Have you ever run a campaign involving a fantasy parallel for the Discovery/Conquest of the Americas?
Was it anything other than the (really shitty) Maztica?
Yes. But running the Aztec themed Mechica module/setting from Dragon Magazine 70 which was actually fairly well presented. Surprising Maztica was not.
No conquest though. Aside from a PC rescue party likely wreaking havoc. heh-heh. There was at least one other article in Dragon but I can not pin it down at the moment. The magazine module though could easily be retooled as an island discovery or new continent.
Another is the BX/BECMI Gazeteer "The Atruaghin Clans" which covers NA and SA cultures and could form a good basis for such a campaign.
No. Sounds fun, though. I suspect the setting would be pretty alien for your average demographic, it'd probably end up getting received like Tablua Rasa did. That and African settings. I remember Broken Sword 2 did South America quite respectfully but even that caused an old friend of mine to be like "what?". I mean hell, they're doing the narcocartel RPG (can't remember it's name) and that's already alienated a few people (it's a very different world and is actually grounded in the non-White viewpoint of the world, which doesn't help).
Quote from: RPGPundit;1056602Have you ever run a campaign involving a fantasy parallel for the Discovery/Conquest of the Americas?
Was it anything other than the (really shitty) Maztica?
I ran a long campaign set in an alternate history Vinland ("Vikings & Skraelings") - including magical/mythological elements. Is that within what you're thinking of?
Quote from: jhkim;1056720I ran a long campaign set in an alternate history Vinland ("Vikings & Skraelings") - including magical/mythological elements. Is that within what you're thinking of?
Well, close.
I ran a mini series totally about 12 hours of play set in a La Compagnie des Marchands merchantalist settlement on the St. Lawrence in New France. Early 17th century. It's fantastic elements were all weird fiction stuff so it was closer to Call of Cthulhu: New France than a fantasy setting. It was about dealing with the horror rather than the affairs of colonization or exploration though.
I own but haven't read thoroughly the GURPS supplement for the era. I'm wondering if that might be a good resource to exploit and use with your favorite OSR game? Also,Bruce Heard's new campaign setting appears to have one of everything in the list of countries/gods...
Quote from: RPGPundit;1056602Have you ever run a campaign involving a fantasy parallel for the Discovery/Conquest of the Americas?
Was it anything other than the (really shitty) Maztica?
My Americans have been filled with Skull Island creatures and holes leading to hollow Earths, etc. Sailors used to be afraid of the edge of the Earth, until they found the Americas. No one returns from them.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1057363My Americans have been filled with Skull Island creatures and holes leading to hollow Earths, etc. Sailors used to be afraid of the edge of the Earth, until they found the Americas. No one returns from them.
Did you mean to say "your Americas"?
I've considered it.
But I would probably veer some way from historical America in the process, if I was doing a fantasy parallel.
Not just to include the fantasy elements - but also so that players don't really no what they can expect to find - I'd really want to capture the sense of mystery of a new land more than I'd want to graft fantastic elements onto historical America.
Quote from: TJS;1057718I've considered it.
But I would probably veer some way from historical America in the process, if I was doing a fantasy parallel.
Not just to include the fantasy elements - but also so that players don't really no what they can expect to find - I'd really want to capture the sense of mystery of a new land more than I'd want to graft fantastic elements onto historical America.
Well, in my experience outside of stereotypes from some movies or tv, most people have surprisingly little knowledge of pre-columbian civilizations in the Americas.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1058138Well, in my experience outside of stereotypes from some movies or tv, most people have surprisingly little knowledge of pre-columbian civilizations in the Americas.
The nonsense about the subject you come across on internet is baffling sometimes.
I did a Flashing Blades hack called Chronicles of Kaetlen, wherein I stripped the system from FB, set it in my own setting (based mostly on the same premises and themes of 17th century Europe), and included the New World across the sea to the west. It was historically themed though, so there was a lot of plantations, native uprisings, and massacres, although I decided that the Kaetlish didn't go in for slavery, so instead the King allowed the landed nobles to forcibly relocate some of their vassal villages to the new world (sometimes through propaganda, sometimes at gunpoint).
The big problem with the natives was that they had a tendency to violence if they couldn't "perform heathen acts of worship", and one of the early conquests by the Kaetlish explorers was a holy island akin to Mecca. So there were these constant crusades against the settlers. Map-wise, I decided to cheat a bit, and the geography looked just like the Indonesian Archipelago, but turned 180 degrees. The big continent to the south (china) was unexplored, but covered with jungles and rumored to be full of gold, while the one to the north (Australia) had barren wastes and ruins of cities (also rumored to be full of gold, but also full of ghosts and monsters).
So, with all that adventure material, I came to my players, and they all made gentlemen of leisure with steady incomes who had no interest in the new world or any form of adventuring whatsoever. I allowed it, and I was just about to go into the "pull the rug out from under their comfortable lives" mode when the interest shifted and we went on to a Razor Coast game, followed by a Viking game, and now I'm running Lost Mines of Phandalin for some college friends of my wife.
Quote from: 3rik;1058184The nonsense about the subject you come across on internet is baffling sometimes.
I'm amazed for example, at how many people don't know the difference between Mayas and Aztecs.
Then, among those who do know, I'm amazed by how many people still believes the now decades-old discredited myth that Mayans were a peace-loving gentle people.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1058517I'm amazed for example, at how many people don't know the difference between Mayas and Aztecs.
I'm not surprised at all. If people come out of school with no geographic and historical framework to hang geographic and historical information on, then it's no surprise if Aztec, Maya, Hitler, ninjas, ancient Egypt, dinosaurs, Latvia and Uruguay all end up floating around together in the same perplexing soup.
Quote from: Zirunel;1058524I'm not surprised at all. If people come out of school with no geographic and historical framework to hang geographic and historical information on, then it's no surprise if Aztec, Maya, Hitler, ninjas, ancient Egypt, dinosaurs, Latvia and Uruguay all end up floating around together in the same perplexing soup.
It just surprises me because I was always a history/geography nerd. As a kid, I loved to learn about history and other cultures. I just can't grasp how some people don't give the slightest shit about that.
This is no different than in Japan where their anime/manga/games use syncretized motifs, legends, myths, religions into their fantasy material.
They don't know wtf they're talking about either. But it looks cool. So they'll use it.
Only in the SJW bubble is it considered evil if you do it. (but only if you're white).
Quote from: tenbones;1058825This is no different than in Japan where their anime/manga/games use syncretized motifs, legends, myths, religions into their fantasy material.
They don't know wtf they're talking about either. But it looks cool. So they'll use it.
Only in the SJW bubble is it considered evil if you do it. (but only if you're white).
Nothing wrong with syncretism and pastiche in fiction and fantasy. But I thought Pundit was shaking his head about people's ignorance of real-world history and geography.
Quote from: Zirunel;1058829Nothing wrong with syncretism and pastiche in fiction and fantasy. But I thought Pundit was shaking his head about people's ignorance of real-world history and geography.
Here? Sure.
Try saying that on The Big Purple...
Quote from: tenbones;1058832Here? Sure.
Try saying that on The Big Purple...
Ok, I'm interested, could you elaborate? Obviously I hear a lot about "TBP" here, but not sure what the objections to pastiche would be. Are we talking "appropriation of voice" or....other issues?
Quote from: Zirunel;1058829Nothing wrong with syncretism and pastiche in fiction and fantasy. But I thought Pundit was shaking his head about people's ignorance of real-world history and geography.
Indeed I was. Syncretism and pastiche are to be expected in Fantasy.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1058517I'm amazed for example, at how many people don't know the difference between Mayas and Aztecs.
Then, among those who do know, I'm amazed by how many people still believes the now decades-old discredited myth that Mayans were a peace-loving gentle people.
I'm amazed at how many people think that the Maya went extinct. That they were (and are) one politically united, culturally-homogenous people. And that Maya culture is somehow older (more ancient, more authentic, whatever the fuck they mean by that) than Aztec culture, which is a comparison that makes no sense at all.
Each person has stuff that they don't know anything about. There's nothing wrong with that in itself. It's just that a lot of people seem so unaware that there's stuff they don't know or know incorrectly.
Quote from: 3rik;1059097I'm amazed at how many people think that the Maya went extinct. That they were (and are) one politically united, culturally-homogenous people. And that Maya culture is somehow older (more ancient, more authentic, whatever the fuck they mean by that) than Aztec culture, which is a comparison that makes no sense at all.
Each person has stuff that they don't know anything about. There's nothing wrong with that in itself. It's just that a lot of people seem so unaware that there's stuff they don't know or know incorrectly.
I was in a village in Mexico where the local priest and the three of us travelers were the only people who spoke Spanish. The rest spoke Mayan. I ran an adventure set in a similar small village where the characters had to get information with one local who could speak their language and they didn't know if she was a trustworthy translator.
The surprisingly unaware people I thought of when reading these last posts were the Japanese who had no knowledge of the Ainu.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1059109I was in a village in Mexico where the local priest and the three of us travelers were the only people who spoke Spanish. The rest spoke Mayan. I ran an adventure set in a similar small village where the characters had to get information with one local who could speak their language and they didn't know if she was a trustworthy translator.
The surprisingly unaware people I thought of when reading these last posts were the Japanese who had no knowledge of the Ainu.
I trust that by Mayan you mean Yucatec, which is often referred to as Mayan but is of course by no means the only Mayan language that still exists.
And yes, Japanese not knowing a single thing about the Ainu seems... very ignorant. My Mexican family-in-law - except for my wife who studied ethnobiology and did field work among a couple of indigenous communities - is not particularly knowledgable about Mexican indigenous people either, but at least they are aware and have a rough idea of their history and geography.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1057704Did you mean to say "your Americas"?
Oops. Yes.
Yes, I spent a good while in the Mayan part of Mexico, and it's certainly true that the Mayan culture didn't die. Only Mayan Civilization did.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1059721Yes, I spent a good while in the Mayan part of Mexico, and it's certainly true that the Mayan culture didn't die. Only Mayan Civilization did.
While Classic Maya Civilization in the southern Maya lowlands "collapsed" - i.e. cities declined and were abandoned - during the 8th and 9th century, upto the Conquest there was still very much a Mayan civilization with flourishing city-states in the highlands and northern lowlands of the Maya region. This civilization was eventually destroyed during the conquest. Lots of people seem to think that all the Maya mysteriously went extinct during the Classic Maya collapse and apparently aren't even aware of the city-states the conquistadors encountered in Yucatan and the Maya Highlands or where the heck the present-day Maya must have come from. Must've been aliens.
Quote from: 3rik;1059808While Classic Maya Civilization in the southern Maya lowlands "collapsed" - i.e. cities declined and were abandoned - during the 8th and 9th century, upto the Conquest there was still very much a Mayan civilization with flourishing city-states in the highlands and northern lowlands of the Maya region. This civilization was eventually destroyed during the conquest. Lots of people seem to think that all the Maya mysteriously went extinct during the Classic Maya collapse and apparently aren't even aware of the city-states the conquistadors encountered in Yucatan and the Maya Highlands or where the heck the present-day Maya must have come from. Must've been aliens.
Those city-states were more like a descendant-civilization. But with regards to your last point, yes, there's a lot of that idiocy.