Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy,rec.games.frp.misc From: [i--z--e] at [hogshead.demon.co.uk] (James Wallis) Subject: IMAZINE 21 X-Mailer: cppnews $Revision: 1.41 $ Date: Wed, 9 Nov 1994 03:56:58 +0000 I M A Z I N E ROLEGAMING QUARTERLY ISSN 0267-5595 Issue 21 Autumn 1994 Editor: Paul Mason This publication is FREEWARE. It may be freely copied and distributed on condition that no money is charged. A paper version also exists. All material is copyright the original authors. Contributions may be sent on paper, on disk (IBM formats, Mac 1.44Mb or NEC accepted), or even on CD-ROM. Modem capability is in the works. imazine/Paul Mason, 101 Green Heights, Shimpo-cho 4-50, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464 JAPAN This issue: THE MASQUE OF GOD religion in rolegames IN PRAISE OF PLAGIARISM the future of game design IMAZINE WELCOMES CAREFUL CONTRIBUTORS words on the way the zine works THE WATER MARGIN state of play This magazine exists to provide a forum for discussion and debate on the subject of rolegames. The limits set on this debate are, quite simply, those of the interests of the editor. My approach to rolegames is best described as the 'narrative' approach, by which I mean that I view rolegames as the creation of a story; or more properly, as a set of interlinked stories. I also favour games which emphasise role-playing. Finally, I prefer the experience of games which enable me to explore cultures other than my own. Thus the purpose of this magazine is to stimulate debate on how best to achieve the above objectives. This may be through game mechanics, other forms of rules, or any other aspect of the way the game is conducted. For now, at least, the games which are of most interest to me are 'Tirikelu' ('The Empire of the Petal Throne') and 'The Water Margin', a game about China which I am designing myself. However, this need not exclude anyone who is unfamiliar with either of these two. What's more, 'Tirikelu' already has a fanzine dedicated to it ('The Eye of All-Seeing Wonder', address given on page 8), so there is no necessity for me to carry material for that game. Some readers may remember imazine from its previous incarnation. The last issue was published in the summer of 1988, so it has been a little while since the magazine last appeared. It ceased publication at that time for a number of reasons, one of the most serious being that I ran out of money to subsidise it. I had become increasingly disenchanted with the administrative, commercial aspects of the magazine, which were raising increasing contradictions with the way I envisioned it. Now, thanks to the increased availability of cheap photocopying, and the number of people possessing computers, it is feasible to release the magazine on a freeware basis, so that I have no need to be encumbered by the irritation of shop sales, commercial printing and subscriptions. Other readers may be aware of 'Inter*action' (now retitled 'Interactive Fantasy') and wonder whether imazine is being set up to compete with it. It isn't, of course. Instead, I hope imazine will provide a more relaxed forum for people to explore their ideas before, perhaps, publishing them in 'Interactive Fantasy'. As in the past, imazine will attempt to avoid being too dry or earnest, and will enable people with views about other rolegaming publications and companies to air them in an environment which has no commercial ties or responsibilities. Since there is no debate in this issue, it will be rather thin. It will, however, contain a couple of rants from me, along with the third part of the Masque of God article, dealing with the portrayal of religion in rolegames. In future articles I hope to include discussion on rolegames, and submissions are welcomed from all and sundry. THE MASQUE OF GOD Paul Mason concludes his series on injecting religion into rolegames with a look at the most intensely religious experiences of all: those of the shaman and the mystic. In the previous two articles (imazine 18 and 19, photocopies available on request), I provided reasonably straightforward and structured detail about religion, and the manner in which it manifests in society. In this article I want to go more deeply into the concept of the religious, something which is ignored by almost every rolegame. I'll do this by focusing on the most intensely religious forms: mysticism and shamanism. I describe them as the most intensely religious because I would argue that in these forms, religion pervades and directs the whole of life. The mystic is someone who dedicates the whole of his or her life to the pursuit of the infinite. The shaman is someone who represents the religious in a culture with primitive religion. (I don't use the term 'primitive' in a pejorative sense: I use it to indicate a society which tends to view the world in an undifferentiated, emotive, subjective, rather than a differentiated, scientific, objective manner.) I will first of all offer a brief analysis of the nature of mysticism and shamanism. Following that I'll develop a few ideas on how to represent these features in a rolegame. 'Everyone is conscious of 'being at a point' or of 'having reached a point,' even if this be no more than consciousness of having reached a certain age. Mysticism begins with the consciousness that this point is on a radius. It then proceeds by what might be described as an exploitation of this fact, the radius being a Ray of Divine Mercy which emanates from the Supreme Centre and leads back to it. The point must now become a point of Mercy. In other words, there must be a deliberate realisation or actualisation of the mercy inherent in the point which is the only part of the radius which one can as yet command. This means taking advantage of those possibilities of Mercy which are immediately available, namely the outer formal aspects of religion which, though always within reach, may have been lying entirely neglected or else made use of exoterically, that is, considering the point in isolation without reference to the radius as a whole. The radius itself is the religion's dimension of mysticism; thus in the case of Islam, it is Sufism, which is seen in the light of this symbol to be both particular and universal -- particular in that it is distinct from each of the other radii which represent other mysticisms and universal because, like them, it leads to the One Centre. Our image as a whole reveals clearly the truth that as each mystical path approaches its End it is nearer to the other mysticisms than it was at the beginning.' ('What is Sufism' by Martin Lings). 'Zen is a technique by which a man reaches unity by bringing it to life. It brings into unity the whole of life as lived from hour to hour. It leads to purposelessness, spontaneous, fearless living in which one is freed from the tension of 'What ought I to do or to be?' It is a bird flying through space which has neither length, breadth, height or depth. It has nothing to teach ...' (Unattributed quotation in 'Zen Comes West' by Christian Humphreys.) 'Only the religious virtuoso, the ascetic, the monk, the Sufi, the Dervish strove for sacred values, which were 'otherworldly' as compared with such solid goods of this world as health, wealth and long life. And these otherworldly sacred values were by no means only values of the beyond. This was not the case even where it was understood to be so by the participants. Psychologically considered, man in quest of salvation has been primarily preoccupied by attitudes of the here and now.' (Max Weber, in his book 'Sociology of Religion'). Three comments on mysticism, not necessarily contradictory, but certainly not on the same wavelength. Certain points emerge from them. The commonly held contemporary view of mysticism is that it properly belongs to the realm of the irrational. This is merely a product of our own culture. A consequence of the development of scientific and rationalist thought has been a clear distinction between two realms: the rational and the irrational. However, this distinction is a recent phenomenon. Societies in which religion is strong, and which have not yet developed rationalist thought, will not consider mysticism irrational. It is simply one response to the world. It is too easy to involve mysticism in rolegames as a humorous piece of irrationality. There is humour in mysticism (gags aplenty, in the case of Zen) but comes from within. Mysticism is striving towards a form of unity. In this sense it resembles the primitive religion of the shaman. '[This]...world revolves round the observer who is trying to interpret his experiences. Gradually he separates himself from his environment and perceives his real limitations and powers. Above all this pre-Copernican world is personal. Trickster speaks to creatures, things and parts of things as if they were animate, intelligent beings.' (M. Douglas, in 'Sociology of Religion'). If religion is a distinction between scared and profane, then the deepest forms of religion are those which attempt to make the sacred personal. As I understand Sufism, philosophical Daoism, Chan and the rest, the goal of mysticism is to enter an undifferentiated world. To come at this from another angle, Stark and Glock suggest that 'religiousness' can be assessed with four dimensions: 1. The belief dimension is the most obvious -- concerned with an individual acknowledging the truth of the tenets of the religion. 2. Religious practice consists of acts of worship, rituals and devotional behaviour. 3. The experience dimension is concerned with the sense of contact, however fleeting, with a supernatural agency. 4. The knowledge dimension refers to the possession of information regarding a religion's tenets. It is obvious from this means of categorising religiousness that the mystic is someone for whom the experience dimension is paramount. Their behaviour is entirely geared to this. 'Traditional' religion concentrates on the knowledge and practice dimensions, with the belief dimension being a precondition. Most forms of mysticism suggest that the practice dimension is of worth only for the common people, and that the knowledge dimension is only of ancillary importance (or in some cases, it is regarded as an impediment). For example, in Sufism the Koran is considered to have two meanings: exoteric and esoteric. The exoteric meaning is that followed by most Muslims: a literal interpretation of the scripture and law. For the Sufi, however, the Koran holds an esoteric meaning which reveals the means of approach to the Ultimate. As more of this esoteric meaning is discovered, the exoteric meaning diminishes in importance. A Sufi mystic who has advanced along the road to direct experience of Allah may believe that he is no longer subject to Islamic law. The same idea also applied to the Christian bible in the early days of the religion, before the church ruthlessly stamped out all forms of esotericism and mysticism. Monastics who dabbled in mysticism rather than devoting themselves to the knowledge dimension were always treated with deep suspicion by the central authorities. It is interesting to note that in the last century or so there has been a resurgence in the concept of Christian mysticism, albeit in a variety of non-obvious disguises. Similarly Chan (or Zen, as the Japanese call it) often involves the mystic striving to break down 'rational' knowledge-based thought processes in order to achieve a direct experience of the Ultimate. The stated conception of the Ultimate may apparently differ (in Islam it is Allah, while in Zen it is the immediacy of existence) but the mystic would probably argue that this is an inadequacy of language rather than a genuine difference: a difference that is only apparent at a point along a radius, rather than at the centre. Shamanism represents a fusion of the experience and practice dimensions. The shaman lives in two worlds at once. He is a medium to the Otherworld, and performs rituals which connect the two worlds and allow others to experience the Otherworld. However, the discussion earlier should make it clear that the Otherworld is not simply a 'Land of Faerie', an alternate universe in which magic is the norm and supernatural entities dwell. The shaman has no concept of the supernatural because he has an undifferentiated view of existence. The members of the tribe respect the shaman because of his clearer view of an aspect of reality. He experiences the Infinite more vividly than anyone else. MYSTICAL ROLE-PLAYING Why bother? Because it's a challenge, and a rewarding one at that. If rolegaming is about engrossing yourself in a character, then a mystic represents an extreme. Role-playing a character who is engrossed in God has to be one of the most interesting experiences you can get out of a game. It's all too easy to blow it, though. Any trace of a rationalist, cynical attitude will destroy a mystic. Mystics can deal with other people who have this attitude, but they cannot afford to have it themselves. So the first challenge is to rid yourself of your 20th-century programming. Forget simple causal logic. Forget the difference between subjectivity and objectivity. You could try a neat gimmick like meditating on Zen koan (such as the sound made by one hand clapping). It's one way of breaking through your ties to rationalist thought, but I'm not convinced of its efficacy in this case. What you really need to do is to try to recapture the attitude you had when you played as a child. Very young kids role-play, but their games are surprisingly dissimilar to rolegames. They have absolute power over their creations, in the sense that they can imagine anything. At the same time they are at the mercy of their fantasy universe. There is nothing that can frighten a young child so much as the creatures they create themselves, because a child still has a fragment of the way humankind once was -- an undifferentiated view of the universe, a weak distinction between I and it. To the child, the fantasy is as real as reality, because the distinction has to be learned. If you can bring that feeling back, then you can play a mystic (or be a mystic, even!). Obviously, a mystic doesn't have to follow a religion in the same way as a normal worshipper does. As I pointed out for Sufism, a mystic may appear to follow entirely different tenets. A shaman doesn't worship a religion with a clearly formalised set of tenets anyway. Since the shaman's world view is the society's world view, you won't get the distinction of belief. Or, to put it another way, a tribe believes exactly what their shaman tells them to believe. [Note: this article was originally written in 1990. I never got around to finishing it. Any offers?] IN PRAISE OF PLAGIARISM What terrible times we live in. Rolegaming has fallen far from its once proud position on the lips of pundits up and down the land. Games Workshop has abandoned its role as champion of true role-playing, and become nothing more than a manufacturer of lurid toy soldiers. Rolegaming has become just an escapist entertainment, its players abandoning all its possibilities for danger and exploration of hitherto unknown facets of the human psyche. What a load of crap, eh? Rolegaming is in a healthier situation now than it has been for years. The time when role-playing nearly became a household word did not spawn any improvements in the field, and I don't believe it really led more people into the hobby. It was just a piece of marketing by TSR which ensured that the mediocrity of AD&D should be spread about as a definition of role-playing, and that those people without the imagination even to play a module could get their fix of schlock from DragonLance books. Games Workshop was never a champion of true role-playing, and in a way its current direction is good because it reduces confusion of role-playing with wargaming and miniatures battles. Rolegaming has always been just an escapist entertainment, except when particular groups of people decided to make it more than that, or at least to try to make it superior escapist entertainment. Demanding that such a new form as rolegaming be all things to all persons so soon after its inception is overambitious and potentially destructive. Surely it's better to learn how to do something well before you try to smash barriers? And the fact is that the rolegamer now has a wealth of material available to him or her, providing a sufficient amount of imagination is expended in combining it. Along with the slew of tedious cyberpunk/horror bandwagon-jumpers there are many genuinely interesting and original ideas in the commercial market: a state of affairs that was by no means the case ten years ago. SO WHY PLAGIARISM? The biggest problem facing the rolegaming designer at the moment is the quest for novelty. This has two facets: the first is the neophyte who produces a game which purports to be original, but which is no more than an old game rehashed. This stems from insufficient acquaintance with the field of rolegaming as a whole, and to a certain extent is caused by the fact that much of the seminal discussion and design work has appeared only in relatively inaccessible (and currently unavailable) forums. The second facet is the reinventing the wheel syndrome: where someone who does have a wide knowledge of the history of rolegames and rolegame systems feels that they must come up with a new way of handling every game eventuality, even though there is a huge body of useful methods of solving a particular problem. This is why plagiarism is such a desirable trait in the field of rolegame design. Any designer of a new game should be at liberty to take the good parts from previous games and should not necessarily be expected to provide some startling new system. Otherwise you end up in a race for gimmicks, as seems to be happening now (coming next month: Speechless Role-playing, the innovative system for non-confrontational action resolution). Unfortunately, when it comes to commercial games, there is one major drawback. Plagiarism is illegal. Luckily, in the course of design, a particular system will usually be mutated drastically, so that the author can no longer be accused of direct lifting. If I were ever to market 'The Water Margin' commercially, this is the loophole I would exploit, though I will cheerfully (even proudly) admit to you, dear readers, that the core rule system was influenced very greatly by Pendragon. However, the amateur designer has no such legal restrictions. He can lift the diceless resolution system from Amber (not exactly such a great innovation, if truth be told: similar systems were knocking about in 1982) and take the template characters from Star Wars and ... some would say the predictability of the Star Wars saga would be perfectly suited to diceless resolution. The point is, however, that the legal situation mitigates in favour of the amateur, for once. By its very nature, the rolegame market will continue to throw up (I use the expression advisedly) a continuing stream of new games, most of them by enthusiastic gamers with little or no experience of game design. These games will not be playable, but will probably each contain at least one decent idea worthy of being ripped off and used somewhere. INTER*ATTRACTION By way of a digression, I'd like to make an observation about stimuli. For some reason, it's a lot more difficult to provoke people to do what you'd like them to do than you might first expect. For example, when Mike Lewis was writing about fanzines for TSR(UK)'s old IMAGINE magazine, he tried to encourage people to get involved, writing letters and articles, and starting zines full of new ideas. The result? A slew of clones, and the rapid descent of rolegaming fan publishing into undeath. When I was publishing imazine, I thought I was writing for an audience dedicated to creativity; to exploring new ideas of rolegaming. That, to me, was the point. I was surprised to discover the truth: that most of my readers apparently wanted from imazine much the same as the readers of White Dwarf craved: ready-made ideas, off-the-peg scenarios and 'humour pages'. This same tendency appears to be taking shape in the response to 'Inter*action' magazine (now retitled 'Interactive Fantasy'). By chance, and the generosity of its publisher James Wallis, I found myself answering the telephone to people inquiring about it. And what was the most common thrust of these enquiries? 'I have a role-playing game I've just designed. How do I go about putting it on the market?' So this is modern Britain. Is this the most we can hope for? Given a chance to do something special, to make an achievement, what do we settle for? We want to put it on the market. It may seem far-fetched to you, but for me this highlights the reason why I'm very happy to remain in Japan for as long as I can. Because shameless money-grubs that they are, the Japanese nevertheless have an ambition that transcends the trivial market-mindedness of dirty, post-Thatcher Britain. They still have the conception of rising to a challenge. If they ever get an idea of genuine quality in the arts, they'll conquer the world. BACK TO PLAGIARISM The manifesto of imazine is: SAY NO TO COMMERCIALISM! SAY YES TO QUALITY! If you aren't interested in this approach, then bugger off. It may seem harsh, but that's what zines are all about. Too many zines have trumpeted about a bright future for rolegames through the efforts of the rolegame companies. I maintain that this has not materialised. In the end it's up to us. By the way, I don't intend to make this a humourless zine. I'll leave the dry academic debate to others: as my old readers well know, imazine is the home of wet academic debate. And plagiarism. But you'll have a job suing me because: i) imazine is freeware so you can hardly accuse me of profiting at others' expense and, ii) I live in Japan. IMAZINE WELCOMES CAREFUL CONTRIBUTORS Or, how does this magazine actually work,and what is going to go in it? Although it is obviously an individualistic zine, and will betray the obvious signs of being the product of one person, imazine is not intended to be solely my own effort. As in the past, I want contributions. And just because I print a contribution, doesn't mean I necessarily agree with it. In other words, you're pretty much free to write whatever you like, as long as you accept that I'm pretty much free to reject anything I don't want to print. You also have to accept the way in which the zine works, which I will explain a little more. FREEWARE The basic principle of this zine is that it may be freely distributed. In other words, no money should change hands. The magazine will initially be distributed in two formats: one will be a paper format, for those of us who prefer the freedom provided by this medium. I envisage the paper format distribution working as follows: I will print six copies of the magazine and distribute them as I see fit. Those who receive these copies may then photocopy them if they wish to keep copies of the zine, then pass on the zine, and any number of copies, to other people who might be interested. No money should be charged at any stage (apart from maybe the raw cost of photocopying, by those who are really stingy or hard up). The disk version works similarly. I will produce disk versions of the zine in both IBM and Mac formats (the IBM disk will be low density, therefore equally readable by Japanese NEC machines). These will then be distributed to people I choose, who are at liberty to copy the zine as required. With any luck, copies of the zine will find their way on to the Internet, for even greater availability. CONTRIBUTORS Anyone who contributes to the magazine must accept that their contribution will become freeware. In other words, although you retain copyright, your work will be freely distributed as part of the magazine. However, although the magazine may be freely copied and distributed, this does not apply to individual articles being reprinted elsewhere. In such a case, there is a clear infringement of copyright. Thus contributors must grant the magazine first serial rights, but may retain subsequent serial rights themselves, which may be offered to other publications. Contributors will receive no payment for their efforts. CONTRIBUTIONS There are two basic types of contribution to this magazine. The first is the letter or comment. From these I intend to create a discussion column. There will clearly be a superficial similarity between this and the forums available on the Internet. The difference here will be that this will be an edited forum. Thus the quantity of material you have to wade through will be far less. The second type of contribution is the article. These will be proof-read, and perhaps superficially altered for clarity, but they will not be substantially edited. Contributions are welcomed on subjects connected with rolegaming, but be aware that the further you diverge from the editor's interests, the less chance there is of publication. I may have published a 'dark future' special in the past, dealing with the (then novel) genre of cyberpunk, but I certainly wouldn't nowadays. On the other hand, I am quite prepared to publish contributions on a field in which I'm not interested, as long as I feel they have something new and creative to contribute to that field. [Brief note: feedback or contributions by email should be sent to "[i--z--e] at [hogshead.demon.co.uk]" and will be forwarded to Paul.] STATE OF PLAY: THE WATER MARGIN The Water Margin is a game which I have been working on for a large number of years. Now and again it seems possible that it will one day become available to anyone who might be interested in it. However, to be quite honest, I can't see that there's likely to be enough interest to justify the money I would have to waste to see it published commercially. Sure, there are a number of people out there who remember with nostalgia the NTV series broadcast by the BBC some years ago, and perhaps would like to try a game purpose designed to represent the fictional setting, rather than some spurious (and tedious) notion of 'realism'. On the other hand, I fancy the majority of gamers would show little interest: after all, there's already Bushido for those gamers who want to play a Japanese game, and the Water Margin isn't cyberpunk, it uses dice, it doesn't include a revolutionary 'new' storytelling system, features no spiky bits, and instead has a large number of foreign words and details. In short, to quote a certain pair of animated representatives of the gaming zeitgeist 'It sucks!' Incidentally, for those of you still with me, yes, The Water Margin is a game about China in the Song Dynasty. It does enable you to fight out ridiculous battles involving leaping all over the bloody place. And it does include a complete list of the heroes of Liangshan Po, including details and stats for some of the famous or more interesting ones (trainspotter? Me? Shurely not?). I like the way Dave Morris serialised his Tirikelu game through his fanzine 'The Eye of All-Seeing Wonder' (available for UKP2.99 in the UK, UKP3.50 elsewhere from Dave Morris, 1 Rusham Road, London SW12 8TJ). However that was for an established setting, for which there is already a lot of material available. It's not practical for me. So what do I do? My solution is to continue working on the game, and I want to try to run it a bit more (though finding players in Japan is about as easy as finding a Japanese politician who doesn't take bribes). At the same time I'll probably run a bit of material about it through this zine, in the hope that I can elicit a reaction which will help develop the game. An interesting factor for me is that I frequently think to myself of what I would criticise if I were reviewing the game. Inevitably, there are plenty of things. When designing a game based on a setting such as the Water Margin, there are harsh decisions to be made. Just as the designer of a Robin Hood rolegame, or for that matter an Arthurian one (such as Pendragon, which supplied a lot my initial ideas on the Water Margin), must decide on an interpretation that will not necessarily appeal to all his or her readers, I have to choose how I deal with China, and how broadly I cover the subject. I would criticise Thomas Kane's GURPS China, for example, for being far too general in its treatment: compressing the whole history and culture of a vast country into one volume is going too far. Conversely, people may criticise me for being too specific: the Water Margin is a game about the Water Margin. However, it could equally well be used by an intelligent referee to run any game set in medieval China, assuming the referee was prepared to change a few bits here and there in the background. Although I don't have the problem that everyone has their own idea about the best version of Robin Hood or King Arthur, the majority of people who are interested come to the Water Margin by way of the TV series. Certainly, I was drawn to the story by this. However, having researched further, I came to the conclusion that my game would have to be based on the Chinese original. For a start, it made it easier to research. For another, I actually prefer the rather vulgar, truthful feel of the original to the mannered, bushido-influenced Japanese interpretation of the TV show. However, the game had to give a clear flavour of the fights in the TV show, as well as those in all those wonderful Hong Kong movies. In the next issue of the zine I want to discuss a little about how to go about doing this, and how the present system evolved -- and what I think are its strengths and weaknesses.