http://wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.com/2010/09/of-follow-north-star-and-steal-away.html

Perhaps it is normative and personal but I don't find reenacting the Black Holocaust in any way fun. I just don't get it. How do you reenact such a thing? How are these memories transmitted over time? What is lost? I just can't get my mind around–and I am speaking as someone with a deep history in rpg's–how there is any pleasure to be had here. Please, help me understand the experience.

First, your quote from that play report is taken out of context in a misleading way. When Clyde says, “This experience has always made me not accept the 400 years of oppression argument.” he is referring not the the experience of playing the game, but to the experience of growing up white in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. This is obvious to anyone reading the preceding paragraph, but your framing of the quote makes it look like he is talking about the game. What he actually says in the post is that the game made him reexamine his attitudes towards racism and oppression. That's a pretty powerful thing for a game to do, regardless of your feelings about the use of roleplaying games as tools for teaching and emotional exploration. But even if you disagree, you really should re-read the post and consider re-writing your own post so as not to completely misconstrue the original poster's point.

Second, role-playing games are not just for fun. A lot of modern games are designed to be enjoyable, but also to provoke emotional reactions and help people examine their own lives and attitudes through structured and collaborative storytelling (which is why some designers and fans of these games prefer to call them “story games”). Steal Away Jordan has a lot of historical research behind it, and while it is fun to play, it's often a thoughtful sort of fun. Octavia Butler's Kindred is a fantasy novel about slavery– another example of a genre of media that is usually considered light and fluffy being used to explore a serious topic. There's also TeePeeKay's example above of Maus. It's fine if serious games, or serious fantasy novels, or serious comics, aren't your cup of tea. But for many people they are both fun and emotionally affecting, and I think SAJ is one of the better examples of the genre, and if you are interested at all, you should give it a try.

I don't see the line-drawing problem. Tabletop role-playing games are played

around a table, like a script-writing session with no rewrites. Nothing is

acted out (that's LARP or live action role-playing, another game form entirely).

All characters are imaginary – they do not exist outside the game. It is the

players' characters against the situation described by the referee/game

master/etc., not against each other. It involves a couple dozen academic

subjects and a couple dozen learning skills. (See Role-playing games and the

gifted student, Gifted Education International, 1955, pp 39-46, or $2.50 through

CAR-PGa, 1127 Cedar, Bonham, TX 75418.)

The standard fantasy setting (in Mythworld late bronze, early iron age, rather

than medieval Europe as in many RPGs) is a culture that accepts slavery as

normal (as were most cultures in this period). In Mythworld, there is an

anti-slavery religion which considers freeing slaves as an act of worship and

takes freed slaves as apprentices since they will need a marketable skill in

freedom. They are accepted because they will always take a job to rescue

kidnapped or lost individuals. Players' characters can be one of these freed

slaves, or even still captive. This sounds like “trying to simulate slavery” to

me. Yes, it is a minor part of Mythworld, but does occasionally come up. What

is the problem? It will help players learn a bit more about the institution.

“How can you make this into a game of any sort?” It depends on how you define

“game”. Endless fun and frivolity? Yes, there would be a problem. A voluntary

activity requiring sometimes difficult choices within a framework of rules? No

problem.

Paul Cardwell

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The specific points of doing this in a roleplaying game, as opposed to a novel, film or comic, are…

a) the audience is not just receiving the story/message, the audience gets to be co-creators, and

b) in making it a game, you get to use rules to shape the experience and convey messages in a way that just isn't possible if the audience doesn't get to see their actions and stories shaped by the rules.

In Steal Away Jordan, point b) is especially relevant and poignant. The rules let the characters get a tiny inkling of what it's like to live at someone else's mercy, under someone who can end your life or take away anything you make. For comfortable westerners, this is a point that is difficult to grasp from mere passive reception of stories or reports, but, with the means of using audience co-creation to get people to invest themselves, and then feel the logic of the rules in play, you get understanding of the subject by a great short cut.

Now, the main point of the game oddly enough isn't that slavery sucks, or that it sucks to be a slave (though it surely does!), but that you get to create stories about people who are truly awesome because they strive to build lives and realize hopes under truly horrific circumstances. The slaves who lived and died and didn't abandon hope were heroes. You get to create heroic slave narratives. That's what Julia Bond Ellingboe was mostly getting at when she wrote the game (I discussed it with her at a convention).

Also, related to this point is the question of, how can this be fun? Fun is not quite the word for it, but things are simply much more exciting when important matters are at stake. Most great stories, whatever their medium, aren't about happy people being happy and having a good time. Most of them are about people striving and struggling under circumstances I'd really rather not find myself in. The basically uplifting nature of heroic slave narratives makes this game both bearable and enjoyable, if not exactly fun in a humorous or mindless goblin-bashing rpg sense of it.

But, to reiterate: Roleplaying games are a medium, like comics for instance. It is quite possible to use that medium to create and tell tales of serious matters. You set down rules and lay out a social contract for the gameplay that lets you and your friends create stories of a particular kind. I invite you to look closely at the rules and suggested social contract of playing Steal Away Jordan, and I think you will find that there is nothing frivolous, disrespectful or gratuitously morbid about it. It is simply a Maus of a roleplaying game and not the Mickey Mouse that you expect from the medium of games.

What would the adventure be? I want my fun to be separate from life and death. That is a personal choice. How do you balance good taste and respect for the lived experiences that are behind such a broad label/descriptor as “slavery” or “genocide” in translating that into a “roleplaying” experience?

Please share a bit about Mythworld. I have always admired folks creative enough and with the discipline to take an idea and put pen to paper.

Are the slaves going to hit the underground railroad or wait until the abolitionists succeed? How is the millionaire going to react to Knights of Labor, the first union? What will the farmers do about the constricting power of the railroads? What will all of them do when they reach 1860?

At the end of the game (one decade per week), they have a feel for that pivotable part of our history. This a role-playing game. It has enjoyable aspects (particularly comparied to dull lecture and tests), but that is not its purpose. The purpose is to educate children about the real world.

For that matter, I created a game system (Mythworld) primarily with a recreational purpose, but with a major educational component in it. I am not yet familiar with Steal Away Jordan, but it seems to have far more substance than “killing orcs for fun and profit”.

Same thing with roleplaying games. There's a general expectation that it's just harmless D&D fun, much like comics used to be just Mickey Mouse and the like. Roleplaying games is a medium, characterised by audience participation and potentially co-creation. It can be used to make lighthearted action entertainment (like D&D), or it can be used for pretty much any other kind of story.

Would you say that making a film about slavery would be wrong, because the subject is not fit as entertainment? Here's something to reflect upon: Stories are often far more exciting and satisfying if the sucject matter is something we care about, and not just “empty calories”. Serious and entertainment does not have to be mutually exclusive.