Tatmaker, make me a tat
[ life | roleplaying games ][ body modification | käärmeuurna | rpgs | tattoos ]
[ February 18th, 2009 ]
[ by: Alvan ]
So a player from our gaming group asked me to help him get a new tattoo – my job was to compile a composite from his source material to a form the actual artist can work with. He asked me to do that about a year and a half ago. Well, now it’s out of my hands, and as suspected, that’s a good feeling. And kind of weird one at the same time. The stuff I tinkered with will eventually find form on someone else’s skin. There is something near-sacred about that. My own view on tattoos is on some level close to semi-mystical reverence. Things etched on the skin telling a truth more deep than all the clothes and mannerisms out there. My father still wears the “Sailor’s Shallow Grave” tattoo on his arm, even if he hasn’t been sailing the high seas in years. He’s not exactly proudly presenting it to people, but it’s something he’ll have for life and no amount of suburbanizing will take that aspect of his life away from him. Of course there are stupid tattoos (although some behind that link are really awesome), I’d love to think that quite a good portion of people, when selecting a tattoo, attach some meaning to it.
So when in RPGs someone has a tattoo, it’s quite sad for me to see what it’s usually there for.here seems to be three typical possibilities why it’s there. 1) It’s cool. “The mysterious stranger has this awesome tattoo of a thundercloud on his face that is so fetch” 2) It’s magical “The mysterious stranger’s tattoo shoots a burst of salami at you” or 3) it’s to mark the wearer as a part of a group “The mysterious stranger’s thundercloud tattoo means he’s part of the thunderous pasta chefs’ ninja-pirate group”
It’s very rare to see a tattoo in RPGs (both in sourcebooks or actual games) that’s there beyond those reasons. In other media tattoos that are there for the character instead of for the story somehow aren’t that uncommon anymore (Battlestar Galactica‘s the first that comes to mind). But not in RPGs, really. For example, in the d20 Future campaign I’m currently playing, two or three of the characters have high profile tattoos, and if I recall correctly, all of them are of type 2. And any tattoo we’ve come across on NPCs have been of type 3. Maybe some of them have started as Type 1s, but moved to the group identity thing quite fast. None outside that.
I try to recall my own campaigns, but can’t come up with many that had tattoos in them outside the “Look at Me, I’m Important” -sphere. I ran a campaign called Käärmeuurna (Snake Urn) that had a minor theme of body modification in it. I think there might have been a character with a tattoo that wasn’t there because it was important or especially cool. But most likely I’m lying if I’m saying that. I do vaguely recall that one of the player characters getting a non-uniform, not-just-for-cool, non-magical tattoo in that very game, but that might have been something she was planning on getting, not really sure if she really actually got it. Closest to getting a normal, character-based tattoo on any game so-far, I think.
The sad thing is that having a tattoo on a character quite easily falls into the superficial cool side instead of anything else. Might be time to actively change that in the next campaign I run. And in case one or more of the people in our gaming group are reading this, I’ll ask you: Have we had regular, “human” tattoos in our games?
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Tags: body modification, käärmeuurna, rpgs, tattoos
February 18th, 2009 at 14:08
re: regular tattoos in our games:
I can’t remember any. Maybe some sailors or whatnot have had some, as well as criminals and people like that. Then again, the question of coolness is a difficult one, aren’t most “human” tattoos also done sheerly for the coolness factor?
Unlike mine (thanks again, btw), which is of course dripping with meaning, but that’s for other people to interpret and figure out.
February 18th, 2009 at 16:20
That’s of course a blurry line – I’d say the difference is in the superficiality. If the character has a tat just because it’s cool that the character would have a tattoo, not the specific one he has, it’s not there for the character. It’s there for the cool factor. Pretty much just the point of view where you write the skin art on him, I think.
I thought about the criminals when writing that, but they’ve been usually more of the “these are Russian prison tattoos” or “that’s a Yakuza tattoo” – they’re there to mark the allegiance of the character. Of course those (especially the prison tattoos) are very meaningful to the character as well. But from the game’s standpoint, they are most often there to be an uniform – it’s quite rare when the details of the tattoos are even mentioned or thought out. They’re just “Russian prison tattoos”.
I guess what I am a bit miffed about that even if the conventions of portraying characters in our games has moved from “superficial cool” to a more “human” (read: flawed) personalities, when it comes to skin art, our thoughts are stuck in the cool. I would love to see a mercenary with a Tron logo tattooed on his back. Tats offer a way to tell more about the character than many, many other things, but they’re not really used as such.
February 18th, 2009 at 18:07
Still, there is always the problem of description in RPGs. If you start detailing the tattoo your character or an NPC has, you’ll easily slip into the cool again. The reason? Whenever something is described in detail, it’s bound to attract unwarranted attention. All of a sudden the character is all about the tattoo, even if it’s just meant as a small personal thing. Same thing with clothing. If you happen to mention that you have an unusual item of clothing, that’s going to become the staple of the character.
This description problem really is a tricky one to solve.
February 18th, 2009 at 19:47
Of course. One good rule of thumb for describing characters is pointing out 3 things about the – something common, something remarkable and then just something – “A blonde woman, wearing a long lace scarf and a yellow raincoat.” And of course, if you add a tattoo to that, it becomes more important than necessary.
But what about a situation with a long-standing NPC? You’ve been in the same unit with McMurdough for 10 games, know some things about him, and then during some shower scene, the GM makes a note about a tattoo of an old Nintendo controller with the text “Never Give Up – Never Surrender” around it. That never happens. I kinda would like it to.