Hi Reader,

Welcome! Please, come in. Let me take your raincoat. And your umbrella, and oh the galoshes. The horrors really are pouring down out there, huh?

On the table, I put some sunny daffodils in a clay pitcher. I couldn’t cut the crocuses, spring’s tiny cheerleaders. But these daffs were fair game.

My partner, M, is away this weekend, so I've been walking Udo in the mornings, and this morning, it was raining. Water streamed down the streets and gutters, but it wasn’t cold. It felt nice through my linen pants. On the sidewalk, neighborhood shai-huluds were all out looking for new homes. I came home to a quiet but not really empty house.

On days like this, gaming feels like both the gentlest and fiercest of pastimes—

Gentle because we get to retreat from the world, spin a story together, and live in a fantasy. We're in the game's magic circle, and it's not even a competitive game. I'm neurotic. I'm shy. And gaming is an easy place to spend my time in...an easy way to be social.

But gaming is also fierce. In this shared retreat space, we're flexing our imaginations, taking off our mental blinders. Saying "what if," over and over again. It's not nothing. Imagining is the first step in practicing how to be free.

Take Defy the Gods. In this game, the gods literally hate you. They hate your face, how you dress, how you do your thing. And their good and faithful servants, the earthly rulers, hate you too. They want to forget you exist. Worse, they want all your fellow city-dwellers to forget you exist, too.

And then you take the fight to them, stare them down, and carve out a space for yourself and your friends to live in.

It's fantasy, but it's also very real.

These days, the US federal government and way too many state governments are passing laws that push trans people out of public life. No end of politicians enlist God in their rhetoric against us. They're waging similar attacks on other queer people, immigrants, refugees—refugees!—and religious minorities.

So maybe the gods and rulers really do hate us. But they don't deserve their power. And Defy the Gods invites us to imagine how we stand against them. How we defy them. Doing it in a world of sphinxes and sorcery makes it fun...but it's also practice.

Imagining is the first step to being free.

Cheers,
Chris

P.S. I hope you'll share this email with other gentle but fierce gamers. We need all of us. We need all the help we can get.

P.P.S. The Defy the Gods Kickstarter approaches! It all starts on April 29. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies!