The Journey To...North America, Part Two

In writing these articles I have come to understand how many people are voiceless in the collective imaginary land that is role playing games. I hope that these articles make our hobby and industry a place where more people are welcomed and encouraged to become involved. Which brings me to North America, the part the second.

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I spoke to a friend of mine and her words still resonate with me. I asked Susan what she might want in terms of how her people are portrayed in role playing. She replied that she would not want her people's traditions taken for granted. Sacred is sacred. In struggling to find a theme for this article, her words helped me focus in on what is important. So I will begin, before talking about the people, with my "How would I use this?" section.

It is not hard for those of us descended from European, especially Western European ancestry, to relate to the sacred. Stonehenge comes to mind. Beowulf and the legend of Arthur. Joan of Arc. The stand at Thermopylae. Rome at its best and at its worst. A host of cultural touchstones that help give us some common context and cultural language. They literally are sprinkled through our role playing; ideas from history and mythology that fuel how we play.

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So if I were going to run a campaign among the North American native tribes, prior to European arrival, it would be heavily focused on those ideas that they found and still find as sacred. It would be an intimate campaign, with no Vecna or dragons or Sauron. Perhaps a band of folk who have suffered loss who wander from place to place, helping others and battling legends. The magic would be subtle and beautiful and full of mystery. It would deal with the idea of what is sacred and how the sacred shapes the lives of the characters. Of course this can be taken into science fiction as well and Shadowrun does some of this with its setting.

What is sacred to the native tribes of North America? A best we can generalize because there are over 500 recognized tribes in the United States, including many in Alaska. Susan mentioned a few things: The Dance, The Ceremony, The Animals, and of course The Land itself. In our modern times issues of land ownership and management have come up again as natural resources are found on tribal lands. To the native peoples, land is more than just a means of making a living or a sign of prosperity. It represents a means of preserving cultural history and identity. Indigenous folk see themselves as protectors of the land and everything associated with it. Equally important are the spiritual and religious aspects of the land and specifically sacred spaces. These sacred places are integral to the tribes spiritual practices and when the land is disrespected, this insults the people and their beliefs. They also believes it angers the land. This should be an important concept in any campaign run using native peoples.

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I would recommend talking to native folk about their own tribes and tribal traditions instead of relying on just Internet searches. In general most scholars break the native peoples of North America, excluding Mexico (covered here) into ten different cultural areas. These are the Arctic, Subarctic, Northeast, Southeast, Plains, Southwest, Great Basin, California, Northwest Coast, and Plateau. These cultures had distinct lifestyles from one another, with some being agricultural and others more nomadic. Tragically some have been lost along the way and that is something we should never forget. If we as games masters and content creators can keep them alive in our games, then that is one way of continuing their legacy into the future.

​contributed by Sean Hillman

 

[Steve1]

Part of the problem is native American tribes did not have a written language with which to record their history, so their history went unrecorded. What if there was not a period of colonization and exploration? The only way I think that could have happened is if we stayed in the Dark Ages, and we would not be sitting here typing to one another on these computers.

There is a tendency to glorify the "small fry" when it goes against the big Empire trying to conquer them. But is small better than big? What is the likelihood of no one conquering the New World and the Native Americans being left alone? About the same as all the air in the room gathering in one corner and leaving the rest in a vacuum. Vacuums tend to get filled. technologically advanced cultures tend to spread at the expense of those less advanced cultures, their is a lot of good that spreads as well as bad. We moderns tend to take the good for granted and discount all the good that came with spreading Western culture. Stone aged tribes of hunter gatherers dominated North America for the past 10,000 years, if we allowed North America to stay in the stone age for another 500 years there would be no roads, no electricity, no cars, no planes, no computers, no advanced medicine, these things we take for granted.

So your choice is to glorify the Big Empire rather than the "small fry then. And who deems what is good? What you suggest as good is based on your own viewpoint and it doesn't frame the viewpoint of other cultures and their perspectives. What use a car, a plane, a computer, to an indigenous person that lives in the Amazon Rainforest? Are you going to next say that your way of life is better than theirs? And if so, who are you to judge? We must be mindful and respectful of another culture's values that don't include our own; no, especially when they don't include our own. The good you espouse is a value judgement that is not shared by all, and that is exactly what we need to be mindful of.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Just as I play RPGs in which heroic characters have an attitude towards the permissibility of interpersonal violence which is very different from my own (given my place, time and outlook), but which gets read through valorising treatments of it (King Arthur legends, 4 colur comics, children's tales of Greek and Norse myth, etc); so if I was going to play an Aztec game I would rather approach the Aztecs through a similar lense, including with a degree of romanticisation if that's how it plays out.

If I was going to play a Mesoamerican game I would still use the Aztec state as the villains. Conquest and tribute-taking are just bad guy things to do. Remember that there were plenty of non-Aztec people, and/or Aztec people who were not instruments of the state, to serve as viewpoint characters.

I think part of the point of the point of @SMHWorlds's article is to encourage looking at American First Nations cultures through that sort of lens, rather than eg as exotic people one might meet if one were a Viking sailing to Manhattan.

While I appreciate that, I also shy away from any suggestion that a story about cultural first contact is "off limits", because those are really interesting stories. The key is making the "other" culture diverse and human rather than just a pack of cookie-cutter stereotype "aliens".

One of the best examples of this in my view is, of all things, the DreamWorks cartoon The Road to El Dorado. Yes, it's a story about two white guys traveling to Mesoamerica and posing as gods for fun and profit, which is not the most promising plot synopsis for the culturally sensitive. What makes it stand out, though, is the characterization of the three main Mesoamerican characters. The king, the high priest, and the thief each have their own interests and goals and political/religious opinions. They're all smart enough to figure out the Spaniards' deception pretty quickly, but they all play along because it advances each of their agendas (up until it doesn't). They are, in short, not noble savages but people. And their relationships with the outsiders underscore their personhood rather than erase it.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

The benefit of the Roman empire was that it kept the peace for those living within it. If you replace a bunch of smaller kingdoms fighting for territory with a much larger empire, the wars one experiences are much fewer.

So the Empire can be forgiven for waging numerous wars because it... prevented wars?

Under Rome Christianity flourished...

The Romans killed thousands of Christians starting with Christ himself.

...and their were worse things than the Romans, for example the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan, that was mostly a bandit kingdom, they didn't build roads or make civic improvements, they just pillaged and plundered.

Marco Polo's account of the Mongol Empire would seem to contradict yours.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

We must be mindful and respectful of another culture's values that don't include our own; no, especially when they don't include our own. The good you espouse is a value judgement that is not shared by all, and that is exactly what we need to be mindful of.

This statement is in itself a value judgment.

 

[Steve1]

This statement is in itself a value judgment.

As is yours. Mine is given with the impetus of recognizing all values, not simply those from the culture I grew up with. Western Culture doesn't frame the entire world.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

As is yours.

...

Explain your reasoning here.

Mine is given with the impetus of recognizing all values, not simply those from the culture I grew up with.

Which is itself a value from the culture you grew up with.

Western Culture doesn't frame the entire world.

"I don't want to be killed or enslaved" is not a value specific to Western culture.

 

[MoonSong]

If I was going to play a Mesoamerican game I would still use the Aztec state as the villains. Conquest and tribute-taking are just bad guy things to do. Remember that there were plenty of non-Aztec people, and/or Aztec people who were not instruments of the state, to serve as viewpoint characters.

I think that the time of upheaval at the end of the Classic would be a better time to have an adventure in the Anahuac. There is also the possibility of exploring the nine levels of the underworld and the thirteen skies. Or making expeditions to the multiple ruins, those of the second Tollan, of la Venta, or early Mayan cities.

 

[MoonSong]

"I don't want to be killed or enslaved" is not a value specific to Western culture.

If you knew that by part taking in a certain ritual you are making it possible for your family to keep living and that it is one of only a few ways you could go to paradise after death oh and on top you get to live a full year surrounded by luxuries and revered as a deity would you do it even if it means you have to die?

 

[pemerton]

While I appreciate that, I also shy away from any suggestion that a story about cultural first contact is "off limits", because those are really interesting stories. The key is making the "other" culture diverse and human rather than just a pack of cookie-cutter stereotype "aliens".

Sure. But every post in this thread about that has assumed that the focal characters, the protagonists - ie the PCs - would be Vikings or Spaniards.

Whereas I think a "first contact" game that adopted the mood of the OP would have the PCs playing First Nations characters.

 

[Eltab]

The complaint that the current article is not informative is missing the point. The writer does not have the room. The point is to encourage us to do some research on our own. The point is that doing so will make our games richer, more diverse, and stronger. No one is demanding perfection, just a little care. How can this be refuted?

The complaint is entirely on-point. Make the room, or provide a link to an outside example, or say "this is part one of two" so we know that more information will be coming shortly.

The article in its current form is a scolding with no guidance on how to do better, not any guidance on how to do the task at hand at all.

Frankly, this genre of article irritates me greatly because it assumes that I do not know how to do DM prep-work; part of my job is to be able to get into the NPCs' heads!