Game Designing For Myself

History, Heritage, and Gamifying the Past

I was raised to believe that my ancestry, at least on my father’s side was German and we had touches of German-American culture sprinkled throughout my childhood experience. A few years ago, I started doing some actual genealogical research and ultimately did one of those Ancestry DNA tests. During my research, but before I got the DNA test done, I discovered I has a direct descendant of Mary MacLeod and Alexander McKinney, a couple that immigrated to America from the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the aftermath of the Jacobite Uprising.

This led me to fall in love with Scotland. Or rather, I should say, the American idea of Scotland. Kilts. Tartans. Bagpipes. The Highlands. All that stuff. Well, when I got my DNA results back, it showed I was only 5% Scottish in blood. I was mostly of English descent, with a dose of German and then a smattering of Nordic Eurpoean, Russian, and a few other lineages. In short, I was an American Mutt.

Nevertheless, I was still in love with the idealized Scotland. I think that’s common among Americans who develop an interest in that nation. There’s this romanticized image of the Scottish Highlands. Tartans, bagpipes, that kind of thing. And I get why. It is enchanting. I wouldn’t be writing this if I wasn’t smitten with it. But that’s not Scotland today, by and large. That image of Scotland was systematically destroyed after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. And what happened to many of those Scots in the aftermath?

They came to America. They settled in the south and in the Appalachian Mountains. They brought with them those traditions which were being snuffed out back home. I think that’s why Americans who fall in love with Scottish culture, as they see and as its often romanticized in the media in films like Braveheart and the book and TV series Outlander. Those traditions changed in the near 300 years since those first Scots set foot on American soil and both the original Scottish traditions and the modern American culture of Appalachia are still celebrated today, and rightfully so.

I’m proud to carry even a sliver of Scottish blood, brought by my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grand parents, Alexander McKinney and Mary Macleod when they left the Isle of Skye for American shores in the 1740s. And I do love the romance of that period of Scottish history.

So, like Skaldic Sagas was my love letter to pre-Christian Nordic culture and Castigant was an exploration of my own Catholic faith filtered through my love of gothic literature, I wrote a roleplaying game about it: Under Highland Skies.

It’s a short game, with the draft clocking in at around 35 pages, and like Barrow before it is based on Cairn. I’ll publish it eventually, but that wasn’t why I wrote it. I wrote it as an American’s love letter to Scotland. It blends history, folk lore, and the indomitable spirit of hope and defiance that exists in both Scotland and America, to this day.

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