The Jiangshi, Chinese hopping vampires, in an RPG that addresses the racism and oppression of 1920s Chinatown - featuring Banana Chan of Game and a Curry.
Read the full transcript and see art from the game here: https://scintilla.studio/monster-01-jiangshi-banana-chan/
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwZnw01Oz9U&list=PLNqL_h0x0qyZoNSS1VP1tBA5QCaie5Coo&index=2
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Music by Jason Shaw at Audionautix: https://audionautix.com
A version of this article also appears on Love Thy Nerd: https://lovethynerd.com/jiangshi-lets-players-empathize-with-victims-of-systemic-racism/
You're just finishing up service.
Speaker:The restaurant is starting to get a little empty.
Speaker:When you stare out the window, you notice a person with their arms outstretched,
Speaker:hopping, and they're hopping towards you.
Speaker:Maybe they've been drinking even though it's prohibition
Speaker:era, maybe they're injured.
Speaker:Maybe they just need your help.
Speaker:But when you look out the window, You also see that their face, it
Speaker:doesn't like they're quite there.
Speaker:They look like they're just staring at you and their eyes are sort of glazed over.
Speaker:Their skin.
Speaker:Isn't exactly what you would call alive.
Speaker:It's gray and it doesn't look right.
Speaker:So, um, this person is hopping towards you and they don't say anything once they've
Speaker:gotten close enough to another person.
Speaker:But she starts coming out of that other person's body.
Speaker:There's this blue wisp flying out of this other person into the hopping.
Speaker:Hello and welcome to making a monster.
Speaker:The weekly podcast where game designers show you their favorite
Speaker:monster, how it works, why it works and what it means this week.
Speaker:I'm thrilled for you to meet banana Chan.
Speaker:One of the designers for a new release called Zhang sugar
Speaker:blood in the banquet hall.
Speaker:She partnered with wedding games to bring this unique and
Speaker:timely project to Kickstarter.
Speaker:And because I'm future Lucas, I can tell you young should blue pass its
Speaker:goals to become fully funded on day one.
Speaker:And it's easy to see why.
Speaker:Her diverse team of authors and designers have crafted a unifying and enlightening
Speaker:cultural experience, utterly unique to the medium of tabletop gaming.
Speaker:You should learn.
Speaker:The banquet hall is about a Chinese family running a restaurant in the
Speaker:1920s and in the daytime they're faced with oppression and, uh, you know, the
Speaker:stress of having to run a restaurant and keeping up with their customers.
Speaker:Meanwhile, at night, John should come out and they attack
Speaker:everyone just a big, quick.
Speaker:Background on what juncture are.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:They're hopping vampires and they don't feed on blood necessarily.
Speaker:They feed on the cheesy of a person, the life force of a person, or like I'm
Speaker:a quote, unquote, the soul of a person.
Speaker:Sen.
Speaker:And I, we go back and forth on like the, the background of the juncture as well.
Speaker:Cause there are a few different stories about like where they
Speaker:came from mythologically, like in Chinese culture, like.
Speaker:Had they become things.
Speaker:One of my favorite stories is that this priest, this priest was trying to carry
Speaker:bodies from point a to point B, trying to drag them along because they had to
Speaker:burry them in a burial site and do like, you know, proper virtual type stuff.
Speaker:And they realized that this is a lot of work.
Speaker:So what they did was they enchanted a bunch of bodies with some paper talismans.
Speaker:And then they started hopping and they start, uh, you know, hopping towards
Speaker:the burial site behind the priest.
Speaker:And that was like easy way of getting out of doing this long.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Or unfortunately some of the paper talismans fell off their heads and
Speaker:that's how we have the juncture.
Speaker:They just like run a muck and started destroying towns
Speaker:and doing all that fun stuff.
Speaker:How do you feel this story is represented mechanically in a game?
Speaker:So in the game itself, each player has a character sheet that has slots.
Speaker:And when they take damage, they cover up their slots.
Speaker:Lots also have items, facets, skills, their hopes, and dreams,
Speaker:things about the character, right?
Speaker:So when they get filled up, they start becoming more and more like juncture.
Speaker:So it's gradually erasing the parts of the parts of the character that
Speaker:the player has chosen to define that character as being in personality.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So you could think of it as like, you know, literally turning more and more
Speaker:into Joshua or, you know, if you were thinking about it in terms of like
Speaker:a, uh, an allegory it's like they're becoming more and more assimilated, or
Speaker:there may be an acting their fears of becoming assimilated into this new world.
Speaker:I'm sold well, tradition and culture figure in the game, not just as an
Speaker:object to be protected, but also as a positive force that itself protects
Speaker:the family and the restaurant.
Speaker:And we also have paper towels.
Speaker:They're fake paper, talismans.
Speaker:I'm air quoting right now with my fingers, but, uh, fake paper tells
Speaker:mins that characters will write on.
Speaker:So they will come together as a family and write out a family motto,
Speaker:which will keep them safe from the juncture so that when they.
Speaker:Use the spell.
Speaker:When they use these pieces of paper, they can stick them on the junction and they'll
Speaker:freeze them in place and hopefully giving them enough time to carry out their plan.
Speaker:A campaign in juncture is a series of one shots collected
Speaker:into an anthology or mini series.
Speaker:Bananas background as a small box games, designer shines here in
Speaker:junctures clear and unique objective.
Speaker:None of the player characters actually die.
Speaker:If you turn into a drunk shoe, you can turn back.
Speaker:The only way for the players to quote unquote lose is if they,
Speaker:their restaurant takes on so much damage that it falls into disrepair.
Speaker:And then the restaurant closes because the restaurant itself actually acts
Speaker:as a character kind of as well.
Speaker:It's got eight slots on the board and when things get covered up by
Speaker:undone chores, it goes into disrepair.
Speaker:Using this restaurant board, you go about your day using the day
Speaker:cycles and like the night cycles.
Speaker:So in the daytime, you're acting out the day scenes, you have to do your chores.
Speaker:You have to, you know, make sure that the customers are happy and that night
Speaker:the junk should come out and you have to defend the restaurant from these juncture.
Speaker:And also we'll make sure that you get some rest for the next day.
Speaker:And every day you get a pool of dice on the first day.
Speaker:Maybe you have like five to eight.
Speaker:And the second day, as you're getting more stressed out one day, it gets taken out.
Speaker:And so you have to roll from 40 eights, a pool of 40 eights, and then
Speaker:the next day you have three D AIDS.
Speaker:And then finally on the last day, maybe you have two DA's and that's
Speaker:like the least amenity it's.
Speaker:You can have a for this game.
Speaker:So, if I were to thumbnail this, I would say in the same way that
Speaker:shadow run has a D six dice pool.
Speaker:Juncture has a D eight dice.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And we decided to use DAS because the number eight is, um, it's
Speaker:lucky and Chinese culture.
Speaker:Yeah, so it's very thematic.
Speaker:And, uh, if you roll any fours, the fours cancel it.
Speaker:The highest number because the number four is bad luck and similar to the word death.
Speaker:So that's why we decided to have before is be like, you know, the number
Speaker:that cancels out the highest number, and then the next highest number
Speaker:would be the outcome to the role.
Speaker:And Mandarin, it would be, ER, I'm sure.
Speaker:Uh, and so in Cantonese, because my Mandarin is terrible in Cantonese,
Speaker:the number four would sound like, say, and to die is say so for Cantonese,
Speaker:the word juncture would be gung.
Speaker:See, it would be different from say and say, so, yeah.
Speaker:When you say Chinatown, are you thinking of one Chinatown in particular?
Speaker:So the base game is actually in it's based on off of San Francisco's Chinatown,
Speaker:because that's one of the first train of towns that, that happens during
Speaker:the, I believe like the 18 hundreds, but, uh, we have a few different
Speaker:Chinatowns that players can choose from and a few different ventures as well.
Speaker:So they don't necessarily have to be in a Chinatown.
Speaker:So we have San Francisco and Los Angeles by Ross churn.
Speaker:He's doing both of those.
Speaker:And then we have New York by Kiana Shaw and we have Vancouver
Speaker:and Toronto by Daniel Kwan.
Speaker:Amazing.
Speaker:So that's five, five Chinatowns that you can choose from, but also
Speaker:with the adventures, if you are.
Speaker:Say, uh, playing a or from Yoshi Creelman, uh, Yoshi, Romans writing
Speaker:one on, uh, Japanese interment camps.
Speaker:So using that as a setting, uh, we also have Carl pure Lewis.
Speaker:Who's using a setting that's based off of a Haitian American community.
Speaker:Yeah, so there's a lot.
Speaker:So in this moment, everything that we've done, the session
Speaker:zero, we've set up the board.
Speaker:We've rolled out these characters sheets in this moment.
Speaker:What do you want people to be feeling.
Speaker:So there are two different tones that we have set up for this game.
Speaker:So the first tone that we're taking on is a more serious, scary, you
Speaker:know, creepy vibe, sort of similar to, you know, the terrorist season too.
Speaker:It's like a weird, creepy, like what's going on type of ghost story.
Speaker:And then the other vibe.
Speaker:Is a sillier vibe, which is something that is used a lot in Cantonese horror movies.
Speaker:For example, the spooky bunch is one of the movies that I've talked about
Speaker:before, where the characters are in like a pretty silly situation, even
Speaker:though there were faced with ghosts.
Speaker:Um, and if you've never seen the spooky bunch, uh, first of
Speaker:all, do definitely check it out.
Speaker:And second of all, I like to think of it sort of like a Bob's burgers
Speaker:meets vampires type scenario.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, it's on the list.
Speaker:The young HSA are exactly the kind of monster I was hoping to find when
Speaker:I started this project, a way of understanding and interacting with
Speaker:important issues that fosters real conversation and community sure.
Speaker:Are there manifestation of the racism and the oppression
Speaker:and all the things that the.
Speaker:Characters at the time were dealing with, so the Chinese immigrant family,
Speaker:they were dealing with like a lot of, a lot of stress from all these
Speaker:different systemic issues and Sen and I were hoping that the juncture
Speaker:would be like this, um, this physical manifestation of all of these things.
Speaker:Uh, but.
Speaker:It's not just, uh, it's not just the scary stuff.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, it's also like the silly stuff, which we tried to make light of, not in
Speaker:the sense that we're trying to dampen it or anything, but trying to make it.
Speaker:Feel a little more hopeful so that it's family friendly and
Speaker:it's a little more approachable.
Speaker:So when we're talking about racism or, you know, oppression, it's a little easier
Speaker:to understand when players try to grapple with these with these sensitive times.
Speaker:I mean, I never asked you to write an essay about whether racism is a zombie,
Speaker:but I might play this game with you and ask is racism a zombie though?
Speaker:And you know exactly what I was talking about.
Speaker:What is doing it in this way, add to the conversation.
Speaker:I think that there are two things, right?
Speaker:So, because it's set in the 1920s, we do have a little bit of separation
Speaker:in terms of time and period.
Speaker:So, because it's something that's already happened, you can sort
Speaker:of take a look at all this stuff that's happened historically, like
Speaker:in books or in the tax itself.
Speaker:Um, The timeline describes, like all the things that have happened, including
Speaker:like the Chinese exclusion act.
Speaker:I think that that separation with the time period allows for, for
Speaker:people to like, Digestible easier.
Speaker:And then the second way is that we added these horror elements
Speaker:because, or quote, unquote horror.
Speaker:They can be silly if you want them to be silly, but we add the horror
Speaker:element because that adds another layer of separation where it's like,
Speaker:okay, you know, I understand that all this stuff is happening, but.
Speaker:It still feels like we're building a story together.
Speaker:We're, you know, sort of like watching a movie, we're not actually
Speaker:encountering these things in real life, even though we are like, we
Speaker:still are encountering like, you know, impression or, you know, systemic race.
Speaker:We still have a safe space to sort of play in and understand more
Speaker:about what's happening in the world.
Speaker:Banana.
Speaker:I'm so glad you came on the podcast.
Speaker:This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to get to.
Speaker:I knew it.
Speaker:I'm glad if you're as excited it is.
Speaker:I am about as young ship blood in the banquet hall, you can find
Speaker:links to everything you need to know@theepisodepageonscintilla.studio
Speaker:slash monster, including beautiful illustrations.
Speaker:Full color cover art banana has also made available a nine page short story written
Speaker:in the Chinatowns setting of young HSA and in the style of an actual play podcast.
Speaker:And you can get it by trusting me with your email address.
Speaker:There's going to be a lot more extras like this as making a
Speaker:monster progresses, and I'm excited to share them with you that way.
Speaker:Juncture blood in the banquet hall is live on Kickstarter until Thursday,
Speaker:August 13th, and a backer kit will be available on that page for late pledges.
Speaker:If you're also listening to this in the future.
Speaker:Follow wet ink games and game, and a Curry on Facebook, Twitter, and
Speaker:Instagram to stay completely up to date on the games, retail distribution.
Speaker:Right now, John should blend the bank at home.
Speaker:We'll be on Kickstarter on July.
Speaker:14th would be a 30 day Kickstarter.
Speaker:I think it ends on August 13th, but afterwards, once production goes out
Speaker:and everything, we should be able to get in stores through distribution,
Speaker:as long as everything is fine, you know, like as long as covert doesn't
Speaker:mess things up some more right.
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