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Content Trigger Warning: Bullying
Yesterday was the World Day of Bullying Prevention®, and October is World Bullying Prevention Month™.
When I was in 8th grade, most of my classmates didn’t know my name. I was just “Nerd” (before that was a badge of honor). I was bullied so much that I ate lunch in the guidance counselor’s office every day. Then a new student, Dan, came, and I realized that he was even less popular than I was, so I joined in, hoping to take the target off of my own back.
I spent a lot of time, not just lunch, talking to our guidance counselor. One day, he said, “Dan’s been having a rough time. I asked him who has been giving him the most problems, and he said, ‘Dale Critchley’.”
I was horrified. Somehow, I hadn’t made the conscious connection between my experience and what I was doing to him. I felt terrible and vowed never again to bully anyone and to defend anyone I saw being bullied.
You may have heard, “Hurting people hurt people,” and I was an example of that. But because someone cared enough to confront me, he helped me be the person I wanted to be.
Since then, I’ve endured bullying many times, and while painful experiences don’t justify hurting others, I always feel pity for my bullies over anything else, wondering what kind of pain or stress motivates their hostility, what kind of bullying they’ve experienced that leaves them acting like my 13-year-old self.
Limitless Champions Adventures Spoiler Alert — skip to the next heading if you’ll be a player, not a DM for them!
One of the adventures in our upcoming Limitless Champions Adventures Kickstarter explores this concept. All too often, “I was bullied, so I want revenge,” is used as a villain’s motivation, but the bullies and/or the victim/villain always seem to end in tragedy. The Toxic Avenger, Stephen King’s Carrie, Syndrome in The Incredibles. The list goes on.
So we flipped that trope with a story of bullying, “A Light in the Tower,” that leads to a fresh start while acknowledging the damage that bullying causes.
End Spoiler
In recognition of the bullying prevention themes of this week and month, our next free encounter is an add-on encounter for “A Light in the Tower” where the party must rescue a family from a flash flood. The encounter doesn’t address bullying directly but emphasizes the supportive environment that helps prevent bullying.
The encounter includes a new set of 4K combat maps and a free downloadable STL for the monsters.
Find it at the link below, and if you haven’t already, please click the “Notify me at launch” button on our Kickstarter page. |
