I have GOT to start running an RPG again. . .

[xiphias]

This may be distressing to a lot of people. But it's ALSO really cool.

Let's say that you're a homeless kid in Miami, dealing with gang warfare, starvation, and disease.

What myths would you create to give your life meaning?

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1997-06-05/news/myths-over-miami/full

And, my Ghu, wouldn't that make an AMAZING RPG setting?

ETA: And a question for those of you of a more mystical bent: what if they're right?

Or at least, if there is some sort of truth in what they have seen. I mean, I don't believe that God can lose to Satan -- but something smaller can lose to something smaller. There may be . . . things out there. And not all of them are nice.

I don't always believe that. But I don't always NOT believe it, either.

Comments

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edgehill made this mythos the center of their second-to-most-recent Bedlam Bards novel, Mad Maudlin. It's not a great book in and of itself, but the Bloody Mary storyline is excellent.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Oh holy shit I would play in a game based on that. For someone with a minor degree in Mythology & Folklore, that sort of thing is fascinating!

[fibro-witch.livejournal.com]

It sounds interesting. Could you get a group going?

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Check out the Destiny's Price setting for Mage: The Ascencion. They've been dealing with these sorts of topics for abou a decade.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, that makes sense, as the article is a decade old.

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm the only one who feels that way, but my gut reaction is that an RPG using that as a setting would be wrong, somewhere between theft and blasphemy, kind of like all the rich blonde white Native American wannabees of last decade or so.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

I don't think you're alone in that feeling...if it were done at all, it would have to be done with particular respect. I believe it is possible to have sacred games for various reasons, so in the right spirit it could be honorable.

As to the second question, what if some of it were real...I think it likely that some of it is. Humans in desperate circumstances and liminal places have always had more access to the otherworld, in all its forms and faces.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

I would be comfortable seeing it transformed into a novel or comic, but not an RPG. I'm not sure why I'd make this distinction, though.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I understand what you're saying. This is something that real people lived and died for a decade ago -- turning it into a simple entertainment would be . . . icky.

But that's not the only reason I run roleplaying games. For me, what attracts me to this is that there's something there. Something I want to understand. And, for me, the way I understand something like that is by simulating being there.

[lagaz.livejournal.com]

this looks really, really cool and i would totally play that game

[temima.livejournal.com]

I first learned about it in the Unknown Armies message boards. I much rather role play the process of making a mythos to give your chaotic life meaning than take one already made. Then again, I enjoy doing that.

(I had been thinking about the idea of different levels of angels battling over free will vs. predestination vs. mass damnation. That is, the most elevated beings in heaven cannot decide one of the most hotly debated theological topics because they have no idea what is the right answer either)

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

"what if they're right?"

They are. There are myths (lower cases "m") which are simply fictional tales, and there are Myths (upper case "M") which are rooted in reality. These are not stories made up to give one's life meaning, but stories which give expression to the reality of one's life, one's very existence. The stories these children are telling seem to me to fall into the category of Myth.

Are they right, in the sense that there is a struggle between Good and Evil, and humans are caught up in it? They certainly wouldn't be the first to think so. That is a recurrent theme in Mythologies and religions.

As for me, I'm already convinced there are many things I can't observe with my five standard senses that are "real" - dark matter and quantum bodies bodies come to mind, as do sounds in certain frequencies. Physicality seems to me to be only one possible way of being. And if the world we can sense with our standard five senses is so highly varied, and populated with beings with such widely differing behavior and intentions, why would the world beyond our senses be any different? And if some people can hear in ranges normally not accessible to humans, or have other unusually sensitive senses, why should not some people be able to percieve, at least at times, that which is inaccessible to most people?

As Shakespeare said,"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Or in mine, for that matter.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

I think that's the only mythology I've come across other than the Germanic/Scandinavian one which holds that the believers are on the losing side, but that it's still important to fight. Their image of the afterlife is also remarkably like Valhalla, if it were transferred to a jungle and the Allfather were nowhere in sight.

I think I will drink to those children later tonight.

[cogitationitis.livejournal.com]

I find the Jungian archetypes, and the universality, interesting. Even if the article is old, it's likely the myths still exist, passed down.