Thinking of A Master Plan

This is a revised version of my keynote speech last year at Generation Analog. It feels fitting and appropriate!

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Ain’t Nothing But Sweat Inside My Hands

It’s 1984.

I’m 8, my brother is escorting me out of our favorite movie theatre in the Bronx. I’m beat-boxing, going through some pop locking motions, sloppily shuffling my feet. My brother wisely stops me just before I attempt some floor work on the sidewalk, but I’m a boy on a mission.  

We’ve just come out of a matinee of the movie Beat Street, and for the next few months I’m determined to be a breakdancer.

I did not become a breakdancer, though at one point my prized possession was this purple-covered book on breakdancing moves that I read and practiced obsessively until I lost it when we moved out of the Bronx to western upstate NY.

What I do become is aware of what is happening all around me in New York at that time: the flourishing and growth of hip hop culture, one of the greatest creative cultures ever known. From b-boying to DJing to MCing and graffiti writing, I start taking it all in, as an observer if not an active participant. Absorbing the story of Beat Street really made me appreciate the culture as a means of expression for ordinary people.

There’s baby me, thinking about all the incredible art people who look just like me are making that will one day take over the world.

So I think of All the Devious Things I Did

It’s 1987.

We’ve moved out of the city to western upstate New York. My brother leaves for college, leaving his Chainmail and AD&D books unguarded at long last. I’ve been dreaming of this moment ever since I was 5, where the injustice of not being allowed to read these books first implanted itself in my heart. I’d been watching my brother and his friends playing this game with weird dice, lumpy lead figurines and lots of talking and I’d been wanting in forever. I’m 11, an adventurer opening the treasure chest with a greedy grin.

I am more than rewarded.

I read about monks, paladins, wizards, thieves. I became obsessed with playing. But none of my friends know how to play, so I’ll have to run it. Great, but my brother’s collection contained a vital omission: the Dungeon Master’s Guide. There is no way for me to get it that I’m aware of at the time. This means I have to fill in gaps and make up a lot of rules in order to play. So I do. 

A few months later I’m running my own games for friends, and filling in gaps and making rules as needed. At some point I think to myself “I’d love to make my own games one day”. 

I think that qualifies as foreshadowing?

Still Don’t Nothing Move But the Money

Many people look at hip hop and roleplaying games and see two activities and cultures worlds apart, with nothing in common. The streets of New York birthed hip hop. DJs jury-rigged street-lights to power block parties while graffiti writers created brightly colored landscapes with spray paint. MCs created worlds with words and b-boys and girls battled with their bodies spinning at impossible angles. Eventually, these sites and sounds would take over the world.

D&D emerged from Wisconsin, born of a need to deepen the experience of medieval wargames. Moving from the regiment view to the personal scale, Gygax, Arneson and others created engines for imagination, allowing players to take the role of fantasy adventurers in search of treasure and adventure. That initial theme would eventually spiral out into endless themes, settings, and settings.

It’s not surprising to me that people don’t see what hip hop and TTRPGs have in common, but as a child of hip hop and a child of tabletop, it’s been clear to me for a long time.

First, did you know that hip hop and TTRPGs are both about 50 years old? Their births are about a year apart - hip hop in 1973, TTRPGs in 1974 - which means their birth shared some material and conceptual realities.  More importantly, both hip hop and TTRPGs are socially focused creative cultures that use “borrowed fidelity” (you can think if it as sampling or remixing) to re-imagine the world… or imagine entirely new worlds. This use of imagination has placed both hip hop and TTRPGs into political cross-hairs, initially from the outside, but later from internal forces attempting to enforce a status quo. 

For these reasons, I maintain that both hip hop and RPGs partake use imagination in ways that inherently defy the status quo. 

If I Strive, Then Maybe I’ll Stay Alive

I want to talk to you today about these similarities and discuss why they both have a part to play in the current landscape we live in.

I need to start, though, by talking about something fundamental that joins all human artistic endeavors: the need to express. I firmly believe expression is a human necessity along with food, water, and social togetherness. The ability to share with others what we think and what we’ve felt is a huge driver for human behavior and a big need for all of us. There are many levels and types of expression, but I want to talk about social expression and artistic expression.  

Social expression is where you relay your thoughts and feelings to those in your immediate social circles. It offers connection and bonding. There is immediacy to this form of expression but it requires the context of your social group and is less durable.

Artistic expression is about creating an artifact with some level of indirection (often provided by some craft or skill) that encapsulates our thoughts and ideas. The requirement for craft often removes the immediacy from this form of expression but the indirection and the artifact created makes the expression more durable; artistic expression is more easily shared with others outside your direct social circles, giving it the ability to reach and influence a greater number of people. 

What’s interesting about hip hop and TTRPGs is that they both provide low-friction skills that can be used in social settings, providing benefits of artistic and social modes of expression. Hip hop cyphers, where MCs get together to take turns delivering improvised or written rhymes, are analogous to a group playing their favorite RPG at a table and telling a story.  In both scenarios, the participants simultaneously create an experience and bear witness to their creations and those of others. In a cypher and at the table, we are both creators and the initial audience. We use tools to synchronize and create an expression greater than the sum of its parts. In a hip hop cypher you use the beat to synchronize the group. At an RPG table, you use rules and procedures to create similar alignment. 

Once we’re all on the same beat, we engage in imaginative play, creating outputs that resonate and extend the input we’ve received with others.

What we create can stay within that initial audience, or we can use those elements from our smaller communities to create expression for our larger communities. That exchange and creation of culture is great, but eventually it ends up running into forces outside that culture that prefer that marginalized voices, well… stay marginalized. Folks often say “if you don’t like it, make your own” but when people do, the same people with that advice are still unhappy. Your position “outside” draws the boundary and gives meaning to their inside. To do that you have to be close, but not too close.

It’s worth noting that hip-hop was born in part because black youth weren’t allowed or able to access the clubs in New York. So they made their own style and their own sound, and when that started becoming popular it started running into difficulties of its own with regressive forces.

RPGs didn’t outright deal with that active opposition, but certainly felt heat during the Satanic Panic. Years later, as gaming sought to become more inclusive and welcoming, regressive agents from within the TTRPG community itself made efforts to interfere.

What’s to be done in that situation? There is a lot of nuance there, but the lesson I’ve learned and what I’ve seen in history is simple: When the status quo is trying to squash your creative culture, it means it matters, and it means you need to continue. That worked in the past and that’s what we need now.

It’s easy to classify our social games as mere escapism. I’ve had more than a few moments where I’ve felt the work is wasted, useless ephemera in the face of regressives tearing down everything we’ve built. 

I’ve considered that the least I can do is to make my work a direct opposition to these times.

Paid in Full

However, looking back at the past and towards the future of both hip hop and tabletop, I’ve realized that the games I make and the worlds I build are inherently defiant. In a world so intent on making human creativity grist for middling semblance machines, the very act of making the work we were born to make is opposition to the times. If all of our expression becomes opposition, then our culture of communication becomes defined and limited by what we are opposing. 

Sometimes we will be called to make that overtly defiant work, but we shouldn’t feel that the call for work that is more personal or more escapist is any less important.  

Dedicate yourself to the expression that speaks to you most clearly, and build your communities around that. Amplify the voices of those around you, and exchange your expression with them. Everyone has a part to play and a turn to take in this cypher of game design and play. What you say on your turn doesn’t matter as long as it is truly yours.

Grab the mic.

“Paid in Full” is one of the best hip hop songs ever. The definitive version of it is the Coldcut ‘7 Minutes of Madness Remix’. It’s worth your time, check it out.