Ganakagok: A Mythopoietic Roleplaying Game
Game and card design by Bill White
Ganakagok Tarot art design and game layout by Dave Petroski
edited by Michael Miller
cover art by Jeremy Mohler
CONSENSUS GAMES
www.ganakagok.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Numerous people contributed to the creation and development of Ganakagok, and I can do their contributions only inadequate justice here. But some of them are given credit above, and I would like to acknowledge also the enormous debt I owe to Don Corcoran, Drew Morris, Alexander Newman, Nathan Paoletta, and Mel White for their support, enthusiasm, and advocacy of the game. I appreciate as well all of those folks who ran games of Ganakagok under one or another of its different versions, editions, and ashcans, like Jeff Collyer, Travis Farber, and John Hay. I am grateful to everyone! Also, I’d like to thank Mike Holmes, the chairman of Iron Game Chef 2004, for his judging of the contest in which the first version of Ganakagok was an entrant; he was the first to see any potential in this game.
In Starlight Cold
Forever have the People lived
In starlight cold;
But now we gather, and soon ascend,
And go together to world's end.
GANAKAGOK is the name of the great island of ice upon which a tribe of primitive, fur-clad hunters called the Nitu eke out a tenuous existence beneath a black sky ablaze with stars.
The Nitu live on a vast snowdrift-covered ice-pack that surrounds a gigantic central iceberg whose upper reaches have at some point in the past, far beyond living memory, been shaped into enormous towers and cascading stairs, intricate labyrinths and soaring spires. The Nitu say that it is the work of the Forgotten Ones, vanished beings of immense power and mysterious purpose whose relics are sometimes yet found out on the ice. But the glacial plains are haunted by dangers, such as monstrous creatures called the cannibal-ghouls, and they are fearsome and terrible.
The People marvel at the legacy of the Forgotten Ones. The People honor their Ancestors, whose spirits watch over their living descendants and protect them when they can. And the People revere the Stars, whom they regard as stern judges of the moral rectitude of the Nitu and incorruptible guarantors of the harmony of the cosmic order. The first line of an oft-told origin myth of the People conveys something of this reverence. “Forever have the People lived in starlight cold,” chant the shamans of the People.
But now the Stars begin to fade. And in the counsels of the wise, the visions of the far-sighted, and the mutterings of the mad comes a new refrain. Dawn is coming. Night is ending. Soon the Sun will rise.
And all wonder: What will it mean for the People?
Introduction
Forever have the People lived in starlight cold . . .
AS A GAME, Ganakagok plays like a quasi-Inuit Silmarillion as seen from the inside looking out. The experience is more than mythic, it's mythopoietic: game-play produces legends, myths, fables—the real just-so stories of an imaginary people. It is, frankly, a kind of role-playing poetry.
Her Tears Fall As Rain
Dave played a curious child.
Frank was a cursed youth.
Fred started off as a harsh truth-teller.
Matt was a brave javelineer.
Lisa was a misunderstood artisan.
Don was a burning prophet.
Shawn played the crazy grandmother.
And I was the Game Master.
We played out a complete game-turn, with one player-turn per character, that took us from the dark of Night to Morning in three hours. By the time character creation ended, we had established that the curious child was the son of the chieftain who had been slain by the burning prophet, whose guilt had been revealed by the harsh truth-teller. A fog lay over the island of ice, shrouding the Stars, and the people were riven with division, with some supporting a boastful warrior as the new chieftain and others insisting on the rights of the curious child.
The game began with the burning prophet pulling himself from the flames into which he’d been cast as punishment for his crime of murdering the chief, collapsing in the snow, steam rising around him.
Dave’s turn: The curious child, wracked with guilt over the death of his father, tried to make sense of someone else being punished for the crime, but found the whole thing too much to bear. The cursed youth tried to comfort him, using his Forgotten Ones mana to call down a flock of snow geese upon the village in a kind of obscure parable, but since he himself is an orphan who’d come to believe that he was destined to destroy any family he had, he did more harm than good to the poor child’s understanding. The harsh truth-teller drove away the cursed youth with his bone walking stick. The misunderstood artisan crafted a weird ice-sculpture incorporating the body of the chieftain in an attempt to put the whole thing into perspective for the boy. And the crazy grandmother sang the Song of the Sun.
Frank’s turn: The people, for whom food had been growing scarce, looked to the cursed youth as their savior because of the bounty he’d called down upon the village. They wanted him to stand up to the boastful warrior and take the role of leader. But because of his belief that he was destined to destroy his family, he refused and sent himself into exile, revealing that he bore a Star that he’d found in a melted tower upon the flanks of Ganakagok and that he was going to bring it back there. The harsh truth-teller, who’d had visions of the Last Star, followed, as did the misunderstood artisan.
Fred’s turn: The self-exiled youth refused to allow those who followed him to join them, and they followed a little way behind. The ice broke beneath the harsh truth-teller, and he was trapped under a clear patch of ice, banging against it, looking to the self-exiled youth to save him. The youth hesitated. The misunderstood artisan tried to move him to action. In my favorite move of this scene, Dave revealed that the curious child had been following the whole time, and now rushed forward, crying “Why aren’t you saving him?!” But the curse was strong, and the harsh truth-teller died, the light of the Last Star the last thing he saw. Then his eyes opened, gleaming black and wet, and he swam away. In a turn of events that Fred clearly relished, he’d become a cannibal-ghoul!
Matt’s turn: Soon, the cannibal-ghoul began to haunt the village, shredding nets, despoiling kills, and even carrying off villagers who strayed too far from the safety of their ice-houses (including the widow of the harsh truth-teller). The brave javelineer set off in his kayak to track down the monster, seeking the guidance of the spirits to lead him to the monster. I let this be a player-vs-player contest, and Matt won. The consequence card was “Darkness” and so, defeated, the cannibal-ghoul sank into the dark depths of the sea.
At this point, Night became Twilight. The fog lifted, the sky lightened from night-black to twilight grey, and the stars faded. We learned that the Last Star borne by the self-exiled youth was in fact the Sun, now shining like a star on the slopes of the ice-mountain of Ganakagok.
Lisa’s turn: The misunderstood artisan confronted the self-exiled youth. “Trade fates with me!” he said. “Let me bear the Star.” But the curse was not in the Star, it was in the youth himself. And so he refused. The consequence card was “Reflected Image” and so the players decided that the self-exiled youth was the avatar of the Sun, and the misunderstood artisan was the avatar of the Moon! The curious child was now a wise witness to their apotheosis. Their ascent continued.
At this point, Twilight became Dawn. The Sun melted the mountain of ice and hung in the pale blue sky, the Moon reflecting its new light faintly.
Don’s turn: Back in the village, the burning prophet threw his support behind the boastful warrior and began to teach the people the way of the Sun. The people became united, but would have to give up their old ways and leave Ganakagok.
Shawn’s turn: The crazy grandmother set herself adrift on an ice floe, singing the Song of the Sun until death took her.
At this point, Dawn became Morning. Ganakagok was transformed, but the People lost the memory of who they once were. The curious child grew into the father of the new people, aided by the burning prophet. The cannibal-ghoul sank into the depths to become the cancer at the heart of the world that would teach the people how to master and pollute the earth. The brave javelineer would wander the globe, a flying Dutchman in a kayak. The Sun and the Moon would continue their eternal chase, with the Sun slaying his family, the Stars, each morning when he rose. And the crazy grandmother would become the Last Ancestor, looking down upon a people that had forgotten her. She would weep, and her tears would fall as rain, not snow. And the People would tell stories of the Lady Who Weeps, but they would have forgotten why she cries.
In three hours of play, we collectively and collaboratively created a compelling and coherent myth. It was fabulous.
How the Game Works
The in-game fiction is an exploration of the characters’ reactions to the certainty of change in their world. The characters’ reactions are made consequential by the fact that they potentially contribute Good Medicine and Bad Medicine to the world, the people, and individual characters. Good and Bad Medicine are the metaplot currency that determine the outcome of the game-fiction. At the end of the game, having more Good Medicine than Bad Medicine means that the world, the people, or the character have a happy ending; otherwise, the object in question has an unhappy or tragic ending. At the end of the game, the rights to narrate the Final Fates of the world and the people are determined by die roll; each player gets to narrate his or her own character’s fate.
A game of Ganakagok follows a pretty consistent pattern. One player, the Game Master (GM), leads the others in using cards from the Ganakagok deck (see the next chapter for details) as prompts to devise the initial situation facing the world of Ganakagok and the Nitu people. Details from the initial situation are used to begin creating two important play aids, the Ganakagok Map and the Nitu Map. The Ganakagok Map is a record of in-game locations and geographical lore; it is also used to keep track of the Good and Bad Medicine accruing to the world as well as the GM’s Final Fate narration rights for the world. The Nitu Map is a record of characters in the game as well as details about the cultural lore of the Nitu. It tracks Good and Bad Medicine accruing to the People and the GM’s Final Fate narration rights for the Nitu.
The players then create their characters by reading cards from the Ganakagok deck to determine their characters’ Truth-Vision, Change-Hope, and Change-Fear; in other words, how the character knows that change is coming, and what the character hopes and fears will come to pass as a result of that change or resistance to it. Other game-mechanical and fictional details about the character are also specified, including the Gifts and Burdens that are the primary mechanism through which players affect in-game action. During this process, both the Ganakagok Map and the Nitu Map are augmented by the contributions of players. Meanwhile, the GM determines the Stars in the Night Sky, a resource depleted in play to create additional Gifts and Burdens, but whose depletion moves the game closer to its end.
Once the initial situation is determined and characters are created, the players arrange themselves around the table in order of character age from youngest to oldest and play begins, with each player taking a turn in sequence.
During a player turn, a Situation Card is thrown to inform the situation faced by the player’s character. Some combination of roleplaying and straight narration leads to the crux of the turn, at which point dice are rolled to determine the in-game consequences of the character’s choice during that turn as well as who wins narration rights to resolve the in-game action. Players use their Gifts and Burdens to influence the dice once they are rolled but before the Consequence Card is interpreted by the winner of narration. The final distribution of values on the dice produces some number of Good Medicine, Bad Medicine, Gifts, and Burdens.
As play continues, the Stars in the Night Sky are being depleted by the accumulation of Gifts and Burdens. In the fiction of the game, this results in Night becoming Twilight and Twilight becoming Dawn. When there are no more Stars in the Night Sky, Dawn becomes Morning and the game ends with the narration of the Final Fates of the World, the People, and the individual characters.
The Ganakagok Tarot
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something that he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
— T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land” (1922)
THE PLAY OF THE GAME revolves around players interpreting cards from a specially devised deck called the “Ganakagok Tarot.” Each card has motifs that are used in play, read by one player or another to establish or develop the current situation or to justify a particular outcome when characters take action. For example, the Ancient of Tears is Anuk, “Polar Bear: to overcome or master.” So when this card is drawn or played, it could mean that a polar bear is nearby, that a man whose totem is a polar bear is significant, that someone has been overcome in the current situation, that an old man in the village has died (been overcome), that someone has mastered some difficulty, and so forth.