This is a webpage dedicated to exploring the complex mythic/archetypal figure of Trickster, as found within the hobby of Role Playing Games. If you would like to comment on what you find here, if there is a link you'd like to suggest, or if you find a link that does not work, please send me a note.
It has been my experience that in most RPGs the Trickster is usually presented as either a fundamentally humorous/joking figure --a Fool or a Clown--, a fundamentally cunning/sly figure --a Thief or a Rogue--, a fundamentally unstable/insubstantial figure --a Shapeshifter or an Illusionist--, or as some combination of these. This makes sense, given that he has almost always been presented for player characters as either a deity to worship and emulate, as a character class to develop along, or both.
Even in Glorantha (which IMO has the best potential for fully realizing the figure of Trickster in any RPG), he is apparently considered by game players (GMs and PCs alike) to primarily be a figure of humor who pulls pranks of one sort or another.
Unfortunately, as you can probably tell from my work below, I find this conception of Trickster to be limited. Trickster is much more than sly thieving, cunning tricks and funny jokes! He is a creator and a destroyer at least as much as he is a clown and a thief. He is also a liminal figure, something "betwixt and between." Trickster has a dual nature, being half animal and half divine. As Carl Jung writes, "He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being..." And these aren't even his fundamental attributes! According to Jung, Trickster's "chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness." He is not evil, but rather "does the most atrocious things from sheer unconsciousness and unrelatedness." Jung also sees in him "an approximation to the figure of a savior." The folklorist Stith Thompson called him not just "a creature of greed, lust, and stupidity," but also "a beneficent being, bringing culture and light to his people."
In his essay on the Trickster, Karl Kerenyi writes that we all "seek to understand this phenomenon [of the arch-trickster] in human terms." This is naturally done through one of the most human things of all - laughter. In his classic "An Essay on Comedy," George Merideth writes about how comedy grasps the essence of humanity by serving an important moral and social function: "it redeems us from our posturings, stripping away pride, arrogance, complacency, and other sins." Humor can also create social bonds. As the saying goes, "laughter makes us human," and so, I suppose it's not suprising that most RPG presentations focus so much on the jester aspect of Trickser.
So, perhaps I've been "too hard" in my critique of how RPGs treat and present tricksters and fools. I don't know. What do you think?
Anyway, I've rambled on long enough. So, without further adieu, Heeeeeere's TRICKSTER!
In the "General" Non-Gloranthan ring of RPG stuff about tricksters, jesters, fools, and/or the crazy, we have:
In the Trickster in Glorantha ring there are:
Other people's ideas:
My personal preposterous ponderings and prevarications include:
From here you can go to Fool's Paradise, to my Glorantha page, or to my home page.
URL: http://members.aol.com/pmichaels/glorantha/jestbaub.html
This webpage was last declared outlaw and banished into cyberspace on: 01 July 2002.
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