Horrified and Indigenous Cultures

We are big fans of the Horrified series of games by Ravensburger and have been since the first edition; Universal Monsters. Since then we have enjoyed the American Monsters (cryptids) and the Greek Monsters (from the pantheon of legends) games. However, we recently got hold of the new Horrified: World of Monsters and while it is another fun game in the series, something didn't sit right with me.

Each Horrified iteration so far has had a clearly defined theme, from the classic Universal Studios monsters like Dracula and the Wolf Man, to the Greek mythological monsters like the chimera and basilisk. World of Monsters initially seems like a perfect entry into this collection with monsters from folklore from around the world, the Jiangshi (or hopping vampire), the Sphinx, and the Yeti. This was a perfect opportunity for Ravensburger to highlight the incredibly rich folklore of indigenous cultures from around the world, but then they went and spoiled it all by doing something stupid like Cthulhu.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Cthulhu mythos and have long said that it would make for a great Horrified but it's inclusion in World of Monsters not only cheapens the impact, but also detracts from the importance of the other monsters to their native cultures. It is almost insulting to draw a comparison between the vast history of folkloric tales of Jiangshi and Cthulhu, the fictional creation of a xenophobic recluse writing in the early 20th century. In terms of their cultural importance, I don't believe there can be a comparison. It would be like including both Baba Yaga and Edward Cullen.

The game attempts to justify the mixing of mythologies and modern fiction through some fairly flimsy pretext explaining that a rift between realities is causing monsters to wonder into our world, along with fantastical steampunk technologies. Fine. As a premise goes, I think that's OK. But I still feel like the inclusion of historical folklore from other cultures should be handled with a little more care than this clumsy introduction. 

There is a lot of fantastic writing done about the unsettling trend of colonialism in board games and how they discretely act to lessen the importance of indigenous cultures. I highly recommend checking our the two articles on this topic from the Daily Worker Placement. As such I won't go into too much detail in this blog as I would only be rehashing something that another author has put so much more succinctly than I ever could.

However, I would like to take the opportunity to recognise that Horrified: World of Monsters seems to have been made somewhat backwards compatible with previous titles. Furthermore, they recently released an expansion to include the Krampus as a monster to go toe-to-toe with. What this could mean is that generally, they will be releasing further expansions for this latest core box, rather than looking to create more iterations of the same game. While I worry this model of content creation engenders laziness, it might offer some hope that future expansions will further explore some of the rich cultural offerings the world has to offer the genre.

What are your thoughts on this peculiar mashup? Could it have been achieved with more care?