Coyote & Crow: Native American Alternate History RPG

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TristramEvans

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So a little while in the Mythras & The Wild West thread I lamented there not being an RPG based on pre-contact North America...

This thread just got me curious - is there any RPGs about Native Americans, pre-contact? Fantasy or not? I mean, I know of a few Aztec games, but I don't think I've ever encountered a game where you play a tribesman (or woman) in a pre-Colombus North America

Can’t say I’ve come across any personally. This list on Board Game Geek has mostly ‘inspired by’ or ‘fantasy analogue to’ style games. Just a couple sounded like they might be close enough to qualify.

Not even a GURPS book (other than a Conan one) - seems like an obvious omission!

I mean, unlike most ancient cultures, you do at least have still-practiced cultures and living descendants that could write it or at least consult on it.

It just seems strange to me that it's never been done.

I thought there was a supplement to Colonial Gothic that focused on playing Native Americans, but I am not finding it. It wouldn't be pre-contact, though. The same company (Rogue Games, Inc) has spin off set earlier during the contact period called, The Journey to Norumbega, but it is still from the perspective of the Europeans.

I haven't seen any good ones. The ones I have encountered tend to be focused on generalities and (sometimes) very basic beliefs in magic and spirits, most of which aren't particularly accurate or are framed in terms outside of the context of the groups that held them. None of them have gone into any real depth. I would love to find one, though.

It wouldn't be that difficult to make one. The biggest issue would be blowback from people who take it upon themselves to be offended on behalf of other people. I doubt that a well-researched one that didn't rely on Western book/movie/myth tropes would bother many actual Native Americans.

There’s the game I think Toadmaster was referring to. It’s Totems of the Dead and is basically Hyborian-Age-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off North and Meso America.

GURPS: Aztecs isn’t the type of Native Americans you’re looking for.

The problem with Pre-Contact is, we did far too good a job at annihilating native cultures. In some cases, what we know of tribal practices, especially spiritual practices, is like Wicca or Asatru, almost certainly invention and pieced together fragments. Also Pre-Contact would include before the reintroduction of the horse to the continent, and centuries of horse culture would make knowledge of what specific tribes were like before the horse damn hard to pin down.

That’s all before you get into the Tetsubo-like issue.

There's some South-America in the mix as well, Amazonian and Andean IIRC. What bugs me about the otherwise fun-looking setting is the inclusion of Chinese, Vikings and IIRC Atlanteans... That and I don't like Savage Worlds much.

That is all very true. We can take a good guess at the basic mechanics of living that pre-contact tribal groups had, based on archaeological discoveries, the landscape they lived in, nearby groups that survived, etc., but even that involves a lot of guesswork. Cultural details from pre-contact groups that were killed off can't really be reconstructed, and (as you said) our knowledge of spiritual practices is scanty or altogether missing.

I spent years in cultural anthropology grad school sharing an office with archaeologists. There is an unfortunate tendency for educated guesswork to become "known facts" once it reaches the public. Some archaeologists end up doing that in an effort to simplify and summarize things. Some get so entranced with their pet theory (or so eager for ongoing funding) that they tout is as almost-fact. Sometimes non-archaeologists read archaeological papers and books and draw unfounded conclusions from them. The fact of that matter is that the only thing we really know about tribal groups who died out or were killed centuries ago is what can be deduced from their remains and the objects that were left behind, which only goes so far.

Native American groups that are still around today don't necessarily know all that much about their ancestors, either. Cultures change over time, and old stories and myths tend to focus more on teaching lessons and providing moral examples, rather than recording facts. Stories change over time, too, sometimes more rapidly than people imagine.

If I were to write a supplement where you played pre-contact Native Americans, I would probably avoid using the names of real tribes, whether they still exist or not. I would focus more on presenting various potential lifestyles, cultural traits, technologies, etc., and encourage the GM to build original tribes using that information. I might provide a few examples, such as a generic tribe that was nomadic and lived in the plains, or something like that, to give some examples. We know enough about Native Americans (and similar groups, elsewhere) to present the building blocks of making a fictional tribe that could have realistically existed, even though they didn't.


What is the Tetsubo-like issue?

I honestly didn't know that we knew so little, TBH. It's kind of saddening. I guess I just always assumed that better records had been kept, or that surviving peoples at least had the foresight of historical recordings.

Pre-contact Native American groups used petroglyphs, pictographs, pictograms, ideographs, glyphs, logographs, "quipu" (Incan knotted strings that kept records), pictures, and various other proto-writing systems. The meanings of most of them are poorly understood.

There is one exception, though. The Mayans used a logograph/glyph system that we can kinda-sort read today, mostly. I took a Mayan glyph class as an undergrad anthropology student that was pretty interesting. The Mayan codices (made of bark paper) were similar to books, and there were a lot of them that supposedly went back hundreds of years. Unfortunately, the Spanish destroyed most of them in the 1500s. Only four have survived to this day. They tend to revolve around information related to astrology, calendars, almanacs, agriculture, religious ceremonies, deities, divination, prophecies, and other such things. Those are the types of things the rulers and priests thought were worth recording. That is why we know a lot more about Mayan culture than most other pre-contact native groups.

Note that the translation of all these various symbols, including most of the Mayan stuff, was largely done by people of European descent, generally in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Some of the Spanish priests in the 1500s had the indigenous people translate some of it for them, but the bulk of the work on Native American writing and symbols was done long after they were still being used by the descendants of those peoples. Native Americans of the 19th century might be able to identify various pictograms and such, but they didn't have anything in the way of extensive historical records that they were keeping and reading. Most of the groups in the Americas (top to bottom) were primarily oral-history based, and a ton of that was lost in the various mass killings, relocations, and programs to "re-educate" Native American children.

The things that the Spanish and other European conquerors recorded about Native American groups are full of biases and inaccuracies, and tend to focus on the things that priests and the occasional individual thought were important to write down. You can derive some information from that, but a lot of it - if not most of it - is out of cultural context.



I figured it was something like that. It Tetsubo a reference to a game? You can send me a private message if it isn't appropriate to post here. I'm just curious.



...and apparently there's a KS running for just such an RPG setting at the moment ...soooorta?

That was how it was pitched in the article I read that made me aware of it's existence (which I'm not going to share because it was glossed over with a thick veneer of politics,)

Looking into it, turns out the eponymous Coyote & Crow RPG is appaently not a pre-contact setting, but instead an alternate history SciFi? setting where the Continent was never settled by Europeans.



The art was a bit underwhelming, but the subect matter was intresting enough for me to look closer at it. Not a lot of description of game mechanics to really go by, unfortunately, no quickstart or Introductory PDf or anything of that sort.

But the character sheet example did give me pause. It certainly doesn't feel like a game designed from a Native American worldview - not when you have a skill like "Skulduggery"? What? Why would a no-contact civilization use an archaic English term?

The sample pages also, um, apparently state that non-native players shouldn't "attempt to mimic native culture", which, uh, kinda defeats the purpose of a role-playing game?

But the campaign does seem to be doing quite successfully, at around .9 million in pledges at the time of this post.
 
To be more precise, the sample page suggests non-Native players shouldn't attempt to mimic tribal ceremonies involving mind-expanding drugs, probably on the assumption that a non-Native group would make a hash of it. Seems like the sort of advisory that will get ignored or adhered to based on the tastes of the group.

The game looks pretty interesting to me in terms of setting, though I haven't backed it yet. I am not sure if I'd get to actually play it and I'm trying to reserve my cash for games I intend to use.
 
I had to back out of pledging because of funds this week, so I'm a bit upset about this, I'd like to explore it as a game, which I think is partly the purpose of it is to explore the future with a Native American world veiw.
 
Cool, indigenous futurism is something I've never really seen.. it looks really cool. Not sure about the ruleset, but it looks easily reinterpreted by SWADE or Cypher or w/e.
 
Given the huge differences in how the tribes in North America lived, the vastly different landscapes and religions there's an enormous amount of material to sort through to get a proper picture. So some sort of GURPS or Mythras* style treatment I'd buy in a heartbeat simply to learn, let alone play.

*Doesn't have to be those rules, just that style.
 
Mm, but the trouble with a GURPS-style treatment is several-fold: the lack of written records, the lack of proof about so very much, the sheer multitude of cultures and languages ... problems many of the quotes cited above mention. Heck, take the Mississippian culture, the most advanced of the lot pre-contact, with by far the largest NA city there ever had been or ever would be. We know little more about it than we know about the Neolithic era, in Europe. We don't even know the real name of that city -- "Cahokia" being an anachronistic name derived many centuries later. So much as a monograph of any one such culture intended for RPG purposes would be painfully thin, and perhaps little more than a veneer at best. You'd be no worse off, and save some money, by cherrypicking Wikipedia articles.

And, sure, some pressure group somewhere would seize upon some element of the work and proclaim it to be "culturally insensitive" or that it involved "cultural appropriation." I can't imagine any reputable RPG company taking a swing at that minefield, or what they could gain by doing so.
 
Can I say that reading the KS makes me think less about an RPG and more about a political pamphlet?

I know, I know. "OMG Luca, you're doing it again! You're trying to skirt the forum rules and "sneakily" inject politics into a discussion".
I'm sorry, but what can I do? It's my honest reaction. I mean, quoting straight from the KS page: "It's not even a question that this game is political."
 
Yeah, the game was made with specific motivations in mind, but my first concern with a game is more about my interest in the content. With that in mind, I think it's an interesting bit of world building.
 
Can I say that reading the KS makes me think less about an RPG and more about a political pamphlet?

I know, I know. "OMG Luca, you're doing it again! You're trying to skirt the forum rules and "sneakily" inject politics into a discussion".
I'm sorry, but what can I do? It's my honest reaction. I mean, quoting straight from the KS page: "It's not even a question that this game is political."

Yeah, there's political content. We all see it and recognize it, hell, last time I checked you can't even visit KS wthout seeing a big political hashtag posted at the top of the website. And there's no point pretending that there arent a ton of games that target a specific sales demographic specifically by using politics.

But as far as a topic of conversation for The Pub? Obviously it's a no-go. There's still a game there, and stuff strictly RPG-related to talk about, and we can all be aware of the other element without mentioning it, because, well, it's so obvious.
 
Cool, indigenous futurism is something I've never really seen.. it looks really cool. Not sure about the ruleset, but it looks easily reinterpreted by SWADE or Cypher or w/e.
I'd thought about getting it, but the price tag is too much from an unknown quantity with an unknown ruleset. And the small bit they gave (the character sheet, and the pool of d12s) gave me even more pause- that's something I'd have to see before investing that much into it. The main creator states he has worked in the industry for 7 years, but gives no credits? And they credit the crew and their nation, but no other mention of what they've worked on?

I wish them the best, and I'll take a look once it has the promised quickstart.
 
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To be more precise, the sample page suggests non-Native players shouldn't attempt to mimic tribal ceremonies involving mind-expanding drugs, probably on the assumption that a non-Native group would make a hash of it. Seems like the sort of advisory that will get ignored or adhered to based on the tastes of the group.

The game looks pretty interesting to me in terms of setting, though I haven't backed it yet. I am not sure if I'd get to actually play it and I'm trying to reserve my cash for games I intend to use.
And to add to it, they say that there will be other options for non-natives, right on the front page.

For those who aren't Native, you'll have a wealth of options to choose from as well as clear guidelines for understanding the differences between this world and our real one.
 
I’m always interested in cultural futurism, and got a specific taste for Native American futurism thanks to Shadowrun.

However, I hope that the point of view comes from actual knowledge and not blood quantum. I’m not really qualified to speculate on how the Celts or Germans would have done without Rome, or what Slavs look like without the Rus, etc. despite me being German, Irish and Polish.

Sure, this game proudly advertises the author’s politics. That doesn’t mean they can’t come up with an interesting alt-history future or that they’re not qualified to provide tribal viewpoints and extrapolations.
 
And to add to it, they say that there will be other options for non-natives, right on the front page.
If they actually think that non-natives aren’t going to play natives, that’s just pure fantasy. It doesn’t matter what you think about it, people will do it. It will be interesting to see where non-Amerindians fit in, both on an American stage and the Global one.
 
If they actually think that non-natives aren’t going to play natives, that’s just pure fantasy. It doesn’t matter what you think about it, people will do it. It will be interesting to see where non-Amerindians fit in, both on an American stage and the Global one.
That's not what that statement means. There are actuallly no non-natives in the setting from what they say. What they're saying there is that non-natives should not try to introduce 'authentic' native rituals- they will have alternatives for them.
 
Reading the kickstarter, it gets a hair confusing on the do this, don't do this thing. Also, the setting sounds cool, but the sales pitch started to make me feel uncomfortable for some reason.
 
watched interview...more information...

  • d12 dice pool system, 5-8 dice on average
  • author says they were heavily influenced by Palladum Rifts and WoD storyteller system.
  • It has levels, level up by writing Legends about your character.
  • Inspiration for setting was taken from Black Panther's Wakanda (as per the film, no impression the author has read any comics)
  • the game doesn't tackle "spirituality" much - the author wants "Native players to be able to bring their own customs and culture to this game"
  • "it's a system that we think helps tell stories rather than crunch numbers, which is at the heart of what we're trying to put out there. We want a system that encourages people to tell stories."
So...it was a hard pass for me,
 
Looks like the final amount raised was $1,073,283 (although there's a button for Late Pledges.) Per the letter sent out, it looks like they'll have about 5,000 books to donate to reservation libraries.

Nice.
 
That's not what that statement means. There are actuallly no non-natives in the setting from what they say. What they're saying there is that non-natives should not try to introduce 'authentic' native rituals- they will have alternatives for them.
What does that even mean? Alternatives for them? What alternatives? A person of Germanic descent shouldn’t “introduce” (whatever that means) an “authentic” native ritual.

So if the game doesn’t have mechanics for say, the Hopi Snake Dance, you shouldn’t make rules for the ritual if you’re not native. Are Seminoles allowed to, or only Hopi?

If they think only specific Tribe GMs or only native GMs are going to make up rules for classic well-known ceremonies that they don’t provide rules for, they’re also fooling themselves. The game isn’t yours once you sell it to people. Ask White Wolf. :grin:
 
watched interview...more information...

  • d12 dice pool system, 5-8 dice on average
  • author says they were heavily influenced by Palladum Rifts and WoD storyteller system.
  • It has levels, level up by writing Legends about your character.
  • Inspiration for setting was taken from Black Panther's Wakanda (as per the film, no impression the author has read any comics)
  • the game doesn't tackle "spirituality" much - the author wants "Native players to be able to bring their own customs and culture to this game"
  • "it's a system that we think helps tell stories rather than crunch numbers, which is at the heart of what we're trying to put out there. We want a system that encourages people to tell stories."
So...it was a hard pass for me,
Heh, I like d12’s. I have a bunch of beautiful Gamescience Fire Gem d12’s. Storyteller and Rifts inspired doesn’t bother me. The narrative stuff just sounds like standard “tell stories” stuff, so don’t know if it’s going to have any mechanical effect.
 
I like a D12 fine, but not for a dicepool for me
 
Heh, I'm not only with CRKrueger here, after reading the screed myself, the only thing restraining me from spewing my full contempt is the no-politics rule, since the whole "cultural appropriation" bullshit has become a political thing.

But certainly as a folklorist, the concept of an "authentic ritual" is a frigging crock. Let's take Christianity for an example, a faith with hundreds of millions of worshippers and rituals codified into attested canonical writings for well over a thousand years. There've been major schisms based on superficial things like how one holds one's hand making the Sign of the Cross, or whether one faces the altar or the congregation when celebrating Mass.

Now let's take Native American tribal rituals, held by oft-hostile peoples sparsely scattered over vast geographic territories, without a tradition of writing. What's an "authentic" Dené ritual? We're talking a language family broken into four dozen sub-languages, ranging from the North Slope of Alaska to Mexico. Their ritual practices had to be all over the place, never mind the changes that get made when groups bump into one another.
 
My feeling is just that an RPGs job is to place the player into the mindset and culture of the character they are playing, not to dictate what players are allowed to do with the game. If they want to go with all made-up stuff for the game, that would be legitimate, because we're taling about a futuristic setting where tribes have had centuries of cultural evolution. But this weird "authentic rituals for some players, not for others" thing is just.....odd.

More interested in seeing what the actual system is like once the game does come out though. My biggest trepidation towards the project isn''t the naive pretensions of the author so much as it looks like a completely out of touch generic 90s game slapped onto an interesting setting, rather than one built to evoke the setting itself.

The author also claims to have 7 years experience in the RPG industry, but I can't find any evidence of that
 
The author also claims to have 7 years experience in the RPG industry, but I can't find any evidence of that

The very fact his inspirations seem woefully out of date, and underdeveloped begins to worry me. The added stuff you shared just makes me worry about the actual background of the game, as a setting. The fact that the map is the NA continent flipped upside down with no South America seeming nearby adds some concern like "How did that happen?" I mean if the game provides an explanation (even a Wizard did it) would be a start.
 
The very fact his inspirations seem woefully out of date, and underdeveloped begins to worry me. The added stuff you shared just makes me worry about the actual background of the game, as a setting. The fact that the map is the NA continent flipped upside down with no South America seeming nearby adds some concern like "How did that happen?" I mean if the game provides an explanation (even a Wizard did it) would be a start.

The setting had a massive apocalyptic foreign object strike on the planet in its pre-colonization time period. I'm not sure if that supposedly took SA out or there's some other reason, but there's certainly backstory for some pretty massive changes.
 
Heh, I'm not only with CRKrueger here, after reading the screed myself, the only thing restraining me from spewing my full contempt is the no-politics rule, since the whole "cultural appropriation" bullshit has become a political thing.

But certainly as a folklorist, the concept of an "authentic ritual" is a frigging crock. Let's take Christianity for an example, a faith with hundreds of millions of worshippers and rituals codified into attested canonical writings for well over a thousand years. There've been major schisms based on superficial things like how one holds one's hand making the Sign of the Cross, or whether one faces the altar or the congregation when celebrating Mass.

Now let's take Native American tribal rituals, held by oft-hostile peoples sparsely scattered over vast geographic territories, without a tradition of writing. What's an "authentic" Dené ritual? We're talking a language family broken into four dozen sub-languages, ranging from the North Slope of Alaska to Mexico. Their ritual practices had to be all over the place, never mind the changes that get made when groups bump into one another.
It does feel a bit bizarre to be talking about authentic rituals after half a millenium of alternate history (and frigging magic as well!)

If the game was actually set in Pre-Colombian North America that would be a bit different perhaps - but this feels like trying to have your cake and eat it too.
 
D12 Dice pools were always a bad idea in the past because you pretty much couldn't find that many D12s without buying dice bundles of all the polyhedrals which makes them expensive to acquire.

Of course with Amazon these days, it's less of an issue, you can just order them. And if you're using a VTT it's irrelevant.

It still feels like a gimmick. Why on earth do you need that much granularity on individual dice in a die pool system?
 
What does that even mean? Alternatives for them? What alternatives? A person of Germanic descent shouldn’t “introduce” (whatever that means) an “authentic” native ritual.

So if the game doesn’t have mechanics for say, the Hopi Snake Dance, you shouldn’t make rules for the ritual if you’re not native. Are Seminoles allowed to, or only Hopi?

If they think only specific Tribe GMs or only native GMs are going to make up rules for classic well-known ceremonies that they don’t provide rules for, they’re also fooling themselves. The game isn’t yours once you sell it to people. Ask White Wolf. :grin:

In all honesty, I'm having a hard time getting my head around what performing rituals in game even means. For everything else, we just roll dice. But I'd think they mean that whatever their system for performing rituals, they'll have an alternate non-authentic to native american culture version. But you'd have to ask them.
 
This game looks very unlikely to appeal to me but the attempts at historical critiques and commentary on Indigenous cultures pre-Contact here are embarassingly clueless of the last 20-30 years of scholarship.

I'd suggest we steer clear of such discussions as most of the comments here so far have just revealed how little most know about the actual subject. Basically, if you think pop-historical books by the likes of Jared Diamond and others are a reliable historical source, they aren't.
 
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This game looks very unlikely to appeal to me but the attempts at historical critiques and commentary on Indigenous cultures pre-Contact here are embarassingly clueless of the late 20-30 years of scholarship.

I'd suggest we steer clear of such discussions as most of the comments here so far have just revealed how little most know about the actual subject. Basically, if you think pop-historical books by the likes of Jared Diamond and others are a reliable historical source, they aren't.

Well, it's a subject that I'd like to hear more about. I'm much more interested in some authentic pre-contact scholarship that a Black Panther-esque scifi. Is there any particularly good books/resources available to the general public you can recommend?
 
Well, it's a subject that I'd like to hear more about. I'm much more interested in some authentic pre-contact scholarship that a Black Panther-esque scifi. Is there any particularly good books/resources available to the general public you can recommend?

The most accessible summary of modern scholarship for a long while was Ronald Wright's Stolen Continents, still a classic although from my understanding it is considered a bit out-of-date since much has been learned since it was published in 92'.

9780143192084.jpeg

This more recent book by Inga Clendinnen is an amazing portrait of the Aztec culture and society combining original sources both Spanish and Indigenous and modern research.

41+eGOSEG7L._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

For an great collation of original oral and written sources I highly recommend Gerard Vizenor's The People Named the Chippewa: Narrative Histories.

817pSri66WL.jpg


Interestingly enough Vizenor, best known as a novelist, also wrote one of the earliest examples of Indigenous sf with his book Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart (later retitled Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles). I feel that Vizenor, although well known in the 70s and 80s, hasn't gotten the recognition he deserves because his work is ironic, formally complex and politically sophisticated.

871537.jpg
 
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