"Today I'm Gonna Try and Change the World" ~ Johnny Reid

Just about 18 hours ago I found out that I am Paizo's 2015 Superstar. It's been a crazy 18 hours of phone calls, emails, my social network pages blowing up, and internal dialogue that oscillates between self-doubt and pride. Over the last two months, I cannot believe it has only been since January 20th that I've been on this ride, I lived and breathed Pathfinder and game design. Never in my life have I learned so much in such a short amount of time, and I have a degree and nursing diploma. I am still in shock. I am wondering how the heck did I even get to this place? I'm going to write about it and maybe we'll find out together.

For my entire life I have been a woman and I readily identify as such, but when I was younger I often wished that I had been a man because my interests were more in keeping with traditionally male things - math, science, fantasy and sci-fi literature, comic books, gaming. I eventually accepted that I liked being a woman and I liked things that people don't associate with women, so I needed to help people understand that very few things are intrinsically "male" and "female". It didn't hurt that I have a daughter and a son and I want them to grow up in a world where they can be whomever they like and love whomever they wish without having to worry about being judged for being themselves. This desire came to a head last year during Paizo's 2014 RPG Superstar contest, when a thread discussion about the number of women in game design was low, that there wasn't a lot of female contestants, and in general, how were we going to get more women into the hobby? The answer was easy, we needed more women to care enough to enter and see other women already in positions where they wanted to see themselves. We needed role models that other women could identify with and feel like they were welcome in the same places. Sounds easy on paper, but getting from here to there is not so easy.

Around that time, I lost my office job and quickly found another one that let me work from home. So, I committed myself to equality activism since I was online and home all the time. I focused mainly on gender and sexual orientation issues, although I feel strongly about all forms of inequity, so if I use gender terms, rest assured I also mean racial, religious and all other personal markers that make us uniquely us. I don't work for women to be treated better than men or men to be treated worse, I work for all people to be treated as well as all other people. I found a great song by Johnny Reid "Today I'm Gonna Try and Change the World" and other like minded people who embraced equality for all individuals. There are a lot of us in the gaming community who feel that way, although there are those who do not, I believe we outnumber them and one day we'll win this equality war of attrition. 

I found that there are quite a large number of women in the gaming community. A stunning amount of them, but they aren't in the places that tend to get their names on the cover of books. I continued to ponder though, how would we get more women in visible gaming positions? Obviously the fastest way is to find someone who publishes and write for them. I knew publishers who were already asking me to write stuff for them. Which was great, if I wanted to do game design, which I didn't. I kept working on raising awareness, raising up my sister game designers, supporting my male game designer friends, because they need some love too and just hanging out making contacts and playing game design yenta (It's really a thing I do, if you have a special skill, I know someone who needs you, hit me up privately.)

December rolled around and I was excited, RPG Superstar is when I go back to the Paizo boards and hang with my hopeful friends and see some awesome competitors write some stuff! Then Owen Stephens announced there would be a switch up this year, instead of wondrous items, it would be arms, armor, rings, rods and staffs. Wait, what? I never entered because I didn't want to win and I never came up with a wondrous item idea. But a magic weapon? I could write one of those, there's this weapon that clerics really need and suddenly I was at the gaming table, surrounded by books and my husband, because I had no clue what I was doing. I know most of the cleric spells to level 6, some of the sorcerer/wizard spells (because they overlap with cleric spells) and that there was such a thing as magic weapons. I never even read the entire Core Rule Book before, much less any other gaming book from cover to cover since Laws of the Night Revised (yup, you heard me right, 1999 and even then I skimmed the thaum stuff). 

I made my very first real magic weapon, Spectre Blight, on December 14th, 2014. I shared it around with the people that I usually helped with their entries and got some great feedback. There were jokes - Oh, what if you and Andrew are both in it? Will he be mad when you win? - and my personal favorite to poo-poo "You're going to get in with this and win." I never dreamed that I really would get in, but if I did, that would be great, because I really wanted this weapon in a book so I could use it as a cleric, because clerics never get awesome stuff. I entered and Andrew did not, I said the magic words "Wouldn't it be fun if we actually were in it together?" so he entered too although that was not his original intention.

Fast forward through fun and laughing during the voting process to January 20th. Andrew was at work and I was alone in looking for our names on the Top 32 announcement and there I was on the list. I was certain I must have missed his name on the list. Not a single member of my pit crew was on the list. How was that even possible? It took me a whole day to get over that, it would have taken longer except that I suddenly had less than 4 days to draw a map of a place that did not yet exist and I didn't know much about drawing a map or Golarion for that matter. I am a visual person though, so maps are a love of mine, I love looking at architectural blueprints, that's why my building map was awesome and my hanging gardens map was not so much.

That's how the whole two months of the contest went, my name would appear on the Top whatever list, I was certain it was a mistake and then I had to jump into action because holy cow, I had a lot to learn. Each voting period I studied ahead to learn what a monster stat block looked like, what goes into an encounter, and how to write an adventure pitch. I was lucky (as far as that goes) that I was unemployed throughout the first 6 or so weeks of the contest. I had to look for a job, but I didn't have to go to a job. Learning game design became my job. I spent alone time reading books, adventure modules, wiki entries, Paizo forums, previous contest entries and most closely the judges comments. If you ever find yourself in this position, read what the judges said, there great big nuggets of solid gold game designing wisdom in there. 

I did lament how dumb it was to enter the contest not knowing any of this stuff first, but then my children found out I was in the contest and things changed in my mind. They knew Andrew had done this before and we used his work to teach them about the writing process. Kate became very excited that I was involved. She would check in to see where I was in the contest. When I hit the Top 8, Andrew shared my profile and entries with her. She was sold. She became my biggest cheerleader and in my mind, reason to win. I couldn't believe it, I was becoming that public female role model for at least one future female! She was my daughter, but wasn't that who I was doing this for in the first place? I still wasn't sure I wanted to win, but I knew I had to win, because I had to prove to her and myself that nothing was worth doing if you weren't going to do it to your very best ability. 

There were other reasons I wanted to win - I fell in love with the things I was creating, I needed them to continue beyond the contest and the only way that was going to happen was if I won, that meant I had to be the best. I felt like I had something to prove, that women could be game designers. And I wanted to be able to say to Owen Stephens "Boom, I did this! And while I know that's exactly what you wanted in the first place, I won't hold it against you that you tricked me into proving it to myself." (And now I've just said it. Thank you Owen.) 

At no time did anyone tell me I could not do this because I was a woman. If they did, they didn't say it anywhere I was ever aware of it. But more importantly, no one seemed to be holding my hand, throwing me soft ball reviews, or voting for me just because I was a woman. I felt like I was being viewed with the same critical eye that all of my fellow Top 32 were being viewed through. If I screwed up, someone called me on it. If I did well, it was recognized. I was an equal among my peers. I have never truly felt like that before. My reproductive organs had nothing to do with whether I could design headless monsters, so why should it be considered in any way by the judges? It was incredibly liberating to be allowed to be myself.

I'm going to wax spiritually here a second, but don't stop reading. There is a saying 'be careful what you wish for, you may get it.' I put a desire out into the universe for there to be women in my community for other women to look up to and strive to be like. Women that I wanted to look up to and strive to be like. But the universe, whether God or karma or whatever is really out there, took my desire and chose me to be the instrument of it's realization in this small way. I don't think that I am going to change the world overnight or completely, but I am going to use this amazing set of circumstances to change the world one day at a time. I realized that the only way to get women into public places was to be a woman in a public place doing things worthy of looking up to. 

Last night, at 4:50pm I got a phone call from Owen's wife, LJ, who is my personal friend and being the incredibly naive person I am, I simply thought she was going to hold my hand like a good friend and watch the ball drop. But they tricked me! (Be careful of those Stephenses, they are tricksy folks!) Owen told me personally on the phone that I won at 5pm. While he was telling me that I won, my husband told my children that I won. So there was I was, on the phone with one of my life mentors* while my daughter hugged me tightly telling me how proud of me she was, surrounded by the people who I loved the most, realizing that I had fully achieved a life's dream that I wasn't even aware of having until that crystal moment in time. 

There's so much more to be said about this and I'm sure I will say it in time. Today though I want to tell everyone that you can change the world. Open yourself up to the possibility and take hold of it when it appears. Ride the wave until it hits the shore, stand up, throw your arms in the air and scream with triumph. Because you can change the world one day at a time.


*Owen and I have been friends for several years and being in the contest was one of the hardest things I've ever done, because I was unable to tap into one of the most influential people in my life for feedback. I want to be clear that at no time did he or any of my other publisher or published friends who were judges or among the voting population ever consult on any of my entries. Paizo was made aware of our friendship prior to the contest.