Mesoamerican Campaign?

[catdragon]

First off, do you think that this locale is possible given the 3.5e rule set?

Obviously, I think so, but oftentimes my imagination and desire for coolness overlooks something very basic and it all comes crashing down on me, usually putting an extremely bad taste in my mouth. I want to avoid that if at all possible.

Here's the kernel of the idea...

In some very settled, adventured out world, a gate is discovered that won't close. Some investigation is done and it’s discovered that it leads to a world where the Inca of Peru/Ecuador are still in charge. Since the Inca of our world had so much gold that they literally used it as pure decoration, these alternate Inca have the same deal with gold. Needless to say this attracts a large number of *bad folk* into this alternate world.

The PCs will be "fixers," special agents of the wizard cabal that controls the gate.

As the campaign goes on, the party will discover that one of their "bosses" is actually a turncoat, intent on selling out his home world, killing all the mages, and then using the resources of the Inca world to control the home world. Eventually he wants to be the Emperor of Two Worlds.

Now, to me, this sounds exciting and cool. A new environment, a new setting, new beasties and people and gods and everything else.

But can the rules support it?

If I remember my Mesoamerican history correctly, the Mesoamerican cultures were odd in a lot of ways. The Mayans had no protein sources (some scholars theorize that their feather wars, where they didn't kill their enemies, but captured them and took them back to be sacrificed to the gods) was actually used to harvest food for the conquering tribe.

The Mayans and The Incas didn't have the wheel. Or rather, they didn't use it. Toys have been found with wheels but for some reason they never used it in a meaningful way.

Construction like metals were rare -- by this I mean steel, iron, tin, lead, and others that make the alloys that medieval society depended on. If this is true, they would be very little armor and no steel weapons. The spear and the spiked club would be the dominant weapons.

BTW, I figured a way for the eagle knights of the Maya to get armor. The Eagle Knights are elite; they were taken from their families close to birth and trained as they grew. Once they passed the initiation into adult hood they were considered Eagle Knights and able to wear Eagle feathers. So my thought was that these elite knights were trained n one level of sorcerer and the rest as fighter. The spells that they were taught were simple and used as aids in fighting: one spell would turn feathers into something resembling armor for 1 hour per level.

Okay, now I am starting to blather. But I am interested in others’ opinions. How would you set up a Mesoamerican campaign?

 

[Tonguez]

Maztica?

(and its been theorized that wheels are pretty useless when you live in a predominantly rugged and mountainous land - ergo no wheeled vehicles

 

[RangerWickett]

The theory I like is the lack of horses. The Americas had no horses for most of pre-colonial history, and without horses, you have no real reason to invent wagons, which gives you no real reason to build roads, which means you're not going to have infrastructure.

There was certainly an advanced culture in central and South America, particularly with how well they coped nutritionally through farming despite having no protein supply larger than small pigs. But they just didn't develop the infrastructure to have distant farms and ranches support central cities.

Now, didn't the Incans have llamas, though? I wonder what a civilization based around domesticated llamas, some bred for riding, some bred for food, would be like.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

Although it requires heroic restraint, I will not use this thread as an excuse to take a swipe at my former religion.

 

[dougmander]

The theory I like is the lack of horses. The Americas had no horses for most of pre-colonial history, and without horses, you have no real reason to invent wagons, which gives you no real reason to build roads, which means you're not going to have infrastructure.

There was certainly an advanced culture in central and South America, particularly with how well they coped nutritionally through farming despite having no protein supply larger than small pigs. But they just didn't develop the infrastructure to have distant farms and ranches support central cities.

Now, didn't the Incans have llamas, though? I wonder what a civilization based around domesticated llamas, some bred for riding, some bred for food, would be like.

If you haven't read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, do so now. For the record, the Incas had an excellent infrastructure of well-built roads, but because their prehistoric ancestors had killed and eaten everything* that could have been domesticated into a draft animal, they had to rely on foot runners alone.

*According to Diamond, anyway. How much of a role climate change and human hunting played in the extinction of most North American megafauna is still in debate.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

They had soruces of protien. They didn't have cattle or horses.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/A/An/Ancient_Mesoamerican_agriculture.htm


Some mesoamerican cultures also had huge well developed infrastructure and very advanced and well developed farming techniques. You don't get cities that had 20,000+(sometime over 100,000) people if there is no infrastructure.

 

[catdragon]

They had soruces of protien. They didn't have cattle or horses.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/en...agriculture.htm

Interesting article. But pumpkin seeds aren't going to support a civilization.

Another article I recently read suggested that dogs were used as a source of protein. And of course, there is fish. And it also turns out that the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incans were all sailors. The Inca regular did trading with the Native Americans of California and the Northwest.

Let me finish with a side note on the sailing abilities of the Mesoamerican tribes/civilization. They were just as proficient as the ancient Greeks. But unlike the ancient Greeks, they didn't have the Mediterranean as a refuge. So the Mesoamerican civilizations had to deal with hurricanes, typhoons, and other weather than would easily swamp the barges the Mesoamericans regularly sailed.

 

[Nyeshet]

If you haven't read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, do so now. For the record, [snip]

*According to Diamond, anyway. How much of a role climate change and human hunting played in the extinction of most North American megafauna is still in debate.

Most historians and climatologists don't pay Jared Diamond much mind. Environmental determinism is typically frowned upon in most academic circles. This doesn't mean that climate and environment did not play a part, however. It just wasn't as direct or certain as suggested by Diamond. Read the works of Brian Fagan for a better idea of how climate / environment affected civilization. His is a much more realistic presentation of the effect of climate upon the rise and development of civilization.

Anyhow, back to the topic of this thread.

The Mayans lived in a borderline jungle setting. Lots of rain - and thus mud - and lots of undergrowth in areas not often traveled. A wheel would have gotten stuck more often than not. The Incans lived in the mountains. Within their settlements a wheel was often not needed due to lack of distance travelled. Outside them it was all up hill and down hill, making the wheel a questionable investment - especially as there were no draft animals to pull them. Both societies knew of the wheel, they just didn't see the effort of having / developing it as worthwhile considering thier circumstances.

As already mentioned, pumpkin seeds - and some other plants besides - are an adequet source of protien. There is no sign of widespread canaballism in regards to Aztec, Toltec, Mayan, etc societies - although there are signs that it occasionally occurred, perhaps as a ritual by the priesthood. Note that the Mayans were popular for bloodletting during religious ceremonies - ie: cutting themselves to bleed either upon the ground or into sacred vessels.

I think you are undervaluing the combat ability and weaponry of the mesoamericans. They may not have had much armor, but they did have shields. They also had the bow and arrow, the blow gun (in the amazon, at least), hatches / tomahawks, etc. While they may not have had steel, they did have hard bone, wood, etc. It is a proven fact that flint can have a better razor edge than most steel or metal can attain. And the chipping pattern used when sharpening a rock is not all that different from seration.

Anyway, I think your idea has a lot of merit. Let us know how it turns out.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

Interesting article. But pumpkin seeds aren't going to support a civilization.

Another article I recently read suggested that dogs were used as a source of protein. And of course, there is fish. And it also turns out that the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incans were all sailors. The Inca regular did trading with the Native Americans of California and the Northwest.

Certianly but maize, squash and beans provide a whole lot of what pople need. I just posted that link as an indication that it is possible for folks to get at protien even without cattle and sheep. There was fishing as you point out, maybe aqua culture of sorts (put a city by or in a large lake and there are going to be fish nearby).
Some folks had llamas as well.


here is smething i just pulled off the web:
ANIMAL FOODS
"Dogs, turkeys, and the Musovy duck were the only domesticated animals in ancient Mesoamerica. All were used for food, but they made only a minor contribution to the Aztec diet. The Aztecs also fished and hunted wild game, but again these food sources were limited...Archaeologists do find the bones of fish, deer, rabbit, iguana, dog, turkey, and other animasl in Aztec domestic trash deposits, but rarely in dense concentrations. Meat from large animals was a minor part of the Aztec diet. Early Spanish observers noted the widespread use of insects among the Aztecs, including ants, grasshoppers, manuey worms, and jumil bugs. Insects are high in protein, tasty, and could often be harvested in large numbers. The Aztecs also gathered great amounts of blue-green spirulina algae...from the surface of the lakes. This algae, known as tecuitlatl, is extremely high in protein, grows rapidly, and abundantly, and is easy to gather with fine nets...The Spanish soldiers and priests had a low opinion of the palatability of this algae, but it was much prized by the Aztecs."
---The Aztecs, Smith (p. 67)

 

[Emirikol]

Conan Of The Isles

If you REALLY want to play D&D in mesoamerica, don't play 'historical' gaming for cripes! Take a quick read of the book, "CONAN OF THE ISLES." It's where he ends up going to ancient america and has some REAL adventures. it would be a good source of material. Another good source would be to rip out a bunch of pictures from National Geographic. They have tons of stuff.


From: http://www.swordandsorcery.org/conan-isles.asp
" Conan of the Isles

By L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter

Originally published by Lancer, 1968

Reviewed by Ryan Harvey
The Story

Conan has ruled Aquilonia for over twenty years and now nears his mid-sixties. After the death of Queen Zenobia in childbirth, Conan wearies of ruling Aquilonia. A sudden attack of mysterious 'Red Shadows' spirits away Count Trocero and many other people of Aquilonia. In a dream, Conan sees the prophet Epemitreus, who tells him he must cross the Western Ocean to stop the evil of the Red Shadows. The Prophet gives Conan a phoenix-shaped talisman to aid him. Conan abdicates in favor of his twenty-year-old son Conn and secretly heads to the west on his last adventure. In the Argossean port of Messantia he meets an old companion from his days with the Brachan pirates, Sigurd of Vanaheim. King Ariosto of Argos, who has also suffered from the Red Shadows, approaches Conan in a tavern to offer to fund his voyage over the Western Ocean. Conan, under his old guise of Amra the Lion, picks a tough crew and sails with Sigurd on the ship the Red Lion. What they find out in the Western Ocean will put them face to face with the last remnants of sunken Atlantis, Demons from the Darkness, and a strange city of sacrifice, dragons, and evil labyrinths.

Comments

The "Conan Saga" as L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter imagined it concludes with this novel. Conan's story, as reported in the fictitious Nemedian Chronicles, ends when he passes out of the knowledge of the Hyborian Lands. De Camp and Carter based the novel on vague hints Howard left in a letter, but they fly off into some odd speculative territory and create what must count as one of the strangest of all Conan pastiches. It doesn't feel much like Howard's Conan, but it contains some of the most unabashed fun sword and sorcery that de Camp and Carter wrote for the pastiche series. The two veteran writers conjure up a breezy fantasy adventure with a pulpy sense of excitement.

Conan of the Isles puts to the test the reader's taste in post-Howard Conan. Which is more important: adherence to Howard's spirit, or fun adventure? If you can have both, that's wonderful. But I think most of us would prefer to have a good sword and sorcery adventure instead a poor, boring, and slavish attempt to imitate Howard. You will never mistake Conan of the Isles for genuine Howardian Conan, but you won't mistake it for a boring novel either. The plot barely pauses to take a breath: like a movie serial or an Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure, this is "One Damn Thing After Another." Where a Tor novel would develop a story around different character subplots, interactions, and conspiracies, Conan of the Isles just points Conan in a direction sends him on his gory way. The novel flies along a linear path: monster, fight, escape, rescue, monster, sorcerer, duel, escape, rescue, etc. Imaginative weirdness appears throughout. Character drama takes a back seat—the only supporting characters are Sigurd and Metemphoc the master thief—and action hurtles nonstop across the page.

Thankfully, most of the action works. Conan's horrific contest against the horde of huge rats ranks as one of the best-written suspense sequences in a pastiche novel. The navel battle scenes are also exciting, and plenty of giant monsters show up to threaten our aging hero. (I personally adore big monsters, so the book earns extra points with me.) The finale is just what you want from a fantasy adventure: constant action, monsters, magic, horror, and ironic turnabout.

The personal interests of the two authors emerge strongly; more than any other Conan piece they authored, Conan of the Isles belongs to de Camp and Carter. Carter provides the pulpy delirium and the nonstop rush of insane events. De Camp provides a fascination with the Atlantis legend and the origins of myths in general, as well as his "logical fantasy" approach to mythic events. He even suggests that Conan will become the basis for the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl, "the Feathered Serpent" who sailed out of the west to their lands.

Where Conan of the Isles deviates from Howard's vision is in its pseudo-scientific gadgetry and the outlandish culture of Antillia. Howard made the Hyborian Age realistic, injecting historical cultures into a hodgepodge fantasy setting and adding doses of supernaturalism. De Camp and Carter, however, toss Conan out of the Hyborian Age and into lands beyond knowledge, and all convention collapses into a science-fantasy parade of peculiarity. The Antillians sail impractical dragon boats, use 'super metals' like orichalcum, wear breathing helmets, don glass armor, hurl stun-gas grenades, and wield crystal swords. Their culture has hints of meso-American Indians (a de Camp touch, based on the pseudo-scientific nineteenth-century bestseller Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly, who theorized an Atlantean origin for Central and South American empires), but otherwise the Antillians might have leaped out of one of Burroughs's Martian novels.

The writers treat the older Conan with admirable realism. They pile on reminders of the past, which gives a sense of closure for the final story of Conan's career (at least in de Camp's chronology). There's also an effective moment of reflection for Conan: "Now that [Zenobia] was gone, he found himself often thinking of her, in moods of black depression that were unlike him. While she lived, he had taken her devotion as his due and thought little of it, as is the way of the barbarian. Now he regretted the words he had not said to her and the favors he had not done for her." Conan has matured and has aged; facing the approach of the 'Long Night' of death gives him a sense of regret and loss appropriate for someone his age. Howard himself would have approved of this touch of reflective darkness.

The novel's major flaw comes from the authors' predilection for overstuffing their prose, possibly to imitate Howard. This is especially noticeable in the dialogue: Conan chats too much, and Sigurd gets too many 'salty dog' speeches. Here's a good example of often heavy-handed writing: "The northman grinned broadly and gave a bellow of joy that would have summoned a hippogriff in the mating season had one been within earshot." A hippogriff is an unlikely Hyborian animal. (One of the authors must have had Ariosto's Orlando Furioso in mind, since they use both the name 'Ariosto' and Ariosto's invention, the hippogriff.) In a few places, their word choice falls flat, or else they strain too hard to use an obscure term. I have never seen anyone use the word 'decardiate'—to remove the heart—in a work of fiction before, and I doubt I will see it again. In places the plot moves too fast, and de Camp and Carter rely on coincidences (such as Conan running into Sigurd and Ariosto in the same bar) that seem a bit too much.

You can't expect all of it to makes sense or adhere to traditional Conan, but at least this pastiche lives up to the Sword and Sorcery obligation to entertain with fast, fun, imaginative action. Compared to many of the later Conan novels, Conan of the Isles is fast, fun, and imaginative indeed. "

jh