Mod+ Mythic Polynesia

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TristramEvans said:
What? The Bunyip from Dot and the Kangaroo is clearly centre stage on the cover, weilding his traditional container of Vegemite!
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Plus it's Australian law that you are not allowed to take, draw or show an image of a Drop Bear or Bunyip.
 
burbles said:
Awwww, not a drop bear or bunyip in sight.

We do have multiple ways to kill Pc's with natural fauna though.

Snakes, spiders, platpus, octopus, scorpion, jellyfish, fish, sharks, crocodiles, stingrays.......

I started this list and then went off the whole topic as I began to think of more and more. I started to wonder why I lived here and hadn't migrated to somewhere safer!
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Come to the PNW. In theory we have a poisonous snake and spider. I have never heard of anyone being bitten by either.
 
burbles said:
Awwww, not a drop bear or bunyip in sight.

We do have multiple ways to kill Pc's with natural fauna though.

Snakes, spiders, platpus, octopus, scorpion, jellyfish, fish, sharks, crocodiles, stingrays.......

I started this list and then went off the whole topic as I began to think of more and more. I started to wonder why I lived here and hadn't migrated to somewhere safer!
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I think we may need to create a ‘Random Death in Australia‘ table, heh heh
 
In the case of that other site, I think it's more performative lashing out, and then slowly realising exactly how important they actually are. But they seem happy being miserable, so they can shine on.
Fenris-77 said:
Edit: to add another bit, we're also talking about the replacement of expertise, or actual knowledge, with something that people want to call lived experience. This is an idea I find all manner of problematic. Not in any kind of rally around the academy way, but far more because people seem to think that just kind of stating this thing both automatically grants them the right to speak, and denies that right to anyone who falls outside their criteria (whatever that might be). That's not to belittle the possible importance of lived experience, rather the opposite, but instead the notion that birth alone grants (or denies) the right to speak or critique.
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I dunno, I figure if you're writing a book about a particular culture that exists today, speaking to folk who actually practice it and getting input on them, dealing with primary sources rather than just secondary, is just a sensible thing to do - you'll get higher-quality information, and as a (Potential) customer you get a book that hopefully is better at doing what it says it does (If I buy an RPG book about playing in a specific culture, I want the culture to be represented as well as possible - like, that's literally what I'm paying for!). I know folk who have been hired in "cultural consultant"-type roles for RPG books about Scotland by companies based in England, for example; if that's possible, surely the same thing for a wider geographic and cultural difference is possible (And maybe even advisable) too.

And if there is one particular outlier - a disclaimer in the intro along the lines of "While there's sufficient overlap between many of the local varieties of this culture, one or two are so distinct that we didn't feel we could do them justice in a general book, so we will be publishing a supplement going into them in greater detail" does the job neatly, and many buyers will accept your reasoning.
 
Ladybird said:
I dunno, I figure if you're writing a book about a particular culture that exists today, speaking to folk who actually practice it and getting input on them, dealing with primary sources rather than just secondary, is just a sensible thing to do - you'll get higher-quality information, and as a (Potential) customer you get a book that hopefully is better at doing what it says it does (If I buy an RPG book about playing in a specific culture, I want the culture to be represented as well as possible - like, that's literally what I'm paying for!). I know folk who have been hired in "cultural consultant"-type roles for RPG books about Scotland by companies based in England, for example; if that's possible, surely the same thing for a wider geographic and cultural difference is possible (And maybe even advisable) too.

And if there is one particular outlier - a disclaimer in the intro along the lines of "While there's sufficient overlap between many of the local varieties of this culture, one or two are so distinct that we didn't feel we could do them justice in a general book, so we will be publishing a supplement going into them in greater detail" does the job neatly, and many buyers will accept your reasoning.
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I'd agree, but I think this specific issue is quite muddied at the moment for several reasons.

Firstly, "cultural consultant" and "sensitivity reader" seem to be being used interchangably. Are they the same thing? Is it the same remit? I have no idea currently.

Related to that, what the actual role is seems to vary wildly from "it's a factchecker to make sure there's no inaccuracies" to "the role is to make sure you validate any marginalised groups in your work". I lean much more towards the former approach but it feels almost random what you're going to get if you hire someone.

There's also questions of what specifically qualifies someone for the job. At worst (particularly in the US) that seems to be based entirely on ethnic heritage rather than knowledge. The idea that someone who's lived in the US all their life is more qualified to talk about a culture than someone who's lived in a culture for decades but has the wrong "blood" is very dubious indeed. And I've seen it lived into some really dubious places. The one that sticks in my mind is someone on Twitter claiming that someone who had lived in Japan for 12 years shouldn't write about it because "I wouldn't write about Robin Hood". Yeah, if you're American you maybe don't have the cultural knowledge. But any argument that implies that a Black Briton doesn't own Robin Hood as much as I do is dodgy as fuck whether it comes from the BNP or a 'progressive'.

Finally, there's the question of exactly what you're paying for. I've seen repeated claims that it's unreasonable to even mention the cultural consultant in regards to inaccuracies they've missed. In which case, what exactly are they for? I've worked as a proofreader and I'd get short shrift if I tried to claim that missing typos wasn't my responsibility.

Overall then, the idea of a cultural consultant seems reasonable and useful to me. How it's being implemented in RPG circles? Frequently not so good.
 
Ladybird said:
In the case of that other site, I think it's more performative lashing out, and then slowly realising exactly how important they actually are. But they seem happy being miserable, so they can shine on.

I dunno, I figure if you're writing a book about a particular culture that exists today, speaking to folk who actually practice it and getting input on them, dealing with primary sources rather than just secondary, is just a sensible thing to do - you'll get higher-quality information, and as a (Potential) customer you get a book that hopefully is better at doing what it says it does (If I buy an RPG book about playing in a specific culture, I want the culture to be represented as well as possible - like, that's literally what I'm paying for!). I know folk who have been hired in "cultural consultant"-type roles for RPG books about Scotland by companies based in England, for example; if that's possible, surely the same thing for a wider geographic and cultural difference is possible (And maybe even advisable) too.

And if there is one particular outlier - a disclaimer in the intro along the lines of "While there's sufficient overlap between many of the local varieties of this culture, one or two are so distinct that we didn't feel we could do them justice in a general book, so we will be publishing a supplement going into them in greater detail" does the job neatly, and many buyers will accept your reasoning.
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I know I am a bit of a broken record on this point but I think it is absolutely central to how this book came about and the argument that actually TDM hasn’t particularly made any mistakes with regard this product (certainly that’s my take as a consumer).

So, I think one of the issues is that in a very real sense these books are not writing about a particular culture that exists today. If not in the initial research and drafting then certainly by the finished product and editing process. Indeed, the disclaimer in the book itself notes that historical accuracy very much takes a backseat to what makes an interesting rpg sourcebook.

At most the cultures in the Mythic Earth series are an echo or a distorted mirror image of real cultures. That’s why I find the comparison between the accuracy of the research done with Māori culture and the rest of Polynesia interesting but not something that really impacts how I would use the book.

Much of the anguish and issues as far as I can see are because people are engaging with the book as if it is an educational tool or a replacement for a cultural guide or a history book. Which it just isn’t, either by design or function.

Once the reader engages with the book as a piece of fiction and more specifically a rpg sourcebook then many of these issues, if they don’t entirely disappear, they certainly reduce by orders of magnitude.

In particular one aspect of the issue of historic and cultural (in)accuracy that I haven’t seen discussed is that the book itself isn’t actually going to be consumed by the majority of people who will be presented with the source material in the book. This is in contrast to most other pieces of fiction.

To clarify this; Any rpg-source book generally speaking will mostly be read by a GM rather than the players. The GM will then take the parts they find interesting, change and modify those things as they see fit and then present them to the players. The players will then use that information to represent characters in a variety of ways from well thought-out characters to farce and stereotype.

Certainly, some players will read some parts of a sourcebook (character creation etc) but ultimately the book is a tool or a vehicle for a GM to use as they desire to construct a game.

All this means is that there is a significant filtering process from any remnant of a real-world culture to game table.

The filtering process looks a bit like this:
  • The real world’s culture’s own historical record
  • The authors research
  • The authors writing emphasising the points he or she finds most interesting.
  • The author adds a strong mythic and fantastical element
  • The editing process for brevity, page count and price point that cuts and changes elements of the culture.
The GM purchases
  • The GM interpretation of the material based on a percentage of the source book they actually read and their own understanding.
  • The GM edits and changes the material for things that they find most interesting.
  • The GM chooses or builds a scenario they find interesting. (Incidentally this will almost certainly involve mythic and fantastical elements which will exacerbate the dislocation of the source material from the real-world culture, but regardless…).
RPG begins
  • PCs pick characters they find interesting regardless of how likely they were to be found in a given culture or their ties to other PCs from other cultures.
  • GM allows some additional editing and compromise of the culture and material to allow certain characters and the group as a whole to work
  • GM’s ability to roleplay NPCs in a way that is accurate to the culture.
  • Variable PC engagement with the game world to make culturally appropriate choices both individually and as a group.
  • The PCs desire to be the heroes of the story and have an impact on the culture and game world described to the point of making dramatic in world changes.

(add in various stops for real world issues, in-jokes, pop culture references, people looking at their phone etc)

Once all of this is taken together the chances that an individual player at a table of three or four other players and a GM is going to experience what it was like being in a real-life culture is basically zero. Which is why personally as a consumer I would have no expectation that that is the experience I am buying.

None of this is to say that authors shouldn’t do research but that research I would expect to be with the artistic aim of producing a work that has a particular aesthetic and verisimilitude. In other words, a feeling that the world you are playing in is real. But that is very different to the reader, or the GM or the player (or a member of a particular culture for that matter) engaging with the book as if it is a historical sourcebook (or any kind of real educational tool).

A cultural consultant might be useful for some authors for research but I just don’t see them as a necessary value add when considering what a rpg sourcebook is for and how it is used.
 
TristramEvans said:
I really don't know what I wrote that you interpreted as me "trying to explain to [you] what beliefs are central for the culture of the Balkan peninsula"
My reply doesn't state anything about that - I would never have even attempted to do so.
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See (your own) post #268 if you're not clear on what prompted this response...:shade:
After that, let's drop this line. It was pages and pages ago, I just didn't want to leave that unaddressed. (The rest of your post I'm totally not in the mood to address today...and probably never. I'm putting it in the categories "posts that are best forgotten ASAP, by a poster I generally respect", FWIW).

Toadmaster said:
As I pointed out in my deleted comment Polynesia covers 800,000 square miles, 8 major cultural groups, and 38 languages. Modern Polynesia includes several independent nations as well as direct influence from the USA, UK, France, Chile, and New Zealand. If the related cultures of Melanesia and Micronesia are included then it gets even more broad.

A 200 something page book with pure historical intent would struggle to cover the culture and history of the region, and wouldn't be devoting pages to rules like weather, sailing and surfing.
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Yes, and that's why I said it should be cut a lot more slack.
Or, in this case, it should be used as "Mythic (Polynsia-NZ)":tongue:!

Atelerix said:
Scots dialects do something similar.

Typically in English, the "wh" sound is pronounced "w". What and whale are pronounced "wat" and "wale".

Lallans (lowland) Scots pronounces the phoneme as "hw". What and whale become "Hwat" and "hwale".

In Doric, the dialect of Aberdeenshire, what becomes "fit". So "what are you doing [stepbro]?" becomes "fit ee daein'?"

Sadly, I don't have an Aberdonian on hand to talk about whales.

Beyond some mild ribbing (in all directions) it's not a point of contention.

Cone to think of it, "hu" in Japanese is usually transliterated as "fu". I wonder it it's a really common sound mutation!
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One of the things that are throwing me off in Brazilian Portuguese is how they read "ru", "ro" and so on as "hu", "ho", and so on...
I've been pronouncing the names of Roger and Rickson Gracie for long for a startingly long time:shock:!

TristramEvans said:
Covering Polynesia was an ambitious project, but if the takeaway from this anyone arrives it "never try to cover an otherwise not often covered culture & period of history" I think that's completely missing the point.
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And yet I'd bet that a lot of publishers are going to take exactly this from the whole social media storm...:devil:

Leon ap Hywel said:
If you don’t mind getting banned you should do that.
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If that's the purple site, being banned is just a matter of number of posts...:thumbsup:

Atelerix said:
Got the PDF on Tuesday, as an intro to a time and a place I knew nothing about. Lots of useful material.

Am I disappointed that there are errors in the descriptions of Maori history, culture and belief? Of course.

Am I glad that it exists at all? You betcha.

Hearing that it's really solid otherwise is a bonus.
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Yup, that's my take on it. And I'm just going to order the hardcopy next year. Hopefully it would be the same edition yet - I love tables that represent statistical deviations among populations:gunslinger:!

Also, raniE raniE there are quite a few similarities in the Christianisation of the Scandinavian and Balkan peninsulas (though it involved slightly more violence on our side, if I'm reading right between the lines of what remained recorded). I've always found that interesting, TBH!
 
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Black Leaf said:
I'd agree, but I think this specific issue is quite muddied at the moment for several reasons.

Firstly, "cultural consultant" and "sensitivity reader" seem to be being used interchangably. Are they the same thing? Is it the same remit? I have no idea currently.

Related to that, what the actual role is seems to vary wildly from "it's a factchecker to make sure there's no inaccuracies" to "the role is to make sure you validate any marginalised groups in your work". I lean much more towards the former approach but it feels almost random what you're going to get if you hire someone.

There's also questions of what specifically qualifies someone for the job. At worst (particularly in the US) that seems to be based entirely on ethnic heritage rather than knowledge. The idea that someone who's lived in the US all their life is more qualified to talk about a culture than someone who's lived in a culture for decades but has the wrong "blood" is very dubious indeed. And I've seen it lived into some really dubious places. The one that sticks in my mind is someone on Twitter claiming that someone who had lived in Japan for 12 years shouldn't write about it because "I wouldn't write about Robin Hood". Yeah, if you're American you maybe don't have the cultural knowledge. But any argument that implies that a Black Briton doesn't own Robin Hood as much as I do is dodgy as fuck whether it comes from the BNP or a 'progressive'.

Finally, there's the question of exactly what you're paying for. I've seen repeated claims that it's unreasonable to even mention the cultural consultant in regards to inaccuracies they've missed. In which case, what exactly are they for? I've worked as a proofreader and I'd get short shrift if I tried to claim that missing typos wasn't my responsibility.

Overall then, the idea of a cultural consultant seems reasonable and useful to me. How it's being implemented in RPG circles? Frequently not so good.
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These are all very good points.

I grew up moving around from country to countrt. In the mid-80s, while my supposed cultural peers where watching He-Man, The A-Team, GI Joe and Tranformers, shows I am only vaguely familiar with, I was in Kuwait watching a blend of Bollywood, anime dubbed in French with Arabic subtitles and Betty Boop cartoons.

There simply isn't a place for me in the world of cultural purity that some of these people want.
 
Baulderstone said:
These are all very good points.

I grew up moving around from country to countrt. In the mid-80s, while my supposed cultural peers where watching He-Man, GI Joe and Tranformers, shows I am only vaguely familiar with, I was in Kuwait watching a blend of Bollywood, anime dubbed in French with Arabic subtitles and Betty Boop cartoons.

There simply isn't a place for me in the world of cultural purity that some these people want.
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Funnily enough, I was asked recently if I could check over a work that used Jewish mythology. And according to the cultural purists I should be perfectly qualified because I'm halachic Jewish. But I passed it on to a friend on the grounds that, unlike me, she actually attends synagogue. And even she only agreed with lots of qualifiers about how she wasn't really able to talk about different movements like the Orthodox.
 
Yeah, I'm what might be described as technically Jewish, but I don't think that gives me any special insight or control over Jewish narratives. I did like Fiddler on the Roof though, so there's that.
 
TristramEvans said:
Is that like a podcast?
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Yep. Interview with Loz and Brian Pivik (who does some work with them)
Midas said:
Weelllll....Not for the system in question:
"Mysteries of Mesoamerica", and "Terror Australis"
:grin:
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The latter is on DTRPG in the 1e format with a wonderful variety of incorrect language related to racial issues in Australia.
 
Fenris-77 said:
I am also known to occasionally use words like kvetch, schvitz, and oy vey. I don't think that came packaged with my parentage though. :grin:
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Hah, a number of Yiddish words made it into Amsterdam accent/dialect and even into Dutch so am I partly qualified as a Jewish sensitivity reader now, even though I probably have the most boringly common fully Dutch and Frisian, at "most" Western European, roots? :grin:
 
Zebraman said:
Once all of this is taken together the chances that an individual player at a table of three or four other players and a GM is going to experience what it was like being in a real-life culture is basically zero. Which is why personally as a consumer I would have no expectation that that is the experience I am buying.

None of this is to say that authors shouldn’t do research but that research I would expect to be with the artistic aim of producing a work that has a particular aesthetic and verisimilitude. In other words, a feeling that the world you are playing in is real. But that is very different to the reader, or the GM or the player (or a member of a particular culture for that matter) engaging with the book as if it is a historical sourcebook (or any kind of real educational tool).
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That, to me, feels like an argument towards wanting the book to have folk with first-hand knowledge of the actual culture involved (eg. primary sources), because they'll be able to bring more information about how things are actually lived and done; it removes some of those filter layers, and can tell me what those cultures find mythic and fantastical about themselves, which will help me as a GM populate the world better and (On either side of the screen) get into the headspace of the people described, as well as provide context for the mechanics and how they could potentially be expanded.

Will a sourcebook show me what that actual real culture is like? No, it won't, and I accept that (And wouldn't expect it, either). But for me, the closer to the inspiration the author can get, the better presented the culture can be as something different to what I personally know and experience, and those small details are what help my verisimilitude.
 
Yeah, I think there's a big difference between "pure fictional" and "reality based setting with fictional elements".

If we treat everything as the former there's no logical argument against having Space Marines turn up in Ancient Greece.
 
Ladybird said:
That, to me, feels like an argument towards wanting the book to have folk with first-hand knowledge of the actual culture involved (eg. primary sources), because they'll be able to bring more information about how things are actually lived and done; it removes some of those filter layers, and can tell me what those cultures find mythic and fantastical about themselves, which will help me as a GM populate the world better and (On either side of the screen) get into the headspace of the people described, as well as provide context for the mechanics and how they could potentially be expanded.

Will a sourcebook show me what that actual real culture is like? No, it won't, and I accept that (And wouldn't expect it, either). But for me, the closer to the inspiration the author can get, the better presented the culture can be as something different to what I personally know and experience, and those small details are what help my verisimilitude.
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I can't say I've ever played games too close to actual cultures as lived. Even when I've played clear knock offs like Rokugan it's only broad strokes that mattered to our groups. I was fun gaming but it was roleplaying for a game vs roleplaying to understand a society.
 
Black Leaf said:
Yeah, I think there's a big difference between "pure fictional" and "reality based setting with fictional elements".

If we treat everything as the former there's no logical argument against having Space Marines turn up in Ancient Greece.
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Hellas is a pretty cool game.

(In the case of cultures which are long-dead and where there aren't any primary sources... well, I don't expect authors to be summoning the dead for a chat. But if I was writing a game about roman soldiers, for example, I might contact a few re-enactors to get an idea about how the kit actually works in daily use.)
Bunch said:
I can't say I've ever played games too close to actual cultures as lived. Even when I've played clear knock offs like Rokugan it's only broad strokes that mattered to our groups. I was fun gaming but it was roleplaying for a game vs roleplaying to understand a society.
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Well, yeah. But I actually think L5R is a good example of what I want; it devotes a lot of space to the why of rokugani people think and act like they do, with rules that flow fairly naturally from that. It's still roleplaying for a game, which if course it's going to be, but it lets you go fairly deep into that.
 
3rik said:
Hah, a number of Yiddish words made it into Amsterdam accent/dialect and even into Dutch so am I partly qualified as a Jewish sensitivity reader now, even though I probably have the most boringly common fully Dutch and Frisian, at "most" Western European, roots? :grin:
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Are you fishing for a job, too:shock:?
 
Ladybird said:
Hellas is a pretty cool game.

(In the case of cultures which are long-dead and where there aren't any primary sources... well, I don't expect authors to be summoning the dead for a chat. But if I was writing a game about roman soldiers, for example, I might contact a few re-enactors to get an idea about how the kit actually works in daily use.)

Well, yeah. But I actually think L5R is a good example of what I want; it devotes a lot of space to the why of rokugani people think and act like they do, with rules that flow fairly naturally from that. It's still roleplaying for a game, which if course it's going to be, but it lets you go fairly deep into that.
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All I can say is you and I have different players. Most of mine look at the pretty picture a d say I want to be that! I have one paragraph to describe the vibe of the world and then it's people looking nervous if they'll be tested on this later.
So Mythic Polynesia would be islands! No steel! Cultural Explorer mythology/mentality! Boats! Shark men! No armor? Tattoos!
 
Sensitivity Readers give you changes like this...
  • "The Mysterious East" as a descriptor is insensitive in a game about REH's Conan, where no one in The Dreaming West knows a thing about Khitai.
  • The term "Martial Arts" is a western term, it shouldn't be applied to eastern fighting styles. It got changed to HTH Combat, even though weapons are part of it.
The laughable part, of course, is that "Martial Arts" is directly translated from Wushu. It was always an Eastern term. That's why people who study European styles call it WMA (Western Martial Arts) or HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts).

Sensitivity Readers don't possess specific knowledge of anything besides certain political and cultural theories. You hire one because if you don't, well...you have a good company there, be a shame if something happened to it. It's a grift and a power play. It's Twitter Insurance.

As far as Cultural Consultants go, it's the same thing. They're Sensitivity Readers who do have some knowledge of a specific culture. Do they know as much as a multi-disciplinary PhD who's devoted their life to writing a dozen books on the culture in question? No. If they did, they'd be making money writing books. Instead, they want to convince everyone that their education has value by holding the Social Media Mob threat over any company that doesn't hire them. Again, it's a grift and a sign of power.

Most of the Mythic line shows if you go to the correct sources, you don't need to be an expert in that cultural field (although some of the Mythic authors certainly are).

Mythic Polynesia shows what happens if you go to the wrong sources. But, did Mark Shirley need to check with Liam? No. What he should have done is referenced more sources. It didn't take Séadna Séadna very long to verify that the Maori section was wrong, and the rest of the book was right. Granted Séadna Séadna is an AI, but everything was verifiable.

Cultural Consultants or Sensitivity Readers are hardly ever needed. If you're talking about a modern group and the game is set in modern times, then of course, going to the people as a source can supplement research and could be valuable.

Cultures and Races aren't Gods, you don't need Priests to translate.
 
Black Leaf said:
Yeah, I think there's a big difference between "pure fictional" and "reality based setting with fictional elements".

If we treat everything as the former there's no logical argument against having Space Marines turn up in Ancient Greece.
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Yes there is. As stated, the aesthetic and verisimilitude.

Also considering magic, sharkmen and island sized lizards I think "reality based setting with fictional elements" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
 
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Fenris-77 said:
There's a difference between the internet edgelords of 15 years ago and what we're talking about here. What we're seeing now is pretty much a straight power play executed under the guise of outrage. Sadly, outrage of a particular sort has a lot of currency just now.

Edit: to add another bit, we're also talking about the replacement of expertise, or actual knowledge, with something that people want to call lived experience. This is an idea I find all manner of problematic. Not in any kind of rally around the academy way, but far more because people seem to think that just kind of stating this thing both automatically grants them the right to speak, and denies that right to anyone who falls outside their criteria (whatever that might be). That's not to belittle the possible importance of lived experience, rather the opposite, but instead the notion that birth alone grants (or denies) the right to speak or critique.
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A time and place within a lifetime of the present, "lived experience" may have some value, but only at a rather superficial and anecdotal level. Can I give some input to the SF Bay Area in the 80s? Sure I can give you the experience of one white and nerdy lower middle class guy from one of the larger cities (but not "the City"). I have no real insight into what "the cool kids" were doing, can't really reflect on what it was like being from another cultural / racial group. Sure I had friends who were not white, or from higher lower income classes, but that doesn't make me any kind of expert on being Chinese or black, or a woman, or gay or a party dude / dudette or even a Super Nerd (I was not cool, but I was also a lower case nerd) at that time and place.

Lived experience from somebody in the present is worse than useless unless you are talking about a culture that still lives largely as they did hundreds or thousands of years ago. There are still a few indigenous groups that have maintained minimal contact with the outside world, but outside of that even a lot of people who still live a rather ancient life style have been changed by the modern world. I think it is safe to assume most Amish of 2022 are culturally different from the Amish of 1922 or 1822. Not using all of the trappings of modern life does not make one unaware of it, and that chnages ideas of the world.

Bunch said:
Is there a Mythic MesoAmerica?
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GURPS Aztecs


Ladybird said:
Hellas is a pretty cool game.

(In the case of cultures which are long-dead and where there aren't any primary sources... well, I don't expect authors to be summoning the dead for a chat. But if I was writing a game about roman soldiers, for example, I might contact a few re-enactors to get an idea about how the kit actually works in daily use.)

Well, yeah. But I actually think L5R is a good example of what I want; it devotes a lot of space to the why of rokugani people think and act like they do, with rules that flow fairly naturally from that. It's still roleplaying for a game, which if course it's going to be, but it lets you go fairly deep into that.
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Re-enactors can be a useful source, but must be taken with a grain of salt. They can be prone to spreading bad information as well. The bad is often glossed over or flat out ignored, and liberties are often taken for fun, comfort or financial reasons, kind of like RPGs.
 
Ladybird said:
That, to me, feels like an argument towards wanting the book to have folk with first-hand knowledge of the actual culture involved (eg. primary sources), because they'll be able to bring more information about how things are actually lived and done; it removes some of those filter layers, and can tell me what those cultures find mythic and fantastical about themselves, which will help me as a GM populate the world better and (On either side of the screen) get into the headspace of the people described, as well as provide context for the mechanics and how they could potentially be expanded.

Will a sourcebook show me what that actual real culture is like? No, it won't, and I accept that (And wouldn't expect it, either). But for me, the closer to the inspiration the author can get, the better presented the culture can be as something different to what I personally know and experience, and those small details are what help my verisimilitude.
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Again as I said a cultural consultant may be helpful to the author from an artistic point of view to help build the verisimilitude. But the idea that it is necessary to help ensure actual realism doesn't really track for me as a consumer because the filtering process is so extensive from real life to gaming table it is never going to be a real life culture being presented.
 
Bunch said:
All I can say is you and I have different players. Most of mine look at the pretty picture a d say I want to be that! I have one paragraph to describe the vibe of the world and then it's people looking nervous if they'll be tested on this later.
So Mythic Polynesia would be islands! No steel! Cultural Explorer mythology/mentality! Boats! Shark men! No armor? Tattoos!
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That's fair. And yeah, I've long accepted my outlook on these things is different from many other people's.
Toadmaster said:
Re-enactors can be a useful source, but must be taken with a grain of salt. They can be prone to spreading bad information as well. The bad is often glossed over or flat out ignored, and liberties are often taken for fun, comfort or financial reasons, kind of like RPGs.
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Oh, totally. Would I trust their opinion on the effectiveness of the roman senate from a soldier's point of view? Probably not. Would I trust them to tell me how they'd stow their gear while travelling and what aches and pains a hard day's romanning might give them? Probably.

would i invite them to turn up to my new year's party in full campaign gear again? probably not tbh.
 
Zebraman said:
Yes there is. As stated, the aesthetic and verisimilitude.
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But if it's pure fiction there can be no true versimilitude because it requires the existence of a material truth to measure it against. If a setting is pure fiction from the mind of its creator, no setting element is more out of place than any other. Justification of Space Marines merely requires the author to see Space Marines as part of the setting with no relation to anyone else.
Toadmaster said:
Re-enactors can be a useful source, but must be taken with a grain of salt. They can be prone to spreading bad information as well. The bad is often glossed over or flat out ignored, and liberties are often taken for fun, comfort or financial reasons, kind of like RPGs.
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Personally I'd go specifically for one of the renenactor groups that does educational/living history work and specifically would avoid the SCA. (Which is no slur on the SCA, simply a recognition that historical fidelity is pretty low down their list of aims.
 
Black Leaf said:
But if it's pure fiction there can be no true versimilitude because it requires the existence of a material truth to measure it against. If a setting is pure fiction from the mind of its creator, no setting element is more out of place than any other. Justification of Space Marines merely requires the author to see Space Marines as part of the setting with no relation to anyone else.

Personally I'd go specifically for one of the renenactor groups that does educational/living history work and specifically would avoid the SCA. (Which is no slur on the SCA, simply a recognition that historical fidelity is pretty low down their list of aims.
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In this context it's the reader/GM/gamers/consumers who will be the ultimate judge of verisimilitude not the author.

Secondly verisimilitude is a feeling of reality though not necessarily your own reality. An adjacent word would be immersion. I struggle to see how you can present a fantasy version of Greece with Space Marines that conjures this feeling of reality.

Similarly I said aesthetic and verisimilitude. The aesthetic would also preclude Space Marines in fantasy Greece.

Whereas judging from sales and reviews Mythic Polynesia demonstrably can create this aethestic and verisimilitude of a fantasy Polynesia despite historic inaccuracies.

The idea that something can be pure fiction and therefore anything goes is contrary to thousands of years of thought about structured narrative.

To put it another way, to use the argument your making why put any fantasy elements in? They necessarily taint the subject and present an inaccurate history. It should be 100% real or nothing.
 
CRKrueger said:
As far as Cultural Consultants go, it's the same thing.
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I very much disagree with you there. Sensitivity readers are a modern phenomena, brought about by attempts to navigate the constantly shifting mindfield of what is currently considered "PC" (as such I'm not sure they are ever an appropriate topic for discussion here at the Pub).

But using Cultural Consultants on media is a practice stretching back close to a hundred years. Anton La Vey was a cultural consultant on Rosemary's Baby. It's not unusual by any stretch of the means to reach out to a expert to look over one's research or to ensure authenticity.

Can someone be both? Yeah, sure. But they aren't the same thing at all.
 
Black Leaf said:
But if it's pure fiction there can be no true versimilitude because it requires the existence of a material truth to measure it against. If a setting is pure fiction from the mind of its creator, no setting element is more out of place than any other. Justification of Space Marines merely requires the author to see Space Marines as part of the setting with no relation to anyone else.

Personally I'd go specifically for one of the renenactor groups that does educational/living history work and specifically would avoid the SCA. (Which is no slur on the SCA, simply a recognition that historical fidelity is pretty low down their list of aims.
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I was thinking more specifically reenacting with baggage rather than SCA. Extremes being German WW2 soldier, or Confederate soldier. These are popular reenacting subjects but they tend to be sanitized to leave out the less desirable elements which can give a skewed view of reality.

As Ladybird referenced reenactors are mostly good for evaluating physical aspects, gear, maybe what the daily routine was like. Not so useful for sociological aspects of how people thought which tend to be highly censored as even educational reenactors don't usually want to focus on the dark places of history. Even when trying to give an accurate representation many of those dark places require far to much context and understanding to do them any justice. The bad without that context can easily become caricature.

I wouldn't expect old west reenactors to portray the real life common 1800s attitudes towards women and the Chinese or Irish. What they may be able to tell you in a side bar about attitudes of the period you can easily find in a book. You also find a lot more gamblers and cowboys than farmers because they are more fun for most people.

Again, quite a lot like RPGs which hype the fun parts and gloss over the bad.

Zebraman said:
In this context it's the reader/GM/gamers/consumers who will be the ultimate judge of verisimilitude not the author.

Secondly verisimilitude is a feeling of reality though not necessarily your own reality. An adjacent word would be immersion. I struggle to see how you can present a fantasy version of Greece with Space Marines that conjures this feeling of reality.

Similarly I said aesthetic and verisimilitude. The aesthetic would also preclude Space Marines in fantasy Greece.

Whereas judging from sales and reviews Mythic Polynesia demonstrably can create this aethestic and verisimilitude of a fantasy Polynesia despite historic inaccuracies.

The idea that something can be pure fiction and therefore anything goes is contrary to thousands of years of thought about structured narrative.

To put it another way, to use the argument your making why put any fantasy elements in? They necessarily taint the subject and present an inaccurate history. It should be 100% real or nothing.
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In some ways including "real" mythology as it was believed to work, is harder than straight history. It needs to be both accurate and fun, or you aren't going to sell a lot of games. Black Death the RPG of living during the bubonic plague epidemic of the 1300s will likely be a lot more popular if it is spun into a survival horror game, than as a technically accurate historical game of living as a peasant while disease runs rampant around you.
 
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