神河当時 - 断片的フレイバーテキスト

昨日の記事の続きです。

One Blank Canvas. Many Flavorful Writers.
One of the things we tried to do as a creative team was to approach Champions of Kamigawa’s flavor text like that of Fallen Empires. That is, we wanted to have you all feel as if you were receiving scraps of documents and bits of history that all added up to a rich and textured setting. The trick was that we weren’t sitting around a table doing this co-creation, we were all logging into Namebase and posting our ideas for each card without any direct interaction at all. As writers, we were constantly taking cues from each other and trying to build on each other’s ideas to create something coherent and credible.

The best example of this sort of organic lore-creation comes in Kamigawa’s historical texts. What you see in the flavor text now from “Great Battles of Kamigawa,” the “Diary of Azusa,” “Teachings of Eight-and-a-Half-Tails,” messages from the Lost Batallion, “The History of Kamigawa,” and “Observations of the Kami War” all exist because one writer offered up the idea in a submission and others liked it enough to follow suit. None of the flavor text referencing these texts comes from a single writer.

I forget now who was the first to write something from “The History of Kamigawa” or “Observations of the Kami War,” but these two were the first established texts that people used. I guess it was only natural for us to need some kind of “Encyclopedia Brittanica” early on, which is why each book has a lot of flavor text associated with it. These two constantly vyed for which was going to be the Kamigawa history text and, in the end, neither won out (though I give the slight nod to “Observations”). “Great Battles of Kamigawa,” by the way, was something Brandon created after the first waves of writing to capture most of the stories we told about specific battles. Originally, each “Battles” quote was attributed to either “The History” or “Observations.”

The same thing happened with Kamigawa’s legendary people, places and weapons. If someone wrote something particularly cool about a character, place, or event, the other writers used this information in their own writing. Consider for example some of the flavor text submissions for Marrow-Gnawer:

"My followers are so loyal, they would give their friends’ lives to serve me." -- Marrow Gnawer

"Nature rewards only the strong." -- Marrow Gnawer

"Rats are scavengers. The nezumi-bito are thieves." -- Marrow-Gnawer

The nezumi-bito were a mere annoyance until Marrow Gnawer taught them strength in numbers.

Marrow Gnawer united three nezumi gangs when he slew their leaders in a single night. Now they call him their first lord.

Whichever was selected would shape who Marrow-Gnawer was in the world of Kamigawa and would be yet another bit of lore for the other writers to file away as part of their writing. As a result, what you see as Dosan the Falling Leaf’s contemplativeness and Takeno, Samurai General’s obstinate resolve are both the direct result of a team of writers all iterating on each other’s ideas as pieces of history slowly clicked into place. You can look at the number of quotations associated with each of Kamigawa’s legends to see the characters with which we collectively fell in love. It seems we liked the “Mister Miyagi” characters like Hisoka, Minamo Sensei and Eight-and-a-Half-Tails most of all.

引用元
LAND OF TEN-THOUSAND LEGENDS Posted in Feature on October 4, 2004
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/land-ten-thousand-legends-2004-10-04

『神河物語』のフレイバーテキストには、「神河大戦記」「梓日記」「八ツ尾半の教え」「神河史書」「神乱見聞録」などの文章や伝承からの断片的な引用が何度か登場しています。

これは、それぞれに担当者がいた訳ではなく、ある人が「神河大戦記」のフレイバーテキストを書いたら、他の人もそれを元に「神河大戦記」のフレイバーテキストを考える、というやり方で作られました。

ある意味、リレー小説、のようなものでしょうか。書物の一部しか示されていませんし、連続性がない、という違いはありますが。

このようなフレイバーテキストを作るにあたって、参考にされたのは『フォールン・エンパイア』でした。文章や歴史の断片から、フレイバーを感じ取ってほしい、という考えです。

作り方の１つとして、興味深い事例だと思います。1人で作るオリジナルエキスパンションではリレー形式は無理ですが、オリジナルの書物を創作するのは出来ますし、やってみると面白いかもしれません。




追記
webアーカイブに、日本語訳の記事があるのを発見しました。

一万の伝説の地 ――神河物語の名前とフレイバーの幕裏
https://web.archive.org/web/20041217002944/http://www.hobbyjapan.co.jp/magic/articles/files/20041013_01.html