Hi Reader,

Welcome! Please, come in. It's getting blowy out there. On the table, we've got flame-orange dahlias.

The Raccoon Sky Pirates Kickstarter is doing well beyond my wildest hopes. But, for once, I'm not here to talk about that.

I recently read Lin Codega's diaries of their experience playing Over/Under, the massive, 30-day game on Discord that started a year ago. Here's what I said about it on Bluesky:

Over/Under was part of "Mothership Month," a promotion for the Mothership RPG during October 2025. Ostensibly, O/U was a mega board game about resource control, played on a dedicated Discord server. Six factions had differing win conditions, mostly not mutually exclusive. The "bosses" of each faction, about 20 in all, played the board game. The remaining 950 players amounted to a resource for the bosses to control.

However, as the game progressed, it became all about the role-play, for everyone. Occasionally, people tapped resources—faction members, area control, money, data tokens—but only to express the role-play in mechanical terms.

People got obsessed. They played for days on end, neglecting all obligations and relationships. In the second week, the whole server came afire, convinced an alternate-reality game was in progress. If you don't know ARGs, they operate in real time, blur the lines between in-character and out-of-character events, and invite obsessive play. Even after the ARG evaporated, the obsession barely abated. Hundreds of people loved playing their characters regardless of mechanics. The game's designers rode a rocket as they struggled to keep up with even half the stuff all happening at once.

It reminds me of my first salary job, helping make a video game called Meridian 59.

Don't bother looking it up. It was a flash in the pan back in 1996. Most of the graphics suck—I say that as the creator of most of the graphics.

But wow, we were obsessed. All of us—players, moderators, creators. A shared space to play online! In real time! In a fantasy RPG, with hundreds of new best friends!

People got married in that game. I mean the players got married.

It's a shame the vehicle wasn't more meaningful.

So, yeah. Reading about O/U, which was basically a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) without the graphics, punched my buttons. I always wish we'd made a better game back in the '90s. MMOs engender that kind of obsession. Maybe it never leaves you.

The best I can take from that long-ago lifetime is the community.

Video games are so isolating. You sit in a room with a glowing screen for hours, hopping through its hoops. Doing what it allows.

Discord isn't much better: It's a video game about connecting with people who play (video) games. Its creators must realize there's a gulf there. But you're still interacting with an app—posting messages, reading others' posts. Trying to connect.

So it was lovely to read Lin's eloquent, empathic diaries on Over/Under. Lin made the community come alive for someone who couldn't be there. They left me with a deep love for the act of role-playing.

We're here to throw ourselves, our whole hearts, into imaginary roles and situations. The better to connect with real people who, generously, throw themselves into the same situations.

It's not all make-believe. Don't kid yourself. Something real happens when we play together. It couldn't happen if we were just playing our usual roles. We need the fantasy, drama and heightened emotions.

And then, by triangulation between fantasy roles and quotidian roles, we find something meaningful behind both.

Something we share.

Here's to sharing make-believe meaning made real.

xoxoxo
Chrys

P.S. Lin's reply to my Bluesky post was "this is the morally correct response"

P.P.S. Reluctantly, yes, Raccoon Sky Pirates is going gangbusters. If you want to see just how much—and get a little slice of raccoon heaven for yourself—check it out before it ends on October 31st! The box set is just $29 + shipping. If you back at the highest tier, you get all the unlocked PDF expansions for free.