NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ashtagon" data-source="post: 8490272" data-attributes="member: 72335">Considering that 16th century Spanish colonisers (eg Antonio Montesinos) openly discussed whether or not American Indians even had souls and thus qualified to be considered as better than livestock animals, GAZ 10 is an improvement on that. Not by much, and certainly not by enough to ever boast about, but it's there. GAZ10 being an improvement doesn't speak of the quality of the book, but of how low the bar actually was.Granted, that's not about portrayal in RPGs specifically. Depictions of American Indians in an RPG context before the D&D Gazetteer series are thin on the ground (I couldn't find any), but there are several wargames that cover them. I've highlighted a few below, but the portrayal varies from terrible stereotypes, through to awful barbarians to NPCs.There's the Big Chief tabletop game, variously dated as 1938 or 1950, which contains all the bad tropes common to the time. The game 7th Cavalry (1976) features units called squaws and chiefs (illustrated with feather war bonnets); American Indian units are referred to in the rules as "hostiles", contrasted with "U.S. units". Apache (1981) has the following text: "rampaging Indian tribes pillage and burn ranches, settlements, stage coaches", and oytright refers to American Indians as "red men". Top Totem (1959) features a totem pole, which appears to be grossly misrepresented in terms of its cultural meaning.[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/682312519/1938-big-chief-game-board-by-milton?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details[/URL][URL unfurl="true"]https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29169/big-chief[/URL][URL unfurl="true"]https://rpggeek.com/image/4716592/7th-cavalry[/URL][URL unfurl="true"]https://rpggeek.com/image/75360/apache-game-old-west[/URL][URL unfurl="true"]https://rpggeek.com/boardgame/148790/top-totem[/URL]Please note that this isn't praise of GAZ10. I am simply highlighting just how low the bar actually was.</blockquote>

Verification