MLK comes to Heroes

When games masters (GM) have players who do something they don’t expect and they have to figure out how to respond, i call it “playing off the page”.  Because the GM has to make up what happens then, without the pre-designed script.  Robust games masters design elaborate worlds with many secret hatches and passage ways, so that characters who stroll off the page can gently wrap around and come back onto the page again.  Lazy GMs live off the page and just always wing it.  You can guess where i land.

martin-luther-king-jr-day

In my somewhat unusual prepping today for the Heroes educational fantasy role playing game i decided i wanted to put in a bunch of questions about MLK.  The form was to get the players to identify the one thing on the long list which was something which was not a characteristic of King.  For example, i choose these quotes:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

But the quote which spoke to me most powerfully was:

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

[From Brainy Quote]

King was arrested 29 times

King was arrested 29 times

 

Before my little research i did not know King had won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album in 1971.  But more importantly i did not know that the New York Times reports that the US government has been convicted in the conspiracy to kill King, including paying a Memphis cop $100K to assassinate king and make sure there were no police on the site.

But even more important than all this was the way he changed the lives of African Americans in this country.  And for this he deserves at least a holiday.