Swordfarer: a solo journalling RPG experience

What I learned from pretending to be a Buddhist swordfighter

Ryan Yeo Ken Hui

I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop by Tan Shao Han from Curious Chimeras. I had a lot of fun playing Swordfarer, roleplaying my character, and envisioning how roleplaying games could be a medium for learning. 

Swordfarer is a solo journalling game written by Shao Han. The idea behind solo journalling games is that there are a series of prompts given to the player. The player builds a world and a character in response to these prompts, and “journals” as their character. It’s similar to a writing prompt, except that the point is to have fun developing the character and exploring the world as if playing a game, rather than simply creating a conventionally good story. 

The world of Swordfarer is inspired by wǔxiá fiction, where you roleplay a martial arts hero and embark on a personal quest. This was new to me—I have played plenty of roleplaying games and solo journalling games in the past, and these were mostly written from a Western perspective. Here, I was extremely fascinated by how Shao Han’s work captured philosophies and symbols that were more rooted in East Asian traditions. For example, Shao Han cleverly incorporated the Buddhist concept of karma in the mechanics of his game: when you perform certain benevolent actions, you gain Merit points that can alter the tone of the game later on. There was also much more floral imagery throughout the world. In particular, the blooming of the lotus flower is a significant metaphor for awakening in Buddhism, and the lotus featured heavily throughout the world of Swordfarer. It was a breath of fresh air. 

Furthermore, I have been interested in using improv theatre and roleplaying games as media for education for a long time. I have been experimenting with different ways to incorporate roleplaying into education through other modules whenever I have gotten the chance to do a creative assignment. For the Topics in Buddhist Philosophy class, I was given another chance to incorporate Buddhist teachings into roleplaying games through the unessay assignment. I set out to create a guidebook on incorporating Buddhist principles into improv, and the workshop with Shao Han was extremely helpful in two ways.  

First, Swordfarer showed me a way to adjust the game mechanics to fit a different purpose or perspective. After seeing Shao Han adjust the karma/Merit mechanics to incorporate elements of Buddhism, I was inspired to tweak some mechanics in my improv unessay project as well, rather than to simply do an improv scene in the way I was used to. In the end, I settled on a mechanical change that could best help us explore the idea of attachment and non-attachment, by getting participants to repeat the same scenario over and over with different levels of attachment. 

Second, reading through the Swordfarer book gave me a better idea of how to present my unessay, because it was presented in a very clear manner. I proceeded to organise my Buddhist Improv Guidebook in a similar way: by including explanations on why certain mechanical choices were made, explaining the inspirations behind my project, and including a d50 table for players to roll on in case they needed a random prompt. 

Finally, and most importantly in my opinion, I had a lot of fun. In my adventure, I was a socially anxious nerdy warrior who was looking for an adventure because I had read some adventure books. I even got to meet one of the Four Heavenly Kings and, after some embarrassing fumbles, managed to win his favour through some quick thinking. It was a great exercise in imagination. I’ve always been fascinated by roleplaying games and this workshop was a wonderful experience to add on to that!

Notes from the Game Designer

Tan Shao Han