Children's Heroines

I'm the father of two daughters, one aged seven and the other aged ten. They've both enjoyed a fair amount of traditional fantasy and science fiction tales - Chronicles of Narnia, Star Wars, etc. However both of them have also indulged in a fair amount of what I'd considered to be "girl-centric" literature and videos.

As a caveat, I'm far from being an expert on women's issues and am not a wiz in the social sciences. With that caveat in mind, I have nevertheless tried, together with my wife, to make certain the girls have good female role models. I want them to be able to enjoy stories where a girl or woman protagonist is the hero - where she is not waiting for her prince to rescue her, nor just a "dude with boobs", nor some ultra-sexed object.

Another desire is the stories actually be entertaining. Preferably without sparkly vampires.

Both girls started off with Dora the Explorer. I can still recite the theme song to Dora with ease. I suspect when I am old and have forgotten my name. "I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map!" The television show had Dora going on all sorts of minor adventures but the kids really enjoyed the longer Dora movies where she would have adventures in fairytale land and deal with the Pirate Piggies. I'd view these as primarily "cute" with a goal of providing some education to the viewer/

I think though their interest grew more when they discovered the Barbie Fairytopia movies. Now as a caveat - these are clearly designed to sell Barbie dolls. For those of you who lack knowledge of Fairytopia the initial story is that of Elina, a fairy without wings. She gets teased by the other fairies for her lack of wings. Elina becomes involved in saving Fairytopia from the villainous Laverna, sister of the kind ruler of Fairytopia, the Enchantress. As Laverna kidnaps the guardians of Fairytopia she comes closer and closer to her desire to rule - and she tempts Elina with her greatest wish, having wings. However Elina rejects this temptation and saves Fairytopia - and (spoiler alert) gets rewarded with wings.

It is a simple enough story but one my daughters both greatly enjoyed. It had some nice fantasy tropes such as the magical land, fairies, magic, etc. Sequels deal with other parts of Fairytopia such as the undersea kingdom of Mermaidia. And Elina is not one who uses violence to solve her problems (not to say that a "male" story must have violence either). She often doubts her own abilities but nevertheless does not give up.

Lately my younger daughter has discovered the American Girl series. While a lot of people think of just the dolls with American Girls, there is a strong effort at historical accuracy with the books that are associated with the dolls. They are not fantasy but rather grounded in history - just as a number of RPG-ers I know also double as history buffs. There's got to be a number of people who are experts on the 1920s due to participation in Call of Cthulhu games.  Right now my daughter Jasmine is all about Caroline, the protagonist of a series of books centered around Sackets Harbor along the shores of Lake Ontario in New York during the War of 1812. In the first book Caroline witnesses her father, a shipwright, being taken by the British just after war is declared - and before the protagonists had gotten word of the declaration of war. The books do not alter the historical role of women - Caroline does not strap on a sabre and engage in the life of a privateer. But it does show the great accomplishments women were capable of despite the limitations sexism put upon them. Caroline's mother takes over operation of the family shipyard's without hesitation and during the First Battle of Sackets Harbor stands ready with a pistol should the British manage a landing. Caroline herself finds herself assisting the guncrews as they try to adapt their too-small cannonballs to their cannons - during this she forgets to be afraid despite being vulnerable to British bombardment. But after the event is over the realization of what she has been through hits her.

These novels really reach my daughter as she recently got to meet the author of the books, Kathleen Ernst, at a book-signing and tea party at the nearby (for us) U.S.S. Constitution Museum - any author of a work with nautical action in it in the War of 1812 would find the museum an excellent resource.


To be honest, I never thought I'd find myself being a connoisseur of works targeted for girls. But I'm really hoping to get one of them to join the gaming group at a certain point - I really need new blood. And if you can't recruit them then best to create them. Also, in all seriousness, I want them to be able to imagine their own fantastic worlds where they are not the princess in need of rescue but rather their own strong characters in their own rights.

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Recruiting for a Cthulhu Game

In the summer time my gaming group had played some Dungeon Crawl Classics. The game was great fun but my attempts at using it to add new people to the group didn't pan out - with real life issues we actually seem to have lost a member.

With the group being rather small I'm attempting to switch its gears toward something which handles smaller groups better. I've mentioned previously one of my more successful campaigns has been with Call of Cthulhu and being an investigative game where firepower is of less importance that seems a natural match for where we are presently.

That said I'd still love the opportunity to add a few people to the virtual table (we play remotely using various communication tools). If you'd like to join us give me a shout - you can find links to my email on this blog and you can also reach me via Google+ or the comments.

Let me tell you a little about this campaign and the group in general. As far as the campaign goes it is set in the early 1920s, centering around New York City though we've also had adventures set in New England, South Carolina, and the American southwest. The characters are private investigators or those associated with them. These investigators have focused on the weird. That said, they have also dealt primarily with the periphery of the mythos - cultists. evil scientists and sorcerers, and lesser servitors. In Trail of Cthulhu terms we'd be on the pulp side of things (instead of purist), though I would categorize it as realistic pulp. Violence can solve problems but you'd best have a plan - three people taking on a dozen armed cultists will end badly and even three on three in a fair fight can be dangerous. Ambushes are your friends.

We've been using the 6th edition of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu game. We meet every other Monday starting around 7:15 PM Eastern US time and play for 2-3 hours. As far as communications goes we've been using Fantasy Grounds II as our virtual tabletop and skype to communicate. Given the highly investigative nature of the game I have been contemplating switching the rules over to Trail of Cthulhu but wouldn't do that without chatting with the group. (For those unfamiliar with it, Trail of Cthulhu is very focused on the investigative nature of play).

As far as group dynamics go... To begin with, we are not an especially intense group. We're all in our thirties or forties and have families (indeed family issues is a big reason for losing people - when it comes to a choice between family or game, family of course must come first.) We all either live in Massachusetts or have lived there at one point (as the game started face-to-face). We're all involved in various techie industries in way or another. Politically we're all probably left of center. Religiously we're pretty tolerant - we've had Pagans, Atheists, and Catholics at the same table. We all seem to like science fiction and superheroes - not an odd interest for gamers I know... You don't have to match any of what I've described but it does seem fair to give a glimpse of who you'd be at the virtual table with.

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First Thoughts on NBC's "Revolution"

Including audiobooks and comic books, I read a lot more than I watch television and movies so I don't catch a lot of new shows. I was a fan of "Jericho" a few years back, a show about a small Kansas town trying to endure in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange and the collapse of the United States government.  When I first heard of "Revolution" I thought of "Jericho" and decided to check it out.

The premise of "Revolution" is that 15 years ago some event removed power from the entire globe. We're not talking all power plants failed or an EMP fried lots of devices, nothing electronic works. To be honest, this is something I have a hard time buying into - sometimes willing suspension of disbelief is hard. As someone who majored in Computer Science and Engineering I had to take a lot of Electrical Engineering classes and this selective suspension of the laws of physics is awfully hard to swallow. After all if you really suspended electricity you'd die pretty quickly as your nervous system and brain would lose their ability to transmit messages. I know S.M. Stirling did a series with this as a premise, starting with Dies the Fire, though I've not read that series.

For the time being I swallowing my disbelief to see how things develop. The series takes place around Chicago with the main threat being the Monroe Militia which rules over everything. There is a magic gadget that one of the protagonists possesses that apparently can make electricity work again, suggesting there may indeed be something "magical" about the suppression of electricity.

The society that has emerged is one that people familiar with the post-apocalyptic genre will recognize pretty readily - one that has been forced to go back to a medieval level of technology. Firearms still work but the Monroe Militia has banned civilian possession of them. Flashbacks have been showing what transpired in the aftermath of the event that suppressed electricity.

For the time being I'm watching the show. In my opinion it illustrates the challenges in sustaining interest in a setting - it is an interesting setting, but interesting settings are, in my opinion, not that difficult to create. The difficulty is, I believe, in keeping that setting going. This is true whether you are making a book, movie, television series, or RPG campaign. In this case there is obviously a mystery as to why electricity no longer works and the possibility of brining it back. But this seems to be see something that needs to be addressed vs. kept in the background. It's a balancing act - you don't want to reveal or resolve everything at one but at the same time you can't keep your audience - or gaming group - hanging forever. Ideally a revelation or resolution should not close off dramatic opportunities so much as opening up new ones.

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