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So I'm playing this tabletop roleplaying game right now, this collaborative storytelling game called City of Mist and it's absolutely amazing. It's incredible. The characters and the plot are compelling and rich and I wanted to share just a small piece of that with you today just to give you a taste of the story that's being told. Now there's going to be massive spoilers here, so if you don't want that you can check out the podcast, it's in the video description below.
All right. So, I was talking to one of the players, let's call him Jon Doe. I was talking to Jon about the gap between individuals and large-scale power structures. Because the characters in the game right now -- there's six players, each with their own character -- the problems they're dealing with are large-scale problems. There's this horrible gang that dominates their neighborhood and it has a ton of control, and it does drug trafficking and corrupts politicians and it's killed people. And there's also this huge corporation that started out as something pure but got twisted over time into something cold and uncaring and vicious.
One of the most recent things that happened was the team went out to take out some of this corporation's surveillance drones and the corporation found out and dispatched these security forces and the security started gunning down an innocent bystander. And for me, those security forces were a microcosm of the story of this corporation because the corporation started as a business intended to empower artists and support the dreams of individuals. But as it grew and grew and grew the importance of the individual got left behind, and that's why these security forces are so scary, is because they don't care about individuals. They're only there to defend the corporation's interests. They didn't care that the guy they were shooting at wasn't involved, they were just following orders.
So we have these massive, formidable institutions. These institutions are the villains. And I like that, because we see stories -- and especially RPG stories -- about the heroes fighting a single big bad evil guy all the time, and a power structure as a villain is scarier, it's amorphous and domineering, and I like the nuance there. But I was talking to Jon about how it seemed like a really difficult story to tell. Because individuals can't change massive societal power structures on their own. We can't do it alone, this is something I really believe is that the only way to overcome harmful power structures in real life is by organizing and large-scale collective action. And that kind of runs counter to the core fantasy of role-playing games, because in a role-playing game you play as a single character, an individual, a hero who does have the ability to enact grand scale change. The whole story is about how the actions of these individuals change the world.
So that kind of seemed like a contradiction to me. On one hand, I have this idea that you need large-scale collective action to solve large-scale collective problems, but on the other hand you have the fantasy that these six individuals are gonna change the world. And so I presented this to Jon and Jon said no, that's not a fantasy at all. Actually, individuals can do an enormous amount to change the world, and the false belief that they can't is precisely how these toxic power structures maintain their grip on society and propagate. Even large-scale collective action is based on the choices of individuals. And he said individuals actually have a lot of advantages over large systems, because individuals have better communication, it's much easier to coordinate logistically, they're faster and more agile. The more people you have in an organization the more it bogs down under its own weight, and you need more management and there's more miscommunication. And he said maybe our team of six can use that to our advantage. And I said that's very interesting, but there's a big problem. There's a big, gaping hole in that plan. And that's this: one of the power structures the team is fighting is a huge gang. It's called the Ouranios gang. And two of the characters on the six-person team are also in the Ouranios gang. In fact, they are directly connected to the people at the very top of the Ouranios gang. So you don't have that advantage of communication at all, because the leadership of the Ouranios gang has a direct line into the heart of your team. And the storyline of those two team members who are in the gang, their names are Kaz and Agave, is a storyline of abuse and manipulation. They're being controlled in toxic ways by the leaders at the top of the Ouranios gang, and a big question in the story is if they're going to be able to make it out of that horrible situation or if they're going to stay trapped and keep suffering and cause suffering. The redemption of Kaz and Agave are the key to this whole thing. And then I said it seemed like you and the other people on the team are working on that, you're working on bringing Kaz and Agave out of their toxic relationships and giving them a positive support network, and then you won't have spies in your own camp and you'll be able to take advantage of all that stuff you were talking about before. And Jon said yeah, I was doing that. I was doing that before. With Deroy.
And that was heart-wrenching for me. It was so brutal, and to understand why you have to understand the story of Deroy. Deroy is a character based on the Hindu god Shiva, the Destroyer. Deroy is cool because he can annihilate anything. He can just clap his hands and make anything disappear, just vanish. Gone. And it's not just physical objects he can make disappear, he can also destroy metaphysical concepts, like ignorance, or the linearity of time. And he can also choose what breaks, so he's indestructible. When Jon first pitched this character to me he just pitched me this image of Deroy getting slashed across the face with a machete and the machete is shattering into a thousand pieces while Deroy takes no damage, and I was like that's badass, that's awesome. So you might be thinking, Deroy sounds totally overpowered! How is that fair? He's completely indestructible and he can destroy anything, including metaphysical concepts. He is the avatar of destruction incarnate. But here's the problem: he can't make anything. He has no originality, no creativity. When he tries to paint, he can only produce the most bland, generic paintings. When he tries to drum, he can only produce the most boring, basic beats. And he's got this childhood friend called Eddie who's a prodigy! Eddie's this genius musician whose music is so good it moves his environment and Deroy always feels inferior to him. And eventually Deroy runs away from home because he just can't bear living in Eddie's shadow anymore, and he sees how Eddie is doing everything on his own and Deroy wants to do that too, but he can't, he can't make or build or create, he's cursed to be the avatar of destruction. So he runs away from home, he abandons his support network and tries to do it all on his own and meanwhile Eddie is deeply embedded in his community, and Eddie is supporting others and receiving support, so Deroy's whole notion that Eddie was doing it on his own was misguided. And Deroy just goes more and more downhill and he's blaming himself for all of it.
And this is where we get to the climax of the story. Picture this. The team is facing off against a major villain and they think the villain has won. They think the major villain has killed a whole crowd of people. And Deroy sees this, and he blames himself. And he wants to completely erase that villain from existence, not just destroy her, but make it so she never even existed at all. He wants to turn back time and wipe out every trace of her from reality. But he knows it's gonna come at a cost. This is a destruction of such magnitude that the only way he can do it is if he sacrifices himself and leaves the story. That's the price he has to pay. And he pays it. Because he falsely thinks he's the only can fix this.
And here's where to Kaz and Agave. Remember, Kaz and Agave are the key to this whole thing. They're the reason will never be able to win against the Ouranios gang. And Deroy was one of the few people who knew about the toxic situation Kaz and Agave were in. He had done all this work investigating them, learning about how they were being controlled and manipulated and when he sacrificed himself, all of that was lost. In trying to redeem himself he destroyed a crucial piece of the support network those two needed so badly. And that's the tragedy of Deroy.
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