INDIGO SUMMER

Indigo Summer was designed and written by Fabian Blake as a way of engaging critically and productively with the colonisation of the Romani art of travelling block printing.

Despite being a Hopeful and Cosy game at its core, it does ask players to engage with themes of colonialism, including encounters with soldiers trying to help a Powerful Other seize control of the arts of dyeing and block printing. These themes and encounters are intrinsic to the game and can’t be removed without the game losing its meaning.

 

SOME HISTORY AND CONTEXT

Wooden block printing originated in China, and it eventually spread to India via trade routes where it became an artisan craft. A common trade for Romani people - who originated from India - was that of the travelling block printer. They would follow seasonal well known routes with their kit of hand made wooden blocks, papers and dyes. We owe much of our knowledge on this history from the diaries kept by a Muslim silk weaver named Kamāl al-Dīn, in the 16^th century.

One of the main dyes used for block printing was indigo - the dark blue pigment gained from the herb of the same name. The indigo plant was gathered wild, dried carefully, underwent a complex period of oxidation, and was finally baked into a hard ‘cake’ which was easy to store and transport. Indigo was also cultivated in India and traded across Europe as early as 332BCE, in fact the herb’s name means ‘of India.' 

Artisan Romani block printers travelled and traded from around 900BCE onwards. These were well regarded, educated men and women, who were fluent in many languages and printed works in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, and more. Eventually, these Roma craftspeople migrated into Europe, bringing the art of block printing with them Colonialism, and notably the East India Company, began to commercialise block printing.

Herbs like indigo were now grown on plantations, farmed by African and Romani slaves. Industrial printing presses sprang up and eventually governments took control of what could be printed and by whom. The growth and production of indigo was strictly controlled, and small businesses and independent traders and artisans were forcibly shut down.

Revival began in the 1960s when activist Pupul Jayakar presented the Indian government with a road map for preserving and re-establishing India’s creative industries. She founded the National Institute of Design in 1961.

 

PLAYING THE GAME

The aim of this game is not to encourage cosplaying as Romani block printers, or to gamify that lived experience, or the inherited ancestral trauma of the descendants of those people.

Instead, the aim is to encourage players to engage with this history critically and with clear intention; to draw real world parallels between this history and the way that art-based livelihoods and creativity itself are being colonised by those pushing for an AI-takeover.

Yet again in our current global situation we can see capitalism driving the colonisation, not only of land, but also of the minds and bodies of marginalised people including BIMPOC/Global Majority, Women, LGBTQIA2S+, and of course those living in poverty. Intersectionality and multimarginalisation  only multiply the harm.

But we are not without the means to fight back - to resist - and that is what the core of this game is about: Hope and Resistance.

CHARACTERS AND WORLDBUILDING

In this game, players take the role of a group of apprentices training under the guidance of a travelling artisan block printer.

Players tell the story together by expanding on rolled prompts. This process can be guided by a Game Master (GM) or self-guided by the players.

The world is a fantasy world, but whether or not it contains magic, magical creatures, monsters, or any other fantasy elements is for your group to decide before you play.

In this world that you create together, a Power greater than yourselves is trying to control the arts of dye making and block printing.

As you play, you’ll gain THREATS which are hints that this Power is getting closer. But for now, your characters may not be aware that this power exists, or that their world is about to change.

Once you have all fleshed out your characters, your mentor, and your world, your game begins one morning at your mentor’s workshop - it is the day before you go travelling the trade routes for the summer season, and your mentor tells you to go and gather the indigo and make it into cakes just like they taught you - they are trusting you with this important task...