{"id":3301,"date":"2012-11-08T11:00:29","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T16:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=3301"},"modified":"2020-06-17T17:52:48","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T21:52:48","slug":"better-folklore-through-alchemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=3301","title":{"rendered":"Better Folklore through Alchemy"},"content":{"rendered":"

For my birthday this past October, my girlfriend bought me a copy of Skyrim for XBox.  For those not familiar, Skyrim is the latest installment of the ‘Elder Scrolls’ series of open-world role playing games set in a Dungeons and Dragons-informed mythic backdrop.  It’s a standard RPG, where the player roams around an open and expansive landscape leveling up their various skills and slowly acquiring better gear (like enchanted weapons and armor) all while engaging in quests that either drive the main story-plot forward or add a bit of color to the already imaginative universe on display.  I love these types of games because they allow a kind of freedom of movement and exploration of the map that strict narrative driven games often lack.  Maybe I don’t want to slay the dragon right now.  Maybe I need to go help that homeless guy in town find his old battle helmet from a bygone war, or perhaps I want to go hunting for ingredients to make more healing potions.<\/p>\n

But something began to occur to me as I was wandering across the vast mountain ranges scattered throughout Skyrim’s map looking for said potion ingredients.  (My character was an Orc who liked to brawl hand-to-hand combat style, thus necessitating the need for a well stocked healing potion supply)  The ‘high medieval’ background of the game contained a surprising amount of rationalistic and enlightenment based underpinnings that helped to support what I would call the ‘Medieval+’ background common to many similarly-themed RPG’s.  Everywhere the player goes there is evidence of a society deeply under the influence of ‘liberalistic’ ideals, be it through the plethora of books found all over Skyrim’s ludic universe (this despite the lack of *one* printing press) or, of particular focus for this post, the use of Alchemy as a pseudo-science to validate ‘folkloric’ herbal knowledge.<\/p>\n

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Photo via SegmentNext<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I want to use this post to explore what I mean by ‘Medieval+’ and especially look at how Skyrim treats the idea of knowledge reconfiguration and validation in the use of herbs to make more potent<\/em> potions.  In doing so I will be referencing the work of scholar Kapil Raj, who studies how ‘modern’ knowledge is collected, transmitted, and reconfigured at the local level.  Rather than saying that modern designers have put their own biases and views into a supposedly ‘medieval’ game, I will argue that the systems and procedural rhetoric of Skyrim actually embodies a thoroughly ‘modern’ mindset that helps justify the positivistic setting and integration of the ludic universe into the player’s modern setting of play.<\/p>\n

In his book, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650-1900<\/em><\/a>, Kapil Raj argues that our contemporary concept of what defines the ‘modern’ is inherently tied to the Western European experience with enlightenment ideals and rationalistic inquiries.  However, if one extends their scope beyond that of knowledge making in Europe, there are several examples of how ‘modern’ knowledge is actually the product of local environments in distant locales far away from the European setting.  For example, medicinal knowledge may have been certified (through print and scientific acceptance via professional societies) in Europe, but if we trace where that knowledge originated then we are presented with a much bigger picture that must, by necessity, include fakirs, merchants and various other indigenous agents that European intermediaries utilized in gathering said medicinal knowledge- especially in locations like South Asia where such knowledge would be invaluable for the age of sail.<\/p>\n

While Raj notes that more recent works studying the creation of knowledge focused on enclosed spaces like laboratories or museums, his ultimate conclusion is that we should study other spaces, outside of these enclosures, if we want to fully map how “localities constantly reinvent themselves through grounding (that is, appropriating and reconfiguring) objects, skills, ideas, and practices that circulate both within narrow regional or transcontinental- and indeed global- spaces.” (21) Knowing this, we can begin to analyze how Skyrim handles the creation and certification of knowledge through its use of the ‘Alchemy’ system, in addition to the other general qualities of the ludic universe that constitute the ‘Medieval+’ setting required for this knowledge transfer to feel appropriate to the player.  Given that Skyrim takes place in a fantastical setting, it is all the more curious that traces of the ‘modern’ can be found in these play-mechanics.<\/p>\n

But what exactly do I mean by ‘Medieval+’?  I broached this topic, first, on Twitter, and the responses I received made for very intriguing debates\/insights.  Here is the Sorify I created detailing this discussion:
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