Why John Wick Writes RPGs

It's no big secret that John Wick and I have had our differences. More than once, we've come to blows. In fact, I recall one instance when, had not Rob Vaux been willing to douse us both with pepper spray he'd gotten on the sly from a prison guard, one of us would surely have drawn a great deal of blood. But that's neither here nor there, it's in the past, it's water under the bridge. Both of us have left AEG and no longer have any fiduciary reason to screw each other over. We've both left that kind of soulless backstabbing and ladder climbing to more ambitious souls like Steve Hough.

What prompted me to write is the following quote, read recently on Gaming Outpost.

Watch how many people ignore that statement when they reply to this. Just watch. I can see it now: "Wick admits he hates gamers!"

-John Wick, "The Game Designer's Journal" Episode 11

When I read that, I was startled and briefly thought, "Can it be? Can Wick's hubris and contempt have swelled so grotesquely that he's going to finally snap and pour forth his true opinions?" I should have known better. Wick is far too canny for such indiscretions.

But make no mistake. John Wick hates you.

John Wick hates us all.

If you don't believe me, ask anyone who's ever seen him at a convention. Some dark nights I still drink myself to sleep, trying to blot out the memories of the vile degradations he visited on the innocent "fans" who approached him at GenCon '97. Good lord! On his better days, when "Grognard" (his connection) had gotten him "the good stuff" he contented himself by merely autographing copies of his books with succinct lines like "Make me rich, you pus wad!" or the less verbose but surely more authentically felt "For you, suicide is the only solution." As his self-medication began to wear off, his behavior became more extreme--spitting on passers-by, screaming obscenities at anyone in costume, and tearing pages out of the books he was supposed to make collectible with his signature. By nightfall, he was out of control, cruising the statistically-few females with a brutal leer, using all his craft and charm to lure them back to his hotel room, where awaited elaborate degradations so psychologically warped and convoluted that the Marquis de Sade would scratch his head in puzzlement.

One might wonder about such extreme behavior. I sure did. I learned the explanation entirely by accident. Perhaps I am the only one who knows.

It was during my first trip out to California to work in the luxurious gaming palace of AEG. I'd only been there a day and was still confused by the vast maze of plush carpeted hallways, leading to spacious offices overlooking the ocean. As I was searching for the can, I stumbled by mistake into Wick's private office suite. Immediately, I was stuck by an overwhelming reek of gasoline fumes.

"Shut the door," he hissed, and I only complied out of fear that Maureen Yates would walk by with her trademark Cuban cigar hanging out of her mouth.

"You know what I've got here?" he asked.

"A garbage bag full of gas fumes?" I guessed.

"No, damn you!" he bellowed, sticking his face into the bag for a deep, shuddering inhale. "I mean this!" He slapped his hand on a lone piece of paper on his desk, a blow that made the entire ebony top shudder.

Daring to creep closer, I saw that it was a review, downloaded off the internet and printed. It was generally favorable towards L5R, but it had a few minor quibbles with the setting and didn't like the layout.

"It doesn't look so bad," I said slowly.

"Doesn't look so bad? Are you blind as well as stupid? How dare those impudent proletarians besmirch my work? They should be on their knees, thanking whatever God they revere that they're even allowed to lay their Cheeto-stained fingers on the products of my toil!"

Thereupon followed a fifteen minute diatribe against gamers "and their ilk" that chilled me to the depths of my soul with its bitterness and intensity. He worked himself into such frenzy that he lurched to his feet, dizzy and unstable from his huffing, but still able to stumble around his office smashing furniture and bellowing about "dice-rolling nincompoops" and "card-fondling lackwits." He climaxed this tantrum by smashing his fist through the window and howling as the blood trickled down his arm, covering his emerald cufflinks.

"Owww!" he shrieked--a cry of such great pain, inner as well as outer, that I hope to never hear the like again.

"Are you… all right?" I asked as he huddled in a corner, curling tighter into the fetal position and clutching his gas bag like a security blanket.

"I'll never be all right," he whimpered.

I don't know why, but something compelled me to ask. "John, why do you hate them so?"

After an agonizing pause, his voice--strained with equal parts misery and honesty--emerged.

"Gamers killed my daddy," he whispered.

I make RPGs because I -love- them.

-ibid.

The above statement came hard on the heels of my first Wick quote. Poor bastard, I believe it's the truth.

Before GenCon '97, before I'd ever screamed abuse at him on the phone or taken a swing at his head with a desktop stapler, I had a lengthy email conversation with Wick. In retrospect, I think I got on his good side by venting humorously about the blowhards posting on AOL's SHADIS forum. I now suspect he took my hyperbolic (and vitriolic) suggestions at face value. In any event, we initiated a dialogue that began on the topic of game design and quickly spun off into a discussion of art, history and the nature of fame.

That's how I learned of Wick's deep, abiding and idiosyncratic love of RPGs. For you see, he loves them not as a means to an end, but as ends themselves.

The modern image of love involves mutual interest, frank and equal communication, and gobs of sex. Similarly, the average "RPG lover" finds a game that plays to his interest in powerful magic swords or giant robots, reads it, makes a few changes and runs it with some friends.

To Wick, this is tantamount to intellectual rape. His form of affection is more like that of the medieval troubadours, who felt that the highest love was hopeless infatuation, one-sided, impossible and never expressed. The great lovers of that age were content to sneak off with one of their inamorata's stolen nose-rags, then to die in battle with her name on their lips. If they ever told her about it, they'd be dragging their pure amore into the sordid realm of beasts and rutting commoners.

Similarly, I believe that John Wick sees an RPG as a thing of imponderable possibility--until it's played, at which point the immense volume of things you could do collapses into a mundane single campaign in which the tough guy, the sneaky guy and the gal in the chainmail bikini voyage there, do that and all go up a level.

(I've heard rumors from his housemaid that Wick has a vast collection of unopened Christmas presents too, because he doesn't want to spoil the potential by uncovering the actual.)

Furthermore, Wick honestly believes that when future historians examine the 20th Century, they will consider the roleplaying game to be our epoch's only unique contribution to world culture. I'll confess, I kind of skimmed those messages, since an email about how John Wick thinks L5R is going to mark him as a world-historic hero is less compelling than hearing him shriek and rant about "elf fetishists" while smashing an ottoman on the corner of his desk. Take it from me, though: He thinks that just as Homer is remembered for epic poetry, Sophocles for classic theater and Basho for haiku, he will one day be revered for "Orkworld."

So you see, every time you play one of Wick's games, you're violating the intellectual integrity of a structure he values as his only bid at immortality. Is it any wonder he would gleefully kill every one of you and dirty dance on your graves? You're soiling the purity of his immaculate creation. (Plus, there's that whole "dad killing" business, I guess.)

Personally, I have nothing against John Wick. I see him as a tragic figure, trapped in a vicious cycle of madness by the games he loves and the gamers he hates. He is the Ahab of RPGs, more to be pitied than loathed.

Nonetheless… if he asks you back to his hotel for some of his special "Orkboss love" just smile, nod, and look for a chance to run.