“No Kings” and No Kings

28 Saturday Mar 2026

Posted by in Uncategorized, Politics

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Today’s “No Kings” protests will generate much of the same backlash we have seen before. People will joke that the protests have worked, because we still don’t have a king. They will tell us that it makes no sense to protest a king when one does not exist, and of course some people will tell us that such protests would not be possible is America really had a king. It’s all nonsense, of course, but that never stopped Maga before. They are nothing if not disingenuous, but they are also persistant.

Speaking of which, I don’t remember ever getting a serious answer to the question of just when Maga thinks America was great or what was so great about it?

So be it!

These are slogans, not essays. They allude to an agenda, but they do not really define it. What Maga was always telling us when they talked about Making America great again was that they wanted an America where people could and would affirm its greatness without hesitation, and without qualification. They might also have been interested in seeing great crimes committed in the name of America, but of course that too is made more possible by the grand commitment to affirm greatness regardless of details. Maga may not have been prepared to tell us what they meant by “making America great” (that would have required too much honesty for them), but they certainly did have something in mind.

So, why “No Kings?”

At its most basic level, this message is about affirming the basic principles of republican government, something the modern Republican Party is hard at work trying to destroy. The language is partly an allusion to our nations origins in opposition to a king (or at least to a certain founding document listing a host of grievances against a king instead of fielding the more tedious arguments American colonists might have had against the British Parliament). It is also an allusion to a broader sense of autocratic power clearly sought by the Trump administration, and clearly supported by the average Trump supporter. It is also meant to suggest something of the scale of Trump’s corruption, of the crises facing the nation when a President and his cronies set about deliberately dismantling the basic principles of American government.

Whether or not America was ever great, Trump means to end the nation in any meaningful sense. Whatever grievances some people may have had with business as usual in the United States, Trump is hard at work removing its virtues. He does so with the full support of flag-waving pseudo-patriots all across the country. The phrase “No Kings” is meant to convey something about this crises. If we aren’t careful, we will soon find ourselves without a republic. Whether or not that means the United States will become a monarchy is another question, but we are rapidly losing any real connection to the government once formed in opposition to King George.

The phrase “No Kings” conveys this problem and the sense of urgency that goes with it quite well!

So, what is it about Trump and the Maga movement that threatens the republic? What is it about Trump’s approach to the Presidency that suggests autocracy? In what manner is he acting more like a king than an elective representative?

This will of course be an incomplete list, but let me tell you…

  • This isn’t the most serious criticism, but we could start with Trump’s penchant for leaving his mark on everything. From the “Gulf of America” to the “Trump Kennedy Center,” a Trump Coin, and apparently even a new class of battleship. And of course, there is Trump’s constant remodeling of the White House. I understand, we will now be getting Trump’s signature on our money. The problem here isn’t obvious, but suggests a deep disconnect between Trump and the very idea of a Presidency. This is not a public servant who sees himself as occupying an office. This is a man who seeks to define the office and to refine the relationship between that office and the American people in personal terms.

  • Trump’s use of informal communication for official actions. People shouldn’t have to learn they have been fired over social media, nor should we see laws announced over social media, as if a post on Truth Social carried the force of law. Both of these habits indicate a profound disrespect of Trump’s own office and a disregard for the welfare of people who have to guess at how seriously they should take anything coming from the clown prince of White House shenanigans. (Also, to Hell with Elon Musk!) All of this has the effect of heightening Trump’s power by discounting the importance of procedural norms, official channels, and even common decency. Through this medium of communication, Trump is effectively telling us that he is above any standards of personal conduct, both as to chain of command and legislative and administrative procedure.

  • While we are at it, the frequency with which Donald Trump makes demands of private entities is itself disturbing. Most Presidents are reluctant to criticize businesses or artists while in office. Oh they do it, yes, but the criticism is generally phrased in abstract terms, rarely naming the targets of criticism, and almost never calling for specific actions by employers. For his part, Trump is happy to call for the firing of this or that actor.
  • On a more serious note: Trump’s penchant for directing the prosecution of his political enemies is a serious breach of justice. Under Donald Trump, the independence of the Department of Justice simply does not exist, and the agency serves as a personal asset for Donald Trump himself. This is not what President’s do. This is what kings do. It’s what tyrants do.
  • Trump’s penchant for using executive orders to govern. This is a frequent bone of contention for most any President over the last few decades, not that all the complains are equally valid, but it is particularly disturbing to see a President rely on Executive Orders when he has majority in Congress. This is somebody who could get the legislation he wants with a little effort and some effective negotiation, but the so-called author of “The Art of the Deal” isn’t interested in making deals anymore. He wants to rule by fiat. So, Trump rules by Executive Order, even in contexts that would clearly call for actual legislation.
  • The fact that we are even talking about a third term for Donald Trump is unbelievable. The Constitution states quite clearly that nobody can be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and yet the Trump camp consistently tells us they mean to get him a 3rd term. This too indicates a clear lack of respect for the Constitution as a whole, and particularly for the limitations it places on a President. This is one more respect in which Donald Trump has shown us all that he will not be limited to terms of a Presidency. He will do as he wishes and that is that.
  • Trump’s use of his office to create a Board of Peace, an organization of which is now the permanent head illustrates once again the degree to which he seeks power outside the scope of the Presidency. That this Board will have nothing to do with peace doesn’t help matters, but it is an office that conflicts with Trump’s responsibilities as President.
  • The mere fact that Trump never did create the kind of blind trust politicians normally use to shield themselves from conflicts of interest is already a problem. We are told that his business is now managed by his children, but his children have been actively involved in his administration, and they have never hidden the degree to which they discuss business with him. Simply put, this means that Trump’s actions at any given time are as much about his personal business as they are about the United States. No, that is not how a President operates. It is in fact how a number of monarchs operate.
  • Do I even have to mention the mention the likelihood of insider trading?
  • The degree to which Trump has worked bribery into his policies is astounding. Time and again, donations to Trump’s campaigns, purchases of Trump currency, and concessions to Trump’s frivolous lawsuits have come before decisions benefiting private parties. The shear number of criminals who have been pardoned by Trump (and often absolved thereby of the obligation to repay their victims) in the wake of some such purchase or donation is incredible. Nations have found their tariffs lowered after such exchanges, an of course business deals requiring approval of the President have followed legal settlements. Anyone who cannot see the corruption in all of this is willfully blind! This is not public service. This is an autocrat using public office to enrich himself, his family, and his inner circle.
  • The Trump camp made no secret of their intent to eliminate professionals throughout the Federal Bureaucracy and replace them with partisan loyalists. They did just that. This too reflects the difference between a President who manages a range of public institutions intended to work for the benefit of the American people and an autocrat who leads a following loyal to him, one expected to answer to his every whim regardless of legality or consequences. Once again, this is not how Presidents relate to the institutions of government. It is how cult leaders relate to their followers.
  • I’ve been putting off the topic of ICE, because it’s a whole lot of abuses bundled into one instrument of domestic terrorism. Whatever ICE once was, whatever it did to enforce America’s immigration laws, it is now an instrument of terror consciously used to frighten a broad range of people, including legal immigrants and U.S. Citizens as well as entire communities Trump clearly regards as political enemies. The rhetoric behind this is anti-immigrant, but the practice has been far broader. At this point, ICE is simply an instrument of terror.
    • We can begin with Kavanaugh stops, or the decision by the Supreme Court to allow detention of anyone reasonably suspected of being in the country illegally. In practice, this has been a blank check allowing ICE to detain people on the basis nothing more than racial profiling, and if detention might have meant stopping someone for question (a practice which is already problematic), it has clearly become a cover for actual arrest. Never mind that! Kidnapping. That’s what ICE now does. Trump’s faithful still talk about this as immigration enforcement, but millions of U.S. citizens now live in real fear that they will end up in a concentration camp without any opportunity to present their documentation, without access to a lawyer, and without any means of connecting to their families.
    • Add to this the fact that ICE facilities are producing a rather high body count with plenty of stories emerging about failure to feed prisoners or provide proper sanitation, or medical care.
    • Use of prisons in foreign countries has one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to circumvent U.S. Law. It is a means of removing people from access to legal recourse and placing them in a location where they can be tortured and even killed far from the eyes of the American public. When question arise as to due process violations, we are told immigration proceedings are subject to the standards of civil due process, and no mention is made of the fact that this civil procedure somehow landed people directly in prisons to horrible to be found on American soil. …so far, anyway. The sheer glee with which Maga described “Alligator Alcatraz” should tell us all we need to know about their intentions. If they get their way, America’s private prisons will one day become the center of an industrial slave complex that would be the envy of the old Nazi movement.
    • And then of course there is the Trump camps attempts to use ICE warrants to enter houses and private businesses. This kind of general warrant bears direct comparison to the Writs of Assistance which helped give rise to the American Revolution. Yet another respect in which Trump is closer to a King than a President.
    • What Trump has done with ICE is to turn that organization into a private army. The newly lowered standards of hire for ICE agents and lower standards of training help him to do as he will with this private army because these measures ensure the absence of professionals who know the difference between law enforcement and domestic terrorism. Real professionals say ‘no’ to corrupt officials, and Trump will not tolerate such people. ICE answers to him and to him alone at this point, and there doesn’t seem to be anybody willing to stop them.

There is course a lot more to be said about this matter, but I am going to hit “Publish” at this point. Please feel free to add any issues I have left out in the comments below.

In any event, I think it should be perfectly clear as to why people would be comparing Trump to a King. We know very well that he didn’t inherit his office, but we also know very well that Trump’s actions are closer to those of a king than they are to an elected official. Right wingers can play all the word games they want, but today’s protests are well named. The phrasing is as much a defense of the republic we are supposed to have as it is a protest against the regime modern Republicans mean to place it with.

Note the pictures are from the No Kings Protest at Homer, AK. They come complements of my wife who is there now. I wish I could be there with her, and with the other protesters.

To say “No Kings!”

That Time I Got High

10 Sunday Dec 2023

Posted by in General, Uncategorized

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“Dude, do you know where I can score some pot?”

It wasn’t the first time a jock or a prep had asked where he could buy some marijuana. Neither was it the first time, I said, ‘no.’ It certainly wasn’t the first time, that answer got me a suspicious glare. If you could call somebody a liar with just a glance, these exchanges always seemed to end on exactly that kind of glance. He drove off with a disgusted look on his face.

Maybe it was the long hair or the Hevy Metal T-shirts, or my penchant for walking barefoot wherever I went. Maybe it was the fact that all my known friends were stoners, or maybe it was the fact that I was so completely disengaged from anything happening around me back in high school that chemical influence seemed an obvious explanation, at least to a number of people. In any event, most everyone seemed to assume I was heavily into drugs.

My stoner friends knew I was straight. They had offered many times, and I always said ‘no.’

I mean; “no, thank you.”

I always said ‘no, thank you.”

Cause it never hurts to be polite.

Of course, I could have offered to connect some of these straight-laced folks bringing surprise solicitations to some of my friends. I certainly did know someone who was dealing at any given time, but I didn’t really know which of my friends that was, much less what they had or how much they wanted for it. None of this was my business, and I meant to keep it that way.

I may have preferred the company of stoners, at least when I could tolerate company at all, but it certainly wasn’t the drugs that led me to those circles. No, I made it all the way through my teen years without catching more than a whiff or two of secondary smoke from those around me.

***

It was many years later that I actually got stoned, just that one time.

It was also quite by accident.

***

This was at the tail end of graduate school. I was employed in a research project dealing with youth gangs on the Navajo Nation. Usually, I talked to teachers, cops, social workers, etc., but my coworker couldn’t really move safely in this one community. So, it was up to me to get the gang interviews for that particular location. The “OG” for this set was my connection to these guys. We paid him a small fee for each interview he set up, so he was happy to help out. On the final day of my visit, he introduced me to his younger brothers. Their parents were out of town, so it was just them and a number of their friends hanging around the house. They reminded me a lot of my teenage friends, but this was the same set that had rattled the prosecutors trailer one night and burned down the local courthouse. It was a peaceful moment in their lives, but this group was not always so peaceful, a fact I had been made well aware of before ever meeting them.

A couple things became quite clear to me as we set up to do the interview. The first was that I was talking to both of the brothers at the same time. The second was that they were smoking as we talked. They had draped a throw rug over the window, just like my old high-school buddies had done, and they would sometimes pull it aside just enough to blow smoke outside. But they were definitely smoking as we talked.

I could do the interview while they got stoned, or I could accept that we weren’t doing an interview all.

I set up two interview sheets and alternated between them. Both subjects were forthcoming and thoughtful, and also quite friendly. I soon relaxed and settled into the flow of the conversation.

***

At some point, I remember noticing a purple box on one of three beds in the room. It was covered in writing. The words that stood out to me most were “Michael you’re going to die.” The rest of the box was filled with additional violent thoughts about someone named Michael.

I couldn’t help but ask.

“Oh yeah, that’s our sister’s box. She really hates Michael Jordan.”

Mystery solved!

…Sort of.

***

At some point, I remember cracking a joke at the expense of one of the interview subjects. He laughed. He Laughed just as I came to realize how stupid my joke was. He could just as easily have taken offense, and I didn’t know this person well enough to know his personal boundaries. So, I was relieved that he laughed even as I kicked myself for telling the joke. The atmosphere at the moment was friendly, but these were not my friends. These were the same people the cops and prosecutors were working hard to put away for as long as possible. One of them had tried to gouge his girlfriend’s eye out with a screwdriver the night before, so I was told. If they were young and scrawny, I was at least as scrawny, and of course they had their friends outside. No doubt, they also had plenty of weapons at their disposal. Were something to happen to me, near as I could tell, the worst punishment they would face would be about 6 months of probation. This would have been a good time to mind my own manners, and I damned well knew it.

Beyond the issue of safety, I remember thinking that was just completely unprofessional of me. Sure, the interview was casual, but that was no excuse for taking liberties. I shouldn’t have been acting like that during any interview, and I wasn’t sure what had gotten into me. I remember thinking, I’m normally smarter than this. What the hell is wrong with me!?!

And I realized, I felt a little strange, possibly light-headed.

Why?

As one of them lit up his pipe again, I looked around the room and saw a thick haze of smoke hanging in the air around us.

Oooooooooh!

I made a mental note to stay focused and get through the interview. It went well, and I soon said goodbye to all of them before driving back to the hotel. I had just enough time outside to catch a little fresh air and get my head in order.

***

Aside from a few medical treatments, that remains the only time I have ever gotten stoned.

***

On a side note, I remember a disturbing thought occurred to me on the way back to Window Rock the next day. I went straight to the business office and talked to the head of the department, telling him that I was about to file some requests for checks to be sent off to a third party. I remember telling him that if the checks took as long to get to this party as they had to reach others in the past, there was a decent chance I would be dead before they got paid.

That was a bit dramatic, but I wasn’t entirely joking.

This once, the check was sent in a timely manner.

A Blink and a Bacon

25 Saturday Nov 2023

Posted by in Animals, Anthropology

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Somewhere in the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty tells us that mankind is condemned to meaning.

Somewhere in his own works, Clifford Geerts asks what is the difference between a blink and a wink?

It’s been a long time since I read either of the works in question, but I was recently reminded of both when I came across an old family picture of my Dad with a hog he bought at a livestock auction at the state Colorado state fair.

What the little news clip accompanying the picture does not say is how my father came to came to deliver the final bid on this hog. Dad used to love telling this story. Suffice to say, the plot thickens just after he began to feel a slight itch on the tip of his nose.

An Ironic Beating

22 Wednesday Nov 2023

Posted by in Childhood, Uncategorized

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I don’t know what he had done this time, but little Scotty McNameRedacted was always in trouble. He really didn’t get along with any of his teachers. At this particular moment, it was a long-term substitute for our first grade teacher that had lost all patience for Scotty. Why, I didn’t know, but this time, she got the paddle out. And there in front of all of us, she bent Scotty over her knee and began to paddle him.

Scotty made no sound as the paddle struck. In fact, he barely flinched. I remember looking up at the face of the substitute, and I saw the look of frustration in it. Seeing no signs that her punishment had made an impression, she began to put some real muscle into it. I realized with some degree of horror that she was actually striking Scotty as hard as she possibly could, straining to hit him hard enough to teach him a lesson, so to speak.

…and she got nothing.

If I had looked forward to seeing someone I took to be our class bully get a comeuppance, that feeling was now completely gone. I was shocked to see just how hard the substitute was beating him, and more so to see just how little impact the spankings seemed to have on him. I reckon Scotty had taken more spankings than the rest of us put together, so I might have expected him to handle it better than I could. Still! This was a level of courage I could not have imagined.

And just like that the spanking stopped. I wasn’t entirely sure why. Had the substitute reached some magic number of blows? Did she realize she had gone too far? Or had she simply given up? I couldn’t tell what led to her decision to stop. I just watched along with the rest of the class as Scotty got off of her lap.

Scotty walked back to his desk and sat down without a trace of a tear on his face, not even a wince as his butt hit the chair. He looked around at the rest of us, maybe a little embarrassed and perhaps a little confused, but he showed absolutely no signs of surrender, no regret, and no reform.

For her own part, the substitute appeared to be totally drained.

…and utterly beaten.

I’ve heard a lot of things about corporal punishment as a means of dealing with children. Having no children, myself, I don’t have any real commitments on the matter one way or another, but whenever the topic arises, I cannot help but think of this memory.

Scotty may have taken the hits on that day, but there has never been any doubt in my mind.

On that day, at least.

Scotty won.

Trench Art in the Miracle of America Museum

18 Saturday Nov 2023

Posted by in History, Museums

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This last summer, I spent a little time in Polson, Montana. As my wife was busy at a conference at Salish Kootenai College, I had time to kill. So, naturally, I found my way to The Miracle of America Museum. As might be expected from the title, this was a rather conservative institution, and its massive collections certainly reflected this outlook; old fashioned Americana interspersed with plenty of military hardware, and of course a couple UFOs. There was certainly plenty to see.

One thing that definitely caught eye was a small display of trench art not far from the entrance to the museum. “Trench Art” got its name from the shear quantity of such art produced by soldiers in World War I, but that hasn’t stopped folks from applying the label to art made during other wars. What makes something trench art is the fact that soldiers are making it during their time down range. What makes it interesting is the frequency with which it is made using materials clearly manufactured for the purpose of fighting war.

Here is what the museum has to say about it:

“Inscribed and carved mess kits were called scrimshaw or Trench Art. To pass the time during a lull in the fighting, soldiers would use pocket knives, tips of bayonets or tools from the field machine ship to personalize items, or make useful mementos like salt and pepper shakers, ashtrays, vases or lamps. Spent shell casings were handy and usually used.”

I have a couple close-ups. (Click to embiggen)

Troll-Mode Defined

05 Monday Jun 2023

Posted by in Irritation Meditation, Minis, Politics

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This is trolling in a nutshell, a man who regards his own lack of sincerity as a poor reflection on the character of somebody else.

What is an Insincere Question?

03 Saturday Jun 2023

Posted by in Politics, Uncategorized

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The film “What is a Woman” begins with Matt Walsh reflecting on gender within his own family. So, it’s appropriate that the film ends on a conversation with his wife. Okay, maybe it would have been more appropriate to go the other way around, but the point is that Walsh’s family bookends the whole performance. This is particularly fitting, because it facilitates one of the central features of the film, namely the consistently personal framing of the inquiry. Walsh isn’t just exploring the topic in general; he consistently frames his questions in terms of his own identity and that of his family.

Walsh wants an objective answer to his question, but he consistently frames his questions in personal terms. He is asking these questions in response to progressive ideas about gender fluidity and the social construction of gender identity. Anyone familiar with Walsh knows that he thinks this is all nonsense, but that doesn’t stop him from framing the issues as if he was personally implicated in the possibilities. It isn’t enough to know what being a woman might mean to someone else; as he frames the issues, Walsh wants to know what it would mean to him and his own family. So, he sets out to answer the question of what is a woman? He asks this question as though his own identity were at issue.

Walsh also seems to assume the answer will be universal, and that it will be normative. He wants to have his is and ought it too. Whatever the nature of women, there is little doubt that Walsh knows what this should mean for both men and women.

One has only to see the color-coded dress of his children to know just how rigid Walsh may be in response to this issue.

Walsh spends the first half of the film interrogating progressives, many of them professionals working in medical and mental health fields, asking them what a woman is. He is never happy with their answers. To be fair, the answers he gets here really are less than impressive, but also to be fair, the answers these people actually use in their daily work are simply non-starters for Walsh. When he asks what a woman is, Walsh is looking for a firm biological answer, but he is talking to people deeply entrenched in the world of social constructivism. He knows these people are not going to give him that kind of answer, and so he skates right past the answers they actually do give him.

It’s frustrating to watch this performance. Many of these people seem to have grown so accustomed to constructivist paradigms that they have no idea how to talk to the Matt Walshes the world. He isn’t helping them, of course. His goal is to make them look foolish. They are less interview subjects than marks who have been conned into a discussion with someone who isn’t really interested in what they have to say. And so we get a battle of the just-so narratives. For Walsh’s marks, gender is a social construction, because it just is; for Walsh it certainly isn’t, because it just ain’t.

One of the themes Walsh hits rather hard in this part of the movie is the problem of circular definitions. Using a word to define itself is a problem; it really is, but that problem keeps popping up here for a reason. The social constructivists Walsh is talking to do not wish to define a woman in biological terms, so they keep talking about socially constructed roles and self-perceptions. This leads to a common refrain; they tell him a woman is someone who “identifies as a woman.” There are variations, to be sure, but all these answers lead back to the same question, what is a woman in the first place? If someone identifies as a woman, then what do they think that identity means? Walsh doesn’t get a good answer from any of those he talks to in the first half of the film, and of course he never wanted good definitions from them in the first place.

By the middle of the film, Walsh has concluded that those he has been talking to have no idea what a woman is, none at all.

Much of the second half of the film is spent talking to critics of trans-gendered identity (and in particular, the medical establishment supporting various treatments and legal accommodations for trans-gendered persons. Those talking to Walsh in this part of the film get to make their own points; they get to define their own concerns and elaborate on them in concrete ways. This part of the series is interesting, at least. How many of the claims made here would hold up to scrutiny is an interesting question, but the issues discussed here are a good deal more substantive. This half of the film would have benefited from a sincere exploration of the reasons for these practices in the first place, but it was of course never Walsh’s goal to help us understand the issues. Having made the progressives look like fools in the first half of his film, the second half is spent making them look positively evil.

Walsh begins to claim some of his victories in the second half of the film. He parrots progressive themes with glee in the face of people who will have none of it, effectively setting them for a slam dunk response. Walsh relishes the chance to affirm biological differences between men and women in this half of the film, and to tell horror stories about the consequences of failure to accept these differences. All of these horrors, stem from the failure of progressives to acknowledge the underlying reality of sex, which Walsh clearly expects to be defined in biological terms.

Nothing less will count as truth to Walsh.

Somewhere near the end, Walsh asks Jordan Peterson what a woman is. Peterson tells him to marry one and find out. So, Walsh goes back home and asks his own wife what a woman is.

She tells him a woman is “an adult human female…”

And I wonder how many who watch this realize that this too is a cicular definition?

As was that of Peterson!

These are the final answer to the question Walsh has been asking throughout his film, but it is no more substantive than those answers he was given in the beginning segments. They are just as circular as the answers he rejected throughout the first half of the film! Peterson’s answer tells him to marry one to find out, which begs the question of who would he need to marry to accomplish this. His wife’s answer assumes we are talking about a female, but that isn’t far off being a woman in the first place. Neither of these answers gets Walsh any closer to a substantive understanding of the issue.

The answers given by Peterson and Walsh’s wife are satisfactory to Walsh, and to his target market, but much of that is a function of context. If the answer given by Walsh’s wife isn’t all that theoretically robust, it is clothed in the confidence of a warm kitchen where two people seem to know exactly how to behave.

In fact, the answer Walsh’s wife gives him is rather constructivist in its own right. She actually tells him that a woman is; “an adult human female, who needs help opening (a jar)”

Walsh and his fans might see in this a story about a biological female who knows who she is and a biological male who knows what he is, but social constructivists would hardly find it surprising to see a middle class American woman cooking for her husband.

…and of course letting her man to do some of the muscle work.

The Bender is in the Details

18 Tuesday Apr 2023

Posted by in Minis

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The day will come when someone says or does something rather transphobic in the midst of celebrating one of Dylan Mulvaney’s creations.

Just give it time.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EJMBtG5vOJk

A Haunted NPC

17 Friday Feb 2023

Posted by in Gaming

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Eleymenen, The Murder Mage, wasn’t supposed to be a recurrent NPC, let alone my go-to villain for countless D&D campaigns. He had his birth in a simple premise. a small party of first level characters would get caught between two high level spell-casters blasting away at each other in a town market. This was first edition D&D, and I made him up under the clunky old rule for dual-classed characters. As I recall, I made him an 8th level Assassin and a 5th or 6th level Magic User. Had he meant to attack the player characters, Eleymenen would have slaughtered them easily, but that wasn’t the premise. He and another spell caster went to war with each other. The players just had to get out of the way, perhaps overcoming a minion or two on the way out of the area. They managed fine.

In any event, Elemenen survived the battle.

It seemed a good move to bring him back a few games later, this time to attack the players directly. I thought he’d be a recurrent baddy for a game or two before they killed him off and moved on to the next stage of the campaign. Instead, Eleymenen became a persistent nuisance to one campaign after another, growing in time to become a virtual demigod with unimaginable powers. The last time I hauled him out, he was still an 8th-level assassin of course, but he was at least a 22nd-level Magic User. My players were so sick of him.

I definitely overdid it.

But this isn’t a post about Eleymenen.

***

It’s a post about my old players.

What got me thinking about them was a decision to revise Eleymenen for my current home-brew game, perhaps to put him up against a new group of players.

I suppose I should have known working on Eleymenen would bring back old memories. The thing is, most of the players who struggled against this NPC back in the day are now gone. They aren’t around to gripe when he makes another appearance on the game table. I won’t hear their jokes, or even their complaints. I won’t get to see them wallow in despair at the mere mention of his name or plot against him one more time, and I won’t get a chance to give them that final victory, the one they earned several times over, so very long ago. It seems trivial enough, but I should have given it to them, that final victory. I should have let my players kill-off this guy for good way back in the 80s.

It’s too late now.

It’s a trivial thing, the death of an NPC.

It’s not a trivial thing, the passing of old friends.

At this particular moment, I find the two themes blend rather seamlessly together.

***

As a high school kid, back in the 80s, I always assumed I would one day stop playing RPGs. It just seemed like it would come naturally, a regular part of growing up. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself playing D&D all through college, a little more surprised to find myself playing it on and off through grad school, and very surprised to find myself still playing RPGs in my 30s and 40s. A few of my old players were still with me. Others had dropped out of the gaming world. But there were always new players. Well into my 50s at this point, I am no longer surprised to be playing these games, or even to find others my age still attempting to slay dragons with odd shaped dice and an arsenal of bad jokes.

Hell, I expect to kill orcs in the old folks home, if I make it that far.

What I never really thought about was the sense of loss that gaming sometimes brings to mind in the absence of old friends. I suppose I might feel this less if I hadn’t kept my games to a pretty consistent setting or if I hadn’t played with some of the same people for decades. Most of our campaigns took place in one or two different worlds. Old characters made frequent appearances, and steady players often got to bring a ringer into new campaigns. At one point, I realized my old characters were old enough to vote. So were those of my long-time players. These characters and their storylines were persistent enough to leave an impression.

In any event, the absence of these old plot-points and the players behind them is a growing part of my gaming experience. I can’t help but think of my old friends while sitting down to a game these days.

I know that I will never again experience the frustration of Andy’s efforts to derail the entire premise for a game session, never see him burn down a city instead of fighting his way into a building, which was the challenge I meant to set up. I won’t hear him badger me over a frustrating call, nor will I fight with him over the best dice at the table or the last good pencil in the house. I won’t marvel at his min-maxing skills or grumble over how late he was to a game session. I won’t cringe as he accidentally kills other player characters with errant fireballs. I won’t get to taunt Chuck with threats against a custom character or curse as he and Dan both team up to betray the entire party in the middle of a close battle. I won’t even get to laugh at Dan as his fighter spends an entire game session putting on his plate armor while everyone else has the fight of their lives. These moments and many likely them are mostly gone now. With a few exceptions, I am the only one who remembers them. There are few left to reminisce about these old memories. They are trivial because they are no more than a game, and they are profound because they are links to people I’ve known and loved.

“Remember when…” mostly falls on deaf ears now.

That does feel a bit lonely.

Still, there is a certain pleasure in knowing that the Pox Hounds I will attack us with sometime next month are all descended from one of Chuck’s old characters, or that the house rule for hand-and-a-half weapons came from Andy, a simple solution to a problem we batted around for months. My new players don’t know what it means to be the Russ of the campaign, nor will anyone know that my House-rules for GM’s characters come from Will, or that Will broke those house-rules all the Goddamned time. The next player to wear a suit of Sealy Posturepedic armor will probably never know about the story of Dan’s fighter and the great battle he missed, but that player will appreciate the chance to sleep in the comfort of some fine magical armor. And I will smile every time I think about it.

***

It’s an odd thing. When close friends and family pass, they always take a little of us with them. Memories once shared with others become personal matters. You can share the stories with other people, of course, but they will never resonate with anyone else the way they once did with those who shared the experience.

And who but a gamer would give a damn!

This happens in real life.

It also happens in the game world.

As long-time gamer friends pass away, they take away a little bit of the worlds you’ve shared with them, pieces of the stories you once told together. You can see traces of your old gamer friends in a house-rule, a recycled challenge, or even the design of a custom magic-item that had all of you laughing at one time or another. You hear them in the silence of an inside joke nobody laughs at anymore. You smile at them as you realize how they would have responded to a new challenge.

Players who moved away or simply quit gaming are one thing. You may one day talk to them again, perhaps even about the times you once shared rolling dice. That possibility alone keeps their memories light, but those who’ve passed away leave shadows on the worlds you’ve built together. Some days you feel that with more intensity than others.

Like when you decide to resurrect an old villain, for instance.

It seems odd to think of a game as something that carries so much weight, but this is just one of many ways that the lines between the fantasy framework of a game and the social networks of real life become blurred.  When friends leave, they often leave a mark. When those friends shared an imaginary world with you, they often leave a very real mark in that imaginary world.

***

I’ll be thinking about my old friends when I put Eleymenen back on the table to make life difficult for my new friends. They won’t know what’s up, the new group, I mean. To them, he will just be a particularly challenging boss villain, whereas he is in fact a sort of haunted character.

Very haunted.

Just not by anything in the game rules.