A PERFECT WIFE
(It is Vampire Weekend! Have a pontianak-themed urban-horror investigative adventure. I wrote it with Kuala Lumpur in mind, but it should work for any big city just fine.)
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DISAPPEARANCES
An inner-city neighbourhood, too ugly for gentrification. Refugees have settled here. They fled war in their own country. But they have not escaped violence.
People work basement sweatshops, or clean toilets in nightclubs. They stumble home in the morning dark. At dawn, their neighbours find gore blotching the dumpsters.
The first disappearance was a year ago. Now it happens with alarming regularity—every fortnight. The neighbourhood is tense. Most agree the following precautions work:
- Cross the road if you spot rats.
- Walk on if your name is called.
- Do not look for the baby crying.
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THE COMMUNITY CENTRE
A school for refugee children. A girl in pink polka dots tugs the sleeve of a hijabi woman. “Shingalong time, Missh Shara?” she asks.
Sara gives in. Poor Yinyin! Her father vanished over the weekend. Sara offers cash for information about what happened to him. The authorities don’t seem to care.
Sara cares. She teaches English here, weekdays. Last year, when she miscarried, she bled all over the felt carpeting. She paid to have it cleaned. A faint stain remains.
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YINYIN, THE ORPHAN
Sniffling, hiding, remembering.
A bundle of giggles, playing with her friends—but as soon as she is allowed a moment on her own she crouches, hugs herself, sobs.
Yinyin tells you her Papa is short a finger on his left hand, and has a picture of a scary black cat on his right arm. Yinyin tells you she loves her Papa.
“Shaturday night, Papa wentsh out to buy shtuff at the shop. Papa hashn’t come home. Will you ashk Uncle Yat when Papa will be home?”
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SARA, THE WIFE
Literature, pastry arts, embroidery.
At brunch her friends coo: “Look. At. You! You’re glowing!” Then they smile, half-cringing. They know she knows they’re lying.
Sara has not been sleeping well. Hormones, she thinks. She is six months into her second pregnancy. This will be her firstborn child. She will not disappoint her husband the doctor again.
She has a nail embedded into the back of her neck. She cannot feel it. Her hijab means nobody else sees it.
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THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Shop signs in a language you cannot read. Even the thoroughfares feel like alleys. Whenever you turn a corner, roll an encounter:
- Music blaring from a phone. A gang of six 38-ers. They whistle passers-by over, to squeeze for snack money.
- Excited yaps. Seven dogs, four puppies. An elderly man has brought them rice and curry, in styrofoam packets.
- The flutter of yellow paper. Ideograms and a tiger, drawn in red ink. Somebody has lost their protective talisman.
- Squeaks from a smelly drain. A rat pokes its head out, peers at you for a full minute, then continues on its way.
- Police tape. “Move along, move along,” Sub-inspector Rafiq repeats, bored. A severed finger has been found.
- “Eh-hek, eh-hek, eeeeeeeeeh!” A baby has begun to cry, close by. Just behind that pile of boxes. Sara’s baby.
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38-ER, GANG MEMBER
Machete use, boasting, escaping.
Tattooed on their bare shoulders: the number “38”, stylised to look like the symbol for the sacred sound Aum.
Are these disappearances the work of some rival triad, trying to take over their turf? They were protective amulets. They move in groups. One in every group carries a gun.
They are still losing. Three senior members have gone missing. Their boss Uncle Day has not left his club in weeks.
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SARA’S BABY, THE GHOSTLING
Stalking, mimicking, exsanguination.
There was no funeral because she lost them so early. She buried their remains, mourned them in private. She doesn’t know their spirit is still abroad.
Usually invisible; materialises to attack. Appears as a child with corpse-green pallor; talons; and proboscis-like umbilical cord.
Will never harm Sara. Hungers for her affection. Often spies on her at the Community Centre. May copy her teaching voice: “Quiet please!” “Sit down, children!” Make a check, or obey.
DEALING WITH SARA’S BABY
As resilient as an ordinary five-year-old. Harmed by mundane weapons. If slain, reappears the next new moon. Even full funeral rites will not put them to rest.
The wrong that made them was done to their mother.
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REFUGEES
It is a close-knit neighbourhood. Folk gossip about your business. Some are becoming familiar faces. At every location, roll to see who also happens to be here:
- An eleven-year-old. Suki. Organising, hauling, shortcut-taking. With five siblings to support, she has stopped school. Is a gofer for most businesses. Has keys to most back doors.
- A one-armed man. Uncle Tin. Marksmanship, bushcraft, forgetting. His panther tattoo marks him as a former resistance fighter. Cheap rum in his pocket. An assault rifle in his flat.
- A woman, heavy makeup. Sanda. Dancing, drinking, scrimping. Go-go dancer. Annoyed that the the new girls at the club pinching her regulars. Uncle Day’s favourite niece.
- A bald head, robes. Brother Pha. Selling, haggling, spellcraft. Peddles a camphor liniment. “I bless, I bless!” Claims it wards against evil. It stings spiritual entities like pepper spray.
- Always taking a call. Mr Nong. Spying, deception, pistol-use. Seems helpful, but feeds you bad leads. Actually a private investigator keeping an eye on things for Dr Azman.
- Waddles like a duck. Mya. Cooking, scolding, knife-use. She is expecting twins—two boys. “My hubby’s so happy.” Unless you get involved, will be the next person to disappear.
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THE SHOP
No signboard; doesn’t need one. Sells cosmetics; produce and spice pastes for dishes from the old country; third-hand phones.
Also roasted sunflower seeds; cheap rum; smuggled cannabis—enjoyed at tables in the alley out back.
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UNCLE YAT, THE SHOPKEEPER
Smuggling, gossiping, electronics.
“See this panther here?” He points to a tattoo on his left arm. “We fought. We believed! But we lost. That’s life.” He takes another drag of his spliff, and chortles.
Yinyin’s father was here, Saturday, drinking. “Putting the charm on some girl. Real pretty! And getting real close, touching his face, all that. They left together.”
Yat gets quiet. “After what we’ve been through? We all deserve some happiness.” Yat thinks she was a go-go girl. “They work at the club. Go ask Day.”
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THE POLICE KIOSK
Community board: empty. Front desk: empty. Air-conditioning: freezing. You have to press the call buzzer four times before an officer appears, irritated.
Whatever you say, she will ask if you want to make a report. “Here, the form. Write. Sign.”
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SUB-INSPECTOR RAFIQ, THE OFFICER
Report-writing, delegating, pistol use.
Takes cigarettes breaks to escape the kiosk’s chill. Obliged to set up a cordon around any scenes of obvious violence. Treats his job as a pensioner’s hobby.
A grey moustache, holding your attention. Friendly but unhelpful. Mention Sara and his eyes narrow; he asks whether you know Dr Azman.
“Because I do. The doctor’s wife has pure intentions, yes. But she is naive. These refugees? They are bad people. We should protect pure women from bad realities.”
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THE CLUB
A poor person’s idea of what wealth looks like: lots of glass; lots of pleather. Driving dangdut. Dancers gyrating on stages in front of murals of elephants, phoenixes, panthers.
Upstairs, a 38-er with a shotgun guards an armoured door. To meet the boss, you must be vouched for.
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UNCLE DAY, THE BOSS
Speechifying, martial arts, rifle-use.
A fifty-year-old veteran with hippie dreads. Panther-themed ink. Day was a military commander. Now he fights on a different plane.
“My people’s true war is spiritual. You appear on a lucky day—very lucky. It is fate. Preordained! What insight do you bring, heavenly messenger?”
Confirms that there are many fresh faces on weekends. “Beautiful girls are sacred animals, you understand? We cannot turn away beauty!”
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THE WOMAN OF YOUR DREAMS
This happens on the next weekend night, to the most cishet male person among you:
Maybe she is in some sort of trouble, and her car won’t start. Maybe she is on a corner, smoking—one black eye. Maybe she is on the podium, enduring gropes and jeers.
She is beautiful. Exactly your type. You can save her, be her hero. She will be grateful.
There are warning signs. There is no car. She will not describe her assailants. She leads you down a dead end. Her fragrance is sweet, like rotting flower garlands. Every dog in the neighbourhood bays.
She lowers her eyes, bites her lip. How can she repay you? she asks. This is a game she likes. Gratification delayed. It makes the end delicious.
Show suspicion, fear? She gets annoyed. Why aren’t you playing along?
Her neck twists around. She grins, chin over the nape of her neck. Arms at wrong angles, fingers ending in talons. She lopes after you, running backwards with a digitigrade gait.
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SARA, THE PONTIANAK
Pretending, pursuing, disembowelling.
The pontianak is a nightmare: born when an unhappy mother dies at childbirth; made when life is destroyed, trying to satiate the demands of the patriarchy.
The pontianak is a predator: she eats men. Women are exempt—except when they are pregnant with a male foetus. Baby flesh tastes best.
The pontianak is reversal. In human form, her physical features are tailored to appeal to potential victims. She must reveal her monstrously twisted form to feed.
The pontianak is fear. She wants her victims to know. She has tells. She always smells of rotting flowers. Dogs hate her: one will flee; a pack will attack.
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SARA’S POWERS
She may whisper to any man she can see. The target hears this whisper over any distance. She materialises by his ear.
She may laugh, a high-pitched cackle. Men who hear this laugh develop debilitating fever a day later. Breaks after a week.
She may touch your clothes. Unerringly locates any man wearing any article of clothing she has previously touched.
She may fly. Moves through the air as if running on solid ground.
She may change shape. Besides taking human woman’s shape, she may also transform into a bay owl.
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DEALING WITH PONTIANAKS
As resilient as three human persons. Harmed by mundane weapons. If slain, reappears the next new moon.
A known solution is imprisonment: a specially-prepared nail, stabbed into the back of her neck. This transforms the pontianak into a human woman.
Unaware of the nail, amnesiac, she is easily groomed by her captor. Often she is made to perform sanctioned gender roles—marriage, family-making—roles she previously abandoned.
The pontianak remains within. Her children may be born as monsters. If the nail is removed, she remembers what she is, and once again goes free.
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DEALING WITH SARA
A pontianak always has a nest—typically a banana plant, banyan, or frangipani. This is where the root of her spirit resides; where she retreats if her body is slain.
Kill the pontianak, wait for her to retreat to her tree. Trap her inside with mystic wards. Burn the tree. This destroys her permanently.
Sara’s banana plant is in the back garden of her house.
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THE HOUSE
A two-storey bungalow, in one of the city’s oldest suburbs. The neighbours are cousins of sultans, hedge-fund managers, architects.
The perfectly manicured back garden has spider lilies, frangipanis—and a single banana stem, in a person-sized urn. “Easier to control the corm, so it grows neat,” Dr Azman explains.
The banana’s trunk has a girdle woven from coarse black thread. Look closer: the thread is human hair.
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DR AZMAN, THE HUSBAND
Gardening, surgery, spellcraft.
Has a driver with a concealed-carry licence. Went to boarding school with the current Defence Minister. Framed: doctorates in a variety of medical fields; a masters in anthropology.
“Black magic? Bloodsucking spirits?” He shrugs. “Charlatans, placebo effect, criminal types using spooky stories to hide trafficking operations.”
You notice a vial on a cord around his neck. Inside: a single hair, suspended in dark oil. He buttons up his shirt without a word. He asks Sara to bring tea. “You’ve met my wife?”
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DR AZMAN’S WIFE
Dr Azman wanted a wife. He did not leave such a thing to the vagaries of love; he made one for himself. Etched the nail in her neck; wove the girdle around her tree.
Dr Azman wants a son—though he is willing to accept a daughter. His first try failed. His perfect wife does have some downsides.
Dr Azman is trying again. Curious how gestation goes easier if his wife’s spirit is let out, given leave to feed. Nourishment for the foetus? Once every two weeks.
When he removes her nail she blusters and threatens. She doesn’t mean those things, he knows. He wears protection, as a precaution.
Dr Azman’s vial contains oil distilled from the flesh of Sara’s original corpse. Sara may never harm the person who wears this vial.
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Some notes:
- This was written with page references—ie: “turn to pg xx”—because that’s what I do as a matter of course in drafting. But I couldn’t get internal hyperlinks to work with Tumblr’s text editor; my html-fu isn’t good enough. Sorry. Hope it is still legible nonetheless.
- The original version of this was written as a monster entry for an urban fantasy game. Stripped the system-specific stuff out; expanded the adventure bits (locations, characters, shape of What Is Going On). Basically rewrote the whole thing.
- Writing for a contemporary setting is interesting. Felt okay to use an even more basic version of the system-neutral “stat block” I usually use. Mechanics aren’t a prerequisite to contextualise action in modern-day reality, consider we (most of us, anyway) actually live here.
- Malaysian hantu / monsters are overwhelmingly gendered female; most are created from childbirth and its horrors. They are nightmares of the patriarchy (and its callous treatment of women’s bodies) made manifest.
- Every Malaysian writer eventually writes a pontianak story. This is mine, I guess? The one bit in the pontianak mythos that arrests me most is the idea that she can be captured, turned into a “proper” woman. And that this is spoken of as some sort of victory, some sort triumph against evil—men win, in the end, always and forever.
- The refugee angle is me working through Malaysian society’s xenophobia towards of asylum seekers. I have written about it before; it is still relevant now.
- This adventure explicitly casts the husband as the villain. He should get his comeuppance. Any way the situation develops, Sara—an innocent woman—will not come out of this unscathed.
- Felt okay to sketch the NPCs, but not the monsters, because I’m not a good enough artist. Your imagination is better than I.
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Image credits:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/ufb8de/random_alley_in_cheras_kuala_lumpur_malaysia/
- https://www.sabahpost.net/2019/12/06/polis-tembak-mati-3-pengedar-dadah-rampas-syabu-dan-senjata-api/
- https://www.hmetro.com.my/mutakhir/2021/08/747004/balai-polis-sungai-besi-dihias-indah-sempena-hari-kebangsaan
- https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Flmb0m4v472n81.jpg
- Nick Gray on Flickr
- https://g.co/kgs/7wu8NTh
- https://naturerules1.fandom.com/wiki/Oriental_Bay_Owl
- https://www.bikemap.net/en/r/7659968/
- https://www.secret-retreats.com/blog/general-info/list-of-edible-flowers-in-asia-floral-delights-in-asian-cuisine-part-1.html
Mechanics as Bits
EDIT:
Freddie Foulds over on Bluesky found the post for me! It was a Chris McDowall post: Alien Dojos.
This is now a fan post about the genius that is Alien Dojos.
Every martial art described there (for use with Into The Odd) has a resolution mechanic that involves doing something tactile with dice, beyond just rolling.
For “Bafistan Fist Fighting” each punch is a d6, “rolled” by “throwing them into the air and punching them”—but you have to punch them in such a way they still land on the table; if you miss your punch, or punch them off the table, that’s a failure.
Or, how about “Five Way Stick”:
Initiate: When fighting with a Martial Stick (d6, Bulky) stack 5d6 in front of you and try to flick the top die from the stack. If any other than the top tie fall, fail and treat the roll as 1. Continue down the stack until you fail or choose to stop.
These are:
- Functional subsystems (clear resolution mechanics);
- Thematically appropriate to fiction they are meant to represent (little minigames of player dexterity to resolve character actions involving martial arts);
- Physical spectacle (at the very least you will be focused on the “roll”, if not dodging flying dice);
- Goofy as shit (a virtue in itself).
I want to make rules like this.
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Today I spent a few hours watching this Alien-abduction themed actual play of Dread, on Smosh. I liked it a lot! More than I thought I would!
(Please don’t laugh at me too much for my very vanilla Internet media consumption! I am an old, and very uncool. Today I was watching YouTube between digging up banana corms.)
I almost never watch actual plays, mind you. I tried Critical Role and bounced right off; I have seen maybe two Dimension 20 sessions ever; the last AP series I followed really was HarmonQuest, which was—what, the twenty-teens?
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Watching the Smosh Dread thing got me wondering:
How often do mechanics / system talk come up in the course of big mainstream actual plays?
I don’t mean:
- “Pull from the Jenga tower.” (simple resolution mechanics); or
- “I cast Fireball!” (diegetic, arguably)
But:
- “Okay so let’s look it up. Fireball is 20ft x 20ft, and *doesn’t* set stuff on fire.” (non-diegetic rules clarification); or:
- “You have four ‘Mercury’ symbols, and from last round you have the "somebody will betray you” narrative trigger, let’s consult the relevant oracle table …“ (complex resolution mechanics)
This analysis by Trilemma of the transcript of a Critical Role episode [and additional commentary by Thomas Manuel] goes a ways towards answering how much general rules talk occurs, though it doesn’t make a distinction between the types of rules talk in the sense I’m thinking of.
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Here’s a (totally untested) hypothesis:
If actual plays are edited / watched for the uninterrupted flow of action / banter / emotion at the table (as ones geared towards general, non-TTRPG-enthusiast audiences like Smosh and HarmonQuest certainly are);
and:
If certain kinds of complex mechanics tend to divert attention into cul-de-sacs of meta-narrative detail, interrupting said flow of action / banter / emotion (these are generally absent from the APs I can sit through, or at least edited out);
then:
The games that work best for actual play are basically party games, with light and (more importantly, for this post) VISCERAL resolution mechanics:
- Jenga-d suspense;
- The sleep rituals in stuff like Werewolf;
- An overdramatic rock-paper-scissors game; etc
Or, alternatively, they are games whose systems can get out of the way enough to function like party games. I’d argue that D&D counts as one such game. It is go-to mainstream TTRPG actual play system because yes, of Name Brand Recognition—
But also because it is possible to not play with any actual D&D rules (and therefore avoid the tedium of looking up what stuff like Conditions mean) and still be playing D&D culturally.
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Basically:
How suitable a tabletop roleplaying game is for actual play depends on how easily its mechanics can function as bits or performances, in the improv sense.
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So this is very shaky ground for me; I don’t watch actual plays and I am talking out my ass. But through the sewage of my bullshit is perhaps the firmer ground of a design opportunity, maybe?
Namely:
Could we be designing TTRPG mechanics as performances / for performativity?
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I’d argue that Dread is so well-known because its simple core mechanic is a novel for precisely this reason: you and your friends enact your suspense around the Jenga Tower physically and viscerally (even if it is anxious silence), for each other (if not for an outside audience).
There is the sense that you are acting. Doing something.
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How else could we manage this?
Rolling dice or revealing a card are already performances, technically—but for our purposes here I’d argue that they are very "small”; they don’t have enough presence.
How can we treat dice rolls with the pomp of ritual, construct more ceremony around a card-based resolution system?
Boardgames are already good at fun counters and tactile props and click-y dials—but these are also small, in that they live mainly on the table. You are still sitting on your ass.
Props that make you get up! Rulesets that necessitate play-fighting!
LARP totally fits. Throwing pouches and yelling “Magic Missile! Magic Missile!” 10 out of 10 no notes.
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Finger games (rock paper scissors; lat ta li lat ta li tam pong; thumb war) fit.
A chase scene in fiction resolved by a game of tag is maybe too on the nose, but also fits.
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I’ve been trying to find this blogpost I vaguely recall, that proposes exactly the kind of thing I’m thinking about.
It suggested a list of unusual fighting styles (or maybe martial arts) for D&D. It has stuck in the substrate of my mind because the proposed fighting styles all had non-standard, action-based resolution mechanics.
Ie: the GM tosses a handful of dice; you (the player) try to punch as many of them in mid-air with your fists; how many you get determines how many hits you score in fiction.
Something like that. Imagine that goofy shit at the table!
I can’t find this post any more. Does anybody else remember something like it? Help! I want to find it again!
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GNS is not a Theory; it is a Tradition
This post is a brain-fart—me trying to jot a thought, lurking and seeing TTRPG folks react to GNS Theory for the upteenth time.
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Context:
GNS Theory seeks to frame, understand, categorise, and model tabletop roleplay—and, via this framework, suggest solutions and improvements to the craft of TTRPG design as a whole. Understanding GNS Theory, it is asserted, will allow you to create better-designed (“more coherent”) games.
Edwards compares the utility of understanding GNS to that of understanding physics:
I use a physics analogy: prior to the insights of Newtonian physics, bridges could be built. Some of them were built rather well. However, in retrospect, we are well aware that in order to build the bridge, the designer must have been at the very least according with Newtonian physics through (1) luck, (2) imitation of something else that worked, (3) use of principles that did not conflict with Newtonian physics in a way that mattered for the job, or (4) a non-articulated understanding of those principles. I consider the analogy to be exact for role-playing games.
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“Is GNS Theory right or wrong?” is usually the question when TTRPG folks talk about it. This feels unusual for an art theory—but is perhaps understandable in GNS’s specific case.
Edwards presents his ideas as actionable: a science by which you can make better games; principles you can rely on to build your own bridge. It becomes paramount, then, that those principles be factual. Otherwise the bridge collapses.
(Edwards infamously called people who enjoyed “incoherent” games [according GNS standards] brain-damaged, but the less said about this the better.)
Also because nerds are perverts about taxonomy:
Here is a sorting hat that will let us categorise and self-select our fandoms and selves.
We love this tribal shit. “Are you a Gamist? Narrativist? Simulationist? Take this quiz! Argue in the comments!”
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GNS is two decades old by this point.
It was the chief theoretical framework of the Forge. It guides the work of designers like Vincent Baker and Paul Czege. Game lines like Burning Wheel and its descendants are entirely informed by GNS conclusions about players and player behaviour, resulting in specific strengths, quirks, and frustrating design “solutions”.
On the other hand:
From the Noughties onwards there has been any number of interesting and excellent games made without adherence to (or even knowledge of) GNS. Tabletop roleplaying games have flowered much since the Forge’s heyday.
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All that long-winded shit to get to the thought I had:
Rather than asking: “Is GNS true? Does GNS work? Does GNS accurately describe tabletop roleplaying games?”
It is probably more useful to consider GNS as a TTRPG art tradition. A school or movement or genre, that creators and designers have chosen to belong to / define themselves by / work in the lineage of.
Similar to:
- Dadaism as a movement; or
- Animation that falls within the anime genre due to context and lineage; or
- Tanztheater / Pina Bausch’s place in contemporary dance; or
- How employing Method techniques results in specific styles; or
- Music theory, which should be more accurately called the “harmonic style of 18th Century European composers”.
But Dada is not the whole of art; nor is anime synonymous with animation. Pina Bausch is just one albeit influential choreographer; nowadays method acting has an antiquated, faintly ridiculous legacy.
Meanwhile, European music theory today is often seen as the scientific yardstick by which all music should be measured, just as nerds are wont to do with GNS vis a vis tabletop roleplaying games in general.
But we should remember that GNS is a lens, one way of considering and practicising the craft of TTRPGs. It is one lens amongst a multitude. Whether it is a good lens is up to you. Some designers have followed its precepts, and made games informed by said precepts; such games vary in quality but share a particular vibe.
A bridge built in the Moorish style isn’t necessarily superior or more stable than a bridge built any other other way; but you may find it beautiful, provided you are partial to Moorish architecture.
I think that analogy works for GNS.
Monument vs Shrine
In “Replica, Aura, and Late Nationalist Imaginings”, the political scientist Benedict Anderson (most famous for his Southeast Asia scholarship and that definitive critique of nationalism, Imagined Communities) muses on the Lincoln memorial:
- Within a temple explicitly mimicking “the religious edifices of a safely pagan Greece”;
- Mazda Corp floodlights designed “to ward off unnatural, indifferent sunlight”;
- The abstract enshrinements of “Lincoln’s memory” in the “hearts of the people”, while neither Lincoln’s actual remains or any rites for people to perform are present;
- The sense that ultimately the most reverential thing to do there is to take photographs.
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The Lincoln Memorial; the Jefferson memorial next to it; both figures repeated again on Mt Rushmore; both figures repeated ad nauseum on dollar bills.
These monuments are designed to proliferate. Not only must they create a sober, stately experience for the visitor—but they must also do so consistently, because they are built for visitors: the mass audience of the national population.
Otherwise they must be physically replicable: a memorial to a particular national hero, erected in every city.
The very format of monument-building get copied:
Post-colonial countries, in need of new myths, choose to manufacture national cenotaphs of their own, in imitation of Western models.
Malaysia has Putrajaya, a federal capital sprung ex nihilo from palm-oil agricultural land, its buildings all arches and onion domes and imitation arc de triomphes in inhuman scale, its avenues broad and utterly unwalkable in the tropical heat.
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At such monuments the citizen is cast as tourist.
Of this state-sanctioned object of devotion you are encouraged to take photographs, sell merchandise—ie: continue the process of replication. With every copy nationalism is reified.
God forbid you tweak the official monument with your own meanings, though! While writing this post, I found the following story, from December 2023:
“Lincoln Memorial temporarily closed after being vandalized with ‘Free Gaza’ graffiti”
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Anderson’s essay cites instances where the personal and irreproducible sneak back into, or leak out from, or vandalise, national monuments:
“Early in the 1910s,”—in Manila’s Cementerio del Norte, a municipal cemetery planned by an American urban designer—“a small pantheon was constructed for the interment of Filipino national heroes.”
This monument was to emulate the Pantheon in Paris, where “great Frenchmen” of the national canon are memorialised.
But the Filipino version failed.
“Today, hardly anyone in the Philippines is aware of this dilapidated pantheon’s existence … What has happened is that the Filipino Voltaire and Rousseau have managed to escape, summoning devoted, often familial bodysnatchers, to convey them to home-town shrines.”
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Not that the municipal cemetery itself is deserted. Custodians and their families live in the very mausoleums they care for.
Further, Anderson describes All Saints’ Eve in the Cementerio del Norte, when thousands pour into its precincts.
But these multitudes adjourn to their own myriad family graves and small ancestral shrines: spending the day with immediate loved ones, “drinking, praying, gambling, making offerings …”
Most of the Philippines’ presidents have mausoleums in Norte, “but no one pays attention to them … and only their separate descendants come to attend them.”
“There is something exhilarating here that one rarely sees in national celebrations, maybe because the structure of the ceremonial is not serial, but entirely cellular.”
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Hometowns re-exerting themselves within the nation; ordinary people scrawling meaning onto the edifices of the uppercase-P People. A multitude of the singular, instead of a single mass.
Despite nationalism’s efforts to centralise and clone a national identity, still we mutate, still we bootleg, still we graffiti, becoming once again ourselves.
And—particular to post-colonial societies—in doing so we casually continue the work of liberation, sneaking the idea of freedom away from our own architects and elites and prime ministers, who would seek to seize its meaning for their own purposes.
The churches or mosques or temples to demos that the federal government builds are ours to transform. To take from. To ignore.
“No need. We’ve got our own shrines at home.”
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National heroes become local saints and slip out of national control.
Does the Filipino government really control the various Rizalista sects? Karpal Singh is now a datuk kong, without his political dynasty’s consent.
Across Melaka and Negeri Sembilan there once existed shrines dedicated to Hang Tuah, Malay folk hero, now a powerful figurehead of Malay-Muslim ethno-nationalism.
One such shrine existed at Tanjung Tuan:
- With a plain altar—more a porch, really—of poured cement, for folk to leave food offerings;
- Sunlight mottled from the surrounding forest, and fluorescent lights from a nearby gazebo;
- A large rock, with an indent on its crown, said to be Hang Tuah’s actual footprint;
- The idea that this was a sacred space, where you could come to ask the spirits of the place for love or children.
The shrine that existed was sited in a forest reserve. It was swept clean of leaves by locals; its adherents belonged to all faiths and ethnicities; following the transactional logic of folk religion, those who had received its blessing would’ve paid for its maintenance.
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“Existed”.
Because the Religious Department of the State of Melaka destroyed the Hang Tuah shrine sometime in 2022, for the crime of idolatry.
A double heresy. An affront to both orthodox Sunni Islam—
But also to the Malaysian state, that sanctions Sunni Islam as its official religion; whose nationalism requires its mythic hero to have only the attributes and magics the state ulama and historians say he must have—and no others.
Local shrines are destroyed, because the nation-state intuits them to be threats to its exclusive franchise.
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Image sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_five-dollar_bill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_de_Triomphe
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putrajaya
https://www.facebook.com/PilipinasRetrostalgia
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/984521.shtml
https://www.facebook.com/PerakPress
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malays_(ethnic_group)
SILVER’S CHILDREN SEARCH FOR THEIR MOTHER
At her funeral Silver’s children did not cry. Their grief was dry as pyre kindling. They said:
“We will sail east past the border. We will search for our mother in the shoals of the dead. We will bring her home to the warmth of the sun. We will see her smile again.”
They were Samry the brother, older and bolder; and Sellie his sister, smaller and smarter. They spoke such words, such oaths against nature. Their kinfolk shushed them quick.
“Fool children! Do not blaspheme,” their kinfolk said. “To find your passage through the sea of souls, you must blind yourself to all things living. Who between you will give up sight?”
They heard their kinfolk’s scolding as instructions to follow. Their grief was like a roaring fire. Samry was bold; he said: “My sister Sellie, you are the better sailor. We need your eyes for the voyage ahead.”
Samry put his eyes out with netting needles. And Sellie sailed their boat behind the sun.
Together they entered a nighttime world. It was a place that knew neither moon nor day. Here no compass told the truth; stars blinked in fake constellations. Here waves appeared as hands—clawing, dragging their prow astray.
Without eyes Samry was blind to misdirection. Wherever he pointed Sellie steered. She sailed their boat to a candlelit island. There dwelled men with tigers’ faces.
“Big brother, little sister! We have your mother, Silver,” the tigermen said. “She is our treasure. Giving her up will make us poor. We will trade her only for a prize of equal measure!”
They thought the tigermen’s deal a bargain. Their grief guided them like a steady flame. Samry was bold; he said: “My sister Sellie, I do not fear such men. I will remain. Take care of our mother, see her smile again.”
Samry pierced his chest with a fishing spear. And Sellie shed a tear for her brother.
Their mother’s soul was already aboard, seated at the bow. Wherever she pointed Sellie steered. Now the stars hid; Sellie’s compass stuck. Now the waves appeared as arms—heaving, pushing their boat home.
Sellie felt uneasy. Her mother would not speak. She heard birds calling instead. A cormorant with a gibbon’s face alighted on the rudder; it fixed her with a laughing smile.
“Young missy! You have been deceived,” the cormorant said. “You cannot save your mother! Her flesh went up in a funeral pyre. Her naked soul will burn in the sun.”
She took the cormorant’s words as a challenge. Her grief was bitter as white ashes. Sellie was smart; she said: “My mother Silver, I was born of your blood. I give you my body. Wear it as your own, and return to the living world.”
Sellie drowned herself in her mother’s breast. And Silver wept with her daughter’s voice.
A single woman sailed their boat back west. She slipped into warm daylight. She wrote her name as Silver, though she wore Sellie’s face. Her kinfolk treated her careful, asking many questions. She answered:
“Two children went east past the border. They searched for their mother in the sea of souls. But the son was lost, and the daughter too, and their mother did not return.”
The woman spoke such words, such riddles—and little else. Her grief was empty as an urn.
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( Image sources:
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-funeral-pyre-7865
https://www.lensculture.com/articles/francesco-cilli-the-night-without-moon
https://www.audubongalleries.com/pages/books/7629/john-james-audubon/florida-cormorant-from-the-birds-of-america-amsterdam-edition
https://artreview.com/customised-postures-decolonising-gestures-gajah-gallery-singapore-review/ )
WHO GETS TO BE A PERSON?
The opening of my soon-to-be-real Cairn RPG adventure, The Tide Returning, is a crime scene.
The king of Zum and his sceptre has gone missing in the night. Hired to find him, you are allowed a tour of the royal bedchambers, to find clues to where he’s gone.
Design objectives for this opening:
- Give players an idea of who and where their quarry is. Who did the king prefer spending time with? Why did he write a letter to the governor of a nearby town? Why was he swimming the span of the canal?
- Allude to the faction politics of the adventure. These are mainly embodied in the characters present in the intro, and their relationships with each other. What is the culture of Zum like? How do they treat the indigenous witch-folk culture? Do the witch-folk resist? Do the witch-folk disagree on how to resist?
- Present complex setting detail in an evocative, gameable way. The fact that the Zum-folk practice slavery, and how that slavery functions, isn’t just set dressing, and shouldn’t be conveyed via lore dump. Players should be engaged, alarmed, invested.
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Particular to culture of Zum is canny-ware: human servants permanently bonded to heirloom objects or furnishings.
This is what the adventure text says about it:
CANNY-WARE
To the priests of Bowed God Market bring 500gp, a thrall you own, and the inanimate object you wish to make canny.
There will be one night of fearful rites. In the morning: your thrall is permanently joined to this object—if physically separated from it, they are wracked with agony; harm done to it transfers to their flesh, instead.
Henceforth your thrall is no longer a person. They are called by the canny object’s name. Their own is expunged from all record.
War galleys and weapons are never made canny. The priests insist murder is the province of actual people, not mere things.
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The idea that things have their own spirit is pretty common, ya? You beg your computer not to crash; you plead to your car to go just one more kilometre on an empty tank.
Plus: the baseline animism of Southeast Asia.
Plus: the fantasy trope of the sassy talking sword, the whispering One Ring.
So: if things have spirits and personalities, worthy of respect and consideration; if we already treat our possessions as characters in their own right—
Could the things we own be people?
Why not?
Considering we own animals which we believe have rich interior lives. Considering our history of owning actual humans; our ongoing objectification of whole genders; our industrial extraction and toolification of whole classes, cultures.
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In Zum a magical self-propelled cart is not powered by magitek nor combustion engine. It is pulled by a person whose personhood has been erased.
Canny-ware expands on an idea I used in (of all places) a personal essay on language and being a bilingual writer from the third world:
A prisoner of war is given to the sultan—“At the palace she was called Dagger. Because that was her function: to bear the royal dagger.” Because the magic dagger is, in her cultural context, considered more worthy of personhood than she is.
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Who gets to be a person?
What degrees of personhood are they allowed? How are these various degrees of personhood changed, or challenged?
I’ve fixated on this question for most of the time I’ve been thinking about and making art.
A perennial, perhaps now-overplayed question in science fiction: “OMG are robots / AI human???” “Do you lose your humanity the more cyborg you are???!!!” etc.
I like the question better in fantasy, though.
Asking whether a robot is a person gives the question a “Is this where we are headed?” speculative frame. Asking whether an ancient tree is a person lends the question a mythic “Maybe this has always been an issue?” air.
Its proper register, I think! Contained within the question is—everything, honestly? Everything in history, everything happening now. Colonialism, imperialism. Race, sex, gender, class. The webs of relation / power / violence in all these subjects.
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Anyway, back to the intro for The Tide Returning.
The royal chambers are full of precious heirloom canny-ware. They include:
The front doors—a pair who can tell you who came in and out of the rooms that night. The chamberpot—a blind fogy who’s kept the king’s hygiene and confidence since boyhood. The pillow—a jealous girl who was the king’s lover, before he started favouring the sceptre instead.
The writing desk—a prim woman who scoffs at indigenous traditions. She is indigenous, herself, but has grown accustomed to present luxuries.
The peacock fan—an agent working with local rebels, trying to maintain her cover. The silk parasol—who bristles at their bondage, the only one who will tell you their own name (Kanan) and that of the missing sceptre (Shiri).
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Essentially: looking through the king’s room is a series of interviews.
Less CSI, more Murder On The Orient Express. Clues aren’t facts passively waiting to be discovered, but NPCs with personalities you have to roleplay with.
Having play-tested this introduction with my home group I am pleased to say it is a fun time, and works as intended!
My players came away with the facts they needed; a better idea of what to expect in the hexcrawl ahead; and a deeper understanding of the stakes.
Playtest highlight:
“Wait wait, how does this canny-ware thing work, actually? Is it Beauty And The Beast? Because if it’s like Beauty And The Beast, then the chamberpot—” (cue horrified faces)
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( Image sources:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canopy_Bed_of_the_King_at_the_Chakraphat_Phiman_Hall.jpg
https://yayahkiki.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/cari-keris-berdiri-berani-harga-tinggi/
https://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/objects/1725
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:China;_a_woman_carrying_buckets_of_night-soil._Wellcome_L0056427.jpg
https://www.theatreco.com/galleries/beauty-and-the-beast/ )
TO PUT AWAY A SWORD
David Blandy + Daniel Locke’s post-apocalyptic hopepunk TTRPG ECO MOFOS is back from the printers. Meaning it will soon be in our hands.
Am fairly hyped for it, because I wrote an adventure!
To Put Away A Sword is about the woes of building a home on poisoned earth. The terrible powers that hurtled us to the end of the world continue to bear bitter fruit in your garden.
You are villagers living under the shadow of a fallen giant mecha. Its reactors and warheads leak into your groundwater, poison your goats. What will you do about it? What can you do?
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Mechanically it is a pointcrawl around your local valley. Not super complex, design-wise; but I was pleased with my gimmick solution for mapping both the adventure’s dungeons:
Grab a mecha figure, pose it, place it on the game table; each part of the figure corresponds to a location in the dungeon key. Solves for stuff like relative orientation.
Easy!
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To Put Away A Sword is me making a mecha adventure.
Disclaimer: I am not a mecha nerd. I am unfamiliar with most of the genre. Anything I know about Gundam I’ve absorbed by osmosis.
I was mainly into giant robots in childhood. Receiving a Macross figure for my birthday. Pouring over the manual for The Crescent Hawks’ Revenge, which my brother left behind:
While I was not much a fan of mecha, I was very much a fan of Evangelion. I spent my middle teens obsessed with it. The biomechanical, pseudo-mystical stuff; the teen angst. I wanted to be Shinji. I thought trauma was so cool.
So cringe. Anyway:
One of the inspirations for To Put Away A Sword is the survivors-rebuilding-a-town-and-planting-rice sequence in Thrice Upon A Time; probably my favourite part of the whole franchise, now.
The joy and difficulties of trying to build your paradise in the weird ruins of the old world:
Yeah, the adventure has a lot of Evangelion in it. There’s a Nerv HQ analogue to explore. There’s a content warning for child soldiers.
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The other inspiration for To Put Away A Sword is this piece of box art, an accessory set for Macross’s iconic Stonewell Bellcom VF-1 Variable Fighter:
I don’t know what this kind of arrange-your-missiles-in-front-of-your-fighter-jet photo is technically called. Hardware porn parade?
You see it often enough. Here’s a real-life photo of the Lockheed Martin F35 Joint Strike Fighter:
Fairly or not, in my head I associate mecha with seeing copies of Jane’s Defence in airport magazine racks. The genre feels like such a natural way to riff on the hyper-charged corpo-military-industrial complex.
After the brush war ends, and the natural resources extracted, and the ethnic cleansing concluded, and the profits announced, who gets to clean up after a Raytheon missile?
In To Put Away A Sword—you do.
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Ultimately, as always, I am writing and designing from my lived experiences.
See that? The gas flare from the Hengyuan Refining Company? It is about 200 metres from my living room.
That gas flare surfaces constantly in the stuff I make. As I write this post I am breathing its acrid chemical smell. My nose itches. I was asthmatic as a child; I seriously worry about cancer, nowadays.
At night it lights up the sky like Barad-dur.
The plant obviously and continuously flaunts regulations. We’ve tried lodging complaints: with its corporate management; with the Department of Environment. Nothing has worked so far.
“A home on poisoned earth” is a visceral fact of my life.
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To Put Away A Sword is wish-fulfilment, I guess? In the world of the adventure, at least, the forces that are poisoning your home are post-peak oil.
It is nice to imagine a reality where a kind of survival and flourishing is still possible. My partner Sharon and I talk a lot about imagining hope.
Last month she bought this small mecha-looking thing. A wireless camera! She built a little hut for it on our garden wall. It is trained, 24-7, at the gas flare.
Environmental activists we’ve met say video evidence of emissions is important. We’ll see. We imagine it helping.
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Anyway. David just sent me this photo of my adventure, in print:
Looking good. I hope folks play it and enjoy it.
Preorder ECO MOFOS and its adventure bundle >>>HERE<<<
EVANGELION
Neon Genesis Evangelion was my whole identity, when I was fifteen.
I was an angsty boy from a small town. I longed to have a fiery redhead be mean to me (or to just meet one); to be part of world-ending events (or to be part of a clique that mattered); to pilot a god (or to just feel powerful in my own body).
As I grew up I’ve managed to sublimate those longings, I guess?
All my middle-age aches tell me my body is friend who cannot be taken for granted; their are not a flesh-tool. On good writing days, I do feel like I make some meaning in the world.
And, while I’ve still never met a fiery redhead—I no longer see Westerners as aspirational, so meeting them now feels human instead of symbolic.
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Last year I watched the Rebuild series through. I liked it! Parts of the new movies remind me of Shin Godzilla (my favourite Hideaki Anno work).
Some notes:
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1. CAD leads to overdesign
True when Tim Burton got CGI; true when Games Workshop started to sculpt minis on computers; true for the nonsense Evas, Unit 05 onwards, and that over-busy flying SDF-1 knockoff. I mean, what the fuck am I looking at here???
And while some stuff like the Eva 07s are neat (they’ve got these skull + pharaoh-chin designs), it’s moot because you can barely see them, because they only appear in scenes like this:
So dumb, so dumb.
The new angels were sick, though. Because when you overdesign by computer you pass into the realm of the inhuman, and the angels are supposed to be eldritch inhuman creatures.
Sahaquiel was my favourite re-designed angel. It got these ridges that look like leaping evangelical choirs.
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2. Meta-indulgence
I’ve aged out of thinking that breaking the fourth wall is clever. I did like the meta stuff in last film, though? Calls back on the series finale + End of Evangelion. But crucially it felt really different.
It felt like a satisfying (and kinder!) end to the characters’ stories; more satisfying closure for the fans. It felt like Anno was saying goodbye to his demons, putting the franchise to bed, and turning off the lights. Moving on.
(All instantly rendered moot when they announce a new Evangelion project / tie-in / whatever. Because of course they will. Because Capitalism.)
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3. Rebuilding
The best part of Thrice Upon A Time is the first third of the film: minutiae from a community of survivors trying to pick themselves up from the end of the world. Planting rice, arranging hot baths, playing with pregnant cats.
Evangelion finally got some actual, undashed hope.
The whole movie could’ve just been this—the characters staying in this small town, dealing with their demons, learning how to feel and heal and actually live the lives that were stolen from them.
That would’ve been a really good way to end, honestly.
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4. Child soldiers
The most obvious thing about Evangelion is this:
its protagonists, the pilots of the giant mechas, are emotionally and physically tortured preteens, gaslit and manipulated by every adult they meet.
This is a show about the use and abuse of children. My teenage self never clocked it. Hm, I wonder why!
Maybe because I didn’t yet have the discursive tools to understand that stuff; 2000 was a different time, after all.
Maybe I didn’t care. Surrogate mommy please kiss me and dangle that sex-carrot so I’ll go kill the world, oh yeah! Use me, mommy!
Because when you’re that young you’d do anything to be treated as important, as an adult. You want to be used, because being used means you are legitimate.
And nothing is as legitimate as suffering.
GRANDAUNT NGENG WILL NOT MARRY
Ngeng ap Ten was no grandaunt then—her breasts stood high, her arms were masts, her hair flowed like the night breeze freely.
And like all young chieftesses she was quick to folly. She would not flee from a fight. She looked at the Zum King, saw his soft belly, his pale lips. She judged that she could not lose. She would have been right.
She kissed her spear and said: “I accept your challenge, o king. Should I win you will never seek me again, and live in peace always.”
He pointed his sword and said: “I accept your terms, o queen. Should I win you will give me your hand, and rule with me in splendor now and ever.”
Ngeng ap Ten laughed aloud and answered: “Never!”
She was no grandaunt then—her eyes glared fire, her fists were mallets, and her hair swirled like a storm approaching.
Spear haft sang, spear point shrieked. But though the Zum King was slow, unskilled, she found she could not fight him. Her thrusts were forced away. Her slashes she threw aside. She found she would not spill his blood.
She dropped her spear and said: “Calumny! Treachery. My own right hand betrays me!”
He sheathed his sword and said: “I am a son of the gods of heaven. No mortal arm may hurt a star.”
The Zum King offered her his open palm and said: “Come!”
Ngeng ap Ten was no grandaunt then—her heart beat steady, her brow an unbowed arch, her hair hung still like a veil never to be parted.
With her left hand she seized his sword. With his sword she severed her right arm at the elbow. This she offered to him, in accordance to his terms. He asked for her hand, if he won. It was her hand that she gave him.
Thus the Zum King, who thought to trick Ngeng ap Ten, was tricked in turn, and went home to his city with a wife he could not marry.
So it has been to this day: that the kings of Zum rule palace and markets with an arm now bone as their scepter.
Thus Ngeng ap Ten, who thought to best her enemies with might, learned guile instead, and paid a limb for wisdom.
So it has been to this day: that she is our Grandaunt Ngeng, living ever free and alone in the heart of the wood.
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This is a self-congratulatory post.
The above fable is part of an adventure I have just I have finished writing, for the Cairn 2E Boxed Set. The adventure itself is titled: A Tide Returning.
It is now in layout, and will receive proper art and cartography by proper artists. (These sketches are my own personal studies.)
Of late I have been doing poorly, mental- and emotional-health-wise—so it is a wonder I finished anything at all. I am glad I finished A Tide Returning. I am pretty proud of it.
A little shy, because it retreads the same general themes as a lot of my past work—the mangrove setting; colonial-capitalist violence done to a people and landscape.
Am rationalising the above worry thusly:
I have now written a trilogy of TTRPG adventures, set at the beginning (Lorn Song Of The Bachelor), middle (A Tide Returning), and end (Spy In The House Of Eth) of a settler-colonial project. Taken together, they make the point that:
- Colonial projects are long-term, violent throughout, and an evil not simply halted by the defeat any single Big Bad.
But also that:
- Resistance is as long, and as tenacious, and righteous action is its own victory.
Thank you Yochai for letting me write this thing.
PS: the header image is that of the Heritiera littoralis, or looking-glass mangrove—the kind of tree Grandaunt Ngeng appears as, in the adventure.
How To Play The Revolution
So: I do not like the idea of TTRPGs making formal mechanics designed to incentivise ethical play.
But, to be honest, I do not like the idea of any single game pushing any particular formal mechanics about ethical play at all.
So here I am, trying to think through the reasons why, and proposing a solution. (Sort of. A procedure, really.)
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Assumptions:
1.
Some genres of game resist ethical play. A grand strategy game dehumanises people into census data. The fun of a shooter is violence. This is truest in videogames, but applies to tabletop games also.
Games can question their own ethics, to an extent. Terra Nil is an anti-city-builder. But it is a management game at heart, so may elide critiques of “efficiency = virtue”.
Not all games should try to design for ethical play. I believe games that incentivise “bad” behaviour have a lot to teach us about those behaviours, if you approach them with eyes open.
2.
The systems that currently govern our real lives are terrible: oligarchy, profit motive; patriarchy, nation-states, ethno-centrisms. They fuel our problems: class and sectarian strife, destruction of climate and people, spiritual desertification.
They are so total that the aspiration to ethical behaviour is subsumed by their logics. See: social enterprise; corpos and occupying forces flying rainbow flags; etc.
Nowadays, when I hear “ethical”, I don’t hear “we remember to be decent”. I hear “we must work to be better”. Good ethics is radical transformation.
3.
If a videogame shooter crosses a line for you, your only real response is to stop playing. This is true for other mechanically-bounded games, like CCGs or boardgames.
In TTRPGs, players have the innate capability to act as their own referees. (even in GM-ed games adjudications are / should be by consensus.) If you don’t like certain aspects of a game, you could avoid it—but also you could change it.
Only in TTRPGs can you ditch basic rules of the game and keep playing.
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So:
D&D’s rules are an engine for accumulation: more levels, more power, more stuff, more numbers going up.
If you build a subsystem in D&D for egalitarian action, but have to quantify it in ways legible to the game’s other mechanical parts—what does that mean? Is your radical aspiration feeding into / providing cover for the game’s underlying logics of accumulation?
At the very least it feels unsatisfactory—“non-representative of what critique / revolution entails as a rupture,” to quote Marcia, in conversations we’ve been having around this subject, over on Discord.
How do we imagine and represent rupture, to the extent that the word “revolution” evokes?
My proposal: we rupture the game.
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How To Play The Revolution
Over the course of play, your player-characters have decided to begin a revolution:
An armed struggle against an invader; overturning a feudal hierarchy; a community-wide decision to abandon the silver standard.
So:
Toss out your rule book and sheets.
And then:
Keep playing.
You already know who your characters are: how they prefer to act; what they are capable of; how well they might do at certain tasks; what their context is. You and your group are quite capable of improv-ing what happens next.
Of course, this might be unsatisfactory; you are here to play a TTRPG, after all. Structures are fun. Therefore:
Decide what the rules of your game will be, going forward.
Which rules you want to keep. Which you want to discard. Jury-rig different bits from different games. Shoe-horn a tarot deck into a map-making game—play that. Be as comprehensive or as freeform as you like. Patchwork and house-rule the mechanics of your new reality.
The god designer will not lead you to the revolution. You broke the tyranny of their design. You will lead yourself. You, as a group, together. The revolution is DIY.
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Notes:
This is mostly a thought experiment into a personal obsession. I am genuinely tempted to write a ruleset just so I can stick the above bit into it as a codified procedure.
I am tickled to imagine how the way this works may mirror the ways revolutions have played out in history.
A group might already have alternative ruleset in mind, that they want to replace the old ruleset with wholesale. A vanguard for their preferred system.
Things could happen piecemeal, progressively. Abandon fiat currency and a game’s equipment price list. Adopt pacifism and replace the combat system with an alternative resolution mechanic. As contradictions pile up, do you continue, or revert?
Discover that the shift is too uncomfortable, too unpredictable, and default back to more familiar rules. The old order reacting, reasserting itself.
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I keep returning to this damn idea, of players crossing thresholds between rulesets through the course of play. The Revolution is a rupture of ethical reality like Faerie or the Zone is a rupture in geography.
But writing all this down is primarily spurred by this post from Sofinho talking about his game PARIAH and the idea that “switching games/systems mid-session” is an opportunity to explore different lives and ethics:
Granted this is not an original conceit (I’m not claiming to have done anything not already explored by Plato or Zhuangzi) but I think it’s a fun possibility to present to your players: dropping into a parallel nightmare realm where their characters can lead different lives and chase different goals.
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Jay Dragon tells me she is already exploring this idea in a new game, Seven Part Pact:
“the game mechanics are downright oppressive but also present the capacity to sunder them utterly, so the only way to behave ethically is to reject the rules of the game and build something new.”
VINDICATION! If other designers are also thinking along these lines this means the idea isn’t dumb and I’m not alone!
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( Images:
https://www.thestranger.com/race/2017/04/05/25059127/if-you-give-a-cop-a-pepsi
