Kavita on Queerness in Friends at the Table
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2021-03-09T02:03:22+00:00
Kavita Poduri
13
talks about capitalism and indie media, tabletop game design, and the way Friends at the Table opens space for others to write their own stories.
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2021-03-18T23:08:18+00:00
Kavi, a TTRPG designer, begins with getting into Friends at the Table, the show's audience, and the impacts of canonical queer representation on the fandom. She continues on the politics of the show and the relationships between capitalism and indie media, then compares Friends at the Table with other actual play podcasts, connecting differences in production to the format and stories each podcast tells. Kavi talks about queer representation and critiques Friends at the Table's handling of disability. In the second half of the interview, Kavi draws on her experience as a tabletop roleplaying game designer to reflect on empty space and queerness in game design and in Friends at the Table. She talks about her TTRPG Songs for the Dusk, co-designed with Quinn Vega, and about the influence of Friends at the Table on the TTRPG design sphere. She concludes by reflecting on canonicity, fandom, and how Friends at the Table makes TTRPGs more accessible by serving as a model for others looking to write their own stories.
Transcript: On Empty Space in TTRPG DesignKavita: I, I think all tabletop games have—are trying to figure out how to strike a balance between empty space and, ah, rails, I guess. You know, it's about… this is going to be a strange metaphor. Game design is like building playgrounds. When you build a playground, you need an empty space for the kids to go. You can't just fill it entirely with innavigable like you know, bars and monkey bars and jungle gyms and what have you. You have to have places for the actual play to happen. But you also have to get—but like, the point of a playground is that it provides springboards, right? But like it is more fun to play with a set of monkey bars than it is to be in an empty field with a bunch of other kids. Um.
And so like, I think the challenge of game design is figuring out what kinds of play you want your game to be able to produce and what kinds of empty space, you want to leave for, um. Like, what structures you want to build and what kinds of things, what kinds of things you want to leave for the players to fill in. Um, and doing it in a way that's like… and one of the big challenges is that like, a lot of the times that empty space is going to be communicated by one person. Because in traditional tabletop game, or at least it is usually the case that in a tabletop game. The person running the game has—is the one who's read the rulebook. And so, in a way, you're… like, all of your rules are not necessarily optional but like, you're not—when you build a video game, or when you even build a physical game, you provide all the pieces and the game doesn't necessarily work unless you put all the pieces in place.
With a tabletop game, the only machine, you know, you don't have a machine responsible for executing it that doesn't also have preferences of its own. The machine that executes the commands, the program of the game is also the player. And if they don't like your rules, they will ignore them, often. Or they will, you know, if you don't communicate your rules well, they will be forgotten or misunderstood. And so there is a challenge of figuring out how to… at least the way I try to write, I try to gently encourage, I try to treat the play structures or the like level design, I guess, or not—level design is a bad word—but like, the structures of play as, as, like… I try to write from a position of like gentle encouragement and like, “Hey, go over there,” you know. “You will find something—I think you will find something fun and you will find the thing that I'm trying to tell you if you do things this way.”Transcript: On Queerness in Game Design and Friends at the TableFinch: My next question is a bit related to that. Which is like, where do you see queerness in Friends at the Table?
Kavita: In the cast? Is the easy answer. Um…
Finch: (overlapping) Okay true, yep, yeah, you, you did say that. (Kavi laughs)
Kavita: Um, I do think that's important, though, that like, um, you know, insofar as I was talking about familiarity earlier like the friends—the queerness of Friends at the Table feels bigger than the queerness of something like Dimension 20 because there's more of it in the cast, you know? Without wishing to do an exhaustive list of people's identities. I don't—it's a majority queer cast, it's a near totality, which path and that falls through, right? Like um—and, and the second place, I guess, is that the assumption of queerness is default in the cast? Most characters are queer. You know, I think, in fact, it's not inaccurate to say that every—I don't think it would be wrong to say that every character in Friends at the Table is queer, um. Certainly they are sort of assumed to be and treated that that that way by both fandom and cast. And so there is the like… just operating with that default assumption is, is like a very good and strong thing.
I think people talk about queerness in mechanics and queerness and production and things that are like not… not necessarily related to people or characters’ identities? And that's always a little bit tough for me to understand, um, in that it sort of breaks from the immediate practical implications of queerness that I, I know. Like if somebody asked me, “How do you make the game more queer in its design or in its mechanics?” I would have a hard time answering that question.
There's a podcast called Game Closet, run by a guy named Taylor LaBresh where he, he basically—his thing that he does, he reaches out to queer, LGBT game designers and does like long interviews with them that are cool, and one of his questions that he always asks is, like, “you have one piece of advice to make your games more queer, like, what would they be?” And I don't have… and I’ve thought about that question and I don't have an answer to that question that isn't just like, “make queer people in the—like give people queer default characters or tell them to make their characters gay,” because like I don't—I have a hard time processing that question in, in sort of ways that aren't related to people's identities.
But you know those identities are important and understanding the cultures that emerged from those identities are important. And to me, it has always felt like Friends at the Table does have that understanding. And has grown in that understanding over the course of its, of its showtime, you know. Counterweight is sort of like… one of the notorious flaws of Counterweight is that it doesn't really handle non-binary identities as well as it should, in part because it like set up a culture and then like sort of came in and was as like, “what if everyone in this culture was non-binary?” and then forgot about it all the time? Because it wasn't a part of the base from the jump. Um, but like, you know, it's much—things get much better in Twilight Mirage, they get much better in future seasons of Hieron and they get, they’re…
Apostolos is—when Austin designs Stel Apostolos, which has a very fascinating take on, on gender. I like fully… I was like, “a cis person shouldn't be able to make something this cool!”
Finch: Yeah, yeah! (Finch laughs) Yeah, (Kavi laughs) uh huh, uh huh.
Kavi: (overlapping) Like what the fuck man! (Finch and Kavi laugh) You’re muscling in on my market, I don't have, like, what am I going to sell people on if (Finch laughs) you’re doing this!
Finch: (overlapping) Come on man. Yeah. (Kavi laughs)Transcript: On CanonicityKavita: And a big part of what the sort of post-Homestuck era of, like, the post-epilogue era and the epilogue era was supposed to do was drive, bring home this idea that like, Homestuck… this, this sort of attempt to weirdly democratize Homestuck? Of being like, “Homestuck is now out—Homestuck isn't just what Hussie writes down. It's like, you know what the fan art—the fanfic writers and the fan artists do, it's what people who are in the fandom create with their podcasts, and their, and their fandom activity.”
Um. And the reason it never quite worked is because it was always hollow, right? And because at the end of the day until unless something is public domain or at least Creative Commons, you know, Hussie always has final sign off on what's official in Homestuck, right, like, you know, I can write… If I sat down and wrote something as long as the epilogues that went in place of the epilogues, people wouldn't treat it with the same thing they would as, with the same, like, degree of canonicity, or at least… like, people wouldn't take it as true, or as, or as reflecting something genuine about those characters, the way they do the way they, the way they, the way that many of them did in the wake of the epilogues, which, you know, even though they were written by a fan, had Hussie’s sign of approval.
Friends at the Table by contrast, I think, is like, not… Friends at the Table doesn't pretend that Friends at the Table is influenced by anybody who, anybody besides the people it's influenced by, right? Like, you know, those—Friends at the Table is made by the cast of Friends at the Table and is influenced by the author of whoever, whatever game they happen to be playing at the time, right, like, you know… And sometimes by certain consultants and, and fan artists, but usually they'll mention those on the show.
And, and Friends at the Table isn’t going to tell you, “Friends at the Table is a democratic story. It's a story is determined by its fandom.” Um, it's obviously a show controlled by Austin Walker and by his, his cast. But what Friends at the Table does is it says, “if you don't like the story we're telling, you can buy these games on your own and tell your own story and bring forth the themes you want to see explored.”Transcript: On Friends at the Table Inspiring OthersKavita: But what, what Friends at the Table does say, and I think frequently makes clear, is you can't, you know, you're not a co-author of this story, obviously, even if we do respond to fan criticism. But you can be a co-author of your own story, and the thing you tell at your own home, even if it's not recorded, even if it's not for publishing, is just as valuable as this thing that we do here. At least on, you know, sort of a psychological level or a spiritual level or whatever level matters to you, you know, maybe you can't sell it and maybe you shouldn't need to sell it, (Finch laughs) but that doesn't mean it isn't worth your time to make.
And I think that's the thing that I really, really value about Friends at the Table at the end of the day, is that it is like, “Hey, you know, we tell a story and we tell a good story. But if you don't like it, if there's something that frustrates you about it, please go make your own thing, because we know you can do it. And we know you can do it in a way that will satisfy you, just as much, if not more than we do.”
Listen to the full interview with Kavi here.
Read the full interview transcript here.