Celebration and Dragons of the Yellow Sea

[jhkimrpg]

So a while back, in December 2005, I had posted "What makes a good celebration?" -- where I discussed the idea of making a good celebration and applying that to RPGs.

I now turn back to that in light of some of the revisiting of Ron Edward's GNS theory -- notably Chris Lehrich's "A GNS Question", plus some Story Games threads including complaints

Comments

[jhkimrpg]

I think it is definitely possible to mix the two, but I'm not exactly sure how to express the method. A celebration should be transformational -- which can include twisting or reversing issues of race and gender.

In my eighties James Bond 007 campaign, one of the twists was that one of the English superspies was gay. Quantin Q. Falstaff III, agent 008, was an old-style heroic English aristocrat and had a private though not closeted fondness for the same sex. He ended up meeting sexy NPCs like Phil McCracken, Edgar Hardwick, and Ivan Moorcock. I think of this as still celebratory, yet definitely smashing head-on against orientation issues.

There are defiinitely gender issues within the Dragons game. Korean culture is normally quite patriarchal, but many of the PCs are women. We've set the game on Jejudo, and a number of the PCs and NPCs are haenyeo -- diver women who are the bread-winners, and matriarchal heads of their families, in contrast with the Confucian standard in Korea. We're mixing some pulp tropes and Korean tropes -- neither of which traditionally fit with each other, and both of which tend to be repressive of women. However, we're also selectively picking out elements which highlight powerful women.

Roughly, I think one can have some pretty revolutionary or reversal material as long as you wrap it thoroughly in the source material. I probably wouldn't want to play in a celebratory Fu Manchu game just on principle, but I think stuff could be done with it. As for the China of the Future... What if the PCs ally with a Chinese expatriate who hates the future government, and who is a genius mastermind with tons of resources to help them -- in other words, Fu Manchu?

[jhkimrpg]

I don't mean to discount all deconstruction. I think there's a place for it, but on the other hand, I'm not convinced that it is necessary. There are a number of reconstructive works that don't seem to me to be rooted in deconstruction. Of course, it's difficult to show either way since in practice there are bound to be both celebratory and deconstructive works in any popular genre.

I'd prefer to cite deconstructive works that are cool in their own right rather than saying that they are important to get to other good stuff. For example, Unforgiven is a deconstructive work that I'm quite fond of. And there is the hilarious "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" essay.