Taking inspiration from stage plays might seem odd, as plays conventionally present scenes in a linear order. The RPG sandbox frees us from this structure, relinquishing control over the narrative to its participants. There were, however, theatre makers who wanted to do something similar before RPGs were around to enable this.
The plays I talk about here deal with workers' struggle. The drive to make artworks participatory often comes from this kind of left perspective. It seems to go with an urge to challenge established narratives, as dictated by the ideologies of powerful groups in society. If their messages don’t speak to you, feel free to just treat them as historical curiosities.
A Sand Box on a Stage
Brecht’s experiments in participatory theatre are stated as being against linear development, yet they still take a linear form. Scene 2 follows scene 1 in every performance. The key feature is that, in principle, many of his plays would work equally well if the order of scenes were changed, i.e. if participants did have the option to choose their order of experience.
Imagine taking a Hitchcock thriller and randomly ordering its scenes by assigning them numbers on a d20. In Psycho, you might easily discover that Norman Bates dresses up as his mother in scene 2 – which pretty much ruins the film. Thrillers rely on a set order of information being fed to you, which is why they adapt poorly to RPGs.
Brecht’s plays are very different to this. The characters are effectively explorers, learning about the play-world as they encounter it. The lessons are such that it doesn’t particularly matter in which order they are experienced; it is more a process that leads to an understanding of the dramatical world.
Why though would a playwright create a play that could be ordered differently, if its form prevents this from ever happening? One purpose is to make the narrative universal, in a way that large swathes of people could relate to from their own lived experiences. Basing a story on serendipity, or a specific set of decisions, means few people are likely to have ever found themselves in similar circumstances.
Contrast this approach with the story arc of Star Wars. Luke is fortunate enough to be strong in the force. His journey relies on a period of training and certain well-timed revelations. His experiences may be relatable as a form of wish fulfilment, but they are highly individual and specific to his “heroes’ journey”. This translates poorly to an RPG context, because it relies on an arc being followed with little room for deviation.
Processes in The Toxic Wood
As I’ve previously found in Old School gaming, there are similarities with Brecht’s theatrical approach – though very much focused on the physical world. The Toxic Wood (TW) by Lazy Litch is a good example of this. The “universal” element of this hex crawl is a corrosive gas, that mutates all those within the woods who lack protection.
Whichever way characters take in exploring the toxic wood, the process of mutation will affect them in some way. This maybe through direct harm or depletion of resources required to protect themselves. Equally, the creatures, plants and factions players encounter all manifest the gas’s influence. This might be through direct mutation, or through beliefs and behaviours related to the gas.
I’ve seen other hexcrawls that have shades of this. Hideous Daylight has permanent magical daylight, with effects that you witness in most of its encounters. Unlike TW though, the characters themselves are not altered by the process. Fever Swamp has diseases which progressively take hold of the characters as they explore its domain. Yet we do not see this process reflected in its encounters, in the same way both elements are combined in TW.
The combined treatment of processes in TW has similarities to that in Brechtian drama. In the context Brecht was writing though, social processes were more prominent in driving widespread effects than physical ones. For primitive societies, physical calamities such as drought or flood would be main causes of scarcity. In a modern industrialised society, Brecht saw scarcity as more often a product of politics and economics.
Processes in Brechtian Drama
I’m going to give some examples from two 1930s plays - Brecht’s The Mother and Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty. Both deal with the same social process. That is, the effect of economic downturn on the working population – something very topical at the time they were written. In both plays, the effect is cumulative, building to an expression of popular unrest.
As in TW, the process in question is widespread. This time the cause is social rather than physical, economic crisis rather than corrosive gas. In TW, there is a progressive physical transformation, as toxicity sickness eventually results in players rolling on a mutation table. In the theatrical examples, there is instead a progressive change in consciousness. This is particularly evident in The Mother, which focuses on the changing attitude of a widowed mother of a factory worker.
The mother in question starts off against the idea of collective action by workers. She then goes through a series of experiences and encounters that cause her attitude to progressively change. For the audience, these are presented in a fixed order.
1. Cannot afford ingredients for son’s soup
2. Flat is ransacked by police searching for propaganda leaflets
3. Sees a worker beaten and arrested for reading a leaflet
4. Learns purpose of strikes from agitators
5. Takes part in a peaceful protest shot on by police
However, it would make little difference to the play if the order of scenes were swapped around or some were missed out entirely. As lessons, none of these are a magical “missing piece”, in the way learning the identity of a mysterious bad guy can be in a thriller. We could in fact present the order of scenes as a hex crawl:
This works because the process in question is so widespread as to make encounters substitutable. In TW, an encounter with mutated dwarf tells us something about the gas’s effect. If we instead roll an encounter with a cursed fern, we are still seeing another aspect of the same process. Similarly in The Mother, missing out on a particular example of state brutality towards workers matters little. At the period of Russian history being depicted, it is likely an alternative example would be just around the corner.
Secondary Effects
Something I really like about TW is its depiction of related knock-one effects from the gas, other than direct mutation. The small village of Mugwort is isolated by a magical barrier, protecting it from the direct effect of the toxic gas. Yet secondarily, all those within suffer mentally from the ordeal. One faction believes the other town folk to be possessed by devils; another wears only clothes created from plants to make peace with the forest.
Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty is particularly good at reflecting the secondary effects of an economic downturn. It contains a series of vignettes, showing individual snap shots from the lives of taxi union members as they vote on whether to go on strike. One scene shows the breakdown in a young couple’s relationship, an outcome we’d typically put down to the personal qualities of either party.
Odets instead presents the relationship ending as a by-product of an economic process. Florence and Sid are clearly very much in love. Florence though has a duty to look after her sick mother, who her family cannot afford to send to hospital. Her brother worries about having support them both, as taxi drivers no longer earn enough to raise a family. Ultimately, both see their relationship as doomed before it properly began.
Conclusion
Combining a widespread process with its secondary effects can be a useful technique to orientate a sandbox around a central theme. This needn’t be as high concept as TW, with something like war, famine or plague being ready alternatives for a medieval setting. I find having a shared context like this at the forefront of your mind makes locations far easier to run. To me, TW’s Mugwort settlement leaps off the page as fraught with interesting dynamics and conflicts, in a way that is far more immediate than a web of personal relationships.
The lesson I take from Brecht is that these processes don’t have to be purely physical. Social factors take on greater importance when seeking recreate the driving forces in an industrialised society. A great example of this is Skerples’ Magical Industrial Revolution, which has 8 pre-apocalyptic innovations. Each of these feel like they could be expanded on into a hexcrawl in the style of TW, replete with the secondary implications of the process they initiate.
For more on this topic, there is overlap with my post on dialectical development. There I talk about the sci-fi novels Roadside Picnic and Annihilation, which I'd guess were an influence on Toxic Wood.
No comments:
Post a Comment