If you only want ninja adventures, skip this post. There’ll be a post with all sorts of ninja commentary later on.
I originally made a commitment to make this blog about gamebooks, and particularly the Way of the Tiger, rather than political opinion.
However, I think it would be crass to make jokes about ninjas and wars between fantasy kingdoms after the violence in Orlando, Florida of around 12 hours ago.
There will always be enough blame to go around at times like this. (The fact that this kind of thing happens often enough for me to type the words ‘at times like this’ is itself a source of grief.) Blame is easy. The determination to confirm a self-serving belief that all tragedies are the fault of another is overwhelming.
But.
Extremists, by definition, will commit extreme acts. Frequently, these extreme acts will be against those who do not conform with that particular extremist’s idea of a ‘proper’ or ‘moral’ society. It is for that reason that, at this moment, the collective idea of a free and accepting society becomes vitally important. A hideous deed of this kind is an act of violence against all members of an accepting society, because it serves as an attempt to punish people for the simple act of existing outside of an arbitrary ‘moral’ code.
As Asimov wrote : “Violence is the final refuge of the incompetent.” Any act of extremism or violence in response to this carnage is nothing less than a complete failure and abdication of responsibility.
Most importantly – 50+ people are dead, and they shouldn’t be.
I have nothing else to say.
THE WAY OF THE TIGER PLAYTHROUGH 
Aye, this system thrives on atrocities to counter atrocities and often the aim of these is to stir up hatreds between people who should live in peace.
When I was in India for my nieces wedding we were in her family home and I realised I was in a Jehovah’s Witness home with a hindu boy from next door playing and the nieces best friend, a muslim, had just walked through the house. When I commented on this I was told, “This is how it always is in India, until the leaders go and still things up.” The leaders do a lot of stirring in India.
After one of the Paris attacks a French Muslim author noted that today muslim extremism is just a rallying point for those who reject the current world system in the same way that marxist terrorism was for the same people in the seventies and eighties, having lived in Ireland in the seventies and eighties it made sense. There are always causes that people will say are worth killing for, and new one’s emerge as others subside in popularity, but they’re all just artificial attempts at dividing people who should just be living with each other in peace.
This is part of why I’ve always preferred fantasy worlds to the messed up real one, at least in fantasy worlds you can make things better – thats the real fantasy.
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