pronoun with ever-increasing levels of acceptance.

MY TWO BITS

I’m a pretty big fan of people communicating clearly and correctly. But I’m also a huge fan of telling prescriptivist grammarians to shut up.

So I strongly endorse making it your personal mission to boldly go forth and use “they” as your gender neutral pronoun in English.

For RPG rulebooks specifically: If you want to swap the gender of your pronouns when writing specific examples, I fully support and endorse your gender-inclusive agenda. Toss some zes and zirs in there, too. And if you aren’t talking about vis character, then you’re unnecessarily excluding future generations of AI players. Seriously: Specific examples of characters and/or players should be multi-ethnic, multi-gendered, multi-everything. Not because it’s politically correct, but because it’s awesome.

But trying to make “she” a gender neutral pronoun is like “fetch”: It’s not going to happen. Please stop trying.

I get a lot of reactions to “Don’t Prep Plots” that basically go like this: “Oh, yeah. I don’t want to railroad my players, but…”

The justification or rationalization which follows the “but” varies. There’s a consistent recognition that roleplaying games aren’t really designed for linear, predetermined plots, but since the vast majority of the media we consume is purely linear (even most of the “interactive” stuff) those creative instincts get buried pretty deep in us.

One of the most common versions of the “but” I hear is, “But I don’t want them to kill my bad guy!” The justifications for this vary from a strictly predetermined “finale” that’s being ruined to the more seductive version of convincing yourself that your players won’t be “satisfied” if the bad guy is “prematurely” knocked off.

These instincts aren’t necessarily wrong: Pulp fiction is filled with scenes where the heroes impotently watch the bad guys escape, building the sense of rivalry between them and baiting our appetite for the finale of the story. It’s an effective trope.

But I don’t think railroading is the only way to achieve that trope at the gaming table. Nor do I think it’s the most effective: When you push your thumb onto the scales of fate in order to predetermine the outcome of your game, you deflate the value of that outcome. If you do it poorly (or simply do it often enough), the anger and frustration of the players will stop being focused on the NPC villain and start focusing on you. The value of the trope becomes depreciated when it’s achieved through artificial ends.

CREATING MEMORABLE VILLAINS

What I recommend instead is a three-pronged approach:

First, build tension between the PCs and the villain without using direct confrontations between them. Give the bad guy minions. Have the bad guy do horrible things to people, places, and organizations that the PCs care about off-screen. Social interactions in situations where the PCs won’t be able to simply shoot them in the head without serious consequences also work well to build a personal relationship. (As do taunting communiques and phone calls.)

Second, when you’re prepping your scenarios include lots of bad guys. You’re probably doing this any way, so the real key here is to simply refrain from pre-investing one of these guys as the “big villain”. Basically, don’t get attached to any of your antagonists: Assume that the first time they’re in a position where the PCs might kill them that the PCs will definitely kill them. (This attitude will help to break any railroading habits you may still be secretly harboring.)

Third, remember that people in the real world usually don’t fight to the death. Have your bad guys run away. And not just your “big villain” (since you won’t have one of those any way): Unless their back is truly to the wall, most of the people your PCs fight should try to escape once a fight turns against them. (If you’re finding it hard to break the “fight to your last hit point” habit, try experimenting with some morale rules.) Most of them will probably still end up with a bullet in the back of their heads, but some of them will manage to escape.

The ones that escape? Those are your memorable villains. Those are your major antagonists.

This is the crucial inversion: Instead of figuring out who your major bad guy is and then predetermining that they will escape to wreak their vengeance, what’s happening here is that the guy who escapes to wreak their vengeance becomes the major bad guy.

MEDIA FAUX-EXAMPLES

Consider Die Hard for a moment. As written, this film is a great example of our first principle: The antagonism between John McClane and Hans Gruber is established almost entirely without any direct interaction between the two of them: Gruber takes McClane’s wife hostage. They talk to each other through telecommunication devices. Gruber sends his thugs to fight McClane elsewhere in the building.

The exception to this is the scene where Gruber pretends to be one of the hostages. This is actually a really clever device that heightens the conflict between McClane and Gruber by allowing them to directly interact with each other. But if this was a game table, what would happen if the PCs saw through Gruber’s bluff and put a bullet through his forehead right then and there?

It doesn’t matter.

Remember our second principle? Lots of bad guys. So now Die Hard becomes the story of the hot-headed Karl Vreski taking control of Gruber’s delicate operation and blowing it up in a mad pursuit for vengeance. Maybe he starts killing hostages and becomes the most memorable villain of the campaign when he throws McClane’s wife off the top of Nakatomi Plaza.

Okay, so cycling through the org-chart of Villains, Inc. works when you’re facing a team of bad guys. But what if the PCs really are just facing off against a single nemesis?

First off, remember that not every challenge needs to be of epic proportions: Sometimes you run into some goblins in the woods and you kill them and you move on. You don’t need every goblin to murder the priestess’ cousin or become the sworn blood-enemy of the paladin.

Second, even the most memorable villains from fiction were often part of Villains, Inc. even when that isn’t immediately obvious. For example, consider Dracula: Wouldn’t it be really unsatisfying if Jonathan Harker sneaked into Dracula’s tomb at the beginning of the book and staked him through the heart before he ever went to England? I mean… this is the Dracula, right?

Remember, though, that Dracula is only the Dracula because that didn’t happen at the hypothetical gaming table. We didn’t know that he would become obsessed with Harker’s wife and kill Mina’s best friend in pursuit of her. We discovered that during play. So let’s pretend that play had gone a different way: Harker stakes Dracula and heads back to England, satisfied that he’s destroyed an ancient evil. It’s a beautiful, happy ending…

… until the Brides of Dracula pursue him to England seeking bloody vengeance.

As a final example, remember that you need to embrace the whole package: You have to allow your bad guys to die indiscriminately and you need to include lots of bad guys in your scenario. If you only prep the “big villains” and then allow them to die indiscriminately, what you end up with are the Star Wars prequels: Darth Maul is replaced by Count Dooku is replaced by General Grievous… and none of them ever achieve enough narrative weight to make you really care whether they live or die.

EXAMPLES FROM THE TABLE

As I’ve mentioned in the past, faux-examples from other forms of media can be useful due to the common understanding of the source material, but can be somewhat misleading because the official version of events from the original media lends a patina of canonicity that shouldn’t be true of actual tabletop scenarios. So let me also take this opportunity to offer a handful of examples from my Ptolus: In the Shadow of the Spire campaign.

SILION: Silion was a cult leader. Using our first principle, I built her up in a variety of ways: Her name was referenced in early foreshadowing. The PCs tangled with her thugs and were targeted for retaliation by her organization. She was also incorporated into the background of a new PC joining the campaign, becoming responsible for murdering the PCs’ family and destroying their village.

Eventually, the PCs managed to track down her lair. They snuck in, found her digging through a box of archaeological artifacts, rolled a critical hit, and put an arrow through the back of her skull. She literally never even got a chance to look them in the face.

My players gleefully tell this story at almost every opportunity. They love it. It’s one of their favorite moments from the entire campaign.

Why did it work? Because when you heavily invest a villain through foreshadowing, the payoff of defeating them is massively satisfying. It can be argued that this sort of thing might not work as well in other media (although consider that Luke’s actual confrontation with the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, after building up to it over the course of three films, lasts almost no time at all), but in a roleplaying game the audience is synonymous with the protagonist. Your players don’t want to be handed their quarry on a plate, but a quick kill shot isn’t a gimme: It’s a reward for all the work that got them to the point where they could take the shot.

ARVETH: Arveth was a mook. She was captured by the PCs, questioned by Tithenmamiwen, and then cut loose. When Elestra tried to sneak back and slit Arveth’s throat to stop her from warning the other cultists, Tithenmamiwen stopped her.

But then the cultists caught up with Arveth: Believing that she had betrayed them to the PCs, they tortured her and even cut out her eye. Eventually concluding that Arveth was still loyal to their cause, the cult gave her a team of assassins and sent her to kill Tithenmamiwen. This was our second principle: Use lots of bad guys and develop the ones who survive. (In some other campaign, Arveth could have easily been cut down randomly during combat and completely forgotten by the next session.)

Arveth nearly succeeded in her assassination attempt before the rest of the party showed up. While the rest of her team held the party at bay, Arveth managed to escape (barely evading Tithenmamiwen’s angry pursuit). This was our third principle: When they’re losing a fight, have your bad guys run away.

At this point, things transitioned to the first principle: Arveth used a magical artifact to send horrible nightmares to Tithenmamiwen (often featuring Arveth cutting out Tithenmamiwen’s eye). She issued threats to Tithenmamiwen’s friends. She placed a bounty on her head.

The PCs would fight her again. This time Arveth was teamed up with a medusa who turned two of the party members to stone. Arveth carved an eye out of each of the statues before making her escape once again.

By this point, of course, the PCs were absolutely furious. Tithenmamiwen, in particular, had a rage which burned so white hot that her alignment shifted: She had shown this bitch mercy and she was repaid with endless torment. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such intense hatred focused towards an NPC before. It reshaped the entire course of the campaign.

Arveth was a mook no more.

When she finally died, the cheers of the players rocked the house. They literally took her miniature as a trophy so that it could never be used in a game again.

WUNTAD: Finally, here’s an example of me breaking (or at least bending) my own rules. Following the scenario laid out in the excellent Night of Dissolution campaign by Monte Cook, Wuntad and a gang of other chaos cultists show up just as the PCs finish clearing out a dungeon. The intention of the scenario is really clear: The PCs have been beat up. Wuntad and his cultists should have a really easy time of beating them into unconsciousness and then stealing several key items that the PCs had taken from the dungeon.

Stealing the PCs’ stuff? That’s pretty much guaranteed to piss them off for the rest of eternity.

Deliberately designing an interaction to create a major villain is against my “rules”. But it worked.

What I consider the key thing here, however, is that I still wasn’t invested in a particular outcome: Common sense showed that the outcome was likely, but I still wasn’t predetermining it.

What if Wuntad had died? Well, I had reinforced the scenario by following my other design principles: He was supported by lots of bad guys (including Silion from the example above). If he had died, somebody else would have stepped in and taken control of the cults. (Which is not to say that these characters are interchangeable: Killing Wuntad would have made the PCs a major target in the campaign a lot sooner. Factions within the cults probably would have broken away from the new leadership. And so forth.)

Similarly, returning to one of our faux-examples for a moment, common sense tells you that the leader of the terrorists who have taken over the Nakatomi Plaza is more likely to become John McClane’s nemesis than one of his mooks. You don’t have to abandon that common sense in order to follow the principles of RPG villainy.

FURTHER READING
The Railroading Manifesto
Node-Based Scenario Design
Gamemastery 101

He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows if you’re awake
He knows if you’ve been bad or good
So you’d better be good for goodness’ sake…
– Haven Gillespie, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”

This lyric is deliberately ironic wordplay and incredibly clever.

First, you have to understand that “for goodness’ sake!” is a euphemistic replacement for the curse “for God’s sake!”. (Similar to the also common “for Pete’s sake!”)

The immediate syntax of the line itself, as you note, carries the meaning that you should be good for the sake of doing good (“do good for goodness’ sake”).

The juxtaposition of the line with “he knows if you’ve been bad or good”, however, calls that interpretation into question and reveals the ironic nature of the line: It’s not “do good for the sake of goodness”, it’s “for God’s sake, do good because the fatman knows what you’re doing!”.

The ironic use of the phrase “for goodness’ sake”, however, also calls attention to the fact that the euphemism is replacing the identity of God. We note, therefore, that this conception of Santa Claus as an omniscient arbiter of morality to whom we perform certain rites and rituals (writing of letters, leaving out a sacrifice of milk and cookies, etc.) raises him to a sort of primitive godhood. As the lyric replaces the identity of God, so does Santa Claus replace the identity of God. Our “worship” of Santa Claus is, in fact, a form of idolatry.

And the prohibition against idolatry is, in fact, why we use euphemisms like “for goodness’ sake” instead of God’s name.

Seeing that God is hidden in the lyric, however, reveals another layer of meaning: The ironic construction of the line is designed to highlight an ideological conflict between “you should do good because it’s good” and “you should do good because otherwise you will be punished by an omniscient power”. And that’s a philosophical criticism which applies whether you’re talking about “coal in a stocking” or “being sent to Hell”.

It’s not just a playful jab at the panopticon mythology of Santa Claus. It fundamentally questions the dichotomy of religious belief in beneficent higher powers that will ruthlessly punish you if your cross them.

Most people, of course, won’t consciously plumb the rhetorical depths of the song like this. But what makes it an effective and memorable lyric is that pretty much everybody can sense the strong ironic tension in it. It may do nothing more than amuse you; but in that amusement the song has caused you to smirk at one of the major underpinnings of most religious faith.

1. Species that simply prefer living underground (either because they fear the sun like the drow or because they love the dark like the dwarves).

2. Magical construction techniques that make huge, underground constructions more plausible.

3. Magical creatures that either have an instinctual need to create underground complexes or which create them as an unintentional byproduct. (Where did all these twisting tunnels come from? Well, they started as purple worm trails. Then the goblins moved in.)

4. Catastrophes on the surface world that prompt people to flee underground are also a great explanation for underground complexes. (See Earthdawn. Or just an Age of Dragons.) Mix-and-match with the techniques above to explain how the huge cataclysm refuges were built. Then simply remove the danger and/or (better yet) introduce some new danger that came up from below and drove all the vault dwellers back onto the surface.

It’s also useful to establish a method for underground species to generate food. In my campaign world there’s fey moss, which serves as the basis for fungal gardens. Huge, artificial suns left behind in underdark chasms by the vault builders or the under-dwarves also work.

I don’t find it valuable to do full-scale urban planning or figure out exactly how many toilets the goblins need, but I do find that at least some degree verisimilitude makes for better games: If the goblins get their food from fungal gardens, then their food supply can be jeopardized by destroying those gardens. And that’s either the basis for an interesting scenario hook or it’s a strategic master-stroke from the players or it’s some other surprise that I hadn’t even thought of before the campaign started.

Fey moss itself is useless. It’s a black, scummy substance. If left unchecked it will cover almost any surface with a thick, tar-like substance.

Sunlight almost instantly destroys fey moss, causing it to burst into flame. Unadulterated fey moss is also extremely flammable.

But, like the plankton of the ocean, fey moss is the bedrock of the underdark’s ecosystem.  Ecosystems on the surface all ultimately draw their energy from the powerful rays of the sun – plants capture that energy; herbivores eat the plants; and carnivores eat the herbivores. But in the underdark the ecosystem ultimately derives its energy from fey moss (which, in turn, draws it directly from the magical ley lines).

Animals in the underdark either eat the fey moss directly or they eat the wide variety of fungal species which have adapted themselves to parasitically grow upon the fey moss. Civilized species establish vast fungal gardens to feed their populace.