The distant future... ...the year 2000

I thought the world would be better if more people saw this:

Conan and Racism

In my continuing project to talk about On Mighty Thews until everyone is sick of hearing about it, here are some things I've been thinking about as I delve into the source material. I've been doing a lot of critical thinking about the pulp fantasy genre, especially Howard's Conan stories, which are my first and greatest love in the genre.

Loving Conan puts me in a pretty difficult position though, given the incredible racism of the stories. How racist are we talking? Pretty damn racist:

The blonde Achaians, Gauls and Britons, for instance, were descendants of pure-blooded AEsir... ...and from pure-blooded Shemites, or Shemites mixed with Hyborian or Nordic blood, were descended the Arabs, the Israelites, and other straighter-featured Semites. - in "The Hyborian Age"

People try to dismiss the racism of the stories by comparing them to other sources from the time, saying Howard was just echoing views popular at the time the stories were written. I'm not convinced. It doesn't make it less racist just because everyone else was doing it too. If you want to make an argument about whether this makes REH a bad person or just someone who lived in a less enlightened time, then go ahead. That's not my issue. I don't care about REH the person, and whether I'd have him over for dinner or whatever. What was going on in his head doesn't matter. What matters is what he wrote, and what he wrote is unambiguously racist:

The hut door opened, and a black woman entered - a lithe pantherish creature, whose supple body gleamed like polished ebony, adorned only by a wisp of silk twisted about her strutting loins. The white of her eyeballs reflected the firelight outside, as she rolled them with wicked meaning. - in "Vale of Lost Women"

So I used to say that I liked Conan despite the racism, that I "read around it", enjoying the action stories and glossing over the racism. But that never quite sat right with me. It felt like a cop out. Racism is so central to what the books are about. The whole theme of the stories is about the difference between civilisation and savagery. Ignoring the racial politics of the stories seems like missing the point. And besides, when I thought about it, I didn't "read around" the racism. I actually enjoyed reading those parts.

Now, maybe it's just the thrill of the forbidden. A guilty pleasure, indulging in the taboo. Maybe it's the seductive simplicity of it, shrugging off the weight of history and enjoying the power and priviledge of being white. That's a pretty ugly thought, and I'd like to think it's completely untrue. But if I'm being honest, there's probably a bit of that going on.

But there's also something else. It was reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan of the Apes" that threw it into relief for me. Tarzan was a big influence on Howard, I'm sure (Burroughs' description of the "Cimmerian darkness" of the jungle seems like an irresistible clue for a possible Conan origin). Burroughs' racisim shares some traits with Howard's:

Presently they reached the center of the village. There D'Arnot was bound securely to the great post from which no live man had ever been released.

A number of the women scattered to their several huts to fetch pots and water, while others built a row of fires on which portions of the feast were to be boiled while the balance would be slowly dried in strips for future use, as they expected the other warriors to return with many prisoners. The festivities were delayed awaiting the return of the warriors who had remained to engage in the skirmish with the white men, so that it was quite late when all were in the village, and the dance of death commenced to circle around the doomed officer.

Half fainting from pain and exhaustion, D'Arnot watched from beneath half-closed lids what seemed but the vagary of delirium, or some horrid nightmare from which he must soon awake.

The bestial faces, daubed with color—the huge mouths and flabby hanging lips—the yellow teeth, sharp filed—the rolling, demon eyes—the shining naked bodies—the cruel spears. Surely no such creatures really existed upon earth—he must indeed be dreaming.

The savage, whirling bodies circled nearer. Now a spear sprang forth and touched his arm. The sharp pain and the feel of hot, trickling blood assured him of the awful reality of his hopeless position.

Another spear and then another touched him. He closed his eyes and held his teeth firm set—he would not cry out.

He was a soldier of France, and he would teach these beasts how an officer and a gentleman died. - in "Tarzan of the Apes"

But then there is also this characiture of a black servant, Esmerelda:

Esmeralda opened her eyes. The first object they encountered was the dripping fangs of the hungry lioness.
With a horrified scream the poor woman rose to her hands and knees, and in this position scurried across the room, shrieking: "O Gaberelle! O Gaberelle!" at the top of her lungs.
Esmeralda weighed some two hundred and eighty pounds, and her extreme haste, added to her extreme corpulency, produced a most amazing result when Esmeralda elected to travel on all fours.
For a moment the lioness remained quiet with intense gaze directed upon the flitting Esmeralda, whose goal appeared to be the cupboard, into which she attempted to propel her huge bulk; but as the shelves were but nine or ten inches apart, she only succeeded in getting her head in; whereupon, with a final screech, which paled the jungle noises into insignificance, she fainted once again. - in "Tarzan of the Apes"

That was really hard to read for me. It was ugly. It felt like an insult, unneccesary hatred sitting in the book like a turd on a tablecloth.

So what's the difference? Why am I cool with reading about "naked savages" and "primitives", but not with Burroughs' caricature?

Here's what I think it is:

I don't believe that an author's intent matters when you're interpreting that work. I don't think Howard's personal racism matters to how we interpret his work. I don't like Farenheit 451 any less knowing that Ray Bradbury thinks it's all about the evils of television. He's wrong. What matters is the words on the page, and how we interpret them in this, modern context. So how do I interpret Howard's Conan stories?

I think the Conan stories, taken as a whole, are about the position of "Man" in the universe, between poles of civilisation and savagery, between the cultured world of cities and technology and sophistication, and the howling wilderness. On the one hand, there is the corruption of civilisation, the filth and the lies and the weakness. Howard has a strong vein of homophobia running through his depiction of civilisation. It is a weakening influence. It makes men soft.

On the other hand, there is the throbbing, black, remorseless jungle. Here, strength prevails, but it is an awful strength, devoid of reason. The primitives are strong but ultimately disgusting, stupid, bent to the will of a stronger white man.

What I see in Howard's Conan is the confrontation of white supremacy with the undeniable humanity of black people. It's an attempt to reconcile the position of white people in a world of increasing social change. It reveals the concurrent fascination with and horror of blackness in our society. The savage is both more powerfully masculine, and yet less fully human, stronger, more vital, and yet more cowed to a stronger will. I think Conan himself is an embodiment of the fantasy of the white man to be fully master of both the savage and the civilised, and yet it's an uneasy fantasy. Conan is a monster. We love him, and yet we are repelled by him.

What if, when we ignore Howard's obviously racist intent in writing the stories, we can see his Conan works not as racist texts, but as texts about racism?

I think that reading Conan today, it reads as a perfect parody of every fear white people have about black people, as an examination of the paradox of the myth of the savage Other. I think Conan shows the natural conclusion of our peverse constructions of the meaning of whiteness and blackness, hysterical masculinty, the peverse fetishisation of purity, justifications for colonialism and slavery, and the continuing opression of people of colour.

On Mighty Thews - The Grind

I'm working now on layout and design for On Mighty Thews. It's coming along, but it's a long hard process where I'm having to teach myself how to do everything before I even get to the step of making design decisions and implimenting them. I'm getting pretty handy with Photoshop and my layout program now.

I've had some invaluable assistance from Joshua Newman and others at Joshua's design studio. Seriously I don't think this thing would have come together at all without that forum.

On the publishing front, I'm in discussions with Malcolm Craig about a deal to get the game printed with Contested Ground's help. Living in New Zealand makes it punishingly expensive and monumentally difficult to publish overseas, and I think Malcolm's help is gonna make publication possible.

At this stage the whole thing is pure grind. Enthusiasm and love of the game will only get you so far, and I think that dried up for me a while ago. Now I'm running on determination and guilt. I've spent money on this thing, so I'm gonna at least recoup those costs, or break myself trying. I still have faith that it's a good game, a great game even, and much better than it was when I started the publishing process. But the step between "game that's fun for me and my friends and that works fine when I run it" and "game that's reliably fun for people running the game straight out of the book, and that consistently contributes to fun play" was larger than I ever imagined.

I was always an advocate of publishing free games, and I think that worked well for me in the early stages of this design. The ability for the game to be done, and then to come back to it with fresh eyes having received some great external playtesting was invaluable. But I think for me at least the hurdle of taking this game from free on the internet to a thing people spend actual money on has driven me to make the game better than I ever thought it could be. It started as a thing I banged out in five minutes to give me and a friend something to do, and now I think it's a provocative, fun, and sometimes challenging game, with a few genuine innovations.

I think what gives me the drive to actually finish this thing is not my own enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm of others. I'm a productive writer. I've written maybe four or five games since the first draft of On Mighty Thews, but they're all mouldering in my hard drive. They've all helped me to improve as a designer, and been interesting experiments, but I doubt any of them will go firther than they already have. On Mighty Thews is the game I'm taking to completion, and that's fuelled by the enthusiastic contributions of the people who have played the game.

On Mighty Thews

A while ago on his blog Vincent posted a thing about the "Three Insights" that go into creating an RPG. He says:

First, you're saying something about the subject matter or genre of your game: something you think about adventure fiction, or swords & sorcery, or transhumanist sf, or whatever. Second, you're saying something about roleplaying as a practice, taking a position on how real people should collaborate under these circumstances. Third, you're sying something about real live human nature.

Here's the insights of my game "On Mighty Thews", which will be published this year.

1) Pulp fantasy like Conan, Tarzan, and all the derivative stuff like Jongor and Throngor and so on is basically about "Man's" position between civilisation and nature. Leiber, and then later Moorcock, were more about the tension between predestination and free will. What these things have in common is that the philosophical contradictions exist within the protagonist (Tarzan is a white man raised in the jungle, Conan is a savage mastering the ways of civilisation) but are never resolved within the protagonist. Tarzan never chooses the jungle or civilisation. Conan remains unchanged by his adventures in the civilised world. Elric never meets his fate. Instead, the protagonists inflict their contradictions on the world around them. The adventures are a lens for examining the contradiction at the core of the protagonist.

2) Creativity is kind of a product of the friction between freedom and constraint. Everyone contributing a small, obvious step can create a big, unexpected whole. The tension between protagonists trying to get what they want, and the world standing in their way creates a canvas for players to create a story.

3) I think people are the sum of their actions. We don't have an "inherant nature", and there isn't a "true" self. We exist as competing narratives and the expressions of such. We are what other people think of us.

Until recently, I think I struggled to realise these three insights well in the context of the game. Especially the first. The game was functioning well at producing interesting characters, and good plot. It flows well, with the creative burden passing around the table. But the story of most games never really exceeded pastiche. It was an imitation of a sword-and-sorcery story, rather than an original composition.

But a small change in the rules has, I think, changed all that.

In "On Mighty Thews" you start play by making a map of the world in which the game will take place. Everyone draws a couple of things on the map, and you end up with an exciting world of adventure and mystery. But it always felt a little flat. Sometimes there'd be original and compelling additions, but often they were kind of uninteresting. What was missing was the symbolic import of the locations on the map - their meaning in the world.

I've always been fascinated by old maps of the world - the way the geography was organised into a culturally-specific structure. Roads radiating from Rome. The Vatican as the center of the know world. Christian nations surrounded by the infidel. I wanted some of that symbolic meaning for my maps in "On Mighty Thews".

Characters in On Mighty Thews have a "d20 trait" which is the theme their character exposits. A character with the trait "Violent" will get a small advantage for every scene in which they are violent, and a large bonus for individual actions in which they are non-violent. Through play we see a picture of a person halfway between violence and non-violence. They are neither one nor the other.

My new rule for On Mighty Thews is that before you start drawing your map of the world, you mark "poles" on the map, and write your characters' d20 traits next to those poles. Things on the map near the poles take on the nature of that trait. People who live near the pole of Violence have a culture steeped in violence, while people grow more peaceful as you travel away from it. In this way, the themes of the characters are writ large in the world around them. Their tension becomes not just an internal tension , but a literal struggle between forces in the world. The characters are outsiders, not fitting into any part of the world with ease. They live on borders, they travel, they are wanderers and adventurers, bearing with them the inevitable contradictions of the world around them.

Mountain Witch

Last night was the first session of a planned four-session game of the Mountain Witch. TMW's a bit passe now it seems, since everyone's played it so many times, and even I've played it a lot, though this is the first multi-session game of it I've played.

There are things about the game though, which I think are still very interesting in play, and that aren't really present in many other games. Specifically, the way that the Dark Fates create a frisson of secrecy around characters actions, how everything the characters do and say is imbued with a deeper significance because it all gives clues to the Dark Fates, is surprisingly enjoyable even after playing the game a number of times.

I think multi-session play definitely makes the game shine. The limited scenario makes it a tempting game for scenario play, but the development of characters that comes across multiple sessions is adding so much to the game.

With four sessions to play with, I let the first session build very slowly, with almost no conflicts at all. We started play with the Ronin showing up in a grimy sakeya in the village at the foot of the mountain. The terrified villagers make their offer, and the Ronin each accepts. This let the players introduce their character in interesting and often significant ways. Some of them were clearly just in it for the money, while others appeared to genuinely care for the villagers.

We left on a cliffhanger, with the hostess of a dilapidated teahouse who had taken the Ronin in for the night transforming into her Ogre husband. Suitably bizarre for Japanese myth, and certainly a surprise for the Ronin, who were taking an onsen after a hearty meal of the local specialty, live nore sore.

KKKKKK

That's Kazekami Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan, not Kabbalistic Kleptomaniacs Kidnap Ku Klux Klansmen, or anything else.

I'm playing it with a friend on wave, and enjoying the heck out of it all over again. Playing Kyoko instead of the Khan is making me appreciate games with different rules for different character types, and the whole structure of the game, which feels like a kind of shadow-boxing or Capoeira display, is making me thing about Mo's "Push and Pull" in a way that makes it super relevant to game design.

I keep thinking that the game shouldn't work, that there's nothing to push against, that I'll fall over, and yet it keeps working, just fine. As a rule, I dislike games that are just free creation of fiction, without tension or consequences. And yet the game has subtleties that make it work, that provide friction and consequence.

Too much out-of-play discussion would collapse the game, I think, turning it into just another creative writing exercise. But the uncertainty of expectations, the tension between your desires for the story, the other player's desires, and then the sexual nature of the content, preserves a feeling that each statement is a concrete "move" in a game where something real is at stake.

Alien World discovered in Math

http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html

Woah!