makapatag

[makapatag]

did you guys know there's a porcelain period southeast asia nusantara silat eskrima arnis martial arts fantasy webnovel about a binukot choosing violence and trying to kill the hero of prophecy

its got marxist buddhist nascent bodhisattvas, excessively honorable femboy girlfailures, butch lesbian colonizer killers, adhd demon girls, polytheist-buddhist-hindu-animist religious world building, 14 layered world, feminist islamic empires, each guy has 4 souls the works

#gubat banwa #princess murders the hero #ttrpg #filipino #writing #fantasy #rpg #gamedev #southeast asia #dnd #web serial #martial arts

[makapatag]

why is it that we only have like two licenses from any mech producer that’s a good guy? For a game where like there are clear good and bad guys (even if who you play isn’t necessarily linked to that) it seems strange to me that the only loot and XP you get is… more benefits from the bad guys

I can tell you the answer, but to do so, we're gonna have to talk about a completely different TTRPG.

If you've read @makapatag's truly excellent Filipino martial arts TTRPG Gubat Banwa (and if you haven't, here it is), you may notice that every single character class description (with one notable exception) ends with one of these babies:

I am not Makapatag, and I cannot write with quite as much grace and eloquence as he can, but I will try:

If you choose to become a Lancer, ask yourself why you mock the name of peace with these weapons of war. You call yourself a saviour, but your steed was forged from the murder of a world. You stride across the sky in a colossus built in your own image, so why are you too cowardly to give it your face? Why do you believe these machines of death can preserve life?

It is important to note that the admonitions in Gubat Banwa are not just there to make you feel bad; they are there as legitimate questions. The Sword Isles have seen so much blood, death and tragedy. Wars are not glorious and killing is not a game. So, knowing all of that, why have you taken up this discipline - no matter how noble and virtuous it might claim to be - to shed more blood, to bring more death, to write more tragedy? What could possibly drive you to this? What need is so great that you must kill?

The thing with Gubat Banwa is that there are legitimate answers to these questions! There are bad people doing bad things, and some of them will not be stopped with words or kindness. Sometimes, as sorrowful as it is, killing is the correct choice to prevent greater suffering and deeper tragedy - but adding less misery and death to the world is still adding some amount of it. Even the most necessary wars will drench the ground in the blood of the innocent.

A sword is a tool meant to kill humans; while it can be used for other things, it is not well-suited to anything other than this. A mech is, in its most basic essence, just a very complicated sword: it's usually used on things larger than a person, but it's still a tool built to kill.

So why have you taken up this path? Humanity was saved from the brink of extinction and has created wondrous technologies like printers, cold fusion and mind-machine interface, and yet you use them to play soldier in a giant metal man. Why do you choose to take up this machine of death, built by the greedy and pitiless? Why do you think these machines can ever make things right?

Because sometimes, despite everything, they can.

Warhammer 40K shows an awful world full of monsters and monstrosity, and in the darkest moments of its history, Lancer's world looked just as bleak, but Lancer's world differs in one crucial way. Warhammer's world has long given up trying to be better, but Lancer's world never did. Lancer's world kept insisting a better world is possible, and it used what tools it had to make it so.

Sometimes the correct choice, no matter how bitter it may seem, is to kill someone. When you need to do this, a sword is a perfectly good choice for the job.

If you find yourself discomforted by the fact that all the people you can buy mechs from are corrupt and immoral - good! You have correctly engaged with the text. You have understood that the sort of people who would make giant walking death machines and sell them for profit are not good people. But you still have a job to do, and you need the correct tools, and those people have them.

Lancer is not a game about a perfect world - it is a game about a deeply flawed and imperfect one that does not let its imperfection stop it from trying. You have to try to make a better world, even with imperfect tools made by unpleasant people.

[makapatag]

zelda but make her southeast asian and also she has prosthetic arms and also she's mastered the heaven rending art

read princess murders the hero

#this isnt a joke pmth really started out as a gb zelink au

[makapatag]

realities, maximalism,and the need for big book™️

some gubat banwa design thoughts vomit: since the beginning of its development i've kind of been enraptured with trying to really go for "fiction-first" storytelling because PbtA games really are peak roleplaying for me, but as i wrote and realized that a lot of "fiction first" doesn't work without a proper sort of fictional foundation that everyone agrees on. this is good: this is why there are grounding principles, genre pillars, and other such things in many PbtA games--to guide that.

broken worlds is one of my favs bc of sheer vibes

Gubat Banwa didn't have much in that sense: sure, I use wuxia and xianxia as kind of guideposts, but they're not foundational, they're not pillars of the kind of fiction Gubat Banwa wants to raise up. there wasn't a lot in the sense of genre emulation or in the sense of grounding principles because so much of Gubat Banwa is built on stuff most TTRPG players haven't heard about. hell, it's stuff squirreled away in still being researched academic and anthropological circles, and thanks to the violence of colonialism, even fellow filipinos and seasians don't know about them

this is what brought me back to my ancient hyperfixations, the worlds of Exalted, Glorantha, Artesia, Fading Suns... all of them have these huge tomes of books that existed to put down this vast sprawling fantasy world, right? on top of that are the D&D campaign settings, the Dark Suns and the Eberrons. they were preoccupied in putting down setting, giving ways for people to interact with the world, and making the world alive as much as possible.

one of my main problems with gubat banwa was trying to convey this world that i've seen, glimpsed, dreamed of. this martial fantasy world of rajas and lakans, sailendras and tuns, satariyas and senapatis and panglimas and laksamanas and pandai... its a world that didn't really exist yet, and most references are steeped in either nationalism or lack of resources (slowly changing, now)

i didn't want to fall back into the whole gazeteer tourist kind of shit when it came to writing GB, but it necessitated that the primary guidelines of Gubat Banwa were set down. my approach to it was trying to instill every aspect of the text, from the systems to the fluff text to the way i wrote to the way things were phrased, with the essence of this world i'm trying to put forward. while i wrote GB mainly for me and fellow SEAsian people, economically my main market were those in the first world countries that could afford to buy the book. grokking the book was always going to be severely difficult for someone that didn't have similar cultures, or are uninterested in the complexities of human culture. thus why GB had to be a big book.

in contemporary indie ttrpg spaces (where I mostly float in, though i must admit i pay more attention to SEAsia spaces than the usual US spaces) the common opinion is that big books like Exalted 3e are old hat, or are somewhat inferior to games that can cram their text into short books. i used to be part of that camp--in capitalism, i never have enough time, after all. however, the books that do go big, that have no choice to go big, like Lancer RPG, Runequest, Mage, Exalted are usually the ones that have something really big it needs to tell you, and they might be able to perform the same amount of text-efficient bursting at the seams flavor writing but its still not enough.

thats what happened to GB, which I wanted to be, essentially, a PbtA+4e kind of experience, mechanically speaking. i very soon abandoned those titles when i delved deeper into research, incorporated actual 15th century divination tools in the mechanics, injected everything with Martial Arts flavor as we found our niche

all of this preamble to say that no matter how light i wanted to go with the game, i couldnt go too light or else people won't get it, or i might end up writing 1000 page long tome books explaining every detail of the setting so people get it right. this is why i went heavy on the vibes: its a ttrpg after all. its never gonna be finished.

i couldnt go too light because Gubat Banwa inherently exists on a different reality. think: to many 3 meals a day is the norm and the reality. you have to eat 3 meals a day to function properly. but this might just be a cultural norm of the majority culture, eventually co opted by capitalism to make it so that it can keep selling you things that are "breakfast food" or "dinner food" and whatnot. so its reality to some, while its not reality to others. of course, a lot of this reality-talk pertains mostly to social--there is often a singular shared physical reality we can usually experience*

Gubat Banwa has a different fabric of reality. it inherently has a different flow of things. water doesn't go down because of gravity, but because of the gods that make it move, for example. bad things happen to you because you weren't pious or you didn't do your rituals enough and now your whole community has to suffer. atoms aren't a thing in gb, thermodynamics isn't a real thing. the Laws of Gubat Banwa aren't these physical empirical things but these karmic consequent things

much of the fiction-first movement has a sort of "follow your common sense" mood to it. common sense (something also debatable among philosophers but i dont want to get into that) is mostly however tied to our physical and social realities. but GB is a fantasy world that inherently doesn't center those realities, it centers realities found in myth epics and folk tales and the margins of colonized "civilization", where lightnings can be summoned by oils and you will always get lost in the woods because you don't belong there.

so Gubat Banwa does almost triple duty: it must establish the world, it must establish the intended fiction that arises from that world, and then it must grant ways to enforce that fiction to retain immersion--these three are important to GB's game design because I believe that that game--if it is to not be a settler tourist bonanza--must force the player to contend with it and play with it within its own terms and its own rules. for SEAsians, there's not a lot of friction: we lived these terms and rules forever. don't whistle at night on a thursday, don't eat meat on Good Friday, clap your hands thrice after lighting an incense stick, don't make loud noise in the forests. we're born into that [social] reality

this is why fantasy is so important to me, it allows us to imagine a different reality. the reality (most of us) know right now (i say most of us because the reality in the provinces, the mountains, they're kinda different) is inherently informed by capitalist structures. many people that are angry at capitalist structures cannot fathom a world outside capitalist structures, there are even some leftists and communists that approach leftism and revolution through capitalism, which is inherently destructive (its what leads to reactionaries and liberalism after all). fantasy requires that you imagine something outside of right now. in essence read Ursula K Le Guin

i tweeted out recently that you could pretty easily play 15-16th century Luzon or Visayas with an OSR mechanic setting and William Henry Scott's BARANGAY: SIXTEENTH CENTURY PHILIPPINE CULTURE AND SOCIETY, and I think that's purely because barebones OSR mechanics stuff fits well with the raiding and adventuring that many did in 15-16th century Luzon/Visayas, but a lot of the mechanics wont be comign from OSR, but from Barangay, where you learn about the complicated marriage customs, the debt mechanics, the social classes and stratum...

so thats why GB needs to be a (relatively) big book, and why I can contend that some books need to be big as well--even if their mechanics are relatively easy and dont need more than that, the book, the game, might be trying to relay something even more, might be trying to convey something even more than that. artesia, for example, has its advancements inherently tied to its Tarot Cards, enforcing that the Arcana guides your destiny. runquest has its runes magic, mythras (which is kinda generic) has pretty specific kinds of magic systems that immediately inform the setting. this is why everything is informed by something (this is a common Buddhist principle, dependent arising). even the most generic D&D OSR game will have the trappings of the culture and norms of the one that wrote and worked on it. its written from their reality which might not necessarily be the one others experience. that's what lived experience is, after all

*live in the provinces for a while and you'll doubt this too!

#gubat banwa #ttrpg #filipino #fantasy #writing #rpg #gamedev #dnd

[makapatag]

Have you played GUBAT BANWA ?

By Joaquin "Makapatag" Saavedra

War Drama Tactics RPG about wandering martial artists driven by their convictions to do great and terrible violence, set against the backdrop of a Southeast Asia-inspired fantasy archipelago on the brink of apocalyptic warfare

[makapatag]

THE LUNAR AMBAHAN OF SRI BATA KUTING

The patient Knight stood, lunar 

symbols embroidered into 

draconic cloth, scintillates

singing of war and valor.

Her skin was porcelain and

her hair the color of night

right before the dawn. her eyes

the color of amber and 

perdition burns bright, hand on

her kampilan’s hilt, lightly.

She was lithe, her face feline,

cat-eyes, fangs, lithe, sensuous.

The Lunate Knight watched now, as

the raiding crew fast approached.

Wreathed in crimson bahags, crowned

now by blood-colored pudong,

brandishing spears, bows, long knives,

adept at moving through shores,

feet padding as if they were

walking on the seas. They shout.

Rallying war cry: now she

readied her grip, she knew that

the villagers are safe: they

retreated to their mountain

refuges, traps are ready;

so is she, Blade of Goddess.

She was garbed in moonsilver:

cuirass, sabatons, gauntlets

nightcloth silks, sarong, and veil,

then a helm in dragon’s shape.

Waritra, the one slain by

the Moon Herself, wielding Dark.

Killed by the Lunar Goddess

to protect Light from Chaos.

As the Gatusanon blades

advanced in their raiding, she

brandished her blade, bells ringing,

steel sings against ironwood.

The first steps upon the shore,

she was lunar lightning, her

abyss dark hair crowned her face

like the darkness crowns the moon.

The coconut trees and the

river mouth and the craggy 

shores and the ironwood trees,

coral snakes, wild civet cats,

in anticipation, wait,

for coming violence.

The roars crashed against the knight’s

silent fury. Their steel rang,

every stroke of her sword brought 

a splatter of blood, a brush 

held by a brutal painter,

the raiders fall to water.

The massacre is the Moon

cleaving into the ocean.

At the end, a final knight

of the enemy, the sea.

His own sundang was tasselled,

ringing with bones and brass bells.

Clad in elephant hide

breastplate, veiled by a headscarf

large, thick, like a crown, or horns,

an eclipse now arising.

No words were needed, no song

to sing: they let their blades speak.

Flash! A violent first clash.

Blade hits blade, a temple’s bells.

Pleading merit or mercy,

grant violence as ritual.

After three rounds of intense

clashing, seawater frayed, sprayed,

They broke, and the raider said:

“You fight for folk who hate you!”

And the Lunate Knight cackled:

“You think you are equal to

Grandmother Cat! I laugh at

you, whose hubris is deeper

than the ocean itself! 

May your name perish to time,

that grand annihilator,

which stretches from Goddess’ light.”

And then they clashed once more, steel

ringing. They moved like tigers,

sailed through the air like falcons,

blows the speed of crocodiles.

In the end, a hitch in guard,

Grandmother Cat’s Viper Blade

reached through and skewered, then she

stepped forth, kicked him, threw him down.

Her foot stomped on his wrist, forced

his hand to open, kicked the

blade into the surf, the sea.

“Yield!” cried the brute sea raider.

“I yield to your superior

skill. Enslave me as your shield,

and teach me the Moon-Graced Blade.”

The Knight’s grin showed her shark teeth.

“The Law of the Sword Isles states

that you are now in my debt.”

“That is the way of the world,” 

now replied the Sea Raider.

“In my debt you are my slave.

Sail with me, to ocean’s end,

aid me in my lonely quest,

to bring about this world’s end.”

#gubat banwa #ttrpg #writing #rpg #gamedev #poetry #southeast asia

[makapatag]

hit my headtaker with the old lady beam

[makapatag]

Been thinking about Gubat Banwa and its very elevation-centric combat system. Had an idea and no impulse control, so now I have this. I think this might make visualising the situation a lot easier and its modularity should help speed up setup.

Have yet to test it in actual combat, but we'll see!

[makapatag]

This is Nadita Chu, a character I made for a Gubat Banwa Oneshot. She's pretty merciless.

[makapatag]

Nadita carries her child Nitin with her where ever she goes. She's after a particular group of people. She and her husband, Surya, are mercenaries by trade. They really messed up on group bad. They found the couple while Nadita was pregnant and killed Surya. They spared Nadita thinking her husband's death would be enough of a warning. As soon as Nitin was born, she made her husband's armor into a bundle and went after the bastards that killed her husband.

#Gubat Banwa

[makapatag]

I drew more of my solo gb girls and someone folded up and tea-stained the fucking jpeg >:/

#gubat banwa

[makapatag]

been having some hunahuna recently

#gubat banwa #filipino #ttrpg #rpg #gamedev

[makapatag]

Lin Codega, Rowan Zeoli, and Chase Carter are launching their own independent TTRPG journalism site. I am SO thrilled these folks are going to take a stab at earnest, genuine RPG coverage that's not hampered by corporate interests. Please check out Rascal News!

[makapatag]

Long live the resistance. 🇵🇸

Here’s the full video:👇🏻

“My Life as a Palestinian Fighter”

[makapatag]

the latter six years of my precollege life was spent in a born again christian boarding school. i memorized verses everyday. i competed in bible verse recitation competitions and won medals writing baptist short stories. halfway through i learned of god and lost a faith i never had. at the tail end of it i wondered what it was all for. after it i'd lost all memory of the bible verses, the biblical stories. i knew glimpses of it, knew their Forms, what they looked like in Gnosis, but i forgot the specificity. i wondered what it was all for. then i remembered cain and jacob and the salt-pillar wife. this is what being god must be like. half remembered things, muscle memory gnosis. maybe god hasnt forsaken us. maybe god is so used to us that we're now just half forgotten verses

#wakswords

[makapatag]

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

[makapatag]

did some miscellaneous work on ultraviolence at the end of time now that GB's mechanics are solid the level 3 is a secret but it has "The Sword of Deleuze" as an install feature

#ttrpg #gamedev #writing #rpg