Tuesday, April 9, 2013

When real life inspires game scenarios

I recently learned of a Chinese tradition known as Tomb Sweeping Day (among other names).

The short description is: People go to burial sites of their ancestors and loved ones and burn replica items so that in the afterlife these things manifest as real for the dearly departed.

Examples include fake money, model houses, fake food, etc. Recently a woman in china hand crafted a model home with a tiny model electric refrigerator and burned it at her mother's grave site. Her reasoning is that her mother was poor growing up and never had the nice house with appliances she always wanted and this way she would have them in the afterlife.

This could easily translate to the gaming table and would make for an interesting bit of color. It even lends itself to the plot of an adventure:

The party goes to an area with the objective of robbing a tomb, but discovers their timing to be all wrong and winds up short of time and facing the obstacle of this three day festival which will have the necropolis swamped with families day and night, families that will take great offense to tampering with the resting places of their ancestors.

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