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Hallavast
2012-09-06, 04:00 AM
Hi all.

Last week, my gaming group got back together (after about 3 years apart), and we've had an initial pre-game session to outline the campaign, setting, and group template. I will be the GM.

We came up with a homebrew world with a large region modeled after ancient Asia (or, more accurately, modeled after the impressions of ancient Asia according to American fiction and media). The characters will be foreign "Westerners" from a region analogous to feudal Europe.

Some requested features and themes of the campaign are:

-horror: they want a dark, creepy feel to the story and setting
-Vampire cults: the party consists of sanctioned vampire hunters and exorcists who will roam around hunting vampire cults.
-Low magic, low level: while not strictly E6, this game will not go far beyond the relative power of a low-mid level party.
-Feudal power structures: I pushed for this detail. I'm used to portraying a European Feudal system, but this will comprise of something more akin to chinese/japanese feudalism.
-Political Intrigue: This campaign will consist far more of political maneuvering and mystery solving than nitty gritty dungeon crawls or complex combats.
-Shinto Mythology: they want to encounter Japanese spirits/demons. I am largely ignorant of this entire mythology. One player described it as Princess Mononoke mixed with Inuyasha (the others enthusiastically agreed). I feel like someone somewhere ought to be offended by that, but we don't know anybody who would know enough about it to express their scorn, so oh well.

So, as you might have guessed, I will need to do some cursory research before the game on Friday. I figured this forum was a good place to start. If there are any scholars that can regale me with some good Shinto Myths, my appreciation would be immense. Because, as of starting this project, I am largely ignorant of it.

If you're not familiar with Shinto mythology, that's OK. I could also always use some tips about weaving horror elements into a game (in particular, a game with a pseudo-Eastern flavor).

My GMing style consists of playing the rules by ear. I'm quite familiar with the system, but I'm much more inclined to make up specific stats for new monsters and NPCs on the spot (or an hour before the game most often). So the focus of my search isn't a rules-based one. I'm looking for flavorful storytelling ideas. Not new spells or feats or classes so much. The rules are secondary.

Can
2012-09-06, 05:53 AM
You'll be wanting to take a look at Youkai (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youkai) for a whole bunch of them. If you want more visual stuff, the movie Spirited Away (from the same makers as Mononoke) should cater to your needs.

Yora
2012-09-06, 06:08 AM
While shinto certainly has a huge amount of mythology, it is primarily a practical religion. It's not identical with animism, but overlaps with it in very large parts.

The main focus is, how do you keep the spirits around you in a good mood and get them to help you with their powers?
There are gods and a creation myth, but at least in the modern age it's mostly about day to day business with the local spirits. A very major aspect is talismans and amulets for everything imaginable. They either protect a person, a house, a ship, or a village from misfortune and evil spirits, or they draw good fortune by calling on the spirits to help. To have a representation of something shinto-like, I'd put a lot of focus on these things. Going to the shrines to give an offering to ask for anything you might wish for, getting amulets to protect against any danger you might be facing in the future, or to give you extra luck when you will be needing it, having priests put charms and blessings on new houses and ships, and of course visiting oracles who can ask the spirits specific questions you have.

In the very basic concept, spirits live in the spiritwold, but they have certain places of powers where they can enter the human world. In the distant past, these were unusual landmarks, like huge boulders, waterfalls, springs, and the like. The priests would visit these places and call to the spirit, which would then enter these objects in the human world and you can interact with them. You don't normally see the spirit, but it is there and is hearing and seeing you. Once the rites are done, the priest sends the spirit back to the spiritworld and the object is empty again.
Over time, these places were marked with ropes, so people don't step into them on accident, and later on there were richly decorated buildings build on or around them. I think in modern times, shrines are just build anywhere space is available, as there is such an uncountable number of spirits that you can get a couple of powerful ones in any place you call for them.

Another significant aspect is purity. Impurity is not about doing bad things and having bad thoughts or violating rules, but a natural part of life. Everything gets dirty and has to be cleaned regularly, and it's the same with human souls. In shinto, the most important ways of cleaning are water and fire. Water does not only clean the body, but also the soul, and by washing your hands and your mouth, you are also cleansing your soul of the impurity you gained by doing bad things and saying bad things. Touching blood and dead also causes a lot of impurity, but again, that is not such a bad thing and can easily be washed off again. But if you are of high social status, you can avoid these most of the time by simply having others do it for you.

And then you get to all the freaky ghosts and monsters of Japan, and I really don't know how they fit in with everything. Shinto has coexisted side by side with Buddhism for over a thousand years and the two mixed and merged in many aspects, and personally I think that a large parts of the ghost are actually based on buddhist concepts.
An important part however is, that there is no good or evil. Humans do human things, animal do animal things, and demons do demon things. This does not make the demons evil, that's just their nature. That doesn't mean you have to like it or you have to let them get away with it, but it is not as if they are opposed to a universal law of right or wrong. And many monsters can be quite okay and not making problems.

Yanagi
2012-09-06, 03:32 PM
I'm going to focus on one unusual feature that really sets the tone of Japanese horror and youkai stories; the Japanese concept of "spirit" contains a concept not present in the Chinese or Indian influences, in that spirits are not just ghosts or simulcra, but are the product of impressions made by experience, thought, and perception (usually, but not always, of humans). This idea is present both in the basic conception of kami worship within Shinto, within folklore, and is a motif present in several centuries of literary material that incorporates the supernatural.

For example, it is traditionally held that objects that are kept or used for long periods of time develop a "life" and sometimes even supernatural power. Things that people handle or use often...combs, umbrellas, clothes...in particular first absorb the spiritual residue of the user (which is transferred just like biologic dross, like dander) and eventually acquire enough to come alive...traditionally, after one hundred years of "life." At which point they're referred to as tsukumogami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukumogami).

A similar case of age/experience leading to supernatural-ness is the various animal spirits, such as cats, tanuki, and foxes. They're not distinct fantasies races in most folklore, but living animals that have survived for so long long they've become intelligent and magical.

Youkai can also come into being when humans are upset or otherwise strongly emotional...and then transform. This concept of being overwhelmed by emotion or feeling is also present in the folklore of yurei (the traditional ghost/revenant). A popular fictional take on this idea of emotion and transformation is that a strong feeling held on to too tightly for too longer becomes a supernatural being unto itself, independent of the perhaps-unwitting person experienced that feeling. Another take is that strong emotions linger after death, but become more malefic and less coherent, until they manifest as a supernatural being or haunting. I can't nail either of those two ideas as wholly of Shinto canon with regards to spirits, but a lot of great stories have been built on the premise.

It's worth noting, by the way, that the Japanese have been writing fantasy fiction derived from Shinto ideas for centuries now. A lot of now-familiar supernatural creatures have either been invented by professional authors/artists (such and Toriyama Sekien) or reformulated in popular literature such that they're quite different from their regional folkloric origins. Particularly if one is constrained to research in English, you're going to struggle differentiating what comes from where...not that you lose anything by accepting the ideas that aren't "mythology" but are of the mythos...there's a lot of great stuff there.

If you want stories, some accessible sources would Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn, one of the first English accounts of the Japanese folklore and ghost stories; the works of Shigeru Mizuki, whose yokai-themed manga GeGeGe no Kitaro pretty much sets the standard image for manga depictions of youkai.

There's also several websites that contain kaidan (weird and ghost tales):


Hyakumonogatori Kaidankai (http://hyakumonogatari.com/)

Here's the text of Hearn's Kwaidan (http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/kwaidan/index.htm)

And here's an article of kaidan (http://www.japanzine.jp/article/jz/2965/tales-of-ghostly-japan-2)

Another great source, though a bit of a slog, would be Kunio Yanagita's Tono Monogatori, which is a scholarly survey of the folklore in the village of Tono, in Iwate Prefecture. I can't find a copy online right now, though.

For inspiration I'd suggest looking at art as well. Toriyama Seiken did a series of "100 Monsters" prints, but I'm especially found of the wood-block printer Yo****oshi, who did an amazing series entitled 36 Ghosts.

Yora
2012-09-06, 03:54 PM
I can't nail either of those two ideas as wholly of Shinto canon with regards to spirits, but a lot of great stories have been built on the premise.
That is where Shinto most strongly differs from western relgions and Buddhism. There is no canon. There are two major impoartant works on shinto from the early 8th century, but those are considered to be accounts written down by scholars about the believes of priests in their time, but they are not words or teachings by any divine force.

Don't know about any specific works now, but from everything I know about Japanese culture and religion in the modern age, there must have been without almost any degree of doubt some propaganda works in the late 19th and early 20th century that gave a perfect and universal explaination for everything about shinto. There was a huge revisionist movement at that time that invented an entirely new Japanese history, and while it certainly left its mark on later generations, these should not be considered genuine facts about Shinto. Or at least, they do not apply to the time before their creation, now they obviously do affect what people think is shinto.

Yanagi
2012-09-06, 04:59 PM
Don't know about any specific works now, but from everything I know about Japanese culture and religion in the modern age, there must have been without almost any degree of doubt some propaganda works in the late 19th and early 20th century that gave a perfect and universal explaination for everything about shinto. There was a huge revisionist movement at that time that invented an entirely new Japanese history, and while it certainly left its mark on later generations, these should not be considered genuine facts about Shinto. Or at least, they do not apply to the time before their creation, now they obviously do affect what people think is shinto.

State Shinto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Shinto)

The Edo/Meiji transition is interesting in a lot of ways, but it gets really alarming when you read about how dramatically existing concepts were appropriate to cultivate a state-centered, pro-imperial worldview. The other example being Nitobe and the concept of bushido.

Frenth Alunril
2012-09-07, 12:14 AM
To mess with them, Check out Gegege no Kitarou! There is enough freaky spooky stuff in there to reflect a modern concept of Japanese Shinto Spirit Monsters. Some of them are darker than others, but I am pretty sure you can find it out there with sub titles.

After all, the fact that Kitarou is the son of his own left eyeball is crazy enough.

But, yeah, the guys here gave you a lot of good advice. Everything has a spirit, and in new things a spirit must me summoned and enticed and brought to it's new understanding of the things it must do. Every new house gets a Kami-dana, a place where the spirit that protects the house will reside. It is given sake and treats, and the small temple is cleaned regularly. much like a tiny tiny shrine in your house that is only for the houses spirit.

Kelb_Panthera
2012-09-07, 02:02 AM
You didn't say what system you're playing under, but if it's any version of 3rd edition D&D the monsters in oriental adventures are a good place to start mechanically, and the creation myth for rokugan is pretty similar to one of the japanese creation myths.

The rest of the book will be of only a little help though. You'll, of course, want to remove the taint based mechanics from some of the monsters, but unless I'm mistaken any of the tainted monsters that aren't undead were actually created to go with the rokugan campaign setting and aren't really what you're looking for anyway.

Though taint is an interesting way to model the purity/impurity mention by that other post with a little adjustment.

TheOOB
2012-09-07, 02:58 AM
You didn't say what system you're playing under, but if it's any version of 3rd edition D&D the monsters in oriental adventures are a good place to start mechanically, and the creation myth for rokugan is pretty similar to one of the japanese creation myths.

The rest of the book will be of only a little help though. You'll, of course, want to remove the taint based mechanics from some of the monsters, but unless I'm mistaken any of the tainted monsters that aren't undead were actually created to go with the rokugan campaign setting and aren't really what you're looking for anyway.

Though taint is an interesting way to model the purity/impurity mention by that other post with a little adjustment.

Anything Legend of the Five Rings/Rokugan related you find will be golden...in fact you could just use L5R 4e for this game. A party of samurai hunting supernatural creatures is perfect for the setting and system, in fact, that's like half of what the Crab Clan does.

Winter_Wolf
2012-09-07, 04:06 AM
I did a thesis on Shinto to graduate from university. It's most certainly an active real world religion with people who still actively believe in the "mythology" portions. Quite a lot of people actually. That is to say, it's a real life religion and pretty much a no-no topic of discussion in the Playground.

Kelb_Panthera
2012-09-07, 06:30 AM
I did a thesis on Shinto to graduate from university. It's most certainly an active real world religion with people who still actively believe in the "mythology" portions. Quite a lot of people actually. That is to say, it's a real life religion and pretty much a no-no topic of discussion in the Playground.

While that's true, as long as we stick to linking and suggesting references, rather than discussing the religion itself, we should be okay.

Somebody might want to ask a mod to come take a look though.

Yora
2012-09-07, 06:45 AM
We're allowed to talk about angels and demons, souls, mana, chi, the afterlife, nature spirits, shamanism, burial rites, creation myths, and so on.
As long as you don't get into calling certain believes wrong and counter them with other believes, you can have perfectly civilizted discussions about concepts and social mechanism. Though I admit that I've been the worst offender about it by calling State Shinto fake propaganda and it's new introduced concepts false Shinto. It is of course an interpretation of old tradition from a modern perspective which is as valid as any other. :smallredface:
Mentioning that there had been a paradigm shift in the late 19th century that resulted in some differences would have been sufficient.

Roland St. Jude
2012-09-07, 09:46 AM
Sheriff of Moddingham: Real world religion is an inappropriate topic for this forum. Please give it a wide berth.