I have an interview today with Rae Nedjadi on BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home, which is currently available on itch.io! This game sounds so fascinating, and Rae talked about some really deep thoughts with me. Check them out below!
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Tell me a little about BALIKBAYAN! What excites you about it?
BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home is a narrative tabletop role-playing game that gives everyone at the table equal creative opportunities!
Specifically it’s a story about Elementals, beings of Supernatural Filipino Folklore come to life. BALIKBAYAN takes place in the far future, in a Cyberpunk setting at the mercy of The Corp, that has enslaved the elementals through machinery.
Over the generations these machines have infused with the magic, so BALIKBAYAN is also about wielding machine-magic and using it to stay on the run, destroy the Corp, and rebirth Magic.
I’m excited about so many things about BALIKBAYAN, but I’m most excited about offering a creative playground for everyone to enjoy. I’ve never understood this boundary between science fiction and fantasy, technology and ritual, machine and magic. I wanted to offer people to play with these ideas, while also offering my own modern reimagining of Filipino folklore.
I’m really happy with the response, and how excited everyone is to enjoy Filipino games made by Filipino designers! I’m honestly hoping this will encourage more people to create their own games so we can have more creative voices in the community.
Another thing that excites me is the game system. BALIKBAYAN is a Belonging Outside Belonging game, which gives everyone more creative control. It’s different from your typical TTRPG experience, where only the Game Master controls most of the narrative.
Many of my readers will be excited to hear about the Filipino roots of the game! What are some of the elements (themes, history, magic) of BALIKBAYAN that players will see that are very much Filipino?
The strongest and most apparent Filipino themes are present in the Playbooks themselves. Currently BALIKBAYAN has six playbooks: Tikbalang, Diwata, Saint, Aswang Santelmo, and the Duwende. I wanted to unapologetically use the original names for these beings of myth and legend.
I did this mainly because I come across a lot of Filipinos who are familiar with the folklore of other countries (most people who play D&D here know about elves, gnomes, and all that). But when I run a Filipino inspired game and lean into our roots, most of the people I know, living here in this country, don’t know much about our own myths. And often they use a western perspective when approaching these myths, which breaks my heart.
I will say though that I decided to personally interpretat the essence of these myths and legends. There are some problematic aspects of our folklore that reflects the centuries of colonization that still influences the Philippines to this day.
For example I wanted to take the Tikbalang and break it away from just being an anthropomorphic horse. Horses aren’t even a natural local animal here, and to this day they’re associated with the elite and privileged. Instead I wanted to lean into our shamanic and animism roots. The Tikbalang in BALIKBAYAN can change into any anthropomorphic animal form, and I wanted that fluidity to be an important aspect of the playbook. I also wanted to reflect how we often look to spiritual leaders in our community, and the Tikbalang is true to that.
I think the SAINT is another important one. Religion is a big thing here in the Philippines, for better and for worse. We have so many beautiful stories about Saints and the mystical miracles they embodied to protect communities. I wanted to acknowledge that, but once again honor our pre-colonial roots and have the SAINT be a playbook that interacts with Small Gods, in a Cyberpunk setting.
I could just go on and on about each playbook!
In general I wanted to honor our folklore, but I wanted to respectfully bring it into the present and reflect our modern values, nuances, and struggles. Because I’m bi-racial, queer, and non-binary, I think that shows in the design. I put so much of myself, and my complex love for my country, into this game.
BALIKBAYAN also speaks to leaving behind our masters and becoming our own masters. I wanted this to reflect in the premise and creative setting, but also in the mechanics and narrative prompts.
Becoming our own masters is something I want to happen for Filipinos in general. We were colonized for centuries, and the scars still show. As a society, we haven’t done the collective and deeply emotional work to decolonize our perspectives, approaches, and values. In a way we are still bowing down to Masters that have long left us to rot, and it shows in our governance and social value systems.
I have faith that we can do the work. Many artists, teachers, and leaders are already helping their communities to do so. BALIKBAYAN is my own personal attempt to help along and honor that decolonization process.
BALIKBAYAN seems like a big step away from what we’ve seen from cyberpunk. How have you altered the standard cyberpunk setting to really make it yours and to do something different?
It’s funny, I really get this a lot! But to be perfectly honest, BALIKBAYAN simply embodies how I’ve always seen and engaged with Cyberpunk. For one thing, I’ve always gravitated more to portrayal of Cyberpunk themes in anime, especially from the 80s and 90s. I’ve always appreciated that lens more, and it really speaks to me.
I did want to make magic a big part of the game. This is again deeply personal. I believe magic and technology aren’t at odds with each other, and magic shouldn’t be regulated to fantasies chained to the past either. I was initially inspired by games like Shadowrun, but I didn’t like how the lore and system created this great divide between magic and technology. So in BALIKBAYAN I wanted to make that barrier non-existent.
I think the main issue with Cyberpunk as a genre is that we often see the aesthetic markers and surface indicators of the genre, but we ignore the important work that POC and queer creators have done in the space. They’ve given me the permission to define Cyberpunk on my own terms.
And in turn, I want to do the same for the people who will play BALIKBAYAN. The game asks you to bring about the rebirth of magic and to create a Revolution, but what that will actually entail is up to the players and is out of my hands. I believe Cyberpunk, and the Revolution it inspires, is a deeply personal experience.
Because I don’t think the world will change from one Revolution. I believe it will change, and has changed, from the series of ongoing neverending Revolutions that we bring to life.
There is a lot of discussion about decolonizing games and how many major games are from a colonized perspective, so I really appreciate you talking about that! Does any of this translate to the actual mechanics you use in the game? What are the mechanics like?
I definitely feel that the decolonization process can be incredibly personal. For me it was in realizing that the games I used to love to run and play, namely Dungeons & Dragons and games like it, focused on violence, possession, taking things through strength, with a focus on exploring the “alien” and “exotic” and marveling at how “weird” it all was. This was reflected in the mechanics of the game too, I feel. As a Filipino, knowing that my own country was treated this way by its colonizers, it left a really bad taste in my mouth.
In BALIKBAYAN, the Belonging Outside of Belonging system favors narrative play that is entirely in the hands of the players. I also added a few mechanics that center on the decolonization process. First, each playbook asks the players to choose and build on a “human form” and a “true form”. Because the Elementals are on the run, this is basically what forms are “acceptable” versus what they truly look like. I wanted to leave it up to the players and each story what this means, how do they navigate this? Next the playbooks ask you to choose “What you hope for”. While the players are tasked to bring about the Rebirth of Magic (more on that in a bit), I also wanted to give the players a personal goal to help drive the story. In a way this reflects how I feel about the decolonization process: each path is unique, deeply personal. People can talk about what their decolonization process is like, but they cannot dictate to others what it SHOULD be like. Each of us interacts with different intersections of class, race, background, and so on. What the decolonization process is like in America is VERY different from what it is like in the Philippines, and so on. The individual hope reflects that, but it also asks each player to balance or find common ground with that hope and the rebirth of magic.
Which brings us to another mechanic I added. Originally I just liked the idea of having a sort of countdown mechanic, to give the players some structure or urgency to the story being told. There are two clocks running. The first clock is you start ON THE RUN, but can eventually end up CAPTURED by the Corp again. The second clock has you start at FADING, your magic is weak and dwindling compared to your ancestors, but you want to reach REBORN, with the magic being your own.
In my mind, decolonization is not about returning to what was before our colonizers came. That is in the past, and much of our history has been rewritten by those more powerful than us. When I think about what we’ve lost, what we could have been, it frustrates me. When I think of the privilege I enjoy because of my circumstances that are favored by a colonial mentality, I feel guilty and ill at ease. For example, I speak English well and that opened a lot of doors for me, when it shouldn’t have. I strongly feel that the way forward is in acknowledging the past, while building our own sense of worth and grace outside of our colonial mentality. In the Philippines we need to acknowledge that much of our systems and infrastructure are badly compromised by these centuries of colonization. We need to rebuild, to be reborn, to reclaim our own magic.
I’m nonbinary too, so I’m always fascinated to see how other nonbinary designers make games. How do you feel that your queerness, your nonbinary identity, being bi-racial, and these other personal aspects of yourself have impacted the design and presentation of BALIKBAYAN and the cyberpunk world within it?
To be honest, I used to really struggle with the idea of queer design, and what that looks like. I have to truly give credit to the community of indie designers who looked at my work and reflected on it, helping me see the queerness and nonbinary nature of my design. In BALIKBAYAN my nonbinary asserts itself by allowing the players to choose how active or passive they wish the story to flow. There are tools available, but I provide many examples that show how each game can be unique and flow completely differently. As a nonbinary, I believe in nuance and push away from the black and white. There are some cool mechanics tied to that (for example, even if you bring about the Rebirth of Magic, you have to answer the question “Which one of us runs away, and helps rebuild the Corp?”). Though I also have to say that also reflects my colonial pain, many of us resort to acting like our colonial masters in the way of rebirth and revolution (those dang intersections, right?).
But yes as a nonbinary designer, I come from a place of nuance and push that towards the forefront. I think that also gave me the sheer confidence to tackle the Cyberpunk genre. I grew up loving it, and like so many people like me (queer, POC, etc) I also felt disappointed by how so much of its core themes of revolution and self-acceptance were rewritten and downplayed. But I refuse to back down, and I’ll continue designing in these spaces and do my work to reclaim it along with other diverse artists.
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Thank you so much to Rae for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home on itch.io today!