Swords & Wizardry Sighted in Tokyo: Millions Flee

I just noticed that somebody is going to be running a Swords & Wizardry game at the monthly Japan International Gamer's Guild meet up in Yoyogi-Uehara in May. Just my luck that I'll be out of the country for the entirety of that month.

Anyway, this is the first evidence I've had that the retro-clones are actually making their presence felt outside of the blogs and forums. (Unless the game is going to be run by a blogger...although I don't know of anybody else living in and around Tokyo.) An encouraging sign for sure.

I've fallen by the wayside a little when it comes to the 'old school renaissance'. I think my initial enthusiasm for the thing was based on the fact that I didn't like the look of D&D 4e or any of the self-styled 'indie' games. I've come to the realisation that, no, I actually just like old games and want to play them, and haven't actually stopped - which is an altogether different thing from a renaissance. Adding to that, it has to be said that my favourite old games (AD&D 2e, Cyberpunk 2020, MERP, Advanced Fighting Fantasy) probably aren't old school enough to be proper Old Skool anyway. And as a natural dyed-in-the-wool contrarian I was never comfortable with the idea of any sort of movement.

But I do really like Swords & Wizardry. The toolbox approach, and the fact that it allows people to come up with things like Ruins & Ronin, is a huge boon. It's nice to see that it's making at least a vague splash in the Far East; perhaps there's hope for us S&Wers after all.

Cool Cultures

I often wonder what it is about some cultures that makes them 'cooler' in the eye of gamer nerd-dom than others. These days Japanese culture is all the rage overseas (which is odd, given the fact that the country is on its knees in almost every sense, utterly lacking in self-confidence, and faced with a hopeless and near-apocalyptic future of population crash and economic catastrophe). Other cultural 'cool spots' include I suppose France, ancient Greece, perhaps the UK depending on who you talk to, and maybe Thailand and Cambodia. Though none can currently challenge the overarching might of Japaneseness in the nation of Geekia.

For example, one of the biggest and most popular Swords & Wizardry projects is Project Samurai - Mike D's laudable attempt at creating a sort of pulp/fantasy Japan version of the game. It's good stuff. But it makes me wonder - why has nobody started up similar projects about, say, a pulp/fantasy Korea? Or Tonga? Or Madagascar? Or Turkey?

One reason I suppose would be familiarity. Japanese comics are readily available in the West, and popular, and this means people know about the tropes. But that is really begging the question. Japanese comics are readily available in the West because there is a market for them, and there is a market for them because people think Japanese culture is cool (as opposed to Polish culture, or whatever). It doesn't explain the root cause of it.

I've lived in Japan now for five years off and on, and have to admit that I just don't get it. I like it here, otherwise I wouldn't have stayed, but it seems very ordinary to me now and certainly no more or less appealing as a setting for role playing games than ancient Akkadia, Timbuktu, Fiji or Arabia. I'm obviously in the minority.