Regular readers will know that my favorite role-playing setting is Professor M.A.R. Barker's world of Tekumel. Yet in spite of a lavish release by TSR in the mid-1970s, Empire of the Petal Throne never achieved a hundredth of the success of Dungeons and Dragons.That used to baffle me. But when I raised my head out of the fantasy gamebook market and started working in other media, I began to see the view from outside the geek box I'd been living in all my life.
It's a simple enough proposition: most people want to connect to characters that are like them. I guess that's why 75 million Americans queued up for Avatar and only a few hundred thousand went to see Atanarjuat the Fast Runner. Soulful blue fellas with the regulation fantasy apostrophe in their name seem less alien to multiplex audiences than Inuit hunters of their own species.
I shudder at that, yet I know I'd never get my group to show up for an Atanarjuat RPG campaign. Even introducing new players to the wonders of Tekumel calls for careful coaxing, like getting a wild mustang to take the bit. The Game Whisperer, that's me.
Typically, fantasy role-playing games use the same technique to create relatability as you see in Hollywood movies. Most Arabian Nights movies, for example, have obviously Westernized and very modern main characters. The world of D&D is successful (ish) because it's a theme park version of the Middle Ages. Miss Marple becomes a sexy thirtysomething because audiences can't connect to a seventy-five-year-old. No use fighting it, that's the way the world is.
When you're designing a role-playing campaign, do you ask your players to make an imaginative leap and enter a different culture? Or do you let them play themselves in funny clothes? More thoughts on the vexed question of relatability here.
I saw Atanarjuat in the cinema, to the bafflement of my friends.
ReplyDeleteSame here, Fabian. In fact I dragged my friend and fellow gamer Steve Foster along and, although he was too polite to say anything, I don't think he liked it.
ReplyDeleteWe tried a game set in the Stone Age with shamans, animal spirits, shapechangers, warring tribes, etc. The group never really got into it because it was hard to think of adventures.
ReplyDeleteToo bad, Stephane, as it sounds like a great campaign setting. If your umpire wanted to give it another try, he/she could get some adventure ideas from Mezolith, the GN by Ben Haggerty and Adam Brockbank - or from any number of myths and folktales.
ReplyDeleteNo, no, do fight it! Chaos might inevitably win, but you can delay it.
ReplyDeleteWait (double takes) - Fabian, you have the evil Brigadier as your photo? Cool.
ReplyDeleteFear not, DrBargle, Jamie and I will stand against the tide till the last howling hordes come boiling up from Niflheim. Just keep a keg of beer beside us and be ready to feed the ammo belt.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. I'm not familiar with the Petal Throne game, but I did read "The Man of Gold" a number of years ago, and I enjoyed it. Perhaps I should look into that some more...
ReplyDeleteI did like the film, but it left me feeling a bit chilly!
ReplyDeleteSteve
That's "Brigade Leader" to you.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to come up with a pitch to sell my group on a Runequest game with the characters as Neolithic tribesmen in Balazar. I think they may miss their +3 swords.
John, Tekumel is definitely worth a look. There are several earlier posts about it on this blog that'll give you a taste.
ReplyDeleteSteve, I remember that was the only 3 hours of leisure time you had that weekend, so I'm glad after a decade of feeling guilty that you did enjoy it after all :)
Brigade Leader - er, Fabian - the original route into Abraxas was with the players as members of one of two Upper Palaeolithic settlements. But I got so interested in that that I would never have actually got them to Abraxas!
I think that people have a hard time getting into it for the same reason that I have a hard time getting into all of that Tekumel stuff- I don't like to read setting material. Whew, I said it.
ReplyDeleteI mostly like to take the rules and then play whatever pops into my head.
Vaguely European medival stuff is the easiest, since everybody's seen movies about dragons and wizards and stuff, and it's not too much of a stretch to introduce one bizarre monster at a time. Asking somebody to remember all the names and places and monsters all at once is a bit rough, especially when you're supposed to interact with it from the start. It's too much buy in for some people.
Not that I don't like reading about it, you understand, just that it'd be hard to have the confidence to run it "right."
Maybe there's too much source material for Tekumel. When I started playing it I just spent a couple of hours with the original EPT book, we rolled up some characters and got started. Now I guess people feel intimidated by how much they have to learn - though, of course, it's not an exam. You don't have to learn it, and Prof Barker himself says, "There is no 'right' way to play Tekumel. Once you've bought the book it's your Tekumel, play it however you like."
ReplyDeleteThat can't be the reason why so many players prefer games set in fantasy medieval Europe (well, actually fantasy medieval Disneyland) though, 'cause most people would have just as much of an idea of ancient Greece, Rome, etc. I'm not saying they'd have the *right* idea of those places - but Prof Barker's comment still applies.
I think it's just fashion. Go back the the pulp era and you see lots of different types of fantasy: REH, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Fritz Leiber, etc. But since Tolkien in the '60s, and then D&D in the '70s, it kind of settled into this generically medieval/European flavor. I'm hoping John Carter of Mars will encourage some new (or old) fantasy fashions.
Will order the movie from Amazon, as it seems impossible to buy here in Sweden - what a shame!
ReplyDeleteReading your post I realize why I´ve always enjoyed Skyrealms of Jorune. I guess that game is my "Tekumel". Alien worlds to explore and improvise in. The rules suck but there are endless possibilites to solve that minor problem. The important this is, as always, the atmosphere. It was years ago I even looked at my copy. Thanks for reminding me!
On this topic: Do read "Cold Skin" by Albert Sánchez Piñol! Highly recommended.
Thanks for the tip, Joakim. And yes, Jorune is another really original RPG world that's certainly a long way from medieval/fantasy Europe. I wish there were more of them.
ReplyDeleteSpecific genres come and go, but I think that story-telling has been divided into genres of some kind for at least as long as there has been written literature, and probably always will be. Readers and listeners like to stick with what is familiar, which is then copied, emulated, remains in print, etc. We can be grateful that with the accessible media of modern times, the more alien and exotic visions can find their champions to keep them alive. Only occasionally has a strange and anomalous relic survived from antiquity or the medieval world, such as the Hisperica Famina. If an imaginative Ancient Greek wrote his or her own "Atanarjuat", perhaps about the nomads on the plains of Inner Asia, we will probably never know.
ReplyDeleteWe see the same patterns in evolution. A new medium means a rich diversity of forms that narrows down towards attractor points that are shaped both by the environment (or culture, in the case of artistic expression) and the continuing orbit of other attractor points (eg photography affecting painting). Eventually you have dinosaurs like "medieval" "European" fantasy - and then I find myself checking my watch for the next meteor.
ReplyDeleteJust found this from one of your recent posts discussing Kickstarter. Believe it or not, I saw Atanarjuat at the cinema also. By strange freakish coincidence (there are many arthouse films that I don't see).
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed it very much.