{"id":1425,"date":"2019-07-10T14:28:02","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T18:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/?p=1425"},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:38:43","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:38:43","slug":"five-or-so-questions-on-red-carnations-on-a-black-grave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2019\/07\/five-or-so-questions-on-red-carnations-on-a-black-grave\/","title":{"rendered":"Five or So Questions on Red Carnations on a Black Grave"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today I’ve got questions for Catherine Ramen about Red Carnations on a Black Grave, a historical RPG currently on Kickstarter<\/a>! Check out the interview below!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me a little about Red Carnations on a Black Grave. What excites you about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red Carnations on a Black Grave<\/em>\u00a0is a freeform rpg about the Paris Commune, a brief but intense socialist revolution in 1871. For ten weeks radicals, socialists, and the working class controlled the greatest capital in Europe–until the French army arrived and brutally put down the “rebellion.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game explores the lives of 12 characters caught up in this intense moment in history, exploring their personal lives and relationships against a backdrop of a doomed resistance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I came accidentally to this moment in history and then became fascinated by it. The Paris Commune is not well known, and I’m delighted to bring this crucial moment in the history of revolutionary struggle to more prominence. As a designer, it succeeds pretty well in capturing the kind of drama-infused and emotional play that I love to bring to the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
The creator, Catherine Ramen.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What kind of research did you have to do to write the game and capture this experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It started when I picked up, more or less by chance, a copy\nof Mary and Bryan Talbot’s graphic novel The Red Virgin and the Vision of\nUtopia<\/em> which is about the socialist and anarchist activist Louise\nMichel (who is a playable character in the game). I’d never learned much about\nthe Paris Commune before this time, but I had been looking at maybe doing some\nkind of French Revolutionary-themed game. The Commune is much later than the\noriginal revolution, but it quickly became a source of deep interest to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read several works in English (John Merriman’s Massacre:\nThe Life and Death of the Paris Commune<\/em> is an excellent overview and\nintroduction), mostly on the academic side of things, with a focus on the experience\nof women in the Commune, but also some primary sources written by the\nparticipants in the Commune. My French isn’t terrible, so I was also able to\nread some of the primary accounts of the Commune in French–this was the only\nplace I could find anything in depth about Jos\u00e9phine Marchais, for example,\neven though I mostly left that information off of her card in the game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one thing I think that really helped was to look at some\nof the many, many posters the Commune government issued during its brief life.\nI used those as a source for the Inspiration cards in the game–these are cards\nthat contain a historical event or situation and some sense impressions; it’s a\ngood way to get some historical information into the game without overwhelming\nthe players. About 90% of those cards are based on actual posters I\nfound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who are the people in this story? How do you think modern players can relate to them?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now there are twelve base characters in the game, plus\na thirteenth optional character we were able to add thanks to hitting a stretch\ngoal; we’re also going to have some more optional characters become available\nif we hit other funding goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The characters are a mix of historical people and plausibly\nhistorical characters. There’s Louise Michel<\/strong>, who was a badass (and a\npain in the ass) all her long public life; Jos\u00e9phine Marchais<\/strong>, one of\nthree women to be sentenced to death for arson after the fall of the\nCommune (the sentence was commuted). There are two families, the Marchandons<\/strong> with\na former political prisoner and a young widow among them, and the family of Amanda\nMercier<\/strong> a single mother and sex worker. She is in an explicitly queer\nrelationship with Lodo\u00efska Caweska,<\/strong> another historical figure who\nwas often described as an “Amazon” and wore a uniform and carried\npistols; in the game she’s a veteran of the failed Polish revolution of 1864. I\nwanted to make sure that the community of Montmartre (where the game is set)\nwas vibrant and diverse–as it was in reality; plus I wanted to make sure there\nwas representation from France’s imperialist ventures: so we have Dominique\nRousseau,<\/strong> a physician from Martinique who got her MD in the United\nStates, and Tariq Tannoudji<\/strong>, an Algerian light cavalryman who stayed in\nFrance after the war against the Prussians. (Algeria went into revolt during\nthe period of the Commune, and was repressed pretty brutally as well.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are characters mostly living on the edge of society and of poverty, with a political system that is unresponsive to their needs and wants and voices that are not heard over the shouts of the rich. This is unfortunately probably relatable to a lot of people right now! Certainly as a queer designer I often find my anxieties about my future and my place in society are a pathway into these characters’ lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But also: one of the things I do when facilitating the game is to remind the players that while the game is often intensely political, those politics will emerge from the situation and the various historical inputs into the game. The best games of Red Carnations on a Black Grave<\/em>\u00a0in my experience have been the games when people focus first on their relationships, rivalries, hopes, and fears, and let those flow into the situation formed by the historical events. I mean, I<\/em>\u00a0don’t know how to play a revolutionary socialist in 19th century France, and I actually did the research! But I do have some thoughts on how to play a queer person caught up in a tangled love triangle, or an artist afraid of never having her voice heard, or someone trying to figure out how to keep food on the table. In that way I think most players can find a way to understand and relate to their characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What decisions did you have to make in design to encourage the complicated relationships and drama you want to see?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a story about that! When\nI first started designing the game, I knew the characters were going to be the\nmost important part of the game so all my early work was concentrated on trying\nto come up with plausible candidates and thinking about how they related. I\nknew I wanted Louise Michel; I found references to Lodoiska Caweska in several\nsources and she seemed too interesting to pass up, as was Josephine Marchais.\nBeyond them I had plans for a physician, a priest, etc. Around October of 2017\nI thought I had my final cut ready.
\n
\nThen I went and saw Peter Watkins’ film La Commune (1871)<\/em>. It’s an\namazing and powerful movie, five and half hours long and in French, filmed on a\nsoundstage with over 200 actors, most of whom weren’t professionals; I highly\nrecommend it even with its eccentricities (for example, there’s ahistorical\ntelevision stations broadcasting from both Versailles and the Commune) and\nafter I got home at 2 AM I realized I had to tear up a lot of what i had\nstarted and ground all the characters in the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other main change came after the early playtests. I\noriginally had several questions for each character printed on their cards; but\nI quickly realized this was too limiting. One of the earliest rules changes was\nto create a small deck of questions that the players would randomly draw. These\nare pretty provocative and leading questions, and answering them fills out the\ndeliberately skeletal relationships between the characters. It also really\nincreases replayability as the setup will change every time the game is\nrun–and there are a lot of ways to answer the questions and use them. At one\nrecent game at Dexcon, one of the players leaned so hard into Marie having been\na police informant that she remained a spy for the Versailles government,\nchallenging her father’s beliefs and causing havoc to everyone around her. I’d\nnever seen that in a game before!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you support players emotionally and safely in such an intense emotional environment that also deals with difficult political issues?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are safety tools mandated in the game; right now these\nare the XCard, Open Door, and Lines and Veils, but I’m exploring the\nincorporation of other tools. I’ve also asked Jonaya Kemper to help create some\nexercises to deal with traumas that emerge from the game and do de-roleing\nafter it ends.
\n
\nThis goes back to asking players not to concentrate on the politics of the game\nwhen framing scenes–the game is suffused with political content and doesn’t\npaint the Commune with utopian colors (although the game is of course very\nsympathetic to its cause). This helps I think ground players and distance them\na little bit from the grinding, mechanistic tragedy that will overwhelm their\ncharacters.
\n
\nThis is an area that is going to continue to be worked on as we finish\ndevelopment on the game; I’ve had games of Red Carnations that were extremely\ncathartic and games that were extremely emotionally draining. I’m very invested\nin making sure that this experience is emotionally deep but also safe for\neveryone to enjoy as much as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks so much Catherine for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll <\/strong>check out Red Carnations on a Black Grave on Kickstarter today<\/strong><\/a>!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I’ve got questions for Catherine Ramen about Red Carnations on a Black Grave, a historical RPG currently on Kickstarter! Check out the interview below! — Tell me a little about Red Carnations on a Black Grave. What excites you about it? Red Carnations on a Black Grave\u00a0is a freeform rpg about the Paris Commune, … Continue reading “Five or So Questions on Red Carnations on a Black Grave”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[390],"tags":[20,10,4,17,57,25,39,92,73,8,15,12,23,18],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","tag-five-or-so","tag-game-design","tag-games","tag-gaming","tag-history","tag-interviews","tag-leadership","tag-politic","tag-politics","tag-roleplaying-games","tag-rpg","tag-rpgs","tag-tabletop-games","tag-tabletop-rpgs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/COVER_FINAL_New_KS_Web.png?fit=1280%2C751&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paHOcG-mZ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":988,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2019\/02\/five-or-so-questions-on-comrades\/","url_meta":{"origin":1425,"position":0},"title":"Five or So Questions on Comrades","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"February 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I have an interview with W.M. 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