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The Journey To...North America, Part Two
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7739328" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Bernard Williams wrote about the "relativism of distance". There is about as much prospect of me jumping to the moon than there is of Aztec-style religious practices being revived; hence there is no real need to take up a moral standpoint towards those practices.</p><p></p><p>In the context of a historico-fantasy RPG, I would find a game in which non-Aztec paladins wage holy war on Aztecs a little too close to apology for my taste. There was recently a thread about Achilles on this board, and while there was some debate about his alignment no one seemd to think it relevant that (among other things) he enslaves women as war booty. In many contexts we ignore or romanticise these features of the histories and cultures that we roleplay. 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.</p><p></p><p>I think it's actually very uncommon for RPGs to present these ultra-violent heroes as immoral. The default presentation is quite the opposite (eg player characters of this type are typically described as "heroes", and not ironically).</p><p></p><p>I don't know where you live. I live in Australia. I will confidently assert that the British conquest of Australia is a <em>live</em> rather than purely historical event in a way that the Roman conquest of Britain is not.</p><p></p><p>If one turns to the subsequent Germanic and then Norman conquests, I'll let the Welsh speak for themselves; but as an outsider I do notice that they have a degree of self-government and official recognition of the Welsh language. That already marks a significant difference from the Australian situation. Furthermore, for Welsh fantasy gaming, we have the Mabinogion as one possible starting point.</p><p></p><p>I think part of the point of the point of [MENTION=6853809]SMHWorlds[/MENTION]'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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7739328, member: 42582"] Bernard Williams wrote about the "relativism of distance". There is about as much prospect of me jumping to the moon than there is of Aztec-style religious practices being revived; hence there is no real need to take up a moral standpoint towards those practices. In the context of a historico-fantasy RPG, I would find a game in which non-Aztec paladins wage holy war on Aztecs a little too close to apology for my taste. There was recently a thread about Achilles on this board, and while there was some debate about his alignment no one seemd to think it relevant that (among other things) he enslaves women as war booty. In many contexts we ignore or romanticise these features of the histories and cultures that we roleplay. 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. I think it's actually very uncommon for RPGs to present these ultra-violent heroes as immoral. The default presentation is quite the opposite (eg player characters of this type are typically described as "heroes", and not ironically). I don't know where you live. I live in Australia. I will confidently assert that the British conquest of Australia is a [I]live[/I] rather than purely historical event in a way that the Roman conquest of Britain is not. If one turns to the subsequent Germanic and then Norman conquests, I'll let the Welsh speak for themselves; but as an outsider I do notice that they have a degree of self-government and official recognition of the Welsh language. That already marks a significant difference from the Australian situation. Furthermore, for Welsh fantasy gaming, we have the Mabinogion as one possible starting point. I think part of the point of the point of [MENTION=6853809]SMHWorlds[/MENTION]'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. [/QUOTE]
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