Drinking tea, eating bread and cheese, feeling like Epicurus.
A nugget seen in Patrick Stuart’s review of Gus L.’s adventure:
… there is somewhere to go from (civilisation) and go to (the ’wild’) … [or] staying in the ’to’ - which is maybe survival meets empire building … [or] staying in the ’from’ where you are still in civilisation and may to extra-legal things … [but] go from the wilds into civilisation and then go back to the wilds, I haven’t seen that very much - we could maybe call that the Tarzan game, or a Conan game. – A Review of 'Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier' by Gus L
A Review of 'Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier' by Gus L
I posted this on Mastodon and got into a short exchange with @Yora. The following is my elaboration on what I found to be interesting about it all.
I think Patrick’s point is that a game of expeditions into the unknown is about going from civilisation into the wilderness. My contention is that the civilisation part of the adventure consists of buying stuff and gathering information in town before leaving; there is no implication that this generates engaging situations. The part that you are leaving (civilisation) is not emphasised.
Conversely, in the reverse game of “barbarians come to town” the part that you are leaving is not emphasised. You don’t need much wilderness.
In the game of expeditions into the unknown, civilisation can be a shop keep, city guards, a temple, a sage and that’s it. In the barbarians come to town game, the wilderness might only need the names of tribes and their customs. It could be a Fantasy immigration game.
For example: The Cimmerians in Metropolis recognise each other by their long black hair and their round faces; the people from Kush wear those earrings and scarfs and invite each other for tea before doing business; the Scythians know how to heal a wound by singing to the sky god and how to dispose of the dead using their vulture towers; if you need a place to sleep, you know the Helveti will always let you sleep above the goat barn. You play as Cimmerians, Kushites, Scythians or Helveti, you find places to sleep, places to heal, places to drink tea, you adventure as unskilled labour building an aqueduct, signing up for the legion, stealing from merchants, and then you return to the wilderness, to distribute the loot, help strengthen your tribe, and so on. And next year you return to the city to do your stuff. That would be a game of “barbarians come to town”.
In B/X, the price lists for equipment is maybe a page in the book. In our reversed game, we’d also use just a single page about the wilderness to set the tone. Instead of tons of rules about dungeon exploration we’d have a ton of rules about building projects, military campaigns, infiltration, crime, intrigue, chariot racing.
The big issue I have, however is colonialism. The way I see it, inverse colonialism is still colonialism, except now the signifiers for being foreigners are worn by player characters, but as the author of the game you’re still ascribing properties to barbarians like a colonizer. Like: Oh yeah, earrings and scarfs, eh? And drinking tea? Why not add opium smoking to the mix? Or: Why use an uninformed pastiche of Zoroastrianism as a signifier of being foreign? Valid questions. You have to find a balance where you can still play a game of immigration while minimizing the happy serenity of being a blissfully unaware colonizer blabbing your prejudices.
Just like a classic wilderness crawl should hopefully let us think about colonialism and conquest, the reverse game would let us think about colonialism and exploitation of people on the move – while still allowing for a good game.
I just wonder what sort of city adventures barbarians would have. Perhaps we can look at that suggested beginning of a new Tékumel campaign: barbarians stepping of the boat and into a foreign city. Except that for this to be a long form “barbarians come to town” our player characters would return to their families and friends after the adventure.
It might work.
#RPG