A prelude to Bills of Lading: Augie March

Tonight I was watching the ARIA awards, which are the major music awards for Australian bands. Best Single for 2006 went to a band called Augie March for their single "One Crowded Hour", the chorus of which might serve as useful colour in a scene with merchants, because it uses nautical motifs. A sample is here:
http://www.augie-march.com/newsEvents/archive.do?newsId=20030829002889

The name of the song is a quote from Sir Walter Scott, but the performance of the song indicates that it takes an opposing view to his. Scott's an interesting figure for Ars Magica fans, as the reviver of the historical novel in English, the romaniticiser of chivalry that led, perhaps to Twain's satire "A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", and a godfather of the sort of faux Celticness that pervades roleplayerdom. His work is partially set in the 12th Century...have any of us ever translated "Ivanhoe" to Ars Magica?

The title actually reaches us not from Scott, but from the biography of Neil Davis, an Australian cameraman who covered the Vietnamese and Cambodian sides of the Vietnam war. Davis was killed on assignment: the first piece of his work I ever saw was his final one. He was shot while his camera was running, and the clip was shown on the national news. One of his colleagues attempts to drag Davis to safety, across the field of his still-recording camera. Americans are more likely to know his work from the images of a North Vietnamese tank coming through the gates of the Presidential Palace of South Vietnam.

It would be easy to bridge from Davis's life, in which he said he craved combat, and his obsessive desire to be in the most dangerous places possible to record them, to a character type for the game, but let's let that pass. I mention him only to point out that the song quoted above is not, really, just a song about a love affair gone wrong. There are levels, and levels again, and in each of those levels there are potentials for story material, if you are willing to go after them with a trowel. This is a theme we will come back to...one of the comfortable ports of the Bills of Lading Project.

The name of the band comes from a novel, "The Adventures of Augie March" which might also serve as useful material for storyguides considering a saga set around aspects of trade. The novel has two elements which might serve storyguides well, when designing arcs for characters in merchant stories. It is picaresque, and it is a bildungsroman.

A picaresque story is one in which a quick-witted character, of low social class, uses his talents to impersonate members of the upper class for personal benefit. "His" is used advised here: the protagonists are generally male, although female picaras appear, particularly in raunchier or modern works. The picaro is often an anti-hero, and his successes are not lasting, so that he leaves a trail of chaos, of dramatic success and equally abrupt failure, in his wake. The recent BBC series "Casanova" (with David Tennant in the lead role, not the also excellent movie with Heath Ledger) shows the sort of perpetual migration this lifestyle engenders well.

The migratory aspects of the picaresque antihero do not well suit covenant-based play, so they might need to be restricted to the past of a character. An obvious example would be Casanova himself, who is serving as the librarian in an obscure castle, waiting for his Story Hooks to catch up with him, as they finally do. The intention of the picaresque novel is satirical, and satire needs to be topical. Players wanting to play a picaresque character will need the storyguide, and the players, to develop character who show parallels to modern institutions.

Picaresque stories also require a society to be corrupt, because the picaro infiltrates the society by demonstrating its outward signs of status and conformity, without his lack of substance being detected. Among the wealthy, rising classes of Mythic Europe, such pretence is possible. The nobility response by clamping down, excluding from true nobility anyone who lacks the blood of landed ancestors, but as travel becomes more popular, it becomes increasing easy to pretend to be a low nobleman for another place.

Augie March is also a bildungsroman, a German term meaning a story in which a young person grows to the mastery of his profession. Ars Magica suits this style of story particularly well. Stories are spread across the lifetime of the character, because of the seasonal experience mechanics, and the relative lack of combat makes character death less likely. These are stories which begin with a green young man or woman, and lead him or her through the life-stages of a profession, ending at a contented retirement or honoured death. This prelude has been written before "City and Guild" comes out, so the contents can't be discussed, but this sort of story is traditional for magi and companions, and as the rear cover blurb indicates, merchant characters may track a similar path, if that's what groups of players desire.

Bills of Lading: A project for "City and Guild"

In November, the folks at Atlas Games will release "City and Guild". It's the first in the current line of Ars Magica books that has had mundane people as its primary focus. I feel it is likely to be contentious, because the larger arguments on the various Ars lists always arise from the conflict between real versions of, and mythic perceptions of, things. Cats and crossbows are two historical examples. In response, I'm beginning the Bills of Lading Project.

The Bills of Lading project is a kind of game. It has rules. Here's how it works:

• For the first thirty days after the release of City and Guild, I will write one post a day.
• For days of tremendous significance, I may cheat by sending posts in early.
• Each post will provide material related to a question posed by a person who has purchased, or promised sincerely to purchase, "City and Guild".
• Each answer will be, at average, 500 words long, but both longer and shorter are likely.
• People may ask as many questions as they like, and I'll answer as many as I have time for in the Atlas forum or Berklist. The Bills of Lading answers will be longer, and more thoroughly researched.
• Lacking a suitable question I will provide material which expands on "City and Guild" in some way.
• People may suggest questions in advance of the release of "City and Guild", but I can't begin the project, or comment on their questions, in any detail, until the book is released and my non-disclosure agreement is completed. That being said, I'm probably going to prepare a few posts in advance, so that if I have a busy day, I need not work too hard on a particular evening.

So - the blog, and the game, start now.

Welcome aboard.