16 December 2008

Steal Away Jordan: The Man vs. Black Panthers & Nation of Islam


I get a guilty pleasure out of thinking up outlandish scenarios for Steal Away Jordan. It's a guilty pleasure because my mom, the History Professor, and head of the African American Studies Department at University of Memphis, would probably think they're not very tasteful. But Steal Away Jordan is not an educational game, it's a role playing game, and if you learn something, it's not likely to be history.

I have a couple I plan to run at Dreamation. One is set in West Africa, at the very beginning of the middle passage. The "masters" are other Africans who are about to sell you to the Spanish traders at the shore.

The other is a totally over the top homage to the Boondocks' Story of Catcher Freeman. Players are encouaged to abandon historical fact, embrace convenient anachronisms, and play as if the game were a movie directed by Spike Lee, and produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quentin Taratino.

And now the one of the title of this post. Set during the Civil Rights era, again, abandon the real historical facts and have fun playing your favorite and least favorite 1960's persona. Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, or Martin Luther King, Jr., and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. would make great Conjurers, George Wallace would be a fantastic Master. You could plan the greatest March or Protest (i.e. "Rebellion") that never happened. Round up every black person in the nation to march on Alabama or something.

Sorry, mom. Stay tuned.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just catching up after being without a computer for nearly 6 months...

With that in mind- between your post and finding out that Richard Aoki supplied the BPP with their guns, I'm now envisioning a Matrix style game, complete with racks of guns and berets flying in from offscreen, and hoverships coasting on spinning anti-grav vinyl of Fear of a Black Planet and Xodus.

Hee.

Parthenia said...

Hee! Indeed! That's awesome!