LIFTOFF
value
#ManilaEncounters When Philippine Speculative Fiction meets the Twitterverse TEXT BY
Dazen Dawn Lariza ILLUSTRATION BY
Bejay Songcog
“A young mangkukulam harbors a deep dislike for her annoying classmate. She casts a curse on her classmate, dooming him to slowly lose the one he loves the most. A few days pass, and the witch falls ill with a mysterious sickness which she can’t seem to get rid of. @UntalanArrel ” Late February of this year, the Manila Encounters hashtag became viral. What started as a tabletop roleplaying game became an avenue for people to share their true to life horror stories and short fiction tales based on Philippine folklore. How did this come to be and what sparked Filipinos in Twitter to turn it into something more?
Dragons and Tabletops
“THE DRAGON OF PASIG, as large as your house and 5x as smelly. Its skin is plastic bags and sh*t and tetra packs. Its breath is corrosive factory smoke. It eats people, but it is tired of masa and wants to know what glutathione skin tastes like.” @bjrecio
The hashtag is traced back to Twitter user BJ Recio who created the hashtag on the 24th of February for an online tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) set in Metro Manila. The first entry was based on the book “A Time for Dragons: An Anthology of Philippine Draconic Fiction” and was about a so-called “Dragon of Pasig.” But what exactly is a tabletop roleplaying game? According to John Kim’s article entitled “What is a role-playing game,” tabletop roleplaying is a form of roleplaying game where players declare their actions by narration. They describe their characters, what these characters speak, etc. and abide by certain rules introduced at the start of the game by a Game Master. The creator of the hashtag intended to start an online tabletop RPG for Filipino RPG players in Twitter. This, however, sparked other ideas from Twitter users who created their own short stories with horror as their central theme forgetting what his hashtag was truly aimed at.
18
THE
CENTRAL
ECHO
MAGAZINE
