I didnt get the Angels thing at all -- just didnt occur to me, I looked at wings and thought "wtf?  Obviously every 2nd entry is going to be about whisper and murder - secretive conspiracies, etc..."  and yet angles dominated.  I wonder why?

edited to change the title for the split - RE

Ron wrote:
The games are diverse in all sorts of ways, yet there is some kind of shadowy, aerial, ethereal, gore-spattered unity to them which no single title fully encompasses ...

Both of my ideas for a Wings + X entry were totally about angels, as well. Wierd, huh.

Now that you mention it, dragons could have been used for wings+murder as well, but they didnt get a look in.

May I ask how many of the Angel game authors are Christian or come from a Christian upbringing?

baxil wrote:

Ron wrote:
The games are diverse in all sorts of ways, yet there is some kind of shadowy, aerial, ethereal, gore-spattered unity to them which no single title fully encompasses ...

What I find most interesting is the unanimity with which people agreed that "wings" meant "angels", for good or for ill.  Even those who didn't leap to actual angels in their game design still riffed off of it.  Both of us who flew "wings" out to "blackbirds" (Michael's guardian-angelic Crows and my destructive-demonic Deathbird*) basically reduced it to animal angels.  And even Paolo's Wings of Blood, with its vengeance-driven reptiles, seems to me to have that quale.  The closest thing to dissent was the two entries with aerial soldiers/police, and even that isn't a huge stretch from divine authority and judgment.

Ron, I think you hit a deep vein of shared culture there, and "murder" was the icing on the cake.

Which leads me to an observation: Back in the November 2005 Ronnies, you used "dragon" as a term (with a similarly loaded supplemental violence term, "gun").  There was a similar lead for "dragon" use in those results (13/24) as for "wing" here (9/14), though not quite as lopsided.  And you remarked back in that thread on the thematic similarities of the games.  There's something to those big winged things that commands the tone.  (Hell, we've known that since Gygax/Arneson ...)

... And I want to argue that dragons and angels, and other similarly large shared myths, are somehow shorthand in our gamer brains for that thing that matters.  It seems obvious to me** in a deeply intuitive way, but looking back, it's a big jump, and I don't know how to bridge the two in words.

--
* Technically, I took "wings" mechanically out to "flying dice", but my approach into that (which left its thematic footprints all over the game) was the Deathbird itself.
** A self-identified dragon, but that's only relevant in that I've spent a lot of time thinking about just what the hell "dragon" means.

I admit, that after I had finished and submitted, and was reflecting on the entries, I was going "I should have chosen Fairies." At one point in the design space, I was really tempted to switch the Owl motif with a Moth motif, but I figured that would have looked weird against the Raven faction. The next day, as I was about ready to sleep, I was going "Butterflies!".

I might change Wing Types from birds to insects when I go and do a re-write.

stefoid wrote:
May I ask how many of the Angel game authors are Christian or come from a Christian upbringing?

stefoid wrote:
May I ask how many of the Angel game authors are Christian or come from a Christian upbringing?

A few notions of mine ...

1. Regarding our most common visual and cultural notions of angels, they aren't specific to Christianity. They're Abrahamic, found as a vaguely defined but consistent supporting cast throughout Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the whole soup of interacting practices and doctrines which were not included in any of the three but link them (some of which are called "Gnostic"). I am also coming to think that they occupy a particular theological niche which seems to survive all schisms and all institutional shifting-about within the Abrahamic tradition, up to and including rebellion and personal rejection. In other words, angels are a big deal to the culture all around me and most of us posting here, on their own, for reasons which may not be the same as those underlying religious belief or practice.

Many, many gamers self-identify as atheists. They buy, play, and design games filled with angels.

2. I wrote a first draft of a game based on "morning wings" in December and January, and it's angels all the way.

3. In the November 2005 Ronnies, "dragon" was explicitly one of the terms - no one had to arrive at it via association. Whereas here, angels emerged through association, not merely from one pair of terms, but from several. (Interestingly, Gregor had to do a little tap-dancing to avoid "whisper" for his Wings of Desire inspired design.)

Best, Ron

Oh yeah, my first game idea was MORNINGLORDS (all caps, it's a thing), where Lucifer and the fallen are the protagonists.  But I decided it was too weighty, ran out of time mulling over the mechanics, and then Secret Lives of Serial Killers came to me over dinner, with just three hours until the deadline.

FWIW, my Christian upbringing and experience as a former minister definitely colored my game, which is basically about how being a good person just isn't good enough.

stefoid wrote:
I didnt get the Angels thing at all -- just didnt occur to me, I looked at wings and thought "wtf?  Obviously every 2nd entry is going to be about whisper and murder - secretive conspiracies, etc..."  and yet angles dominated.  I wonder why?

stefoid wrote:
May I ask how many of the Angel game authors are Christian or come from a Christian upbringing?

stefoid wrote:
Now that you mention it, dragons could have been used for wings+murder as well, but they didnt get a look in.

May I ask how many of the Angel game authors are Christian or come from a Christian upbringing?

baxil wrote:

Ron wrote:
The games are diverse in all sorts of ways, yet there is some kind of shadowy, aerial, ethereal, gore-spattered unity to them which no single title fully encompasses ...

What I find most interesting is the unanimity with which people agreed that "wings" meant "angels", for good or for ill.  Even those who didn't leap to actual angels in their game design still riffed off of it.  Both of us who flew "wings" out to "blackbirds" (Michael's guardian-angelic Crows and my destructive-demonic Deathbird*) basically reduced it to animal angels.  And even Paolo's Wings of Blood, with its vengeance-driven reptiles, seems to me to have that quale.  The closest thing to dissent was the two entries with aerial soldiers/police, and even that isn't a huge stretch from divine authority and judgment.

Ron, I think you hit a deep vein of shared culture there, and "murder" was the icing on the cake.

Which leads me to an observation: Back in the November 2005 Ronnies, you used "dragon" as a term (with a similarly loaded supplemental violence term, "gun").  There was a similar lead for "dragon" use in those results (13/24) as for "wing" here (9/14), though not quite as lopsided.  And you remarked back in that thread on the thematic similarities of the games.  There's something to those big winged things that commands the tone.  (Hell, we've known that since Gygax/Arneson ...)

... And I want to argue that dragons and angels, and other similarly large shared myths, are somehow shorthand in our gamer brains for that thing that matters.  It seems obvious to me** in a deeply intuitive way, but looking back, it's a big jump, and I don't know how to bridge the two in words.

--
* Technically, I took "wings" mechanically out to "flying dice", but my approach into that (which left its thematic footprints all over the game) was the Deathbird itself.
** A self-identified dragon, but that's only relevant in that I've spent a lot of time thinking about just what the hell "dragon" means.

Oh yeah, my first game idea was MORNINGLORDS (all caps, it's a thing), where Lucifer and the fallen are the protagonists.  But I decided it was too weighty, ran out of time mulling over the mechanics,

I'm also surprised that the are so dark. If you ignore "murder," the remaining three terms seem loaded with cozy, comforting associations.

Devon wrote:

Oh yeah, my first game idea was MORNINGLORDS (all caps, it's a thing), where Lucifer and the fallen are the protagonists.  But I decided it was too weighty, ran out of time mulling over the mechanics,

I would TOTALLY play this game (did someone say metal), and I considered something similar myself.

I'm also surprised that the are so dark. If you ignore "murder," the remaining three terms seem loaded with cozy, comforting associations.

To me, the four words, taken together, are incredibly ominous, lightened only by the inclusion of morning and even then only somewhat. That's my free association spin on it.

Hm, I never had any angel connotations pop up for me until Ron mentioned it here, but my thoughts are so full of steampunk and pulp stuff someone could give me the word octagonal and my first thought would probably be something mad-sciency. :)

Pat

Interestingly, the game I failed to write, ANAKIM, was about half-angels having fantasy adventures in antedeluvian times.

I'm agnostic and was raised pretty agnostic too.

I just want to bring up that at least for the way I looked at the whisper/secrets connection, and I wasn't sure if I highlighted it enough, not every secret was some dire shameful thing. A child holding back the truth about who broke a window while playing ball is as big a secret as throwing a surprise birthday party. ... actually, the Surprise Birthday Party might be bigger, even though it's harder to hide for long.

...

I was really surprise by the number of angel entries also, but I just think that the association to Mechanical Wings is a harder step to do. I don't think it's easy to think of an airplane having wings so much as just being an airplane. It's much easier to think of Wings in terms of an actual animal, or part of a symbol.