Story gaming for Murakami

#1

Anyone here a fan of Haruki Murakami?

I think about his particular style a great deal. For those unfamiliar with his work, most of it is kind of bizarre modern tales tinged with the supernatural in disturbing ways that are never quite explained. Like David Lynch, his imagery is incredibly striking but it’s generally less horrific.

I think about this one passage in 1Q84 very frequently. In the novel, there is another fictional novel within the novel written by a girl who is relating actual things she’s seen, but people assume it’s bizarre creative fiction. One of the characters reads a critical review of the book, which is called Air Chrysalis. This is the passage, along with somecontext from Michael John Grist:

Murakami himself takes a stab at explaining, in a passage buried within a critique of the fictional book ‘Air Chrysalis’ that Tengo ghost-writes in 1Q84. In this Tengo largely becomes a mouth-piece for Murakami responding to his critics.

It goes a little something like this. The critic says of ‘Air Chrysalis’-

“THE WORK IS PUT TOGETHER IN AN EXCEPTIONALLY INTERESTING WAY AND IT CARRIES THE READER ALONG TO THE VERY END, BUT WHEN IT COMES TO THE QUESTION OF WHAT IS AN AIR CHRYSALIS, OR WHO ARE THE LITTLE PEOPLE, WE ARE LEFT IN A POOL OF MYSTERIOUS QUESTION MARKS. THIS MAY WELL BE THE AUTHOR’S INTENTION, BUT MANY READERS ARE LIKELY TO TAKE THIS LACK OF CLARIFICATION AS A SIGN OF AUTHORIAL LAZINESS.”

Tengo, AKA Murakami, is puzzled by this. If a story carries the reader to the very end, how can the author be lazy? He doesn’t know. I’m sure Murakami doesn’t know either. He just writes, and it comes out like this, and it is what it is. He doesn’t sweat the details. He certainly doesn’t sweat the ending of any of his books.

I greatly respect things kind of writing, which I hope is adequately explained by the above. I’m interested in similar experiences at the RPG table, games that are less concerned with pat storylines where the plot lines tie up and more interested in compelling images and moments, and overall mood.

Have you played in games like this? What games? How did you create these experiences, or how do you think they happened?

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#2

I’ll be interested to see what other people say — for me, I’ve read some about differences in Eastern vs. Western storytelling (to use a very broad brush) and I’d like to get my sources straight before sallying forth. The short of it, though, is I think that you’ll be hard-pressed to find something that does this same narrative work from a Western designer.

Something Lynchian, however, is Kira Magrann’s Something is Wrong Here. I’m not a huge fan of Lynch and haven’t played the game, though, so I’m not sure what results you get in play.

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#3

Yeah, I have Something is Wrong Here and I’ve read it through but haven’t had the chance to play it yet. I even thought about changing some of the music and set elements to make it feel more like Murakami.

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#4

Murakami is a favorite, although I never thought about his works as in a game-world. That would definitely be interesting.

If you’re asking about images and mood, then certainly the Cthulu mythos stuff aims for that, right? At least the more purist ones, with the existential and seemingly random horror. There was also the old Over the Edge setting, but it’s been years since I looked at that.

In terms of plot, Darren is probably right that it might come down to basic cultural roots, which are hard to identify, let alone codify into a game system. My default mode of thinking about games lately is through its historical context, which for rpgs usually brings it all back to DnD. With DnD being rooted in war gaming and tactical dungeon crawling, narrative stuff like plot was a feature of games that came later, and usually in the fantasy genre, which is going to be heavily Campbell Monomyth stuff with very linear journey-ish tropes, etc. So games implicitly are about characters and their advancement, somehow.

I recently recommended Ryuutama for my neice’s first ttrpg. It’s pretty much an all-fantasy setting, so not quite what the OP is getting at here, but the flavor is definitely “Eastern” if you forgive the loaded term, by focusing on the nature of relationships and value of experiences versus the result etc.

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#5

Drifting a system might be the answer…Lovecraft might be a little too dire for Murakami, imo (and if I remember Murakami correctly – it’s been awhile since I’ve read any of his stuff), but Word of Darkness might be feasible! Just lighten the strictly supernatural horror and bend the vampire/werewolf/changeling/etc. beats into that slightly off, magical realism world of Murakami. A contract that has more weight than anyone could have expected? Changeling’s contract rules are perfect. A man only glimpsed leaping from rooftop to rooftop? Vampire or werewolf could handle that. The supernaturally charismatic cult leader? Easy.
Hacking a system is definitely no easy task, though :frowning:

#6

A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World were both really big for me because I encountered each at the perfect juncture in my life. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is astonishing. I read everything up until 1Q84, where he finally lost me halfway through the book.

As an aside, although Japanese culture and history obviously inform his work, I wouldn’t isolate Murakami’s narrative structure and tone along cultural lines. Ironically, he is sometimes criticized in his home country for being “too Western.” Paul Auster and W.G. Sebald are just a couple of examples among many of “Western” writers whose works have a very similar feel.

As far as pre-existing games rules/structures to be deployed for adaptation go, the first one that comes to mind is Lovecraftesque. You could re-skin the cue cards to classic Murakami or Murakami-adjacent tropes, and tweak the rules so that the structure, tone, and pacing have the right feel.

Obviously when you’re playing a game meant to emulate a particular author’s work you’ll have an easier time if everyone playing is a fan, but following the Lovecraftesque model, play wouldn’t depend on knowledge of the source material.

I’m half-tempted right now to go through The Elephant Vanishes and start making lists of things for adaptation to cue cards, but I’ve got too much else to do at the moment…

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#7

It’s a pretty heavy system, but I feel Unknown Armies doesn’t take too much of a push to get a Murakami-esque feel to it. I’d like to see more game systems capable of playing in that magical realism field of play you see with Murakami, Bolano, Garcia Marquez, or Rushdie. Not always as dark as Lynch, but solidly weird. I think Invisible Sun also wants to play in this realm, but the ridiculous price tag makes it prohibitive for most groups

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#8

For those who have replied so far listing systems, I would like to hear what about the mechanics make you think it would be well suited for this type of storytelling?

I am actually more interested in analysis than suggestions for a system to run a game in. I might one day try to do something more with this. I have run David Lynch-style surreal horror using Dread, for instance, but I don’t think that Dread would be a good choice for Murakami.

#9

Lovecraftesque follows a single protagonist, whose story is told through the roles of Witness (the protagonist, who makes decisions about what to do) Narrator (who describes everything outside of the the Witness’ purview), and Watchers (who embellish the Narrator’s descriptions). The assignment of these roles shifts from scene to scene, so that each player occupies each role at one time or another.

The game is broken down into three parts: Part I is 5 scenes long and comprised of “Investigation” scenes, where Clues are revealed to the Witness; Part II is up to 3 scenes long, also “Investigation” scenes, but with the additional option of incorporating clearly supernatural elements prompted by “Special Cards.” Part III is 3 specific scenes: “Journey Into Darkness,” which intensifies the established tension; “Final Horror,” in which the truth is revealed; and “Epilogue,” which puts a bow on it.

The Narrator and Watchers frame each new scene, the Witness says what they do in that context, and the scene ends after certain requirements are met (e.g., an “Investigation” scene can wrap up at any point after a Clue has been introduced).

After a scene, the players are instructed to “leap to conclusions” by privately deciding where the story is going, and then use that to shape their future narrative input. Because of the shifting narrative control, players by necessity have to adjust their conclusions from scene to scene, which results in a really interesting dynamic.

There are no dice or other such oracles – conflict or task resolution is in the hands of whomever happens to be the Narrator. It’s very much a collaborative storytelling game which emulates Lovecraftian horror through structure and tone.

Clues are player-generated, but the Special Cards used to inject supernatural elements in Part II are external prompts that can push the story strongly in a particular direction. If I were going to make Murakamiesque, I’d take this card idea and expand it to use as prompts for Clues as well, so that each player would have a hand of Murakami tropes (amnesiac lover, enigmatic symbolism, cats are magic, etc.) to introduce in the first half of the game.

Murakami stories are often mysteries, so the play structure could be quite similar. The big difference on that front would be the conclusion, which would be an inversion of a dramatic revelation; a “no ending” ending.

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#10

Thanks! That sounds really cool!

I like how the tone of the game sounds very “lost” and ethereal.

#11

Unknown Armies has a setting where perception defines reality, rather than the other way around, and PCs can drastically change the world through their world view. Low level play is about kind of going from first glass of absinthe to fifth over the course of a campaign, as the characters get introduced to weird stuff and rapidly reach the point where they define the way the world works. There’s a lot of neat PC mechanics with characters either embodying an archetype to the point where reality just naturally reinforces it, or taking an obsession to the point where they see everything through its frame.

It’s a fairly trad game, but very in touch with the New Weird and with magical realism.

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#12

WTF really? :sob: so UA is half the concept of a game I’ve been working on for sometime. Well, not quite there’s a difference, in my setting believes can change reality, and it’s a medieval game. There’s still hope :white_flag: lol
I’ve been hearing about UA forever and it never really appealed to me, I think about it as the usual Kult-like “reality is illusion” dark stuff which was never interesting to me. Infact I don’t think about Murakami in that way really because. Yes Murakami is initially rampant melancholic, has a lot of dark-ish elements, but I read his stories as fundamentally “optimistic” or at least about experience, epic struggles, and moving on (opposed to the total stagnation which is the typical place his leading characters are at the beginning of the story).
But now you made me courious about UA.

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#13

I think a good starting point for seeing what kinds of stories Unknown Armies can tell is to pick up One Shots, which was a collection of kind of out there short adventures. Jailbreak is a classic and Joy and Sorrow is a beautiful piece that really would work better as a LARP than a tabletop scenario. I see the game as fundamentally optimistic especially in third edition which focuses on incremental progress toward impossible sounding goals

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#14

So when will you run those for us? :kissing_heart:

#15

They both make great con games and I’m more likely to bring them there. I do want to start hosting games on the Gauntlet though. Eyeing doing a run of Headspace at some point in the future

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