Murakami, His Sources, and RPGs

Something that I've noticed as we've gone through the semester is that some of the Murakami/Murakami affiliated works we've gone through that have directly inspired tabletop role playing games. Though I'm quite unfamiliar to the genre, I've mentioned some of the readings to friends in passing and was surprised to see that they were extremely familiar with the material as a result of playing these games.

The one most directly inspired by Murakami comes from a Dungeons and Dragons story quite literally called "A Wild Sheep Chase" (shoutout to Amanda for pointing this piece out to me). Though not identical to Murakami's story, a few similarities are apparent from the game's summary. The main characters are approached by a sheep holding instructions on how to speak to animals, and after using magic they find out that the sheep was once a wizard. This wizard was tricked by an apprentice and transformed into the animal, and he recruits the main characters to help him take revenge/transform back to his original state. A lot of these details can be construed as Murakami's plot points in reverse. In Murakami's story, a sheep becomes a man (more accurately it takes over a man) and in the DND story a man becomes a sheep. Instead of Boku being approached by a man to track down a sheep, a sheep approaches the main characters to track down a man. Whereas the Rat allowed the sheep to enter his body, the wizard was turned into a sheep against his will. I don't have access to the full story so I can't glean anymore similarities, though I am certain that more exist.

Shifting away from Murakami, W. Gibson's short story "Johnny Mnemonic" directly inspired a number of details in the tabletop game Shadowrun. The character Molly Millions was lifted wholesale from the piece and exists in the Shadowrun universe as an NPC "runner". Working as a runner is functionally identical to her profession in "Johnny Mnemonic", as she does illegal jobs for the highest bidder as a sort of mercenary. Past this, the idea of an "information economy" is reflected by the numerous means by which characters can be tracked. Aside from physical tracking using cameras, microphones, and sensors, one's technology can be directly monitored if someone creates a backdoor into it. In addition, people's spiritual presence can be determined should a character be sufficiently well-endowed with magic. One final similarity between the two is the weapon used by the Yakuza hitman. Much like Molly Millions, this weapon was ported directly into Shadowrun as a Microfilament Whip. Players can purchase and wield the whip as a melee weapon, but many choose to get it as an implant embedded in the body. The most advantageous and popular place to implant it is within the thumb, exactly like in "Johnny Mnemonic".

Though I'm not super familiar with tabletop games, the fact that they frequently incorporate concepts from magical realist/sci-fi literary sources is proving to be extremely appealing to me. I hope to play through the "Wild Sheep Chase" mission sometime soon, and I will report back if I find anymore similarities.

-Bruce