Before giant wooden ships carrying curious Portuguese explorers came to our shores, before the Philippines was named the Philippines and all 7,107 islands declared themselves as under one country, there were stories of creatures that had terrified our ancestors at night yet awed them during idle days. Then as history unfolded, these stories went to the backburner of our collective consciousness, filling a reservoir for the imagination of future generations.
Today, we make a game of it.
Project Tadhana is an ongoing project spearheaded by Nathan Briones, a writer and an active member of the Filipino gaming community. Briones was inspired to make an original and accessible tabletop role-playing game (RPG) based on Filipino mythology and set in the pre-colonial Philippines when mystical creatures lived among men. After two years in development, they now have the finished product, complete with a unique card system that veers away from the conventional polyhedral dice mechanic of other tabletop RPGs.
What was life like for our ancestors before westerners came? What would a typical day be for a creature of the night? Would you have been a tikbalang, an engkanto, or a mangkukulam? Project Tadhana is the tabletop RPG that answers all of these questions with the flip of a card.
This story was originally published on Southern Living January-February 2018
Photos courtesy of Nicco Santos and Facebook.com/ProjectTadhana
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