The Green Knight and Inherited Narrative

I have a bit of a pet peeve with adaptations. You will almost never find me liking them, particularly ones that attempt to adapt Christian works. So yes, that means I think the LOTR movies are hot freaking garbage, not to mention the new Chronicles of Narnia. I find the points and ethos are completely missing, which is something I demand from an adaptation. How this ties into my roleplaying game Crescendo will be tangential, but important.

So recently I finished Tolkien's adaptation of The Green Knight, and I find myself scratching my head. Folks tell me this is a very difficult story to understand. It's really not. See, there's this funny little thing at the very beginning of the poem:

It is When the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy,

and the fortress fell in flame to firebrands and ashes,

the traitor who the contrivance of treason there fashioned

was tried for his treachery, the most true upon earth—

it was Æneas the noble and his renowned kindred

who then laid under them lands, and lords became

of well-nigh all the wealth in the Western Isles.

When royal Romulus to Rome his road had taken,

in great pomp and pride he peopled it first,

and named it with his own name that yet now it bears;

Tirius went to Tuscany and towns founded,

Langaberde in Lombardy uplifted halls,

and far over the French flood Felix Brutus

on many a broad bank and brae Britain established

full fair,

where strange things, strife and sadness,

at whiles in the land did fare,

and each other grief and gladness

oft fast have followed there.

It is an acknowledged fact that pre-modern civilizations believed in a universal history. It is, to the best of my knowledge, a universal idea that we have no inkling of, and therefore scoff at. When folks of differing civilizations met up they compared gods to figure out if they were worshipping the same gods. Names and slight differences in portfolios did not perturb them one bit, as everyone acknowledged that the beings they were talking about were beyond them and if they could learn something new from each other they did. The greatest case that most moderns will accept? Rome's almost whole-sale co-opting of the Greek gods and hell, just Greek culture in general. But the one that we've been taught doesn't exist is Christianity's adoption of practically every mythological framework they've come acrost, assuming the state did not interfere with their efforts. 

Far from cutting out Greco-Roman and Norse mythology Christianity integrated it, forming a fusion. That was normal for the pre-modern world. 

"Nathan, where are you going with this?" You may ask.

Well, I'll tell you.

Turns out comic  book nerds were right: it's all the same story. Pre-moderns assumed their stories fit inside the mythological framework they'd already been given, contradictions and all. So the Green Knight is a sequel to the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid. It is not a stand-alone story, and was never assumed to be by the anonymous author. By spending two chapters/sections talking about Troy, the founding of Rome and Britain, the author is referencing a specific set of stories and themes.

Paris, with the help of Aphrodite, falls for and steals away Helen, who is then compelled to stay with Paris. The Achaens/Greeks gives chase. Noble Troy, who refuse to abandon their own no matter the consequences, refuse to abandon Paris. They pay for their loyalty with a ten year-long siege and the destruction of their city.

Odysseus, after being waylaid by a goddess for nine years, finally gets back home, only to find that that in his absence his home has been taken over. Helped by his son and Athena, the goddess of wisdom, Odysseus finally gets rid of the suitors and gets to have sex with his wife Penelope again. It's an all-day affair. Everyone lives happily ever after.

I've not yet finished the Aeneid, but the Aeneas and Dido come to mind, with Eros forcing Dido to fall in love with Aeneas, the two of them getting married... and then Aeneas being told to leave. 'Cause destiny. 

Did we mention that the Greek gods suck? Do we need to?

So, that's the backdrop. And it gives a lot of  context. Gawain is tested in a matter similar to Paris. Trying to find the Green Chapel Gawain asks for the help of the Virgin Mary... and then immediately finds a castle, with a lord who claims that the Green Chapel is just two miles away! Take a load off! Rest!

Oh, BTWS, Morgan Le Fay is here. This is her castle, pretty much. And the lord is the Green Knight. And he sends his wife to tempt Sir Gawain. Without the backdrop of Homer and Virgil it's a toss-up as to why they're doing this. But with that backdrop? Man, it's obvious. They're trying to find a weakness in Camelot to overthrow it. Morgan Le Fay is attempting to recreate the tragedy of Troy; she's trying to turn Gawain into another Paris, Odysseus, and Aeneas. 

But Sir Gawain is prevented from falling to this trap by the Virgin Mary, explicitly. Rather than having a woman trying to drag him down, Sir Gawain is bolstered by the Blessed Mother, and he is able to pass the test that would have led to the destruction of Camelot.

But even then, divinely aided, Sir Gawain cannot bypass the fear of death. He can only go so far. But would that we all failed as splendidly as Sir Gawain! Would that was the only thing we really had to contend with! The world would be a far better place for it.  The context of Homer and Virgil changes the very meaning of the text.

And now we get to Crescendo. 

One of Crescendo's tenets has been to try and bring the principles from older, pre-modern storytelling into an RPG. Every time I've done a more mythological type game it has benefited me and my players. There's a wholesomeness, a vitality to using the mythological method that I've just not seen before. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight really cemented how much I still have to learn, not to mention how much still needs to be encoded into Crescendo.

One avenue I'm beginning to explore is the role of the GM. One of the things I have in the game already is that the GM sets up a myth that he then builds the culture of his setting into. I'd already intuited that I wanted that done, although I couldn't have told you why at the beginning. I've also always been leery of the idea that the GM is over the other players. I do like the idea of their being a locus point for the story, for someone to be director to the actors/writers that are the other players. But the GM is frequently not a player, but someone who is expected to manage the situation and the game itself.

So what if we recast the the GM into The Archivist, the one who takes the Heroic Player's Beliefs, Traits, and Impulses and contextualizes it? And, by contextualizing it, challenges the the Heroic Player? Like, at that point the Archivist would be the one to interpret the data that is the setting and set that interpretation before the other players. The Archivist does not know everything about the setting, only how to get answers about it. So I suppose at this point I'd be setting up the Archivist to be able to generate histories (and the tomes to find more information in), not to mention sub-mythologies and cultures, very quickly.

Because we're all in a larger story. And the Archivist shouldn't have to just pull things out whole-cloth.

And that's before we get into the question of whether or not there should be a metacurrency for the Archivist.

More as I have it.