A Hannah Arendt-inspired Honey Heist hack

Pariah & Parvenu is a tabletop role-playing game for at least one player plus a GM, requiring six-sided dice. It is also more social commentary and poetry than game.

Discrimination and Assimilation

This game is inspired by the writings of Hannah Arendt, on how members of a marginalised group has to choose between the role of a pariah(social outcast) and a parvenu(social climber). A society gives little room for a minority to be “average”; they either get discriminated against or have to work hard (usually through education) to prove that they are not like others of their kind.

Although Hannah Arendt's writings focus on the experience of the Western European Jews in the past centuries, I can relate to the conditions as an Asian living in the contemporary West. Similar mechanics are also in play for neuro-divergent masking and LGBTQ respectability politics.

Credits

Design and writing by W.H. Arthur

Orc head icon by Delapouite from Game-icons.net, under CC BY 3.0.

Fonts used: Germania One, Grenze, Grenze Gotisch, IM FELL English, IM FELL English SC, New Rocker, Pirata One, Unifraktur Cook, Unifraktur Maguntia.

Thanks Laura Govednik for providing feedback!

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Influences

• Mechanics of Honey Heist by Grant Howitt
• Aesthetics of Mörk Borg by Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr
  
• The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
• Orientalism by Edward Said

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Special thanks to my Patrons

• Donogh McCarthy
• Joseph "Laijth" Lai
• Legendary Aced
• Tore Nielsen

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If you like this game, check out Chicken Coup (another of my Honey Heist hack) and CONVICT-ION (another of my philosophy-inspired TTRPG).