What the Hansel and Gretel Story Type Means for the fantasy RPG

 Fantasy RPG’s are rarely so dark as the reality of the past was, there was a reason so many of the fairytales and stories of Eastern Europe where dark, that fairies where to be feared. It was the wealthy in the Victorian Era that created the false happy world of the fairytale. Adding the dark elements such as the “Hansel and Gretel” motif to your RPG Game can help create new plot elements, twists, and add more character to the game. Such plot lines however are not for the faint of heart, as the dark stories of cannibalism and starvation that can be told will challenge the players understanding of right and wrong.

            Imagine if you will a dark world where the people have begun fighting over food, where humans are so hungry that they will abandon their children to the wild. Then a group of people has food but just enough to survive, or perhaps a store of food is discovered by two groups. In either case there is not enough food for both groups, so they begin to fight. How do the players act when starvation fights starvation. How do they react when people attempt to steal food from them when they too have so little they are starving. Do they fight every peasant that attacks them for food? If they do the right thing in the game their characters will die, certainly these characters are merely characters but so to are those who are starving. Good story telling can be about challenging our perceptions of right and wrong of reality and hope.

            There are many games that could be played to the effect of a lack of food as a catalyst, the PC’s could find children lost and alone, starving in the woods, no one cares for orphans, or abandoned children, the parents left them to die and the people would treat them as slaves, or possibly eat them. Now the PC’s are stuck with the task of babysitter in a dark and forbidding woodland, filled with the many beasts of a fantasy world. For good characters this will present many challenges, as they struggle to find ways to take care of and protect the children until they find a way to get rid of them so they can go adventuring again. Such story telling would perhaps make for something truly unique, and could set the mood for a much darker world of famine and true medieval horror.

            Perhaps these children too have heard the stories of the day and attempt to kill the PC’s, how do the PC’s react to an attempt on their lives by the children who where playing on their sympathies? What’s more how do the PC’s come to view the world around them after they witness so many people care so little for children. Adding the daily life and hardships of peasants could create many adventures in and of themselves as the PC’s attempt to change the very political landscape of the world. Such quests are of course not for all Players many people who play RPG games could not handle or would not wish to handle such things, they play to imagine something other then the dark past. However for many such Philosophical thoughts and concerns could be exactly what they want, and could indeed draw more people into Role Playing Games, as this would provide an opportunity to ask and tell stories of questions that lie at the root of what makes us human, and what is good or evil. It is Easy after all for us to discuss such matters in a society where few people will ever have to choose which of their children to allow to die.

            Another way in which the absolute desire for food could play into a game is through an old character called the Forest King, or through devils. Such things could provide food in return for the humans o obedience. A devil for example could begin to build an army of werewolves, half-fiends, and bandits through the ability to provide food. Remember when people in the Dark Ages where given the choice between starving their children and food many chose food, how many more would choose to fight for anything in order to be able to feed their families? And so it is that perhaps the most dangerous of devils might not be the one which provides riches and power but the one which provides food, and the greatest challenge PC’s may ever face is how to deal with a famine and the true darkness that will result from such things.