Stalwart Team Up Part One

With Stalwart, I’ve been able to pull off a few things I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I have a set of core rules I really like. I’ve got an ‘ultimate handbook’ that I’m happy with, and that does was I wanted it to do - to set a foundation of the setting and characters of the larger game world. I’m wrapping up the city book, which should be up as a pay-what-you-want download this weekend. I’ve got the whole game rooted in some solid narrative foundations.

Now, it’s finally time to move the whole thing forward. 

One of my favorite conceits of comics of the 80s was Marvel Team Up – the idea that every month Spidey teamed up with another hero to battle a wide array of foes. I suppose I liked it so much because I was a big Spiderman fan, but the hero he teamed with that month would also then bring a viable threat at their power level – the wide variety of stories and genres he could cross over was greatly influenced by who happened to show up that month to work with him.

For a long time, I’ve had the desire to adapt this concept to a superhero game setting, but for many reasons it never got off the ground. I’ve tried to think of the right framing device and finally realized that the central character who does the team ups IS the framing device. The quality of Spiderman that made him perfect for this is that he is the friendly neighborhood Spiderman. He’s likeable. He’s kind. He’s genuinely interested in other people. He’s goofy, so others let down their guards more easily. His entire persona lends itself to the setup. He teams up with people because he likes people, and they tend to like him back. A character like Zealot doesn’t work, because he’s a loner by nature (Wolverine Team Up just doesn’t work as well). Twilight Archer is better, because he’s a mentor who seeks out others to train, but this immediately creates an uneven playing field; he’s the leader going into each of these scenarios.

But then I got an idea. And then I immediately thought of the problems with this idea.

I thought of a Mexican hero who inherits a totem that grants mystical powers in some way. He’s relatively poor (like Spidey), but he’s incredibly kind (always doing community service for others). He inherits the totem when Bronze Beacon (who is inventorying artifacts and realizing that several were gained unethically and should be returned to their original owners) gives him a family totem that grants him powers, and maybe even entrusts him with distributing the rest of these. She’s packing up for her move to the new museum, and has to leave soon. It’s a hook that creates many opportunities for teaming up in a relatively unstructured framework. I really like it.

I Googled this, and found a great resource about Mexican spirit animals, and started to think how this character takes care of homeless cats as part of what he does, so his spirit animal is this supercat with strength, speed, agility, a combat sense… so Spiderman without the webs and wall crawling. But with claws… so maybe wall crawling. Why not?

The problem is that I’m a white male, and this is a tricky thing for me to navigate. I’ve written a little bit before about how I try to process this dilemma. On one hand, I realize that superhero worlds in the 80s were largely populated by (and created by… and intended for) white males, so being intentional about expanding my game world with people who don’t share my background is a good thing. It’s a necessary thing.

I also realize that this is a field mined with traps for the unwary. I can easily veer into cultural appropriation or unintentional racism because of a well-meaning but also ignorant storyline or event or motif that ends up communicating something I don’t mean to communicate.

Case in point – I’ve decided my main character is both Mexican and poor. Does this mean that on some level I perceive that all Mexicans are poor? Gosh. That’s a tough question. I don’t think so. I was thinking that Peter Parker is poor, and that works better than Batman rich for the stories I want to do, and this character would work. Did I go ‘he’s poor, so then he must be Mexican’? I don’t think so. I was thinking that it would be cool if he was Mexican, because this is an experience I might be able to research and get some authentic understanding out of. It makes sense why he’d be living in this city at this time, but also not be white.

And when I wrote the previous paragraph is when I solved the problem. I like blogging a lot. The process actually solves problems. I’m not writing to show you what I have thought of. I write the blog to help me solve a problem in writing.

I make a mental note: I need to say that to my 8^th graders this year.

Anyway, this is the solution – I am making these stories with this character in order to better understand a culture other than my own. I am not sitting here telling YOU about the Mexican-American experience (because I have no idea)… I am sitting here letting you watch ME as I try to better understand the Mexican-American experience through the process of creating this narrative.

I feel better about this now that I understand my own intentions. I also am less concerned about a mis-step, because it’s a learning process. If I really screw up, someone will point it out to me and I’ll grow from it. Nice. Problem solved.

Onward and forward. Or, I would say up, up, and away if that wasn’t already taken.