Story Games and resuscitating home grown Story!

Hope you all don’t mind if I jump into this conversation. The issue of ‘story’ is something I’ve been fairly obsessed with for a long time. This is somewhat off-topic but I really would like to address Willem’s assertion that “We have no Story, for us (without an indigenous heritage, blooded or adopted), that has this in-dwelling perspective.”

I just want to point out that there is at least one holdout within civilized culture where people still live within the stories offered up by the nature of ‘place’ and nature generally. That holdout is astrology. Most people misunderstand astrology because they consider it a type of divination, but in fact learning astrology is a matter of fine-tuning one’s empathic relationship to the constellation-people and planet-people (if I may borrow a rewilders’ turn of phrase) of the night sky and learning to feel their personality traits in everyday life.

I have a pet theory that western astrology is an animist leftover that survived the rise of civilization in the middle east because it is the one aspect of animism that can be represented with alphanumeric literacy. All of the constellations correspond to some animal or phenomenon in nature, with the exception of Libra the scales, which got added sometime during antiquity, and Sagittarius the centaur, which recalls some images of the “revolution of symbols” that shortly predate cities. Moreover, the three zodiacal animals that are now domesticated — the ram, the bull, and the goat — exist in astrology in their undomesticated forms. For example, Taurus the Bull draws its characteristics not from what is apparent in a domesticated bull, but from the behavior one would see in an undomesticated bull.

If you’re at all familiar with astrological literature, you’ll find that astrologers are almost unfailingly uniform in their interpretations of the broad outlines of these stories; but the details get screwed up because astrology is wholly dependent upon place — even a tiny change in latitude, or a few minutes’ rotation of the earth, can drastically change the appearance of the heavenly bodies’ configuration. The details play out differently in different places because of this, and the best astrologers can do is make an empathic estimate of the next scene — the story itself gets written by the interaction of place with the wandering stars’ travels through the constellations.

It is also intensely interesting to me that the wandering stars, or planets, are entirely civilized archetypes that travel through the territories, or constellations, of specific animals. With astrology, it is completely impossible to divorce any human story from the personalities of animals — Scorpion, Lion, Ram, Goat, and the others exist in astrology in the same way Coyote exists among indigenous North American cultures. It is as if the collective, civilized unconscious remembers and enshrined this knowledge in such a way as to prevent us from forgetting; to carry us through 12,000 years of civilization with something still intact from our pre-civilized cultural ancestors. Astrology offers not just a story, but a practically unbreakable framework for creating stories of place that are culturally meaningful for those of us who come from western civilization, in whatever place we might find ourselves. In my own opinion it is crucially important to keep the story of civilization intact and evolve out of it, and then keep that story intact, rather than discard it and clothe ourselves with something else, lest our cultural descendants forget in the same way we have forgotten. By its nature, astrology protects the entire story from paleolithic through early empires, all the way through to collapse, and sketches the broad outlines of future stories waiting to be revealed.

Personally, my studies in astrology are unquestionably animist, and the whole point is to discover the stories — or more accurately, the ongoing story — the sky has to tell. From its position, it has seen and will forever see absolutely everything that happens on the Earth and it knows every story, including all the ones yet to be discovered.

I don’t really understand the notion that having been born into civilization means we have no indigenous heritage. I guess because I see the world through an astrological lens, and consider this a miraculous gift from pre-civilized, pre-western, animist culture, I feel very strongly that the paleolithic middle east is my cultural heritage. And this feeling is greatly bolstered by the animist interpretation of Genesis — indeed, of the whole bible — that I have been piecing together for a few years now. We are cultural descendants of those from whom western civilization first erupted and I personally feel very strong ties to those people. Scorpio feels the same to me as it has since the first person noticed what he feels like. That is a very strong, shared cultural experience. The story of western civilization’s break with nature, the rise and fall of civilization, and humans’ return to a state of grace looks an awful lot like an in-dwelling story to me… it is our experience, as the heirs to the cultural gold of those who came just before civilization — in the forms of astrology & the bible — it doesn’t make sense to me to disregard these things and try to make something up from scratch.

Well that was very long-winded. Hopefully my points didn’t get lost among all those words.

—paula

Well, I’ll need some time before I can respond to your thoughtful post, paula, but it has certainly left me with a lingering feeling of coolness.

so thank you. :slight_smile:

Jason,
Thank you for taking the time to do that. What you did write helped me understand a bit more.

Paula,
I really enjoyed your post, very refreshing. It’s true that Astrology is an ancient “science” “study” “pursuit” “story”. Although our western culture has largely relegated it to the entertainment category in other cultures around the world it is still considered a valid consideration when making plans of any kind. It connects us to “Creation” in many ways.

Thanks you guys, I appreciate your feedback. This is really one of the most gracious and intelligent communities I’ve come across on the internet since late-90s alt.music.tool, even if I don’t know what you all are talking about half the time. :wink:

—paula

When Scott London asked David Abram, "Do we have any equivalents of medicine people in Western culture, people who perform a similar function?" Abram suggested, "We do have some distant equivalents, such as field biologists who are able to enter into a close rapport with the other species that they are studying."

I’d add that some naturalists qualify as medicine men in Western culture, too. I think Barry Lopez touches on this rather nicely here:

Take care,

Curt

what are our stories about?

We make stories. right now. These stories will be the tracks we have left when the turn has come for our children to live. What will they find? Stories of Grief is the first and most powerful story that comes to me when i think of it all. My stories would tell them why we cried until the land would be fertile again. Then a story of anger comes to me. Stories of destruction and ancient wisdom to live as part of the land. Stories of guilt and doubt. Stories of hard choices. Stories to put us in perspective. To share. It is stories we watch and choose to follow or not like tracks in the earth. We are making stories wheter we want to or not but we have to understand one very important thing, that it is each and everyone of us that makes those stories. We all leave our tracks for others to find. So i will try and ground my stories to the land, where they come from.

Playing stories, enacting them and experiencing them is a great way for us to start to become aware of the tracks we leave. Telling stories makes us aware of the issues that we and our friends are dealing with. We gain greater awareness and understanding of our surroundings because we constantly practise and explore our creativity and empathy. You might say that you become aware of a whole new set of tracks. Tracks and signs that lie hidden behind a persons words, behind a smile that hides hurt and grief. Story tracks, tracks that leave us with ideas to follow or roads to understanding one another better. To speak stories one starts understanding intention, attunement, choices, because stories make us go there and live out these things together.

Story-jamming i love that… to attune to eachother…to listen to each other…to speak to eachother…to appreciate each other. Find your band! play a story. Explore with your friends. Shut down that TV, entertainment need not be meaningless and spoon-fed. Your friends might have great stories that you’ve never heard, everyday a new premiere!

and this is leading me to a new topic: Jamming as a way of (dis)organizing … :slight_smile:

cheers.

Thanks Paula for your thoughts and feelings! I feel really good knowing the forum provides something like that for you. awesome!

timeless-
i can only chant ‘yes! yes! yes!’ over and over again. haha.

for the curious-
i have highspeed internet access at the open space gathering. very handy. :slight_smile:

I’ve linked to this thread from my blog, as i see its gotten quite some attention.

this is what i wrote there, for your convenience,

I asked Willem from the College of Mythic Cartography to talk about story-games on the Rewild.info forums and the reply i’ve gotten is more then i could’ve wished for. The thread is spiralling out, starting its own story by now as people are coming along for the ride offering their insights. For ages we have spoken, shared, created, re-created, lived the stories that mattered to us as individuals and as tightly-knit groups. These “modern” days we are being spoon-fed stories of action-heroes, violence glorified, good guys and bad guys. These stories are not mine. They are not who I am and they do not bring me closer to you. Our stories need to be lived and experienced together. Our Anger, our love, our happiness, our meaning, our connection, our friendship. Our stories tell everything. We need to talk.

@yarrow dreamer: grieve and praise. id tell a story with you.

Warning: StoryGamesBabble Ahead!

@Willem:
Please tell me what you think of Polaris once you DO decide to try it out. From what i’ve seen i think it might rock your story-world.

When playing PTA it seems a common problem is the whole “stakes” thing being slightly misunderstood. Setting stakes does not mean deciding on everything that happens when a conflict is won or lost only to let the highest roll/card state everything all over again after the conflict.
Rather think of it like establishing what it is that players are trying to achieve. If you’re having trouble with this just try phrasing stakes like " im trying to …(insert stake here) … do not specify the details of the result…just state what you are trying to achieve. The result is narrated by the highest roll/card leave the details/story to him and don’t forget to spend your fanmail when he comes with great ideas! This might help ALOT!

I havent tried in A Wicked Age yet, but im reading lots of great things about it. I especially like how there’s no clear “we are the protagonists vs antagonist” division. I understand the conflict resolution has similarities to Sorcerer and that one is quite impressive, if i may say so. I read your story-report on the forge and thought it was way cool. Can’t wait to try this one out. What was it that made this work for you?

The group you are telling stories with, are they new to this in general? Do you think focusing one’s creativeness as iAWA does (by oracle) is helping them to come up with great ideas? whereas PTA’s pitch session leaves you with a scope that is too big?

Im thinking on what would be the best way to guide new people into story-telling, and i think that leaving everything open like PTA does is maybe not the wisest thing to do, really. I do want a shared-narrative experience though. What would you think are good things to do when starting new players with storygames and what have been pitfalls?