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Message: <blockquote data-quote="empireofchaos" data-source="post: 6748466" data-attributes="member: 6800918"><p>I was referring to the third son who inherits Puss rather than Puss himself. Does he simply just do what Puss says? It's a matter of perspective - does the warlock simply do what the patron says? And the animals in these fool stories act in the capacity of the patron. In some of them, the agency of the fool is much more evident. Emelya the Fool gets his powers from a magical pike, which he releases (note the similarity - the third son in Puss similarly saves the cat's life by deciding [agency!] not to drown him) - and then he lies about on the stove and refuses to obey any commands by authority figures (from his sisters-in-law to the Tsar himself). A "reasonable" person would have eaten the pike or drowned the cat - but the fool has uncanny insight that most of us don't. It is their standing outside of social norms that allows them to "think outside the box" and act in ways that shook up the social order. Hence I think your distinction between the fool and the trickster (which, as you correctly point out, the game also lacks) is overstated. The fool at court (the jester) could criticize the ruler when others couldn't and get away with it, because he drew on a greater power from outside society. Same with the majnoon (holy fool) in the Muslim world - their gifts came from God. The whole point of the fool narratives is that the fool succeeds for reasons that seem to make no sense to most others, but they succeed nevertheless, and you can't argue with success. These are paradigmatic stories in many cultures that problematize link between skill, hard work, and success (especially in highly inegalitarian societies), and therefore bear great role-playing potential.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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