GLOG Class: Memory Monk, (Post) Colonial forgetting

Reading Zedeck Siew's musings on South-East Asian hantu, I was struck by one section:

Just yesterday somebody idly asked me whether I’d categorise the jiangshi as a revenant, zombie, or vampire.

The answer is both all, or neither, of course. The hopping ghost doesn’t scan to any one western typeset.

Nevertheless it can be a relevant query - because post-colonialism is a thing, and creators have to deal with how central the Occident is to our thoughts and imaginations.

He's right, of course. There's games that deal with the experience of colonialism, like Dog Eat Dog, or place you in the resistance against it, like Spire, but Zedeck's talking about what comes afterwards.

It's almost embarrassing. I studied English Literature for my degree: I could tell you about the fey or Arthurian romance, or renaissance-era religion, but there's a big question-mark over the stories of the region I actually live in, aside from half-remembered children's stories. Doubly so, because I'm ethnically Chinese, a fourth-generation migrant, meaning the mythology of my land is not the same as the mythology of my ethnicity. Postcolonialism is the experience of forgetting, of knowing that you should know something but you don't.

Anyway, here's a GLOG-class.

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Scholars debate the exact origin of gods, but they all agree on one thing: each god has incredible power over a small limited domain. And despite that, each god is greedy, and insatiable, and wants more.

It is, after all, common knowledge that the Blood God requires blood. Shrines to the blood-god always include a jar of engorged leeches, for tithes. Acolytes of the Swollen Fertility Goddess must swear vows of childlessness. And monasteries to Cinta, the Open-Hearted God of Love, are rife with betrayal and politicking. These are sacrifices that devotees make because their god craves these things.

Deep in the highlands, on the red ridges of the jungle mountains, a sect exists that worships the God of Memory.

by Minsu Kim

Monks of Memory

The novices of the God of Memory travel long distances from their mountain monasteries in search of experiences, which can then be offered up to the God of Memory, whose name nobody now remembers. 

Starting Equipment: heavy robes (as leather), iron cudgel, forgotten trinket (roll on table)
Skills: Literacy, Religion

A: Tithe, Forgotten Things
B: Tithe, Self-Edit, Forgettable
C: Tithe, Take Memories
D: Tithe, Erasure

Forgotten Trinket: you carry an item of significance around with you, but can no longer remember why. Roll 1d6
1. A loop of hair, bound in red silk
2. A fragment of rich brocade 
3. An ivory carving of a mounted rider 
4. A polished human fingerbone
5. A miniature painting of a stranger
6. A jasmine-scented letter you cannot read

A: Tithe
At first level, list down a significant memory you have tithed to the God of Memory. It can be things like the sound of my mother's voice, or the face of my mentor. Every time you take a level in this class, detail another memory that you have forgotten. The last significant memory you will tithe is your name. Once you tithe your name, you can only ever be addressed as Monk. Your true name is lost.

A: Forgotten Things
The monk may call on the God of Memory to remember things forgotten, or secrets concealed. You may Test Wisdom when confronted with a situation that has been forgotten by living memory (Eg, an ancient trap-mechanism, a dead sorcerer-king's tomb from a hundred years ago.) If you succeed, the God of Memory reveals useful memories about this place. On a failure, the memories are false, partial or misleading.

B: Self Edit
Your memories are plastic, and can be edited by you. You have an eidetic memory. You can ignore the effects of long-term mental trauma by conveniently forgetting it.

B: Forgettable
The God of Memory has claimed you, and so you do not stick in the minds of others. If you do not draw attention to yourself, you can pass as a banal servant, a background figure, a harmless bystander. There is a 1 in 6 chance you will not be remembered when you meet someone again.

C: Take Memories
If you concentrate for a few moments, a series of ritual blows on the head from your cudgel can scramble someone's short-term memories. Your opponent has to be restrained or vulnerable in some way in order to deliver the blows. The target loses all memory of the last hour. The GM can choose to reroll on the Reaction Table if appropriate.

D: Erasure
You know a ritual that can erase a person from remembrance. It takes a week, a cart-load of herbs and rare metals, and a part of the person in question (hair, teeth or fingernails work fine). The person's name is forgotten, and all their acquaintances can no longer remember them. The God of Memory will take a valuable memory from you in exchange. A very well-known target (like a king or vizier) might require a higher price, like the knowledge of how to walk.

Alternative XP Systems

So I've been thinking about XP systems as a driver of play recently. I've been spending quarantine throwing together a hack of the GLOG, the Black Hack 2E, and other bits, and I was writing up different XP systems and trying to represent different schools of thought.

Please note that all titles are the actual ones I've used in my hack, and are entirely self-deprecating.

GRASPING CAPITALISTS (blatantly stolen from Goblin Punch)

Over the course of your adventure, you might discover Treasure, if you look. You will know it when you see it. (eg, a jewelled egg the size of a fist, a coruscating crystal of pure life-force, an ancient tome with the names of all the angels)

Each Treasure is worth one level, to only one player. At the end of the adventure, discuss as a group who contributed the most to the party and why. That player takes a d12 die. Discuss who was the most entertaining, and why. That player takes a d10. They cannot be the same player. Then everyone rolls:

1d10+(Bonus die)

Give out Treasure in order from highest to lowest rolls. Re-roll ties. Loop around if you somehow have more treasure than players. 

This is really for me the distillation of the OSR gold-as-xp approach: you're meant to go into dungeons and weird places. You're meant to stick your hand down weird holes and feel about for things and pull out glowing gems from frog-idols and run away from yetis that don't want you to take the gems.

IMPULSIVE MANCHILDREN  (The Black Hack's approach)

Every PC requires XP equal to their level to advance.

Every session, XP is awarded for the following activities:

-          Failing catastrophically in an entertaining way

-          Overcoming an important named foe or obstacle

-          Seizing an especially valuable treasure

-          Completing a quest for an NPC

-          Achieving some difficult and worthwhile personal goal

If in doubt, the table discusses if it’s worth an experience. This rewards PCs for all the screwing around they were going to do anyway. Awarding XP for a 'difficult and worthwhile personal goal' is really just codifying giving players XP for the ludicrous things they already want their PCs to do, like declaring a personal vendetta against the town shoemaker because of reasons.

Really, this is a sort of PbtA approach to XP. Whatever the characters choose to do is ipso facto an important act. XP for you! And XP for you! XP for everybody! Pursue your bliss. 

XP for catastrophic failure is also very story-games. The intent is less on solving problems and overcoming challenges, and more just poking a reactive world and seeing what happens. Failures are entertaining detours, not something to avoid with conservative play.

QUIRKY MISFITS SOLVE A CRIME (Dungeon World's approach with Traits thrown in)

Every PC requires XP equal to (current level+4) to level up.

As a group, at the end of every session, answer the following questions:

-          Did we defeat a powerful foe?

-          Did we discover a valuable treasure?

-          Did we learn something new and important about the world?

-          Did we work together to achieve our goal?

For every one you answered yes to, gain 1 XP.

In addition, each PC should write two traits that define their character. Traits should be an action or behaviour that disadvantages the PC in some way. For instance:

Honourable – Refuse to gain an unfair advantage over a foe
Impulsive – Reject planning to leap into a problem
Kind – Help someone weak at a cost to myself

You may gain 1 XP if you act out one of your traits per session. You may not get this XP more than once.

This is your modern cooperative approach, and also basically Dungeon World's XP triggers. The basic unit is the team, the PCs differentiate themselves through characterisation, but really the aims are pursued as a party, there's an implied wider narrative and collective team goal. I don't know if this approach counts as OSR? There's interpretations where players are problem-solving, and your PC's endearing flaws are played out up until it starts to negatively impact the efficiency of the party.  

A PbtA player-as-a-barbarian would absolutely insult the troll king mid-negotiation because it's what the fiction demands. An OSR player, not so much, I think? I feel I need to see how other tables and play cultures handle this. 

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The thing is, all of these approaches remind me a little of how D&D as a genre is really very American. By which I mean the central conceit is that you have these rugged individualist types running around, problem solving or actualising or seeking treasure, and they're making their mark on the fictional world and also becoming more skilled and capable versions of themselves.

I was reading a blog-post which I cannot find anymore for the life of me, which argued that early Gygaxian D&D wasn't drawing from european sources, but from the Wild West: these enterprising types going out into essentially untamed wilderness and coming back with treasure.

Are there other ways of playing D&D? Reading counter-colonial Hexcrawl and marxist D&D have me thinking of alternative reward structures in addition to alternative campaign framings, but all the ones I know lean in the direction of story-games: XP triggers that seem to reward a particular genre experience. 'XP for opposing tyranny' or 'XP for wealth redistribution' seem to make assumptions about 'correct' moral values which run against the freedom of sandbox play.

What do?

D&D isn't fun enough (or: Enthusiastic Skeleton Boys)

What I mean by this (hyperbolic) statement is that modern iterations of D&D, with an emphasis on elaborate settings, tightly balanced mechanics (combat, because it's always combat), and insistence on narrative and character development can miss the forest for the trees.

D&D isn't enough about play.

D&D should be a modern day Feast of Fools. It should be about chugging all the potions on the wizards shelf. It should be about setting the courthouse on fire. It should be about a frog-priest giving a sanctimonious liturgy to a mutant crab-man who used to be the wizard.

My personal theory is that the aesthetics of ruin are useful because they give players permission to play garbage people. I don't mean edgy grim-dark i'm an orphan and fight crime people, or i steal from the paladin because i'm an amoral rogue ho ho. I mean the kind of garbage person who would find a centuries-old crusted pot in the tomb of a God-King and lick the rim on the off-chance they get super-powers.

Play your PCs like they're stolen cars. Die horribly. Roll up a new one.

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ENTHUSIASTIC SKELETON BOYS (with apologies to Holbein the Younger)

Death is horrible.

The body rots away, the soul-stuff leaks and dissipates into the aether,

So why are skeletons in such a good mood all the time?

The undead are soul-stuff and spirits tugged back into earthly shells for one more go. And they are  perpetually thrilled to be here because nobody else gets the joke. We're walking around in our robes and furs like we're important but really, what separates the noble from the peasant? Everything rots in the end. It's like watching a monkey put on a top-hat and pretend to be posh.

Sure, when you summon a skeleton it'll do what you want. Why not? What a lark. They'll prance and twist and hold parties if you let them. They're polite to you because you brought them back, like a someone inviting them to a ball. They'll stab a man for you because hey we're all going the same way. It's like helping a man with his coat. Off, ye lendings. 

If you meet a skeleton and they're not trying to kill you (nothing personal!), they're prodding at your flesh and clacking their teeth in amusement at how much meat you have on you.

i am the law you're coming with me

This is also why necromancers are always jolly and giggly and corpulent, like a morbid santa. You know that thing in public speaking where you're meant to imagine your audience naked? It's like that but all they see are bones bones bones

i mean look at this guy, he's having a ball

What are these skeletons up to? (1d8)

1. Playing a game of nine-pins with their own bones

2. Trying to get a terrified peasant to dance

3. Taunting a confused owlbear (skeletons don't smell like food)

4. Pretending to be dead so they can jump up and spook yez

5. Found some robes somewhere and quietly joined a group of pilgrims. Just waiting for when someone asks them to tell a story.

6. Intercepted a travelling theatre-troupe. Holding a play with their props while the actors cower.

7. Kidnapped a cow, fleeing the scene

8. Intentionally misunderstanding frustrated junior necromancer