Games for the Mind

I’m in my neighborhood gaming shop and see this new game called Scion, which is kinda sexy looking.  I open it up, flip through the front, look at all the pantheon information they have.  I catch a glaimpse at the picture of the Egyptian pantheon, first as god forms, then as mortal forms, and am tickled.

I see they have a section on the Loa, so I flip on over.  It’s right about then I lose interest in owning the book.  I admit, this is nothing but me reading no more than a couple of pages and looking at some pictures, but those were enough to turn me off and make me put the book down.   

First, it just grates on my nerves when Loa worship is flagged as entirely ‘African.’  As we know it, and as White Wolf uses it, it is a New World religion with a remarkably diverse body of worshipers, black, hispanic, white, jewish, what have you.  That’s a small beef given the general essentializing structure of the pantheons, but it feels more pronounced in this section.

Second, in trying to give Santeria and Candomble their due, they throw in Shango as a token figure from another New World diaspora religion.  This blurs real, meaningful historical distinctions.  That kind of lazy bugs me.

Technically, to stick in Vodou cosmology, Shango is a kind of Ogun.  However, when he appears in other diaspora religions like Santeria or Candomble, he has a very strong identity separate from Ogun.  He is described as Ogun’s ‘friend’ in Scion, when he is far more often (mythologically) his rival.  If you want to break him out on his own, do your homework!

Worse yet, when they depict Shango in god form, they portray him as a wild-eyed fat guy wielding a stone ax.  While the ax is an important symbol of Shango, what is even more basic to his representations is kingliness.  Shango is a *king* and he gets portrayed as some ooga-booga savage straight out of bad 1920’s pulp.

I mean, crap, if you want to portray a traditional Shango, rock on.  But that picture bears no resemblance to any traditional African costume denoting kingship or Shango.  There are so many beautiful, beautiful images of traditional African royal attire, so why the laziness?

Worse yet, why the laziness that plays up stupid stereotypes about African savagery?  Grrr! 

Heck, that kind of bugs me (just bugs, though), too, when they modernize him.  No where do you, for example, see his connection to the drums which is a wonderful direction to take his modern incarnation. 

And, for the love of!!!, they actually include a Voodoo doll (complete with pins!) in the equipment section.  The stereotype of the voodoo doll is not african, it’s European.  It would be far more accurate to have a poppet in the Scandinavian items than it is for it to be present in the African one.

Dolls in Vodou are not things you damage; they represent and embody the spirits themselves.  Sticking pins in them would be akin to kicking a crucifix, something that would be met with horror on the part of sincere practitioners.

*sigh* There is more to complain about (from a glance!), but I’ve satisfied my need to vent so I’ll stop.