EN World Does Postcolonialism

A couple of weeks ago, EN World featured an article on East Asian-flavored supplements for D&D. The discussion centered on the Oriental Adventures sourcebooks that were published for the game's 1st and 3rd editions, in 1985, and 2001, respectively. The author, Mike Tresca, opines that, starting with the name, and ending with the content, these supplements constitute examples of exoticizing the Other, and cultural appropriation. Tresca approvingly quotes one reviewer to the effect that these published settings "reinforced western culture's already racist understanding of the 'Orient'". Conversely, the modern game, must reflect the diversity of its fan base. There is little reason to design culture-specific classes and other character options - after all, fighters, healers, and spellcasters can come from any culture. As such, the game is "unlikely [to] get another Oriental Adventures title", and, by implication, setting, which D&D, in his view, has outgrown.

A samurai from the 3e cover of Oriental Adventures

There are several issues to disentangle in this piece, which, in fairness, constitutes the beginning of a discussion, and not a well thought-out piece of social theory. If the focus is purely terminological, it is hard to disagree with Tresca's argument. Though there was little reason to expect that Gary Gygax and his collaborators, who had come of age in a wargaming milieu of the 1950s and 60s, should be familiar with the academic critique of Orientalism launched by Edward Said in 1978, the recycling of the title in 2001 really was inexcusable. The people responsible for the 3e version had not only been educated in academic environments that had been quite thoroughly transformed by Said's critique, but they had been exposed to historical-fantasy games based on fairly meticulous research, rather than a conflating Orientalism, from a fairly young age. Moreover, it is hard to disagree that the chanting of "Banzai" by white tournament winners of the Legend of the Five Rings card game that was associated with the 3e Oriental Adventures setting is in poor taste - a fact recognized by the LotFR designers, who removed the chant from their site.

With respect to broader thematic questions, the issue becomes significantly more muddled. Is any treatment of Japanese, Chinese, Philippine, Korean, and Mongolian culture an unjustified "lumping together" for the benefit of the totalizing and reductionist perspectives of the colonizer? Certainly, serious treatment of the East Asian region as a coherent whole exists in contemporary academic literature, and it exists in a variety of RPG systems as well. D&D, being a mass-marketed and well-established game, appeals to a broader audience that may not, in its entirely, always appreciate painstaking research of source material, but the notion that detailed historical research cannot inform D&D settings while it informs that of other game systems seems difficult to justify. For all its faults, the 3e version of Oriental Adventures was much better grounded in East Asian cultures than the AD&D version. There is little reason why further improvements cannot be made by designers who possess the requisite background in the region's history and mythology. There is no reason why the setting design cannot be sufficiently nuanced to make the players understand that it includes multiple cultures, instead of a single "Oriental" monoculture. To an extent, even the existing older versions have made this plain - the region of Kara-Tur is composed of multiple countries, some of which more closely resemble parts of China, others Japan, Korea, and so on. There is a legitimate point to be made about the rather Japan-centric perspective behind the class and race design of Oriental Adventures, which is certainly reductionist, but reflective of the legacy of that impact which Japanese culture had on western imaginations in the 70s and 80s, when gaming culture was young. It would certainly make sense to make a new edition more Sinocentric, reflective of the more outsize influence China historically had (and is now starting to have again) on regional development and integration. If that means more youxia and fewer samurai, then so be it. Calling a supplement Kara-Tur - a name familiar enough to the fan-base to facilitate sales - gets away from the Japan-centrism as well - the name is more evocative of Central Asian languages, anyway.

The larger issue in the review, to my mind, is a certain skepticism about historical or folklore-based settings in general. To my mind, this skepticism is unwarranted. Tresca is aware of the popularity of the Kara-Tur-based settings, and of the fact that part of its popularity is derived from a certain multicultural appeal. The fantasy feels different than standard-issue D&D, which draws much more heavily on a European cultural matrix. On top of that, the multi-cultural appeal is not simply one of othering - counterpoising an undifferentiated East to the West. There was (and is) a similar appeal to the Al-Qadim (vaguely Middle-Eastern or West Asian-themed) setting. Though there are Orientalist elements in this setting also, the existence of two distinct "non-Western" settings (three, if one counts the Mesoamerican-themed Maztica), which reinforces regional coherence, breaks down Orientalism. As Said pointed out, the Orient is undifferentiated because it is simply a negation of those properties associated with the West. If there one recognizes a number of distinct regions that are defined by virtue of their own coherence, then these regions are not simply exotic negations, but entities in their own right.

Cover art from the Al-Qadim supplement

I don't have much attachment to the Forgotten Realms as a whole, or to the specific geographic regions like Kara-Tur and Zakhara in which that serve as backdrops for such "alternative" settings. But historically-based settings speak to me in ways that most entirely fictional ones like Eberron, Dark Sun, or Dragonlance do not. I find the former more interesting because they draw on institutions, power relations, economic set ups, and narratives that are grounded in actual societies, and for this reason, are at least arguably capable of generating richer immersion and role-playing experiences than most purely fictional settings. Judging by the many of the comments on Tresca's article, many other gamers have their imaginations stimulated by such settings, too. Is this stimulation necessarily a sign of an atavistic colonialist mentality that seeks to enjoy the exotic by appropriating the cultural values of people whose historical roots lie in locales outside the West?

Policing the imagination in a hobby like role-playing games, which is escapist by definition, is a difficult proposition. One can certainly ask that those who draw on historical and real-world cultural material to design settings raise their standards, treat the material with respect, and draw heavily on material composed by people with a solid grounding in regional cultures. The biggest influences on early East Asian-themed RPGs were Kurosawa films and kung-fu movies, composed partly with a Western consumer in mind, but hard to accuse of being Orientalist impositions. Since then, the genre of East Asian historical fantasy has been greatly enriched by anime, wuxia films (most notably by Ang Lee), Jin Yong's Legend of the Condor Heroes series, and game-relevant scholarly production too numerous to mention (the work of the California School historians first and foremost). Working such material into setting design, and weeding out remaining Orientalist tropes seem like worthwhile projects. Dumping historical fantasy because it has been put to Orientalist uses before does not.

Chult: Orientalism or diverse and innocent pulp?

An additional issue revolves around diversity. The diversity championed by Tresca is graphically depicted in the art of the core rulebooks, which depict people of different races, genders, and cultural backgrounds. For an established system with vast reach like D&D, having these sorts of representations in the main ruleset, applicable as it is to a variety of settings, is right and proper. But the multicultural ethos that champions supermarket-style equipment lists, universally-applicable character class lists, and 'adventuring parties that look like America' may also be cited as a cultural imposition. Today, the hobby is fast expanding into parts of the world that may be multicultural, but that have an entirely distinct historical background and demographic mix. Historically-based settings should be open to a degree, but spelling out what the main ethnic and religious groups are, where foreigners are likely to come from, and distinct classes that are representative of the setting do not strike me as necessarily Orientalist.

If cultural appropriation and imposition is a problem, games like D&D still have a significant amount of decolonizing to do. The issue is not broached by Tresca, but it should come as a surprise to no one that many character options, abilities, and properties have decidedly Eurocentric origins. Classes such as paladins, clerics, bards, and arguably several others are based on obvious European exemplars, and most of the core races are taken from European mythology. The bulk of cleric spells evoke Biblical miracles. Blowguns and elephants notwithstanding, most items on equipment lists are representative of commodities available in late-medieval European markets. Arguably, the imposition of such models on non-European historical-fantasy settings constitutes cultural imperialism, no matter how such characters or items are graphically depicted. Similar (and legitimate) critiques were made of theorists like Andre Gunder Frank, who insisted that Chinese and Indian civilizations were based on market principles no less than industrial Europe. But what appeared as a critique of Eurocentrism was in reality a universalization of modern European structures.

Lastly, the notion that Wizards of the Coast is unlikely to do updates of Kara-Tur and Al-Qadim-type settings on account of their Orientalism stumbles on the reality that Wizards has arguably already published Orientalist supplements as part of the recent (5th) edition. Some commenters on Tresca's article point out Tomb of Annihilation, an adventure path published last year, and set in a jungle inhabited by dark-skinned natives speaking a click-based language, blowgun-wielding cultists, and mask-wearing goblins organizing themselves in battle stacks is clearly Orientalist. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the Curse of Strahd adventure path is a classically Orientalist depiction of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe is one region that it is still Ok to orientalize in RPGs, and champions of Strahdiana typically point out that the gothic adventure is made just for fun. I suppose: Is no fun, Is no Blinsky!

On the whole, despite possible pitfalls, I would like to see more historical-fantasy offerings from Wizards (including a more "European" setting, though I realize that it will never happen with Faerun), and I see no reason why these cannot be cleansed of Orientalist elements. It looks like it won't happen this year, which seems like it will bring happiness to fans of the Planescape, Dark Sun, and Eberron settings; but I take hope from Mike Mearls' excitement at the prospect of an update of the Al-Qadim setting in the future.

 

The Sociological Abuse of Curse of Strahd

I have previously expressed my reservations about the Curse of Strahd Adventure Path (AP) (published by Wizards of the Coast in March 2016), but I never intended to expand them into a full blog post, since my focus here is directed toward analyses of fantasy worlds in general, and my own Lukomorye setting in particular. However, I decided to return to this topic after encountering an academic article in the online journal Analog Game Studies called “The Psychological Abuse of Curse of Strahd”, by Shelly Jones. Jones explores this adventure as a “site for witnessing and performing the psychology of trauma, and specifically the psychology of abuse.” The author finds game play in this particular AP therapeutic because, unlike the traditional D&D module, which tends to be instrumental, and to overfocus on themes of conflict resolution through violence and plunder, the Curse of Strahd has, in her estimation, a rich thematic and emotional backdrop which opens players up to experiences of overcoming emotional trauma, as well as diversity and otherness – thus - to a variety of role-playing experiences. These experiences, according to her, are encoded both into the narrative structure, as well as the actual mechanics of game play.
 

Before laying out Jones’ analysis, as well as offering one of my own, I would like to briefly review the scenario in Curse of Strahd to those uninitiated into the mysteries of D&D, or the history of this particular AP in particular. The action takes place in Barovia – a small, generic, vaguely Eastern European Ruritania of fin de siècle Gothic imagination. Barovia is a land of steep mountains and dark forests dotted with settlements populated by sullen peasants, desperate burgomasters, and gypsies, all bearing vaguely Balkan, Russian, and German names. Its resident Dracula is Count Strahd von Zarovich. Strahd cursed himself and the land through entering a pact with Dark Powers, and then committing an act of fratricide – he killed his brother Sergei and drank his blood, because Sergei, not he, had won the love of the beautiful Tatyana. Pursued by Strahd in the aftermath, she jumped to her death rather than submit to Strahd. Enraged castle guards then slew their bloodthirsty master, but owing to the pact sealed with this original sin, he did not die, but became a vampire. But the curse of deathlessness came with a further complication: Strahd would be trapped in Barovia forever, as the land became surrounded by a deadly mist that could be traversed by those coming from the outside, but not by those wishing to leave, including Strahd himself. In the centuries that followed, Strahd amused himself by terrorizing villagers, abusing women, pursuing the occasional incarnation of Tatyana who he hoped in vain would save him, and bedeviling adventurers who would occasionally wander in past the mists to become unsuspecting pawns (but also possible successors) in the vampire’s cat-and-mouse games. Until, presumably, the adventurers portrayed by the players break the curse, slay the vampire, free the people, and allow Tatyana and Sergei to reunite in the hereafter.

Two preliminary comments to disclose my own feelings about the Ravenloft game setting, and Jones’ project of gameplay as therapy are in order. Regarding the former: when I first learned of the original Ravenloft module as a middle school student in the early 1980s, I was impressed by many of the same features that Jones (as well as numerous fans) find attractive today. I liked the different feel of the adventure, and the fact that it resonated with a gothic theme. Rather than just another meaningless dungeon crawl, here was a villain who had a personality, rather than just a set of statistics and powers. Here was a locale where everything – the village, the woods, and the castle had a reason for being, and could be explored in whatever order the characters saw fit, instead of progressing down the corridor from one room, one monster, and one treasure chest to another. Early on in the Ravenloft narrative, the adventurers encounter Madam Eva, a Vistani (i.e. gypsy) fortune-teller who does a reading for the characters. On the basis of the reading, the characters discover where the vampire lurks, and where they can discover special items that will help defeat him. Since a whole host of different results (linked to particular cards drawn from a regular playing deck) were outlined, Ravenloft was supposed to be different every time you played it. This added to the non-linear quality of the adventure, and encouraged reuse. Indeed, I played Ravenloft several times, and even used it for different games (though the excellent three-dimensional castle maps included in the module were perhaps the clinching factor in this regard). When the module was reconfigured as a 256-page hardcover AP for the new 5^th edition rules, I bought it, relying on my old, positive memories of the original module. To date, it is the only 5e AP I have purchased. I did not buy the accompanying Tarokka Deck – a unique game aid representing the cards Madam Eva was to use in her reading – because it seemed like a purely marketing gimmick geared for an age dominated by collectible card games. But it was not a clincher, and by itself has not really influenced my appraisal of Ravenloft one way or the other.
 

Concerning Jones’ recommendation of playing Ravenloft for therapeutic purposes: I have no issue with using Ravenloft, or any other RPG adventure or setting to help people who have lived through abusive relationships to overcome them, to take control of their lives, and to make friends and loved ones understand what that person’s experiences. Generally speaking, I find arguments to the effect that “it’s just a game, and should be played only for enjoyment” tedious, and beside the point. In fact, I have experienced this exact attitude in response to my own critiques of the Curse of Strahd, by people who were blissfully unaware that original module author Tracy Hickman had a distinct agenda that went beyond gameplay, one which he explicitly outlined on numerous occasions and indeed recapitulated in the Foreword of this very AP. In principle, my attitude is, if people find RPGs useful in processing painful episodes or developing techniques for deconstructing abusive hierarchies in their own lives, more power to them. And in this specific case, using a vampire antagonist to shed light on real-world abusive relationships is amply justified by the well-established psychological notion of emotional vampirism – a condition attributed to emotionally immature people who drain the energy of others to make up for their lack of empathy, independence, or low self-esteem.

My problem with these “deconstructions” begins when they themselves depend on perpetuating abusive and hierarchical relationships. In this case, the relationships I have in mind are less personal, and more political, existing more on the level of relations between states, cultures, societies, and civilizations. Such relationships generate long-lived Orientalist, Russophobic, and Cold War stereotypes that legitimate intervention by “progressive”, “democratic”, “healthy” Western liberators in non-Western societies in order to remove evil rulers and regimes, and to restore these societies to “normality”. Frequently, these interventions are said to be necessary because they are in defense of oppressed groups who are prevented from articulating themselves as subjects (or even identifying with their abusers). In recent times, such interventions have been recommended (and occasionally prosecuted) for the benefit of ethnic, sexual, and gender minorities. In my view, the Curse of Strahd itself, and one-sided analyses that stress the AP’s therapeutic qualities but neglect its toxic ones help perpetuate cultural (and less directly, political) imperialism.

  

The Barbarous Count

 A key aspect of the “cautionary tale” initially told by Hickman in the old Ravenloft module, and underlined by Jones in her article, is a critique of the contemporary image of the vampire, which has “taken a turn from its roots in recent years”. Their targets are Stephanie Meyer’s popular Twilight book and movie series, but also, explicitly or by implication, HBO’s TrueBlood, Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and White Wolf’s Vampire:the Masquerade game (in which players assume the role of vampiric characters). In these reinterpretations, as they see it, the Byronic vampire – a “decadent predator, an abuser hidden behind a romantic veil” is transformed into a misunderstood antihero who could be transformed or redeemed through (typically, a woman’s self-sacrificial) love. However, one doesn’t have to disagree with the Hickman-Jones cautionary message, or with their critique of contemporary vampires to notice that there is one vital feature of the evolution that they miss. The romance of the Byronic vampire, from Lord Ruthven to Dracula, derived from his fundamental otherness. Whereas his victims were generally prosaic European middle-class women, the vampire was poetic, noble, and mysterious. And with the enthronement of Dracula as the classic of the genre, he became foreign, from lands far from the centers of modern civilization, and wrapped up in ancient conflicts and prejudices (therefore, decadent).

In Twilight, and in the mainstream of American vampire fiction since Joel Schumacher’s Lost Boys, conversely, vampires live among us, and are normalized, not just romanticized. They are other exurban teenagers (increasingly of both sexes) whose lives are dominated by consumption and peer pressure. In True Blood, they are business owners, politicians, and religious leaders who struggle to overcome deep-rooted prejudices and fit into a diverse society in which the distinction vampires and mortals is starting to blur. In this more complex moral universe, vampires are not the only perpetrators of abuse and violence. In Coppola’s film, Dracula becomes a vampire largely because of the Church’s prejudice against burying suicides (Dracula’s wife Elisabeta) in hallowed ground, which prompts her husband to reject it, and to seek life “beyond the grace of God”. Similarly, in the Vampire: the Masquerade mythos, worse horrors than vampires exist – a vampire’s rejection of his or her nature being chiefest among them. “Monsters we are, lest monsters we become” is the game’s unofficial motto. Denying the vampires’ (and by extension, humans’) problematic nature leads to the perpetration of even more terrible crimes.

None of these issues find purchase either in Ravenloft or the Curse of Strahd. The vampire takes the classic form of a suave, silk-cloak-wearing, red liquid-sipping count (presumably, he “never drinks… wine”). His name and the general environment of Barovia spotlight his “ethnic” character. Some of the role-playing suggestions for other NPCs in the adventure clarify that their speech should be accented. This instruction is not necessary in the case of Strahd himself: it is assumed, and masterfully reproduced by the Adventure Path’s lead designer Chris Perkins in the video gameplay version of the AP. 

A prototype guide to Barovia

The ethnicization of the gothic elements that embody the modern representation of the vampire is not problematized in Jones’ analysis, though the issue has received attention elsewhere. It is widely accepted that Stoker’s Dracula replaced Polidori’s Ruthven as the dominant image of the vampire at the turn of the twentieth century (Gordon and Hornick, The Vampire in Folklore, Literature, etc., pp. 75-76). Though the reasons for this change continue to be debated, a strong case has been made that the culprit is the rise of British Russophobia (based on fears of “reverse colonization”) in the aftermath of the Crimean War (significantly, Stoker’s father was himself a representative of British imperial power - in Ireland). Precisely at this time, “the term gothic [began to] reinforc[e] cultural and regional prejudices directed against a series of ostensibly lesser peoples and cultures”, “originally Germanic uncouthness and unreason”, but over time, “signify[ing] an ever-expanding and changing host of despicable others”, and particularly, the “dangers posed by the threat of oriental autocracy to middle-class economics and democracy” coupled with “racially suspect Eastern European immigrants” (Jimmie Cain, Bram Stoker and Russophobia, p. 7). The Germanic-Slavic amalgam of the von Zarovich clan (father Barov, mother Ravenovia, and children Strahd and Sergei) is illustrative of the “standard” evolution from Ruthven to Dracula, which Ravenloft perpetuates.

The unchanging and unchangeable nature of Strahd’s behavior also point to its endemic, ethnic qualities. His fall is portrayed as being the product of an inner character flaw, necessary and without alternative regardless of circumstances. “Strahd… can never find a release. [He] cannot not be changed. Like an abusive partner, like Bluebeard himself, no amount of love or effort will ‘make him better’; there is no fixing Strahd. He is stuck, and he knows it,” says Jones. But the gateway that initially led him down his predatory and criminal path was the clannish imperative associated with elites in “backward” societies – military conquest and duty toward the maintenance or restoration of family fortunes. Strahd initially comes to Barovia at the head of an army to fulfill his father’s legacy, to give him a proper burial place, and to give make his mother a present of a new castle named in her honor “to demonstrate his love for her” (Perkins, Curse of Strahd [hence, CoS], p.9). Even after the onset of his vampirism, he (like Stoker’s Dracula, but unlike the historical Vlad Țepeș) perpetuates the peculiar Oriental institution of polygyny – his wives still sleep in the castle crypt, and rise nightly. Aside from his hunt for Tatyana, his main obsession is the perpetuation of his patrimonial state – by finding someone deserving enough to replace him as its ruler (and like most autocratic rulers, “operation successor” always exceeds his capabilities, so irreplaceable he remains). Strahd’s clannishness and traditionalism exoticize him in the way that matters most – in the eyes of the heroes who will serve as his antagonists throughout the adventure. Unlike him, they are either driven by purely altruistic motives to destroy monsters, or at least by understandable gain. Family, duty, customs typically mean little to rootless adventurers. And in seeking to seduce new victims and to trap them in Barovia forever, Strahd is less Bluebeard (a serial abuser who killed his wives once he was through with them) than ‘Moody’ Mahmoody – the abusive Iranian husband in the film “Not Without My Daughter” (1991), who lures his American wife and child to post-revolutionary Iran and traps them there with his family. The movie  - another cautionary tale of relationship abuse at the hands of a “mysterious, misogynist Easterner” was universally deservedly panned for its portrayal of Muslim Iranian culture and its whitewashing. Its resonance with the original Ravenloft module derives from a common zeitgeist. 

'Moody' Mahmoody in a vampiric pose

Strahd the Terrible

Strahd’s backwardness is evident not only in his personal, but in his political relationships. His long-suffering subjects have had to deal with the fallout of his conquest for centuries, during which the character of his rule has not changed. The “Devil Strahd” (as they call him) attacks villagers at whim, occasionally taking them to his castle, or infecting them with his curse, and leaving their families to deal with the consequences. His monstrous and animal minions prowl the woods around settled areas, causing people to fear travel, thus undermining commerce. The preponderance of power in Strahd’s favor make it so that “only a handful of [Barovians] have the will to oppose him” (CoS, p.23), and, given the surrounding Mists, flight is impossible. Despite having been happy “once” (before Strahd’s conquest), Barovians are now hyper-conservative, xenophobic and sullen – characteristics that are instantly recognizable as common descriptors of people residing under totalitarian regimes. They “are deeply invested in their homes and their traditions. They are wary of strange peoples and customs. The way Barovians deal with strangers can be unsettling to those newcomers. Barovians have a tendency to stare openly in silence, thereby expressing their disapproval of anything not familiar to them. Barovians aren’t talkative with strangers, to the extent of being pointedly rude. Most Barovians have violent tempers that boil up through their customary silence when they are provoked. They also have a social cohesiveness (thrust upon them by their weird circumstances) that can make them act together against outsiders if a Barovian is mistreated.” (CoS, p.24). This chauvinism, collectivism, and rudeness are therefore unnatural, and dictated by the suppression of their (initially multiethnic, as they are descendants of various groups settled in the valley by Strahd) society by Strahd’s all-embracing state. Barovian children are literally said to be raised in a “culture of fear” (CoS, p.24) – a term that emerged in the early 1990s to characterize the regimes of petty dictators where reasoned discourse and resistance are said to be futile. A more recent variation – “Republic of Fear” – applied to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, in a book that advocated his overthrow, puts the admonition not to seek accommodation with or understanding of the abuser into stark political relief. Just as, for Jones, “there is no fixing Strahd”, so must the heroes perceive his regime with what can only be characterized as moral clarity – a favored neoconservative term applied to the War on Terror.

Strahd’s rule is not merely a practice of political autocracy; it is a biopower that has a profound othering effect on the Barovian environment and its people as living beings. The realm of Barovia as a whole is a “grim reflection of its undead master” (CoS, p. 7). Strahd himself tells us that he is the land (CoS, p. 252), substantiating the old “blood and soil” vampire mythology that projects an unbreakable bond between the bloodsucker and the earth in which it is buried. The integration of master and realm also extends to the climate: “the sun never fully shines in the lands of Barovia” (CoS, p. 24). The land and air are surrounded by the Mists of Ravenloft, which are impossible to escape without destroying the vampiric Dark Lord, though his Vistani servants are given leave to move through the Mists at will, and though Strahd’s “guests” are spontaneously caught within them. Their function is to keep people trapped within, rather than to defend Ravenloft from external threats. The upshot is that Strahd rules over a “closed ecosystem” (p. 25) that is supposed to have, according to Jones, an “alienating effect” on those (characters and players) who enter this realm from without. The dreary sunless climate and poor ecology invoke not so much the classic Transylvanian homeland (which, even as described by Stoker, was a land of stark and brutal majesty and beauty), but that of a 20^th century Eastern European dystopia. And the Mists behind which Barovia is hidden are more than reminiscent of the Iron Curtain, or the Berlin Wall, strengthening the Cold War allegory encoded into the adventure.

Ivan the Terrible, a near-contemporary of the historical Dracula

Perhaps the greatest impact of Strahd’s biopower is on the people of Barovia. Only 10% of the people born in the realm have souls (a new feature that did not exist in the original Ravenloft module). The majority born without them are mere shells of humanity, “bereft of charm and imagination”, who “can neither laugh nor cry” (CoS, p. 25). Not only is this feature reminiscent of frequent claims to the effect that communist regimes destroyed the gene pool of the population; the truly frightening feature is that the vast majority of the Barovian population only stand to lose from liberation from Strahd. Once the Mists lift following Strahd’s demise, “those without souls fade into nothingness as they take their first steps beyond the edge of Strahd’s former domain” (CoS, p. 208). They are the biomass that have “failed to integrate into the market” of the D&D multiverse, and their treatment as superfluous people puts the whole liberation narrative that permeates the Curse of Strahd into question (to put it mildly).

But what of the liberators themselves? Although concrete details about them are impossible since they are characters created by individual players, their general function and identity are outlined quite clearly, because they are no less a fundamental aspect of the Curse of Strahd than the vampire himself. Given the inert character of the majority of the Barovian population, liberation can only be effected by external forces. The heroes enter Barovia in response to a plea for help from its Burgomaster, are lured or chased into Barovia by Strahd through various minions, or simply wander through the Mists by accident. That is, they do not come to Barovia because it serves someone’s interest in their world – they come because the situation itself calls for it, or the Dark Lord initiates the action; the more likely explanation that would apply in our own world plays the role of the “hidden but obvious premise”. There is no clear indication of the particular place the heroes originate from (since that is up to the players and the Dungeon Master), but the one specific example given is the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms, the default and generic setting where most published D&D APs take place. Unlike idiosyncratic and isolated Barovia, the heroes’ home worlds or realms teem with diversity. The multiple race options that are available for players to select for their characters are barely known to Barovians, who are almost exclusively human, have never seen dwarves, elves, halflings, and the like, and treat such outsiders with scorn and fear. Like other typical D&D worlds, the Forgotten Realms are linked to a vast multiverse of different planes where creatures can travel to at will, assuming they know how. Spirits of the dead also travel through such conduits in search of rewards and punishments, whereas in Barovia, they remain trapped in a kind of limbo only, like Tatyana, to be reborn, in virtually identical bodies. The resemblance of these open, complex worlds which reward people according to merit (and into which Barovia can reintegrate after the demise of its tyrant) to the typical construction of the ‘Free World’, though it is nowhere noted explicitly, is simply too suggestive to be ignored. At one point in the video gameplay version of the Curse of Strahd, Chris Perkins tells the player characters, who have just knocked on the door of a peasant hut: they react to you like people in a distant land who have never seen Americans before. Few things are more revealing of the Western missionary complex written into the adventure – though its impact on Hickman’s own life is a matter of common knowledge.

 Deconstructing Ravenloft

In light of all this, it is hard not to conclude that the vaunted empowering benefits of Curse of Strahd for victims of abuse and violence rest squarely on the perpetuation of conceptual violence against untold numbers of other victims. Lest this claim is once again dismissed by people claiming that the adventure path is ‘just a game’ without real world impact, I would reminder the reader that the Foreign Service is a career with serious nerd appeal. People often become attracted to exotic places because of stories, films, and yes, role-playing games experienced as youngsters. Attitudes toward such places are shaped by the myths contained in such narratives – myths that are supremely empowering to those with opportunity to use them as foundations for their personal progress and worldview. The power of this myth accounts for the intense attraction exercised by Ravenloft over the years, though the stereotypes it relies on have the opposite effect on people on whom they are imposed from the outside. Eventually, such stereotypes may also have a deleterious effect on the societies that perpetuate them when they blind us to the complex realities of other societies – a point that should be abundantly clear to those who have lived through the hysteria of the post 9/11 War on Terror, as well as the ongoing Russia scare following the US presidential election of 2016. Moral clarity toward the Other (of the type recommended in Ravenloft and the Curse of Strahd) has seriously misled us in both instances.

A modern-day Strahd

Secondly, the restorative effect of working through the trauma of abuse that Jones locates in the Curse of Strahd stands in stark contrast to the actual method of overcoming the vampire in the adventure. In actual therapeutic practice, the purpose of reliving the traumatic experience is to restore control of one’s life by reconnecting the present with the past as a linear narrative, and to break pathological cycles by breaking ties with the abuser, and the business of restraining to the authorities. In the adventure, however, the cycle of abuse and violence can only be broken by finding the necessary tools to defeat Strahd through the use of violence. Though Jones contends that the “adventure begins to eschew the standard RPG premise that all players are robust heroes who will ultimately defeat the great evil that stands before them or else die trying”, experience with actual play, as well as numerous recorded versions available online suggests that in the final analysis, the conflict between Strahd, his victims, and their self-appointed liberators is resolved through force one way or the other. Given the widespread identification of the D&D ruleset as a combat-centric system, most players expect precisely that kind of resolution. This is not to say that the focus on combat is itself “wrong”, or that it cannot have a cathartic effect on victims (among whom we may number the adventurers, who are after all lured and harried by Strahd). But it’s the combination of the promise of therapy with remedy by violence that creates an especially toxic brew  - it’s not just a beer-and-pretzels hackfest where you try to kill the monster – it’s a hackfest that is advertised as having psychologically salutary effects. We witness a similar linkage, over and over again, in the real-world international arena, where no legitimate regulating agency to punish state-level abusers exists. The assumption of such legitimacy by one set of institutions and agents claiming to act on their behalf is in fact what produces a cycle of violence and trauma in which our own “realm” is trapped.

The way this cycle is reproduced in the Curse of Strahd ultimately undermines claims to the effect that it is a uniquely open-ended and non-linear “sandbox” adventure, which is different each time it is played. Certainly, the realm of Barovia is a wide canvas, in which player characters do have a choice which village, ruin, temple, or castle they will explore first, and where they will seek potential allies. However, in the grand scheme of things, the direction of the adventure is always the same: figure out what’s going on, find help, find the right tools, slay the vampire. Even the purpose of bumbling about in Barovia is instrumentalized: they do so to gain experience, power, and allies, so as to tip the scales in their favor for a final confrontation with their host (CoS, p. 6) The Tarokka Deck, which is supposed produce a different adventure every time the AP is played, is in reality just a way to turn it into a glorified game of Clue. Sister Scarlet the Paladin can kill the vampire in the parlor with the Sunsword, or Father Mustard the Cleric can impale him with a stake in the crypt. Either way, Strahd cannot be reformed, must be killed, and will not stay dead for long.

Miss Scarlet - a draw from the Tarokka Deck?

What if the cards and the structure of the adventure actually allowed for multiple open-ended outcomes and original solutions – the true hallmarks of sandbox style adventures? What if the character of Strahd, the heroes, and the supporting cast of non-player characters (NPCs) were in fact more ambiguous? A few ideas that might be thrown into the mix could be:

• Strahd’s original downfall could have been partly caused by an institution like the Church in Coppola’s version. It was the Church’s normative intransigence that led it to refuse to bury Elisabeta, which in turn prompted Strahd’s revolt against the divine order. This normative intransigence was later reborn in a scientific guise in the character of van Helsing. Like Hickman and Perkins, van Helsing believes that the vampire must be destroyed (by fully rationalizing - almost industrializing - the religious instrumentarium of incantations, stakes, holy water, and communion wafers). But in the film, van Helsing is at best an ambiguous figure, and at worst a villain more evil than Dracula, because he forecloses even the possibility of redemption, and in refusing to address the root cause of the problem, condemns Elisabeta/Mina to an endless cycle of incarnation. He also threatens her with the same “cure” reserved for Dracula. What if the van Helsing character in Curse of Strahd – the vampire hunter von Richten, is transformed into a similarly problematic character, who represents an institution that is ultimately responsible for perpetuating the cycle of horror? 
• Strahd comes around to seeing that escaping this cycle is possible if he sacrifices himself, like Coppola’s Dracula did. Perhaps there is an item that leads him to make that decision. Perhaps someone convinces him of this as he is about to turn Tatyana, and he recoils from the prospect of forcing her to live an eternal nightmare. Coppola’s Dracula was like Strahd a murderer and abuser, and yet love forces him to change. To the degree that the vampire represents a certain kind of autocratic regime, it is interesting to recall that Soviet and Chinese communisms, which the champions of moral clarity said would never change, did in fact transform themselves from within (the former by liquidating itself, in a way quite analogous to that of Coppola’s Dracula).
• The Vistani, who play the role of Strahd’s secret police, may be angling to use the heroes to drive Strahd from power, so as to take over Barovia themselves. It is possible that they are in the employ of an external force, and connived with it to trap the heroes in Barovia with precisely this end in mind. This would bring up a complex three-cornered struggle, in which the heroes have difficult choices to make. Do they ally with those who manipulate them in the hopes of a kinder, gentler autocracy? Or do they stick with the devil they know?
• The people of Barovia play a wild card role. Some may realize that the fall of Strahd will lead to their destruction. So they may conclude that Strahd is a monster, but at least he is their monster, and they may offer the heroes more active resistance on the master’s behalf.
• Other side characters can serve as critical reminders of the complexity of the situation. An ally NPC can host the PCs in his villa, wining and dining them on all the best Barovia has to offer. In the meantime, all he would talk about is how great life is beyond the Mists, and how the PCs are so much better than most of the zombie-like inhabitants of Barovia, who would simply become superfluous if the vampire were no more. But he would also constantly lecture them about how the practice of burial in their own realms is a huge mistake, and a slippery slope that necessarily leads to vampirism in every instance. He would become increasingly more insistent on the last point. Perhaps he would also serve as a reminder of similar people in our world.
• The player characters could originate in Barovia, and begin the adventure there, not beyond the Mists. That means their backgrounds and personal narratives will be wrapped up with the place and its people. They wouldn't look at the locals just as projects in need of salvation, but as family members, friends, and neighbors. Perhaps they would be unsure if they themselves had souls, and if they would survive getting rid of their Dark Lord. In any event, they would care more about Barovia and its future, and they would be more likely seek solutions that had lasting benefits to the realm as a whole, instead of just moving on to the next adventure elsewhere (to Chris Perkins’ credit, he does in fact give two of the four characters in the video gameplay presentation of the adventure local roots, though this is not stipulated anywhere in the write-up). 

These things could all be determined by draws from Madam Eva’s deck, and be unknown to all (including the DM) at the start. There is no reason to eliminate the original option of Strahd as an irredeemable abuser and tyrant, either – it would just be one variant among several. But this way, the adventure would become a true sandbox, and in forcing us to think through the often unpredictable implications of upending or continuing Strahd’s rule, it would go some way toward helping us to work through and overcome the abuses in global politics, as well as those in intimate relations.