Thursday, March 19, 2009

Theory from the Canon Keeps Me A Messiah

Near the end of February, Clyde Rhoer of Theory from the Closet posted this podcast in which he interviewed and was interviewed by (it was an ambi-interviewal situation) Chris Perrin, formerly of Canon Puncture. Clyde talked about his game Silence Keeps Me A Victim (the link is to a stub in a Wordpress Blog that I believe will eventually hold information about Clyde's game), while Chris talked about his roleplaying strategy game, Messiah.

This is shaping up to be a link post, so I'm going to let all these beautiful links speak for themselves. You don't need to have been reading the Burning Zeppelin Experience for long to understand why these projects will tickle me in particular. For those of you who are knew to the Zeppelin, I'll lay it out for you.

  • Silence Keeps Me A Victim is a roleplaying game that tackles child molestation and the wall of silence that keeps survivors of molestation cut off and isolated. I believe that fantastic literature - including roleplaying games - is just as well, if not better, suited to dealing with serious issues as "conventional" literature. I applaud Clyde's efforts and think everyone should follow his game eagerly and buy three copies apiece when it finally comes out. I was at the GenCon where it was released as an ashcan, and I'm still kicking myself for not buying it.
  • In this interview, Chris Perrin spoke passionately and intelligently about grappling with faith and rationality in the modern world, as a Christian and a roleplayer, and how out of that grapppling came...
  • Messiah, a strategy roleplaying game about how if the messiah came tomorrow, humanity would try to pervert, silence, and subvert his or her message, just as the Christian Bible depicts was done to that infamous nice Jewish boy from the Galilee. Dealing with themes of choseness, bible-style prophecy, and the screwed-upedness of the world we have created, Messiah looks like a sure buy for me, except that I don't really go in for roleplaying strategy games. If you do, however, this is another game you should follow eagerly.

That's all for now.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I've still got some copies if you want to email me an address Mark? I've been sending them to folks free of charge, if they missed getting them at Gen Con, they're just folded paper.

Anonymous said...

Not surprisingly, I'm keeping an eye on Messiah. Some people told me what they thought of it after they read it, but alas, it hadn't happened yet.