BUT IS IT FUN?

The game's not for everyone's style of play. The game's not about picking flowers on Venus. But I will argue with anyone till I'm blue that you can have fun playing the game.

I wrote it because I thought it would interesting to tell a slave narrative in the form of a role playing game, or play a role playing game in the style of a slave narrative. It sounded like a fun thing to me.

There's always room to clean up and tighten up. I wrote about something I found interesting, that people don't seem to role play, and whatever feelings or emotions the subject matter evokes is really on the of the players.

ISN'T IT ALL A BIT DEPRESSING?

See there are tons of popular rpgs, hippie, indie, mainstream, where the objectives are to fuck people's shit up, put on over on someone, kill, maim, hurt, win, be notorious, save yourself, your loved ones, kill your enemy, live, die, do something heroic. And this game is no different.

You do not play a "subject"! You don't play a "victim"! You play a person, for crying out loud. Slaves were people. If you play a person, you will likely strive for good things to happen to you and everyone you care about. You'll look for good things. You'll seek to love people. And you'll probably figure out real quick how to get out of bad things happening to you. You'll then create an uplifting story, because, coming out of adversity is uplifting, it's what most slave narratives are about, it's what slaves would want to do. Heck it's what many, many role playing games are about. Slave narratives are about people who happen to be slaves, but are people first. Slave narratives are about people maintaining their dignity and humanity in the face adversity. Sounds like a lot of role playing games.

I know I'm pretty clear in the text that you shouldn't play a stereotype, and that you should play a person. If you missed that, go back and read it over. And why wouldn't you play anything but a person, if I state that the game is about creating slave narratives--about people, not stereotypes.

I'M SCARED OF GETTING IT WRONG...

I don't have a special "allowed to write about black history" card by virtue of my being black. The black people I wrote about, and the white people I wrote about are dead. I have more in common with you, being a modern day, literate woman who might have gone to the same private college that your sister went to than with those people from history. (Ever read Kindred?) Put me back in the 1800's and I'd have just as difficult time fitting in as you.

So there's this common ground that I'm inviting people to stand on. I'm trying to show you that in this instance, "black history" doesn't exist. This is American history, and you have as much right to claim it, warts and all, as I do. If you don't want to stand on it that's okay. Really.

IS THERE REALLY MAGIC IN THIS GAME?

So you can have no tangible magic and play straight historical narrative, or you can make a ghost story (there are NPC ghost characters), or do something in between. Beloved is a ghost story. Kindred is more speculative fiction than slave narrative. These two books were inspirations.

We had a playtest where one of the PC's wrote as one of her attributes "I can fly." It was a one shot session at a game store, and we had players who were seasoned gamers, rusty gamers, and one woman who the store owner nabbed from a Star Wars game and said, "play this instead". I made it a ghost story. The PC who could fly was the Root Doctor, and her magical use of the herbs was serious magic. The story turned out to be more folk story than straight slave narrative. We still explored more adult themes, and I think the magical and supernatural elements diffused some of the tougher stuff. We also had a funny love story, and a bit of a power struggle between a slave midwife who knew herbs but not magic, and a mute, somewhat crazy Root Doctor who could fly and communicate with animals, and whose spells and potions worked. No one died. One PC escaped with the help of a young slave who was in love with him and the Root Doctor (who, I think didn't like the young slave). The Root Doctor worked for an undertaker. She procured a coffin, and the slave escaped in the coffin.

Great stuff, Droog.  Thanks for posting that.  It's cool to see where she's coming from.  I had some of those questions myself.

I have now discovered or re-discovered a setting where I could play a character in a game like that.

 This setting/story: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0118607/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amistad_(1997_film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Amistad

I want to play one of the slaves that fights back and takes over the ship.  Thats what I meant in the other thread - gotta be a way for a win or a victory.


- Ed C.

Steal Away Jordan looks like a game I might play, at some point, but one I'd have a tough time justifying buying. I'd play or run it once or twice, and it's sit on my shelf. I might enjoy it being there, but unless those few games were really impressive...

I'd almost consider playing the game based on those description, but my actual interactions with the author have left me with the impression that she's a stuck up, obnoxious bitch and I can't in good conscience support her game.

She once attacked a game idea I had for being offensive solely because it referenced the "jungle queen" motif.  She backed up her argument by incorrectly citing Tarzan, displaying a complete ignorance of the history of feral child mythology -- She claimed Tarzan was the first example of a hero raised by animals after I corrected her mistaken claim that Tarzan was raised by Africans.  When I demonstrated that she knew absolutely nothing about the genre she was attacking as inherently racist, she changed tactics and accused me of being offensive on the grounds of sexism -- my game was about survivors in a lost world competing against each other to be amongst those that will be saved by the Jungle Queen, and featured all of the characters as subordinate to a powerful feminine hero.  Yet it was sexist.  Before I could refute that charge, she had her buddy Andy K. ban me from the board.

At the same time her best friend Vincent Baker (they're like neighbors or something) is selling a game that presents Native Americans as agents of the devil, but  hey, it's okay if he's offensive, he's being transgressive.

So yeah, fuck Julia Ellingboe.  She's a stupid cunt.  Fuck her whole circle of friends to.  They're all stupid cunts as well.

I saw that interaction. Yes, Julia reacted from the gut instead of the brain, but you escalated pretty quick. You called her a 'self-righteous busybody' straight away. Her comment could have been handled a lot more diplomatically when you consider who you're dealing with (and I suggest that offline you might have cut her a lot more slack, because you seem to have an awareness of how a black woman might possibly find such things to have a tinge of exoticism and imperialism about them).

I'm not a friend of Julia's. I don't even live on the same continent and I'm unlikely ever to meet her. I know her, in fact, roughly to the same extent I know you. And I've seen you lose it a lot more than her.

If I was making a game with that subject, I'd probably make the default campaign be that you're part of the Underground Railroad.

The potentially dodgy thing would be that your race would have a big effect on what 'skills' you'd have: an escaped slave and a white person would have very different social abilities purely by virtue of their race.

Somewhere along the line, once again, someone passed off the idea that you can call a politically correct improv-scene generator a "game", despite it having no real game qualities at all. Certainly there is "story-telling" involved. But that's it. You roll a dice and then go straight into the hammy untalented performance art.

I can't recall which podcast it was, but it's a Vincent Baker interview where he is asked if the bar has been set higher or lower with regard to "independent game design". He replies (amazingly) that he got his friend to wrote Steal Away Jordan despite having zero background in gaming, so independent gaming must be alive and well.

Now, he meant to say one thing there, but I think he told us another, there. He let it slip-right there if nowhere else-- that this shit ain't gaming at all.

Hey Koltar, you can revolt; you can escape.  Both are strong urges, and the rules are set up to accommodate them.  If you want to play a guy who going to start a slave revolt and go down swinging, that is strictly awesome.

@Jason:
Why can´t I just use GURPS to do such a scenario?
Why a different game?

Please elaborate!

Quote from: Settembrini;244140@Jason:
Why can´t I just use GURPS to do such a scenario?
Why a different game?

Please elaborate!

Of course you can. Or you can use D&D or Traveller or DSA or or or.
Each of these has a different result because of the different mechanics involved. I suppose steal away jordan is trying to take a different approach than those games already mentioned. Mechanics are a fundamental part of setting the tone and mood of a session.
But you knew that already, as you knew already that neither GURPS nor Traveller nor D&D or DSA do anything for the genre as outlined in droogs posts.
So why post?
Please elaborate!

Saphim's right!  You could play GURPS: Slavery.  Maybe there's already a disadvantage to cover it.

Here are two of the things that Steal Away Jordan does that I think are unique and brilliant, and - because they mess with some core assumptions - probably a direct result of Julia Ellingboe not having a long history with roleplaying:

1.  Players don't name their own characters, the GM does.  It's a simple thing but, from the start, it absolutely sets the tone.  There are aspects of your character over which you have no control, no autonomy, no authority.  

2.  The GM is not privy to the players plans.  The GM leaves the room while the players articulate their goals.  This is essentially point one, in reverse - aspirations and dreams are the only autonomy the characters have, and they are carefully guarded and can't be taken away.

So yeah, you could tweak GURPS to include stuff like this, but Steal Away Jordan isn't about anything else.  It's just focused on this one thing.  That's either really interesting to you or it really isn't.  Julia's very nice and easy to track down if you have questions about the game.