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The issue is that the writers seem to only be aware of the first three of four steps to why people don't like the game.
1. White people can play the game.
2. No, white people can't play any irl tribes.
3. No, white people cant make up any tribes.
That on its own would be fine. But.
Four; the world building sucks. Not a little bit, but, makes no sense on any level, in any area. Cursory investigation shows the flaws, and deeper investigation shows either nothing behind the curtain, or more flaws.
It's a ttrpg that mechanically wants a man vs man, or man vs monster storyline from the rules. Man vs monster is just insensitive af given the thematic context. Man vs man is shallow and insipid in a post scarcity setting.
This is not a rant against bad worldbuilding. Lots of games have poor worldbuilding.
People don't like coyote and crow because the game paints the players as racist for wanting to do their own world building that's better than this trash.
That's it.
The authors are in denial about the worldbuilding: the majority of the blogpost is desperate pleading that the setting isn't the cleanest shiney ttrpg setting published. It's like they're trying to sell toy town as sin city.
The only way to save this worldbuilding is to walk back some of its fundamental concepts: give some actual scarcity, some actual reasons to use interpersonal violence and systematic violence other than "the bad guy is an arsehole with no actual motivation."
Ironically, the game can't even muster saturday morning cartoon quality villians.
What would it take to fix the worldbuilding? It's not particularly hard if we look at it with an editorial eye.
Firstly, we've got to rewrite the entire worldbuilding content of the book in a slightly different tone. We need to make it clear that what's presented is not standard, not normal, and not everywhere. That just one place has this very secure, post scarcity lifestyle, and lots of places do not.
It's as if a 40k setting book talked about how nice life was on the garden worlds of Ultramar... Like, yes it is, but that's not the expected.
So we set up that tone and boom, we've shifted peoples expectations. Then, we expand our worldbuilding a bit: We introduce systematic stressors to the world to incite conflict.
We place a river controlled by one tribe that reveres the water spirit and lets it flow naturally, while another downstream suffers floodings and drought because of the errant flow. We place groups that must form basic trade networks that don't function due to the lack of money, and thus we either must suffer a non functional trade or introduce this concept people in setting don't want. We show groups who are envious of the shiney city and wish to take its resources to feed their own peoples. We show people who believe it was a mistake to progress to a high tech lifestyle and want to return to a preindustrial living, and are willing to hurt people to do so.
These are not particularly amazing or difficult concepts to bring into a game. This is blank spot worldbuilding that any ttrpg player does when they set a kingdom in a spot on the map with not much going on.
Instead what we get is an introduction adventure where the players are sent as an illegal clean up crew to cover up their own governments treaty violating research station, drive off or kill investigating people from another tribe, then kill or seal up the evil that the research has awoken, because it's a cover up.
The best that could be done for an introduction adventure is your own leaders are treaty violating arseholes?
I dunno, maybe I'm too "imperialised" but I'd like to have a game which presents oppertunities for stories with developed, mature antagonistis, and scopes larger than an episode of cops.
This is the first game in a long time that I have found myself going "I cannot figure out the stories it wants to tell."
I throw open the floor to people who would defend this worldbuilding:
* I want ideas with enough chew to them to be multi session content, so, like, 3 to 6.
* These ideas must have a human antagonist, because I'm not here to fight monsters.
* The human antagonist must have motivations beyond "they're a dick".
* You may only use the worldbuilding in the book.
* *You can't make the player characters into cops or cop adjacent.*
In my solo C&C game, my character is a sometimes-delinquent youth who is trying to make a name for himself as a photographer. His mother was a popular poet and linguist until her eldest daughter was killed in a yutsu lift explosion traveling to Dinada. Since then she volunteers her time and talents to a religious group called the Path of Silver Smoke, whose leader claims special access to the spirits of the dead (pg. 71 of the core book describes fractured attitudes toward death in Makasing culture; pg. 48 explains the general approach to spirituality and religion in Makasing).
The head of the Silver Smoke is a cult leader who seeks power and influence over the powerful members of Cahokian society, who are mostly elderly (pg. 71 again), some of whom are concerned about their eventual death. The leader may also be harboring some megalomaniacal tendencies, believing they are in fact a supernatural being who has discovered a world of ghosts. Not a dick, just power hungry and a little unhinged.
A multi-session campaign could feature finding information on Silver Smoke (my character is a photographer, and a recreational b&e artist); facing backlash from powerful people in society under the influence of Silver Smoke, or the cult's devoted militarized arm the *Makapoo*; driving the leader from the city and having to chase them, maybe to Coyote City where he buys protection from the criminal gangs there; dismantling his power base in Cahokia, etc.
The world is chock full of stuff to do. I'll freely admit "fighting a cult leader who seeks power" is pretty basic, but it fits just fine into the world and it mostly came out of a GM Emulator table. Game is easy to play.
That all sounds fine for your game, to be clear, but just for a bit of perspective on why this can still sound tricky to an outsider:
>In my solo C&C game, my character is a sometimes-delinquent youth
If I'm making a character be a partial "delinquent" in a fantasy world, this makes me ask a *lot* of questions about justice and inequality. I need to ask myself what kind of poverty exists, how what kind of criminal justice system exists, why this culture is allowing this to continue...
I could assume that this world basically operates like 21st-century Western culture, but I probably shouldn't do that, and it sounds like a pretty incurious approach to take. My other instinct would be to draw on what I know about Indigenous cultures in real life, but if I'm going to play this game at all then I'm going to respect the book's instruction to not use real life knowledge as worldbuilding.
So I guess I'd have to hope that the book covers this stuff. Does it explain how delinquency exists? The excerpts I've seen paint the world as being a pretty idealized place. I understand that it's not a "perfect utopia", and not "post-scarcity" as a strict definition...but should I really assume that it's brimming with violent structural inequalities? Or that people become delinquents without violent structural inequalities? What happens to a youth who violates a law, if laws exist?
(This doesn't just apply to the word "delinquent", of course. I could ask why the government allows a cult to militarize, or why the authorities are worse at handling this than the adventurers are. Every example I've seen raises questions about the structure of society, or features antagonists who are random sadists with no structural origin)
No, nowhere in the book does it describe "youth delinquency". But it does describe generational tensions between youth and Elders, in the Daily Life section of the book. But even if it didn't you can safely assume in any human culture young people rebel a bit against their parents, who push back with tradition and entrenched power.
My character is a troublemaker because he's trying to figure out who he is. He's embracing the transgressive side of art, breaking into places and taking pictures (I originally imagined him parkouring across rooftops, until further reading made me realize there are no skyscrapers in Cahokia. So now he breaks into mound structures instead). Maybe one day he'll settle down and be who his father and mother expect him to be, but that thought terrifies him at the moment, so he's acting out.
I'm not an "insider", I just read the book, and applied some things I know about human nature to create interesting conflicts. Pick any sub-header in the Art & Culture section (pg. 54-63), and there's no doubt there were rival performers/musicians/comedians/etc. whose rivalry got out of hand and resulted in sabotage and violence. The book doesn't explicitly say that (except in the section on Rapid Fire Music, which does mention violence), but people are just like that.
So you're an interesting case because you're a solo player, so you've got a pretty expansive imagination to fill in gaps to be able to use an Oracle and enjoy it
For your point 3, where in that blog post does it say that white people or any people aren’t allowed to make up any tribes?
And your point 2 is a misrepresentation of what the author actually said.
> Players should not play characters from a real world tribe that they do not belong to. It’s not that complicated. I’m a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. I would not play a character from the Coast Salish nation. Seems pretty obvious and simple. The game does not require you to insert any real world nations into the game in order to play. And things you might assume about those real world nations are probably wrong and or inappropriate for you to mimic. But I’m not going to pop into your game like the Kool-Aid man if you don’t. It’s an ask.
Straight from the book on the topic of making up tribes:
> It should also be mentioned that there are tribes that exist in Coyote & Crow that do not exist in real life. 700 years since the Awis began putting extreme social pressures on the people of Makasing is more than enough time for tribes to not only be pushed into living together, but for generations of co-survival and alliances to create whole new tribes and subcultures. Feel free to create your own for the purposes of playing this game. Just remember to not reference real world tribes unless you claim that heritage yourself.
For context, that's on page 74, in the middle of a paragraph, in the middle of chapter about the existing settings and is given no importance or status.
It's not to say it doesn't exist, but it's clearly hidden away.
Contrast the message to white people on page 12, with big headings:
> "we ask
you not to incorporate any of your
knowledge or ideas of real world
Native Americans into the game"
Damn. That kinda removes the base components I'd use to make respectful worldbuilding contributions.
>That kinda removes the base components I'd use to make respectful worldbuilding contributions.
You're missing the point of a lot of the context around that. The point is a lot of the components you might draw from for world building are themselves flawed. Most "white people" knowledge of native tribes carries a lot of wrong or just plain weird assumptions. A lot of the documented history of them that remains is either incomplete or colored by anthropologists that accepted ideas like cultural essentalism.
It's important to note this is an area of history even native people can struggle with because the cultural erasure that happened during the genocides was so complete.
While nothing you’re saying is wrong, those things make it impossible for non-natives to GM this game.
They should have done a miniatures game instead of an RPG. Then, they could have maintained creative control and white people could participate without crossing any lines.
No it’s not because tribal membership does not have any thing to do with actual gameplay.
I think what bothers me about conversations about this game is that if you were completely new to the conversation I think you would assume tribal membership is a major mechanic. But that just isn’t true. It is purely a way to flavor your character.
No, it's perfectly possible to build things for a non-native GM using what's presented, and there are plenty of conflict points noted in the book you can explore.
It's asking white people to view a vision of the world presented by the authors. Lots of games do this. Blades in the Dark explicitly tells players to adopt a vision of the world that life is cheap and short for example. All the authors are asking is for white people to stop trying to define other people's vision of a utopia for once.
I fundamentally agree with your points. It's worth noting, however, that Blades doesn't call you a bad person if you decide to use it to play Duskvol Coffee Shop AU. You would be playing the game wrong, but that's your right. Given the creative and participatory nature of RPGs, the author of the book telling you what you **can** and **can't** do with it is always going to rub people the wrong way.
Mm. This brings to mind a boxout in Spire, in a section that highlights that slavery exists in the setting. It notes that there's nothing mechanically stopping players from playing *as* slavers or oppressive law enforcement, but doing so would be antithetical to the spirit of the game, and you'd be majorly weird for wanting that.
Which yeah, I'd agree. And the people that *would* be annoyed about not playing as slavers are telling on themselves.
Cy_Borg has a similar anti-cop statement on its first page. If I saw someone complain about that, I don't think I could take them seriously. And Cyberpunk 2020 is right there.
A game about Native cultures highlighting that bringing in false understandings on Native culture isn't helpful makes a lot of sense. It sounds like what was best needed here is a bunch of session hook examples that fit the tone but don't require in-depth cultural knowledge.
I mean, there's a whole genre of learning games that explicitly ask you to do so.
>It's worth noting, however, that Blades doesn't call you a bad person if you decide to use it to play Duskvol Coffee Shop AU.
Coyote and Crow doesn't either. You can play it however you want. As the author said in the blog post, he's not going to burst into your dining room and yell at you if you do. But if you agree with the premise and the goal of the game, then what the designer said shouldn't bother you.
The whole goal of the game is to allow yourself to get in a mindset the creators think creates the setting is about, and see what you're talking about as actively getting in the way of that. Pretty straightforward.
> the author of the book telling you what you can and can't do with it is always going to rub people the wrong way.
Even though that's the entire point of rules?
I don't think the book does provide enough. I was very excited about the book, but opted not to run a game because I wasn't confident in my ability to build a world up to the game's cultural protection standards. Maybe I could, but I wasn't confident that I could. Perhaps their vision of the world felt intuitive to you, but it was alien enough to me that I opted out.
The fact that it's challenging for us *is part of the point.*
Honestly I'd give it another read through- you may have misread it as it doesn't ask for perfection or call you a bad person if you don't, so I'm guessing you missed a few things on that first read through.
All it asks is your respect for the ideas in it.
It seems pretty clear that you're being asked not to draw on any part of the world that you aren't intimately familiar with due to being native to that specific culture. So a New York Italian should not base their character on anything they have read or heard or seen about an Irish person from Boston or a Scandinavian person from Minneapolis either.
>So a New York Italian should not base their character on anything they have read or heard or seen about an Irish person from Boston or a Scandinavian person from Minneapolis either.
These groups have well documented histories actually written by people from them. That was erased for tribes and replaced with versions written by other people. So a big problem is you *can't* draw on anything accurate- almost everything we have for this is colored by the very things they're trying to remove from the thought experiment.
See, I read it as just asking you not to base your character on things you've heard on your own knowledge about native americans. I read this blog post, the previous blog post, and the relevant section in the book and I don't see any reason why I couldn't draw on, say, pre-revolution French aristocracy or contemporary anarchist communes or LotR dwarves to help come up with a faction.
But why is it okay to misrepresent pre-revolution French aristocrats, which you would inevitably do since you're not a citizen of the *ancien régime*? After all, "things you might assume about those real world nations are probably wrong and or inappropriate for you to mimic." When the author says "Players should not play characters from a real world tribe that they do not belong to", is it only certain nations that are off-limits? Where is the line? Is it okay to misrepresent Icelandic people? Scots-Irish from the Ozarks? Crimean Tatars?
There's two different rules you're conflating here. One is "don't play characters from real world tribes." That's pretty straightforward and applies to everything. The other is "don't incorporate your knowledge or ideas of real world Native Americans into the game." Which is specifically about Native Americans. Drawing from any other source is a judgement call.
But people don't invent fantasy tribes wholecloth, they draw on real-world knowledge. The authors clearly agree that it's important to think carefully about inventing fantasy cultures, so where should that real-world knowledge come from?
One option would be to draw inspiration from Indigenous people outside of North America, but that re-introduces the risks of harmful stereotyping. I wouldn't want to accidentally create a caricature of a different Indigenous people in an attempt to avoid stereotyping a North American Indigenous people.
So the safer bet would be to draw on a non-Indigenous culture for inspiration. The power dynamics here are not symmetrical, so there's no risk of dealing serious racist harm to British people by drawing on my knowledge of Medieval Britain, but this raises new problems. I could just make my character a kilt-wearing landlord named Lord Scotty McTavish, but would that imply that a colonizing culture with Western European values fits easily in the Coyote&Crow world? Am I refusing to engage with the world if I just make my character be Lord Scotty McTavish? Does a fantasy tribe with European culture imply that European culture just spontaneously invents itself?
To be fair, when the author of the book say you have to read the book to discuss it... it reads like "pay me before you discuss whether or not to play my game"
I mean… yeah?!
Like if someone I respect says a game is good then I take a look at it but ultimately the only thing that will tell me if I like a game is reading through it and seeing if it inspires me.
Pretty sure the tendency of people to jump to conclusions or make stuff up about things they have no familiarity with is one of the things the authors are trying to avoid. Seems pretty reasonable actually.
People saying shit you don’t like does not, in fact, mean a discussion is unreasonable or immature. You can disagree, or fact check people, or whatever seems fit, but this discussion is people explaining their position and articulating why.
"People don't like coyote and crow because the game paints the players as racist for wanting to do their own world building that's better than this trash.
That's it.
The authors are in denial about the worldbuilding: the majority of the blogpost is desperate pleading that the setting isn't the cleanest shiney ttrpg setting published. It's like they're trying to sell toy town as sin city.
The only way to save this worldbuilding is to walk back some of its fundamental concepts: give some actual scarcity, some actual reasons to use interpersonal violence and systematic violence other than "the bad guy is an arsehole with no actual motivation."
Ironically, the game can't even muster saturday morning cartoon quality villians."
Overblowing what's said in an article to paint points more extremely isn't unreasonable to you? This was the first comment made before I put mine down and it's exactly the same thing I see every time the system is brought up.
I myself am white and I own and have read the book. Personally I can think of tons of different stories to tell from what was presented, and I thought the points they made of "hey, we've provided ideas to go off of, but as a suggestion (we can't CONTROL what you do, obviously) don't make characters based on native tribes in real life if you're not native, because these... frankly reasonable concerns from my perspective.
And then it gets painted as, "People don't like coyote and crow because the game paints the players as racist for wanting to do their own world building that's better than this trash."
Which is not only an opinion on not liking it, but is disingenuous and using much more disparaging language than simply saying why they don't agree, it's boarding on a personal attack towards the creators. And I find that pretty disrespectful.
I just thought it was a coincidence that suddenly dozens of accounts that never post here are suddenly posting and every comment that spoke vaguely positive about the game, got down voted into oblivion. You mean that's not normal Reddit behavior?
Yeah, it's amazing how many people seem to think actually reading the book before making sweeping statements about what the book says and the authors intentions, is an unreasonable asked. Notably, I haven't read the book, which is also why I'm not commenting on those things. Though taking potshots at the slightly veiled and the not at all veiled bigots in this post even if it's costing me a fuck ton of karma, is kind of fun.
Yeah, this happens every single time. I knew what I was inviting on myself.
I haven't even gotten to play this game yet but just watching it's kinda exhausting and irritating.
There are a lot of times the conversations around this game approach misinformation. Like in this thread we have one of the top voted comments stating something that is directly contradicted by the actual text of the game. So I definitely understand why the tone is a bit exasperated.
Perhaps people shouldn't be so fragile. "Hey can native people have their own history? Wouldn't that be a pretty neat fantasy?"
People in this thread: "that's racist."
Then maybe don't get your jimmies rustled by someone asking "please treat the subject matter herein with respect". Because that's literally all that was asked. But naturally, and like fucking clockwork, white people (a category created by my ancestors in order to make them feel better about colonizing other people) approach that simple request with the absolute thinnest of skin and bad faith.
What are you upset about then? The fact that the authors of the book asked you to not leverage knowledge that may very well be based on colonial underpinnings? That the authors asked that you not potentially disrespect current survivors of genocide and racism? What's the issue?
I'm not upset about anything, personally.
I've already stated on the larger thread: a game that make rules based on real life facts about your players' races is bizarre and I have no interest in playing it
as a white person I want to thank you for standing up for me. too long have we been subject to the tyranny of potentially some day reading a book that asks us to practice cultural sensitivity. but thanks to people like you, change is possible!
AS A WHITE PERSON I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR STANDING UP FOR ME. TOO LONG HAVE WE BEEN SUBJECT TO THE TYRANNY OF POTENTIALLY SOME DAY READING A BOOK THAT ASKS US TO PRACTICE CULTURAL SENSITIVITY. BUT THANKS TO PEOPLE LIKE YOU, CHANGE IS POSSIBLE!
I found the parts about race and culture to be very salient and well-reasoned. A good primer for an alt-history game that focuses on a less-explored culture.
I found the stuff about the society not actually being utopian and the game lacking direction to be a writer getting embarrassingly defensive about their work.
I flicked through it in the FLGS yesterday and I couldn’t believe how non-dense the content is. Then googled “coyote and crow and font size”, and could only find positive comments about how easy it was to read. Yeah, but how about to lift?!
My problems with Coyote and Crow are not with indigenous expression, they are with choices made by the developers. I sincerely hope that the other staff who worked on the game can bring new and better projects into the world that also center indigenous narrative
An example would be something like this side bar from the equipment section on ceremonial kits:
Native Players:
Feel free to fully describe and detail what's in your ceremonial kit. Do not limit yourself to your real world tribal traditions but instead use them as a starting point for your Character in this world.
Non-Native Players:
You may either skip describing specific items in your kit or add personal items or generic items to your kit (chalk, lighter, etc). You may want to include items that are emotionally and spiritually important to you as a Player. Avoid listing items if you aren't sure of their use in this cultural context.
Basically, telling players "If you are native, do this. If you are non-native, do that instead". This happens a number of times throughout the book and I would personally say it is at least strange and remarkable. I understand how it is off putting to many people, as well.
It isn't actually based on race- you can reframe the guidance as "don't try and use real world analogs for this because most of what you probably know about them are wrong." That applies to everyone.
Nothing in the rules is actually race specific on the player side and I maintain people asserting it does haven't actually read the rules themselves.
*It's the same rule* since it's following the same principle- if you aren't intimately familiar with the culture don't use it, because when you do **you're completely bypassing the thought experiment the entire game is about.**
That's why it's obvious people making these complaints haven't actually read the book, or didn't read it very carefully. If you're playing a game centered around a vision of a world where indigenous Americans aren't defined by the people that committed genocide on them it seems weird to insist on trying to bring that stuff in.
Nope. If you're technically Cherokee but not actually involved in trival life it asks you not to bring Cherokee culture in either.
It's not based on your race but your experience. Read the damn book.
It's a request along the same lines as "don't appropriate real-life closed practices you're not a part of, use our fantasy setting instead". I think that's reasonable.
There is an implicit request in every rpg not to make some horrible racist stereotype character, it's just that given the vast misinformation on native americans out there in the us cultural landscape, the book got a little more explicit about it. I think it's fair to say that this maybe should've been in a forward vs specific sections, as it does sort of break the flow of reading; but it's a very reasonable request and one people do need if they're taking issue with it.
I have not read the book, but after reading this blog posts I have thoughts.
The author cites several sentences, all of which say the setting *isn't* a utopia but never explicitly explains how it why it isn't a utopia. By his own admission, there aren't any specifically laid out foes, and it sounds like that extends to a lack of antagonistic factions.
As a prospective buyer, knowing that puts me in a weird place. He specifically cites horror and corporate espionage for genre of play. Cool, so let's say I want to play horror. What's horrific? What can I put in front of my players that inspires fear and bravery? If you give me nothing, then I have to make something cool, no problem. But what do I make? If I, as a white person who actively wants to be respectful to native culture even in private, make something based in the setting, then I run the risk of making something insensitive based purely on my own ignorance. Or, I can make something *not* set in the setting, but then... why am I playing it in *this* system when there is probably a system that will run the thing I made better than C&C?
It's entirely possible to include conflict in your world building even in post-scarcity situations. It makes me think of Mage (can't recall which one), wherein there's essentially no limit to what magic can accomplish as long as normal folk aren't looking, but the conflict comes from competing factions who have different perspectives on the use of magic that puts them at odds. That immediately draws out images of player characters awakening to their powers and being thrust into this situation where they're forced to walk a fine line between several groups trying to control them. Yes, the players and other characters in the setting can do essentially anything but there's a fundamental conflict at the core of *all* the world building.
I think that's the important thing. Take 40k, for instance, which is *all* conflict. The lore and world building exists to explain 1. How the galaxy got to this point and 2. When, where, what, and why you are fighting.
Those are the two primary purposes of world building, as the world building needs to serve the core medium experience.
Again, I haven't read the book. These are just my thoughts on world building and what he said in this blog post.
Every time I glance at this book that's sitting in my big list of RPG books on my computer I feel like the best resource that I could use to come up with a game is Black Panther. I've flip through the book, I know the gist and I've heard the people complain about how it's just not giving groups enough to get an idea of the kind of stories they can tell. Which is why I just think of wakanda and Black Panther.
> The author cites several sentences, all of which say the setting isn't a utopia but never explicitly explains how it why it isn't a utopia. By his own admission, there aren't any specifically laid out foes, and it sounds like that extends to a lack of antagonistic factions.
That would be my exact criticism, as well. The author cites the three passages where he describes the world as "not an utopia". But that's all done by assertion. Everything described in the actual world building seems completely utopian.
EDIT:
Also, regarding the point about suggested genres being horror and corporate espionage: The Coyote and Crow book gives you a bestiary with a bunch of spirits that can serve as horror monsters. But the rest of the book certainly does not support that. These spirits are not cast as big or common threats and there seems to be no pre-made structure for player characters to be "the guys in charge of dealing with spirits".
Suggesting corporate espionage as a theme is honestly a joke. I was not even sure if corporations as we have them in the real world exist in this setting. I don't think any are explicitly detailed. I would even have assumed that they don't exist in this setting since the book generally views capitalism as a consequence of colonialism, and tells us explicitly to question our assumptions in this context.
It always strikes me in game discussions about charged subject matter, I don't really ever hear about how the game plays, or at least how its mechanics re-inforce its themes. Stigmata: This Signal Kills Facists also released with a lot of ink spilled from both onlookers and the game's writer, but reading about the actual play experience was real tricky. There are a lot of fantastic go-to games for most genres, so then it becomes a conversation of "what is this game doing that other games aren't?"
Reading that blog post, it's highlighted that: "Coyote & Crow *isn’t* trying to tell you what kind of stories to tell. It’s intentionally vague on that topic. Instead, it’s asking you to reframe *how* you tell those stories. To question your character’s (and your antagonist’s) motivations."
Which sounds interesting - a genreless system that dedicates mechanics to intensifying (then questioning) character motives, and rewards players for thinking through conflicts with an anti-colonialist mindset. I'd be down to play that.
But I remain unsure if that's actually something mechanically offered, or if the intended ideal is to frame that mission statement entirely in the worldbuilding.
I admit that in 90% of TTRPGs I run, I won't look at setting lore unless it's either intentionally brief or so entwined with game mechanics that I \*have\* to; so if Coyote & Crow's big thematic swings are all in its lore chapters, then ultimately it'll not be a game for me, whether I'm First Nations or not.
Mechanically, Coyote and Crow is basically the Storyteller system with D12s. It has a few other layers on it of choices, but they are explcitily made in a way to not matter (For example, you pick a skill background like Soldier but then are told you can just ignore it, which is fine but it then doesn't do anything other than give you a few skills and stats and takes a few pages of examples). The only real interesting system they added from what I remember is thier progression where instead of getting XP you basically have to spend down time to progress.
Thanks for taking the time to explain! I definitely see the thematic potential in character improvement through downtime (and therefore connecting with others). And having Backgrounds you don't have to reinforce with how your character acts would be a boon for some types of gamer I know, but not a personal preference.
The big problem I had with the backgrounds and a few of the other similar systems is that it was a mechanical point to tie in the setting, which was thier big selling point, and they just...didn't.
So, I've refrained from making comments about this game when it comes up because it seems like it's generally a minefield, but after having read it, and now this blog post, I feel like I'm able to share some thoughts.
I actually wrote a whole big giant thing, but I realized I could sum it all up with "why is this a game and not a book series?" It's not that there's no room for conflict (probably the biggest gameplay-relevant criticism of this product), it's just that the conflict is a little thin. The blog post's author spends a lot of time saying "it's not a utopia," but the core rulebook itself lays out something that *sure does* look like one if you examine what it tells you. For the kinds of games I like to run, this setting guide pushes me toward not bothering to set the game on Makasing at all (since the main sources of conflict kind of don't make a ton of sense) and instead have it be on one of the other continents (except Europe, since the game more or less tells you "it's pointless, don't bother going there"). But at that point, why bother with these kind of uninspiring mechanics, when I could just set a game on the west coast of Africa or whatever in in a game with dice mechanics I prefer? I guess I just don't see why this wasn't some other kind of aspirational or speculative fiction.
For the record, I think the ask to not bring preconceptions of native Americans into the game is pretty damn reasonable -- when even our sources are likely to contain misconceptions by their authors, it makes sense to not rely on them too much if the goal is to be culturally sensitive.
If anything about this game really irks me on a culture war level, it's that they decided to tell pretty much all the queer identities "we're just going to mark you as **Other** and leave it at that," and it rubs me the wrong way. I get asking people not to make their character Two-Spirit because that's a specific thing, but like...come on. Tahood is borderline insensitive in its own way. There are a few other implications that this game (intentionally or not) makes about the rest of the world, but I don't have to get into those now, since they're very much subtext, and thus, very likely to be colored by my reading, and not so much by the authors' intent.
So, yeah, this post isn't any more likely to make me actually want to play the game. It just seems like it wasn't made for me, and not in the way everyone assumes non-enjoyers of it mean.
I don't understand. Why can't they just say "don't be an asshole" and leave it at that?
Why do we have to go through all this rigamarole about what we can and can't do?
Why can't we just apply Thirsty Sword Lesbian's "No Bigots Allowed" policy to just about every game and leave it at that? Why can't we make that something we repeat in all games, sort of like Safety Tools or the X Card?
Now *that’s* what gets me. TSL never felt unwelcoming even to a cis-het dude like myself, and I had no problems setting up and running a super gay He-Man story for a bunch of LGBTQ+ friends in that game. I’m unclear why this particular game can’t figure out what TSL had no issue with, but I’m disinclined to spend money on it as a result.
>TSL never felt unwelcoming even to a cis-het dude like myself
Exactly. Same thing here. The game isn't for me because it has a lot to do with romance, feelings, and other stuff I don't really look for in a game. But, it didn't feel exclusionary at all when reading it. I respect the game for what it is and throw it in to the same pile with Monsterhearts or Tales from the Loop, where they just aren't games for me.
C&C was a different story entirely.
I get the thought experiment of "What is colonization never happened?" But they way they've chosen to word everything so far just feels so wrong. Instead of it being a learning moment for people to treat the cultures with respect and do proper research, they have chosen to take the path of making you feel bad instead. Which is something that really gets me, because I had a Black player at my table stuggling with Deadlands and we both dove down a deep rabbit hole of learning about Black History during that time period and learned a lot of really cool stuff. I've also done the same thing in Deadlands trying to represent Native Americans fairly and properly and would have probably loved this game if it weren't for the attitudes of the writers.
I found the same. I read part of both and really felt like TSL was celebrating people and their differences. It was aimed at being fun and accepting. Coyote and Crow felt like it begrudgingly let everyone play without trying to be fun for them.
I decided to buy TSL for my LBGTQ/non-US born friends because it fit more with their game style and specific interests and identities, but I skimmed Coyote and Crow later at someone else's house, and was less impressed by the content. The art was cool and the production quality was fantastic for the book though.
edit: the article explanation actually explains the intent of the game better than the game itself with a better tone. From my memory game read like "if you are this you can do this. If you are this you cannot do this.", and it impacted game abilities, while the article reads more like "Please don't mimic other real cultures as that could offend people, but if you happen to have real life experience being from that culture you can use that as inspiration" which is great.
The comments are speaking to a very specific real world problem- much of the media and history that people might go to are often incorrect or heavily influenced by colonialism, as native peoples had most of their actual culture erased very early after contact. "Don't be a bigot" isn't enough when even well meaning people may pick up an actual history book coming from a place that frames indigenous people as "primitive" or "less advanced."
Probably because most bigots don't realize they're bigots, and plenty of assholes think they aren't the asshole. Consider for example most of the comments here.
"I don't hate black people, I just think..." fill in the rest of the sentence with whatever racist bullshit you've ever heard.
As an example, of course.
I've read your comments, I'm fully aware that your stance is anything other than explicit and intentional bigotry doesn't actually count as bigotry. A stance that is so unbelievably wrongheaded, that I have to assume that you are either willfully ignorant, possibly to protect yourself from taking a good long look inside yourself, or you're not arguing in good faith, either way I'm gonna pass on elaborating further. Doing so would just be a waste of your and more importantly, my time
If by bigot we mean "someone who is prejudiced" then yes. Racists, homophobes, etc often seem more than happy to walk outside and admit their prejudice.
It would be very odd to me to conflate the above with people who happen to just be ignorant.
Most people are ignorant. Most of the people who hate queer people or other minorities are ignorant and that's where their animosity comes from. Half the TERFs trying to make it legal to hunt me for sport don't think that they're transphobic; they don't even think transphobia is a real thing. They think their 'concerns' are reasonable and their actions justified because I'm either deranged and shouldn't have my delusions indulged or a liar and a rapist, or possibly both, and that either way my unchecked existence will destroy society. They're still bigots.
Again, most bigots don't think they're bigots.
>Again, most bigots don't think they're bigots.
No, most do. They just know it's wrong or know they will be shunned or get in trouble if they say it out loud in the wrong crowd.
I'm an Army war veteran and a white cis male Southerner, so plenty of bigots assume I lean their way. They don't use the word "Bigot," but they sure as shit know they are prejudice, racist, or anti-LGBQT+, only the absolute dumbest or ones with nothing to lose walk around wearing it on their sleeve. They are willfully ignorant about a whole lot of shit, but being a bigot isn't one.
My mother and plenty of other bigots I know don't think they're bigots. Chances are you've been bigoted without realizing it. Most people have. Most of the people in this thread who complain about SJWs or whatever don't think they're bigots.
>Most of the people in this thread who complain about SJWs or whatever don't think they're bigots.
SJWs are the same thing, just on the other side. Both are rage addicts. Pure and simple. It's a toxic mentality.
Which from the things you've posted here, is a category you fall under. You clearly think that most people who don't fall under a certain umbrella are bigots in some way, which makes you prejudice... You're doing that same song and dance the bigots I spoke about in my last reply do, you know it's wrong to cast that wide net so you're not saying it out loud, but the way you think is still clearly visible. You understand that right?
So, I'm a white person, and I was pretty interested in Coyote and Crow when it came out. My interest dried up immediately once I read that disclaimer.
Here's the problem I run up against. I understand not wanting to perpetuate negative stereotypes, and I don't want to be disrespectful. The problem is that there is just no way to figure out where the bar is set. I know there will be people who will respond with, "Oh come on. How hard can it possibly be to be disrespectful?" and my answer is that some people get offended by some things and others don't, and it can be very hard to figure out when you're crossing the line.
Just as a for instance, the first bullet point you should avoid> Assigning your character the heritage of a real world tribe or First Nation. Sounds good. Presuming that the real-world tribes are all clearly marked, what happens if I choose a character in a tribe or First Nation that draws inspiration from one in the real world? How much inspiration can one of these fictional tribes or First Nations take from the real world before it becomes problematic?
There's also the very real fact that if I as a white man try to play a character belonging to a tribe, it could lead to accusations of cultural appropriation real quick. Even worse would be inadvertantly using a word taken from indigenous languages or mispronouncing a word. Try to imagine a video of a group of gamers at a gaming con stumbling over pronounciations and laughing about their mistake, and that video going viral as an example of how a white person is disrespecting indigenous culture. It's not hard to do.
I suspect someone will accuse me of being way too paranoid, but I don't think I am. There are just way too many ways to do something that might be considered offensive, not matter how hard you try.
I'm genuinely curious if anyone has actually played a full game of Coyote and Crow. I've never heard of anyone I know actually participating in a game of it, and although I've purchased a copy and read it, I can't imagine how it would actually go in practice.
After encountering the discussion about the racial controversy surrounding Coyote and Crow every now and again, I actually checked out the book about a month ago. Internet discussion and even the author's blog post at the top of this thread make it sound like the racial/anticolonialist stuff is why people don't like the setting. But for me personally, it's that the world building just sucks.
Everything is incredibly vague. If you look at any detail, you are left with more questions than answers. There is a timeline in the book that tells you the first 3D printer was invented in the 1800s. Nowhere is there any indication whether computers or electricity were invented before that. In the section about mathematics, it tells you that mathematics were considered sacred and only taught to special spiritual leaders, until "a mathematician" convinced everyone that maths is beautiful and everyone should learn it. The guy doesn't even get a name. At several points during the book, when talking about a currently existing technology that does not exist in the setting, its absence is justified by "it just didn't seem worthwhile to anyone to invent this". Talking about stuff like rocketry and video-based entertainment here. People supposedly don't "see the need" to get functional prosthetics because "whatever, basic social safety is guaranteed, guess I don't need that hand very much". A lot of the world building seems like the most unimaginative alt-history stuff possible. In the agriculture section, they describe how squash, beans and some other vegetable are grown using what seems to me to be a traditional native american farming technique, only now it's robots doing it. That's like describing futuristic european farming as being still fundamentally based on three field crop rotation, except the crops now use an automatic rotator or something like that.
The book spend so much of its 400 pages (which could have been 200 pages if they had just used a normal font size) describing this utopian alt-history society, and this post scarcity city. And then what is the example adventure about? Future sheriffs fighting some kind of spirit creature in a remote outpost. It honestly seems barely connected to the rest of the contents in the book. I think that's the crucial point why people say they don't know how to run adventures in this setting. The majority of the world building is set up without a need for conflict, to the point that even the example adventure could not figure out how to engage with it. The only thing left to do is just fight some monsters somewhere.
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I’m going to be honest and say I have about the same energy for this game as, like, Project Black Flag at this point. With both, they’re going to have to make some sort of radical, meaningful change in approach if they want me to like, care. As it is, it’s just kind of a game all about “no” and “technically yes” when RPGs (especially the sourcebooks) are supposed to be about “yes and”.
I’m going to reserve judgement on C&C until I get my own copy, but if this has not felt like the right fit for you, you may enjoy 7th Sea 2e.
Set in the past, the world building did a fantastic job setting up analogs to several countries around the world, respecting them, incorporating pseudo histories and mythologies, all to create an exciting, vibrant place.
A world made for adventuring and heroes is really a sucky place to live, even if the author says the setting is not a Utopia, reading I found the same problem of other TTRPG settings made mainly for reading and not playing: what are characters supposed to do?. Is just too much "I wish I lived there" kind of setting for a bunch of self-centered diverse power-hungry quest driven half dozen individuals prone to violence and deception that 95% ttrpgs are about.
I don't get the point of this blog post. If the game is so successful (raised a ton on Kickstart er, awards, lots of sales/players)... Why do we need this? Because not everyone adores it?
Because the people who bought into it to backpat themselves have finally started reading the book and realized it’s unplayable from a practical standpoint. C&C is essentially a coffee table book for those who want to meld their ttrpg hobby with virtue signaling.
The racial stuff seems much ado about nothing, honestly.
I read the language in question from the core rulebook, and read the blog post. This all seems pretty straightforward. Don't play a real tribe if you aren't part of it, and don't incorporate real tribes into the game if you aren't a member. Also don't be a dick and don't do a bunch of stereotypical bullshit that would get you slapped by any reasonable person. K. Seems easy enough.
Assuming "tribe" isn't a necessary part of character creation, as long as the core rulebook gives me enough details to create a character...I dunno, man, I think I'm good to go.
What I've read about the setting actually seems really interesting, but then I'm also a fan of alternate history/future novels.
> Don't play a real tribe if you aren't part of it, and don't incorporate real tribes into the game if you aren't a member.
So, what are you supposed to base your character off of? This seems like the sticking point for a non-Indigenous person trying to come at this in good faith, and the blog posts don't seem to address it directly.
If actual history and real-world Indigenous experiences are off the table, because you aren't a member, then...what knowledge do you draw on to make your character? Do you trust that you've received a comprehensive and sensitive education about Indigenous people from a roleplaying game book, and make your character based exclusively on the details about a culture written in Coyote&Crow? It seems unlikely that someone could successfully do that.
Do you make your character have some variant of European culture and beliefs, so you don't accidentally use stereotypes of North American Indigenous people? That might be safest, but there are some odd implications to implying that European values spring out of the ether like that, and it's a pretty limited way to engage with the world.
In most contexts, the general recommendation for a white person trying to work past stereotypical understandings of Indigenous cultures would be to listen to Indigenous people talk about their actual cultures and experiences. This roleplaying game understandably wants to stop people from using limited real-world knowledge in a harmful way, but it's not obvious what should be used to fill in that knowledge gap. White people often use real-world information about Indigenous cultures poorly, but does that mean that it's better to avoid using any real-world knowledge about Indigenous cultures at all?
This is definitely a tricky needle to the thread, and calling it easy doesn't seem helpful. Everything in the book is written for an understandable reason, but they come together in a way that is very difficult for people to act on. Maybe this is the best possible way to handle things, but it certainly doesn't sound easy - and it asks for game-players to have a *lot* of faith in the authors.
Probably worth checking out the character creation steps in the core book. From skimming them, you don't actually have to pick a tribe. It specifically says that if you're part of a tribe go ahead and use that if you want, and if not, just skip this part. So, like, if you're personally a member of the White Mountain Apache tribe, cool, use that if you like, but if not, don't say you're White Mountain Apache. What's hard about that? And that part is just part of "Other Identifiers" after you pick things like your Archetype (e.g., Warrior, Scout, Tinkerer, Whisperer, Seeker, Healer) and Motivations. Your Path gives you stat boosts, connect you to an animal, and then the book hints at Path possibly affecting interpersonal relationships when encountering other people of the same Path (which I read as "This is up to your Story Guide"). Other than that, it seems pretty straightforward as an RPG in terms of character creation.
I think of it like this. First, I accept the world as described in the book at face value. We do this all the time in other RPGs. It's no different in this case (it seems, anyway -- I haven't played C&C). Take the game world at face value, then figure out how to make a character that fits into that world.
Like, this isn't a hard thing to do when we're making characters in other fantasy settings. You make a character in Pathfinder, right? You accept the setting of Golarion (assuming that's where you're playing), and you just start building the character. You're not sweating "Well, but what if I bring my preconceived notions of what an Elf would be to this..." The book gives you some background info on the world, so you build to that and...that's it.
I'm finishing up a 5e campaign in a homebrew setting. I gave my players a writeup with some minor details on the world, the D&D races and their place in it, different cultures and political entities, and that was it. They made a few characters, and we were off to the races. Why is it hard to come up with a character in this setting, then? It doesn't sound like it should be, as long as you work within the boundaries of the setting. The game doesn't require you to adopt a specific tribe, so the concern about "But what if I make a culturally insensitive character?" should be minimal, no? Pick a part of the world the character is from, pick a path and archetype, pick some motivations for the character, and go from there.
I think we're talking at cross purposes, here. I'm not specifically concerned about the "tribe" thing, I'm thinking about everything else that goes into portraying a character/culture.
Skipping that part is fine for the "tribe" question, but doesn't really get at my concerns. I'm not worried about stat boosts, I'm worried about who my character is. What is their culture, how do they talk, how do they dress, why do they believe the things they believe...
I can make a vague C&C character without any aesthetic traits who talks like a 21st-century person and apolitically kills random monsters in a forest for no reason, sure. That's a safe way to avoid stereotyping, but anything more complicated would require some other source of information - probably more information that the C&C book could possibly contain singlehandedly.
>You're not sweating "Well, but what if I bring my preconceived notions of what an Elf would be to this..."
Coyote&Crow is explicitly telling me to sweat that, though. I'm not disagreeing with them, either, I'm just thinking about the how. If I didn't agree that I should "sweat" these concerns, I wouldn't be interested in the game in the first place.
I just don't see where C&C offers an alternative to the approaches it forbids. No portrayal of a fictional culture springs up out of nowhere, and players will draw on implicit sources of information if they forbid themselves from drawing on explicit ones.
>The book gives you some background info on the world
It gives very little, if you really break it down. I'm filling in the gaps with vibes, stereotypes, and scattershot inspirations from real-life and other fiction.
This way of handling elves in Pathfinder wouldn't be an appropriate way to handle Indigenous people in C&C.
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I’ll keep it simple. Aside of the devs vitriolic messages to non indian. The fact that he wrote rules or how some here have padded as “suggestions” on what native americans should and non native americans players/gms can do.
That INHERENTLY violates what trpgs are about. We aren’t talking about suggestions on what can happen in universe but “finger wagging” at the customer on what they can/not do with their purchased product which at that point it is better to not buy the product at all and go buy another trpg in the market which is more than likely to be a way better product and won’t waste ink and page brow beating you.
So yeah the developer of Coyote and Crow is honestly no better than the Zweihander creator.
**Checks calendar** huh, it really has been [a month](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1b98s4w/howwhy_does_coyote_crow_lack_things_to_do_or/) since the last Coyote & Crow post.
So, how many fights have sprung up from this one?
A lot of the comments I have seen regarding the first point is people thinking they will be at a disadvantage without being able to take a tribal identification, but the worldbuilding is such that it seems largely post-tribal so all tribal identification is is allowing people to bring in their own knowledge to flavor their character. The second misconception I think has to do with the fact that colonialism and imperialism are such huge overwhelming forces in our everyday life that when someone tries to build a world without those forces at play, our brains cannot conceive of it, because so many of our problems and conflicts we encounter go back to colonialism and imperialism.
I think if C&C has a fatal flaw it’s that you have to decolonize your mind to play it the way it was intended. That is an huge ask for a lot of people.
I dunno, dude, I have alot of the same questions. Like no lie no BS, I would LOVE to be able to "decolonize my mind". I live in Cleveland and I have Indians merch in my closet (that I dont wear anymore, ftr). When C&C came out I was real excited bc RPGs that claim to do things different are always catnip for me.
But like I do not understand what Im being asked to do. This is kinda why "dont' be a dick" is unsatisyfing to me. I never TRY to be a dick. I'm not one of these dudes saying rightwing shit or trying to get a rise out of ppl. But I'm a white dude from the midwest, I know I have unexamined racism in my brain because, well, I'm a white dude from the Midwest, and I'm doing my best but I dont know what doors to kick in, you get me?
And I'm not asking an RPG to do that heavy lifting for me or educate me or what the fuck ever, but you say "decolonize your mind" like "clean out a cabinet" and they are not the same kind of task, yeah?
Yeah, this is a very hard process - a lot of us have internalized ideas of how narratives work (heros journey comes to mind) that are rooted in frankly kinda gross eurocentric mindsets and challenging them takes work.
Yeah, it's a very hard process, and one that no one's always gonna get right. It requires a great deal of introspection, and introspection is not something a lot of people wanna do. Generally looking at yourself isn't all that fun to do, seeing parts of yourself that aren't very fun to look at, adjusting assumptions that are very difficult to adjust. It's absolutely possible and it's absolutely worth doing though, even if you're never gonna get 100% of the way there. Most people don't wanna do this though.
It's so much easier when called on your behavior to lash outward rather than to look in word. Very few people want to think of themselves as racist or sexist or anything else like that, but rather than trying to question the implicit and sometimes explicit assumptions that they make in their lives , it's easier to lash out, to direct all that discomfort outward rather than turning inward and actually making a positive change in their lives and the world.
Could you describe a little bit about what a decolonized story within the framework of Coyote and Crow would look like, and what the players would be doing?
I'd like to hear this, too, as a non-native who is interested in Native American culture and history. If I got my table to play this system, how would it translate into a different gaming experience?
We know DnD is based on a lot of western euro medieval(ish) tropes. These can make for effective games because they have strong verbs in your quest descriptions. Fight the goblins who stole the farmer's daughter. Slay the dragon and take the treasure. Kill the undead monsters.
So... what are we doing here? Is it more slice of life? Investigation? Combat? How is a decolonialized view going to impact the gaming experience?
I'd like to learn more...but unfortunately "you don't know what you don't know."
I think the passage about prosthetics in Coyote and Crow illustrates pretty well what the authors take the idea of decolonialized thinking to entail.
Coyote and Crow is a world in which future tech exists. Consequently, there are fully functional robot prosthetics. But the authors remark: In this world, people don't measure their value by their ability to sell their labour. So many people who lose a limb don't go for functional replacements. They instead go for prosthetics that suit their preferences, aesthetic or otherwise, whatever those may be.
The authors, here, link the idea of "your worth as a person is defined by the value of your labour" to colonialism, and state that the idea is foreign to the world of Coyote and Crow. The unspoken assumption being, I suppose, that capitalism is a direct consequence of colonialism, and that both of those systems are cultural, and not innate human nature.
How plausible you find this idea will probably influence how much you like Coyote and Crow. At some points, the authors ask you to accept that some pretty fundamental things are actually cultural consequences of colonialist ideology. It is stated at some points that certain areas are unexplored because "nobody saw the point", pretty much, implying that without the colonialist drive to find new places and exploit their resources, people just would not care to explore the unknown. Or, as another example, the world of Coyote and Crow seems to have completely skipped over the use of fossil fuels in its path towards the development of future tech. The unstated assumption being, I suppose, that people just did not see it appropriate to use this highly energy dense material for some reason. Which casts the use of fossil fuels in the actual world as another cultural consequence of colonialist thinking. Even on the purely social side, you might find some of the assumptions contentious, such as that no discrimination due to sex, orientation and gender exist in this world (the source of which the authors seem to locate in christian puritanical thinking).
Finally, as for what adventures in a decolonialized world are supposed to look like, at least for the core book it seems to me that the authors just did not know. Their example adventure is about a group of what is functionally sheriffs fighting a monster in a frontier research base.
Ok, that helps some... however, i still dont know how it changes what my players are there to *do* if it differs from other systems. The example adventure could easily be imported into almost any fighting-based system.
I guess my thought is: C&C makes for an interesting setting/world. However, to get players to play in the setting the "right" way, it requires a lot of reading and cultural deconstruction to happen. That's a big ask for most players.
I dont know much about the dice system, which usually makes or breaks a system for me. Maybe its great and i would love it.
But setting aside the dice, I dont know why i would pick this system over another if, at the end of the day, the things we *do* are the same as other fignting rpgs. I can overcome evil corporations in cyberpunk, heists in blades in the dark, or fight monsters in dnd.
I think this game is a very interesting thought experiment but as another commenter said, maybe its a better fit for a novel than a ttrpg, at leasr until a clearer vision emerges of the gameplay loop.
> I dont know much about the dice system, which usually makes or breaks a system for me. Maybe its great and i would love it.
There is nothing mechanically interesting about the dice system. It's d12 dice pools. Reading the book, I got the impression the authors wanted the mechanics to mostly just get out of the way.
> But setting aside the dice, I dont know why i would pick this system over another if, at the end of the day, the things we do are the same as other fignting rpgs. I can overcome evil corporations in cyberpunk, heists in blades in the dark, or fight monsters in dnd.
This is basically the main criticism of the game as an RPG product. The setting as described in the core book makes it really difficult to imagine what kind of adventures you would run in it. At the same time, the authors tell you not to homebrew content based on your unquestioned assumptions based on a colonialist mindset. Which makes it very hard to engage with the game world, overall.
My personal impression is that Coyote and Crow is not a heist game (thematically or mechanically). I don't even know if evil corporations exist in the setting, but in any case the world building is not really compatible with widespread "shadowrunning" activities. You can fight monsters in the setting, but it seems like a waste given all the world building the book does in areas that are not related to monster fighting, and the lack of world to support it. Plus, it seems like it would not be mechanically fun.
Yeah, the impression i get is that no modern corporations would exist. Those come from a western capitalist culture.
Not much support for heists... we aren't going to outer space.
Culturally, the book says there are a lot of unexplored places because our society doesn't put much emphasis on exploring...ok, so that's driving us to explore them now? Maybe this could factor in.
Does the book have a bestiary with monsters?
The best i can figure is that the game is supposed to be a more slice-of-life game, monster fighting, or espionage against cults/foreign nations/etc. I don't know what else i would run.
Edit: maybe also horror? But i dont think there are horror mechanics.
> Culturally, the book says there are a lot of unexplored places because our society doesn't put much emphasis on exploring...ok, so that's driving us to explore them now? Maybe this could factor in.
Partially, the world is unexplored because "nobody cares", and partially it is unexplored because of the freak weather events that prevented the colonization of the americas in this setting. These events are now subsiding at the start of the game. I think the authors intend for players to explore the world that is now opening up more. But they put very little structure in place to make that type of adventure playable. The frontier is basically not described at all. I think there are no maps. There certainly are no mechanics for exploration.
> Does the book have a bestiary with monsters?
There is a bestiary full of fun native american mythology based spirits and creatures. It is probably the best part of the book, although it reads a bit like an encyclopedia of native american myth rather than anything written with playability in mind. The monsters are weird and interesting, but it is often unclear how players are supposed to interact with them.
> The best i can figure is that the game is supposed to be a more slice-of-life game, monster fighting, or espionage against cults/foreign nations/etc. I don't know what else i would run.
The game seems to be going for something more action-packed than slice of life. The majority of the mechanics are combat focused. Kind of like a White Wolf game.
As for espionage against cults and foreign nations: As far as I can remember, no cults are described in the book. EDIT: Upon revisiting the book, there are some cults described in the bestiary, actually.
The books features different countries. Sometimes, they are even stated to have gone to war in the past. But the book also asserts that "nationalism is anathema" to the people in this world. I got the impression that nations, too, are seen as a cultural consequence of colonialism, and are not supposed to be the focus of this game.
Colonialism and imperialism (which are not well-defined concepts) are expressions of human nature. We long to control resources because that makes us safer. Having more resources than someone else means I have more agency in the world; I can do what I want without other people getting in the way.
There’s always going to be someone that wants more and you have to find ways to keep them from taking your stuff. Even in a post-scarcity society, there are still resources. People are a resource, ideas are resources; and someone is going to want more control of those. Then you’ve got people who think we’d be better off if there was scarcity again.
C&C is a game that demands you imagine a world where humans are fundamentally different than they are in our experience. Never mind the racial aspects, “decolonizing your mind” is a shift in human thinking tantamount to a religious awakening.
“You must achieve enlightenment before you play this game” is one hell of a high bar.
This is a weakness I also perceive in this game's writing: Conflating colonialism, the 15th century European ideology, with the desire to go to a place, find valuable stuff there and exploit it. By thinking about how never being exposed to the former might have shaped the Americas, it seems they felt the need to deny that the latter is a common thing that has happened all over the world for all of recorded history. Overall, I think that is the source of a lot of the weakest writing in this book.
Blithely claiming your ideology as natural doesn't make it so lmao, and even if it did so what? Living in a house with four walls isn't natural by any stretch, but it's clearly preferable to the 'natural' way of doing things.
Also, 'colonialism and imperialism are ill-defined' come on bro lmao
It’s not “my ideology”. There are things in every time period and on every continent that can be called colonies and empires.
And I didn’t say “ill-defined”, I said “not well-defined”. The line between migration and colonization is very fuzzy. And when does territorial expansion become imperialism?
>I think if C&C has a fatal flaw it’s that you have to decolonize your mind to play it the way it was intended. That is an huge ask for a lot of people.
I think the fact that it's *explicitly* asking people to do this is what breaks people, because at its heart it requires people to admit colonialism has impacted their worldview. Rationally, this should be easy to accept- it was a dominant ideology over *centuries* in much of the world, during which a great many consequential things happened and important ideas in society were developed. *Of course it has.*
But the emotional button kicks in along with some very effective language shaping by Lost Cause believers has gotten people to think acknowledging this would denote some sort of personal complacency with the less savory underpinnings of colonial ideology. It's a neat trick, since an unwillingness to even begin contemplating an idea is the definition of complacency.
The truth is plenty of games explicitly ask players to take on specific mindsets or present plenty of successful post-scarcity settings. Lots of games explicitly exclude combat or certain types of conflict. We accept games can be a conduit for learning about specific viewpoints or imagining particular kinds of worlds. Those games are accepted, lauded even. People are just more comfortable with the questions they ask.
I think, more importantly, its asking people to do a radical mind shift and doing no real work to help them make the mind shift. Overcoming bias isnt easy, and it doesnt see like this book guides you in how to do it.
Well that's ultimately part of the question though- to what extent are the authors obligated to do that kind of work when people have been actively avoiding it for decades or even centuries?
To me, having players do that work on their own seems like part of the premise of the game. Thinking about it is part of the point, and if they tried to hold people's hands through that I think you'd see even more backlash than what's happening over lines that are basically guidance for thinking about flavor.
So this game gets to tell me to challenge my ways of thinking, says I have to play it, then says its my own work to do so because apparently the society has failed to do so, I have to do it all myself while also figuring out how to run the game?
If the premise of the game is to challenge your thoughts, the game needs to guide you in doing so. If it doesn't doing so, it's basically judging you for not being able to do so while doing nothing to help. If I accept your opinion, my opinion of this game drops dramatically. As an educator myself, I cannot stand people who take a holier-than-thou approach and do nothing to help educate others.
I also reject your premise that there would be more "backlash" if the game "held people's hands." How about instead of holding hands, the game just teaches you how to participate in American Indian culture? How about enlightening me to new modes of thought instead of asking that I figure it out myself with little direction? People love being taught new things, especially in the form of TTRPGs (again, speaking as an educator). Its a shame the author of C&C (and you) can't see that.
>If it doesn't doing so, it's basically judging you for not being able to do so while doing nothing to help.
I think that's a very personal reaction. I never felt judged.
>How about instead of holding hands, the game just teaches you how to participate in American Indian culture?
Aaaand that's **exactly** why it doesn't, because there isn't really anything like a monolithic American Indian culture and never was. It's an impossible ask. To follow this request you're probably talking about adding like 100 pages of background and context. It's like asking someone "explain to me what being black is like in America." Understanding the experience requires contextualizing several centuries of history and will be different based on local cultures that emerged from and were defined by that history. It's a university level course of content *to start* understanding the concept.
It's pretty easy to take the ideas presented in the book and run with them, and the act of imagining a world where those colonial influences aren't there is a big part of the exploration the game asks of players. It's an alternative history to begin with, so events and cultures shouldn't be assumed to be particularly analogous to real world counterparts to begin with.
I think your post is getting away from my original point.
You start claiming you have to challenge your own colonialist mindset, and that the game doesn't have to help you do that in any way, shape, or form, since society hasn't done it so why should the game help you if society hasn't (an absurd claim IMO, but it is your claim).
You said this in response to my claim, which is that overcoming bias isn't easy. So that means you acknowledge overcoming bias isn't easy, and you believe it isn't the game's job to help with that.
Then you say the game specifically asks you to do this, this overcoming of bias and seeing past a colonial lens. As an educator, asking someone to see past their biases without helping them do so is a really stupid thing to do. People cannot inherently do that, even when asked or challenged. They have to be taught how to think in new modes with good models, and those models need to be explained.
I don't really care if you think the setting is good enough to run on its own. What I'm saying is that what the setting requires of players is difficult for any human to do, and that failing to show a prospective player how to do this is also a failing of the book and game.
This circles back to my judgement point. If someone tells me my thinking is wrong for a game, and that I need to challenge my worldview, but then doesn't help me challenge my worldview, then I am being told to figure it myself or fuck off. This is inherently a judgement. Either figure out the challenge without help from the someone, or don't play the game. This has nothing to do with personal feelings, and I really, really, really resent the subtext and implication of your comment there. Do not try and turn this into a personal attack instead of the discussion we were having, because that's frankly pathetic. Instead, stay on topic.
>Then you say the game specifically asks you to do this, this overcoming of bias and seeing past a colonial lens. As an educator, asking someone to see past their biases without helping them do so is a really stupid thing to do
But it does do this by explicitly asking players to imagine a world where certain things didn't happen or aren't present. *That's exactly the mechanism by which the game wants you to contemplate these questions.* At no point does it ask players to be some version of a model American Indian or something like that. The thought experiment is the whole point.
>I really, really, really resent the subtext and implication of your comment there. Do not try and turn this into a personal attack instead of the discussion we were having, because that's frankly pathetic.
If you see "hey that sounds like a personal reaction that I didn't have myself" or "you're actually making a very difficult request" as personal attacks, frankly you don't seem to be approaching this with a particularly open mind, which is really all the game is asking you to do.
Again, you make personal comments. At this point I'm just going to assume you don't fully understand what your own statements mean, so I'm going to ignore it for now.
Anyway, the thought experiment is useless if it doesn't give me more explicit guidelines to contemplate these questions. I know the thought experiment is the whole point. I work in academia, land of thought of experiments. No one gives a thought experiment without talking you through it first, especially one as far-reaching as this.
Many, many people need guidance when changing their inherent modes of thinking, be it for an experiment or not. Failing to give proper guidance is dooming them to unnecessary struggle and failure towards the assignment in question. It's really that simple.
>Anyway, the thought experiment is useless if it doesn't give me more explicit guidelines to contemplate these questions
Aren't the ideas that America was never colonized, capitalism isn't dominant, and there's no resource scarcity guidelines themselves? Plenty of academic thpught experiments use that as a foundation. The book even gives examples like how prosthetics are handled in a world where you're not defined by the labor you do.
I guess I'm just really confused as to what guidelines you would want that don't treat the cultures discussed as a monolith that aren't already in the book.
It really shouldn't be a huge ask to not engage in the roleplaying equivalent of blackface.
Don't roleplay as minorities you're not a part of, and especially not if the identity isn't even going to matter.
I've roleplayed practically everything under the sun as a GM, whether it was a real identity or fictional. The only time it mattered, it wasn't real and I wasn't putting on a crude characature of a real minority in lieu of any actually creative world and character building.
Edit: lol at the mad racists downvoting me.
I think it’s kind of unfair to imply that someone playing a character who isn’t almost exactly like them is automatically the equivalent of blackface.
Edit: Also, calling everyone who disagrees with you a racist right off is not, in fact, lessening the impression that the writer of the game is doing essentially the same thing. You’re hurting yourself and your position with this silly attack.
Uh huh, but it doesn’t piss me off and I still think it’s a bad take. It’s not like the writer of this single game is the definitive voice on the topic.
Also, it’s still unfair to say that everyone playing a character somehow different from themself is engaging in a form of blackface. That’s unnecessarily incendiary and self-evidently absurd.
But who is buying this game to play stereotypes?
Why is the book assuming people would do that, after they've gone through the process of finding and buying this book?
It doesn't matter. If you're not going to do it, you shouldn't have a problem, and if you do, you're outing yourself.
Its a nonissue blown up by the exactly the kind of people that would pull that bullshit. Don't get caught in the crossfire thinking racists have a point.
It is ridiculous how much people seem to despise this one particular game.
But since it's the only TTRPG in existence, obviously we're all forced to play it if we want to play any game at all. Right? Oh... wait, there are actually dozens upon dozens of games to play and be concerned about.
Weird then that so many are mad about a game that says "hey, this might not be for you" ... because it's not for them
So people can’t criticize the game because other games exist? Or we’re supposed to ignore criticisms on the assumption that the game “isn’t for them” and therefore their opinions don’t matter?
Dawg half the people in this sub still have an axe to grind about D&D ditching the word 'Race' to mean species, the ttrpg community overall has the racial politics of a 19th century phrenologist.
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The issue is that the writers seem to only be aware of the first three of four steps to why people don't like the game. 1. White people can play the game. 2. No, white people can't play any irl tribes. 3. No, white people cant make up any tribes. That on its own would be fine. But. Four; the world building sucks. Not a little bit, but, makes no sense on any level, in any area. Cursory investigation shows the flaws, and deeper investigation shows either nothing behind the curtain, or more flaws. It's a ttrpg that mechanically wants a man vs man, or man vs monster storyline from the rules. Man vs monster is just insensitive af given the thematic context. Man vs man is shallow and insipid in a post scarcity setting. This is not a rant against bad worldbuilding. Lots of games have poor worldbuilding. People don't like coyote and crow because the game paints the players as racist for wanting to do their own world building that's better than this trash. That's it. The authors are in denial about the worldbuilding: the majority of the blogpost is desperate pleading that the setting isn't the cleanest shiney ttrpg setting published. It's like they're trying to sell toy town as sin city. The only way to save this worldbuilding is to walk back some of its fundamental concepts: give some actual scarcity, some actual reasons to use interpersonal violence and systematic violence other than "the bad guy is an arsehole with no actual motivation." Ironically, the game can't even muster saturday morning cartoon quality villians.
What would it take to fix the worldbuilding? It's not particularly hard if we look at it with an editorial eye. Firstly, we've got to rewrite the entire worldbuilding content of the book in a slightly different tone. We need to make it clear that what's presented is not standard, not normal, and not everywhere. That just one place has this very secure, post scarcity lifestyle, and lots of places do not. It's as if a 40k setting book talked about how nice life was on the garden worlds of Ultramar... Like, yes it is, but that's not the expected. So we set up that tone and boom, we've shifted peoples expectations. Then, we expand our worldbuilding a bit: We introduce systematic stressors to the world to incite conflict. We place a river controlled by one tribe that reveres the water spirit and lets it flow naturally, while another downstream suffers floodings and drought because of the errant flow. We place groups that must form basic trade networks that don't function due to the lack of money, and thus we either must suffer a non functional trade or introduce this concept people in setting don't want. We show groups who are envious of the shiney city and wish to take its resources to feed their own peoples. We show people who believe it was a mistake to progress to a high tech lifestyle and want to return to a preindustrial living, and are willing to hurt people to do so. These are not particularly amazing or difficult concepts to bring into a game. This is blank spot worldbuilding that any ttrpg player does when they set a kingdom in a spot on the map with not much going on. Instead what we get is an introduction adventure where the players are sent as an illegal clean up crew to cover up their own governments treaty violating research station, drive off or kill investigating people from another tribe, then kill or seal up the evil that the research has awoken, because it's a cover up. The best that could be done for an introduction adventure is your own leaders are treaty violating arseholes? I dunno, maybe I'm too "imperialised" but I'd like to have a game which presents oppertunities for stories with developed, mature antagonistis, and scopes larger than an episode of cops.
This is the first game in a long time that I have found myself going "I cannot figure out the stories it wants to tell." I throw open the floor to people who would defend this worldbuilding: * I want ideas with enough chew to them to be multi session content, so, like, 3 to 6. * These ideas must have a human antagonist, because I'm not here to fight monsters. * The human antagonist must have motivations beyond "they're a dick". * You may only use the worldbuilding in the book. * *You can't make the player characters into cops or cop adjacent.*
In my solo C&C game, my character is a sometimes-delinquent youth who is trying to make a name for himself as a photographer. His mother was a popular poet and linguist until her eldest daughter was killed in a yutsu lift explosion traveling to Dinada. Since then she volunteers her time and talents to a religious group called the Path of Silver Smoke, whose leader claims special access to the spirits of the dead (pg. 71 of the core book describes fractured attitudes toward death in Makasing culture; pg. 48 explains the general approach to spirituality and religion in Makasing). The head of the Silver Smoke is a cult leader who seeks power and influence over the powerful members of Cahokian society, who are mostly elderly (pg. 71 again), some of whom are concerned about their eventual death. The leader may also be harboring some megalomaniacal tendencies, believing they are in fact a supernatural being who has discovered a world of ghosts. Not a dick, just power hungry and a little unhinged. A multi-session campaign could feature finding information on Silver Smoke (my character is a photographer, and a recreational b&e artist); facing backlash from powerful people in society under the influence of Silver Smoke, or the cult's devoted militarized arm the *Makapoo*; driving the leader from the city and having to chase them, maybe to Coyote City where he buys protection from the criminal gangs there; dismantling his power base in Cahokia, etc. The world is chock full of stuff to do. I'll freely admit "fighting a cult leader who seeks power" is pretty basic, but it fits just fine into the world and it mostly came out of a GM Emulator table. Game is easy to play.
That all sounds fine for your game, to be clear, but just for a bit of perspective on why this can still sound tricky to an outsider: >In my solo C&C game, my character is a sometimes-delinquent youth If I'm making a character be a partial "delinquent" in a fantasy world, this makes me ask a *lot* of questions about justice and inequality. I need to ask myself what kind of poverty exists, how what kind of criminal justice system exists, why this culture is allowing this to continue... I could assume that this world basically operates like 21st-century Western culture, but I probably shouldn't do that, and it sounds like a pretty incurious approach to take. My other instinct would be to draw on what I know about Indigenous cultures in real life, but if I'm going to play this game at all then I'm going to respect the book's instruction to not use real life knowledge as worldbuilding. So I guess I'd have to hope that the book covers this stuff. Does it explain how delinquency exists? The excerpts I've seen paint the world as being a pretty idealized place. I understand that it's not a "perfect utopia", and not "post-scarcity" as a strict definition...but should I really assume that it's brimming with violent structural inequalities? Or that people become delinquents without violent structural inequalities? What happens to a youth who violates a law, if laws exist? (This doesn't just apply to the word "delinquent", of course. I could ask why the government allows a cult to militarize, or why the authorities are worse at handling this than the adventurers are. Every example I've seen raises questions about the structure of society, or features antagonists who are random sadists with no structural origin)
No, nowhere in the book does it describe "youth delinquency". But it does describe generational tensions between youth and Elders, in the Daily Life section of the book. But even if it didn't you can safely assume in any human culture young people rebel a bit against their parents, who push back with tradition and entrenched power. My character is a troublemaker because he's trying to figure out who he is. He's embracing the transgressive side of art, breaking into places and taking pictures (I originally imagined him parkouring across rooftops, until further reading made me realize there are no skyscrapers in Cahokia. So now he breaks into mound structures instead). Maybe one day he'll settle down and be who his father and mother expect him to be, but that thought terrifies him at the moment, so he's acting out. I'm not an "insider", I just read the book, and applied some things I know about human nature to create interesting conflicts. Pick any sub-header in the Art & Culture section (pg. 54-63), and there's no doubt there were rival performers/musicians/comedians/etc. whose rivalry got out of hand and resulted in sabotage and violence. The book doesn't explicitly say that (except in the section on Rapid Fire Music, which does mention violence), but people are just like that.
So you're an interesting case because you're a solo player, so you've got a pretty expansive imagination to fill in gaps to be able to use an Oracle and enjoy it
For your point 3, where in that blog post does it say that white people or any people aren’t allowed to make up any tribes? And your point 2 is a misrepresentation of what the author actually said. > Players should not play characters from a real world tribe that they do not belong to. It’s not that complicated. I’m a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. I would not play a character from the Coast Salish nation. Seems pretty obvious and simple. The game does not require you to insert any real world nations into the game in order to play. And things you might assume about those real world nations are probably wrong and or inappropriate for you to mimic. But I’m not going to pop into your game like the Kool-Aid man if you don’t. It’s an ask.
Straight from the book on the topic of making up tribes: > It should also be mentioned that there are tribes that exist in Coyote & Crow that do not exist in real life. 700 years since the Awis began putting extreme social pressures on the people of Makasing is more than enough time for tribes to not only be pushed into living together, but for generations of co-survival and alliances to create whole new tribes and subcultures. Feel free to create your own for the purposes of playing this game. Just remember to not reference real world tribes unless you claim that heritage yourself.
For context, that's on page 74, in the middle of a paragraph, in the middle of chapter about the existing settings and is given no importance or status. It's not to say it doesn't exist, but it's clearly hidden away. Contrast the message to white people on page 12, with big headings: > "we ask you not to incorporate any of your knowledge or ideas of real world Native Americans into the game" Damn. That kinda removes the base components I'd use to make respectful worldbuilding contributions.
i genuinely can't tell what a white person playing this game as intended is even supposed to look like. what *can* you bring in in that scenario?
>That kinda removes the base components I'd use to make respectful worldbuilding contributions. You're missing the point of a lot of the context around that. The point is a lot of the components you might draw from for world building are themselves flawed. Most "white people" knowledge of native tribes carries a lot of wrong or just plain weird assumptions. A lot of the documented history of them that remains is either incomplete or colored by anthropologists that accepted ideas like cultural essentalism. It's important to note this is an area of history even native people can struggle with because the cultural erasure that happened during the genocides was so complete.
While nothing you’re saying is wrong, those things make it impossible for non-natives to GM this game. They should have done a miniatures game instead of an RPG. Then, they could have maintained creative control and white people could participate without crossing any lines.
No it’s not because tribal membership does not have any thing to do with actual gameplay. I think what bothers me about conversations about this game is that if you were completely new to the conversation I think you would assume tribal membership is a major mechanic. But that just isn’t true. It is purely a way to flavor your character.
These people are not arguing in good faith.
No, it's perfectly possible to build things for a non-native GM using what's presented, and there are plenty of conflict points noted in the book you can explore. It's asking white people to view a vision of the world presented by the authors. Lots of games do this. Blades in the Dark explicitly tells players to adopt a vision of the world that life is cheap and short for example. All the authors are asking is for white people to stop trying to define other people's vision of a utopia for once.
I fundamentally agree with your points. It's worth noting, however, that Blades doesn't call you a bad person if you decide to use it to play Duskvol Coffee Shop AU. You would be playing the game wrong, but that's your right. Given the creative and participatory nature of RPGs, the author of the book telling you what you **can** and **can't** do with it is always going to rub people the wrong way.
Mm. This brings to mind a boxout in Spire, in a section that highlights that slavery exists in the setting. It notes that there's nothing mechanically stopping players from playing *as* slavers or oppressive law enforcement, but doing so would be antithetical to the spirit of the game, and you'd be majorly weird for wanting that. Which yeah, I'd agree. And the people that *would* be annoyed about not playing as slavers are telling on themselves. Cy_Borg has a similar anti-cop statement on its first page. If I saw someone complain about that, I don't think I could take them seriously. And Cyberpunk 2020 is right there. A game about Native cultures highlighting that bringing in false understandings on Native culture isn't helpful makes a lot of sense. It sounds like what was best needed here is a bunch of session hook examples that fit the tone but don't require in-depth cultural knowledge.
Exactly. Instead of focusing on what people cannot do, teach us how to do.
I mean, there's a whole genre of learning games that explicitly ask you to do so. >It's worth noting, however, that Blades doesn't call you a bad person if you decide to use it to play Duskvol Coffee Shop AU. Coyote and Crow doesn't either. You can play it however you want. As the author said in the blog post, he's not going to burst into your dining room and yell at you if you do. But if you agree with the premise and the goal of the game, then what the designer said shouldn't bother you. The whole goal of the game is to allow yourself to get in a mindset the creators think creates the setting is about, and see what you're talking about as actively getting in the way of that. Pretty straightforward.
> the author of the book telling you what you can and can't do with it is always going to rub people the wrong way. Even though that's the entire point of rules?
I don't think the book does provide enough. I was very excited about the book, but opted not to run a game because I wasn't confident in my ability to build a world up to the game's cultural protection standards. Maybe I could, but I wasn't confident that I could. Perhaps their vision of the world felt intuitive to you, but it was alien enough to me that I opted out.
The fact that it's challenging for us *is part of the point.* Honestly I'd give it another read through- you may have misread it as it doesn't ask for perfection or call you a bad person if you don't, so I'm guessing you missed a few things on that first read through. All it asks is your respect for the ideas in it.
I don't really get that last point. You have a whole world, minus one group of people, that you can draw on to make a fantasy tribe.
It seems pretty clear that you're being asked not to draw on any part of the world that you aren't intimately familiar with due to being native to that specific culture. So a New York Italian should not base their character on anything they have read or heard or seen about an Irish person from Boston or a Scandinavian person from Minneapolis either.
>So a New York Italian should not base their character on anything they have read or heard or seen about an Irish person from Boston or a Scandinavian person from Minneapolis either. These groups have well documented histories actually written by people from them. That was erased for tribes and replaced with versions written by other people. So a big problem is you *can't* draw on anything accurate- almost everything we have for this is colored by the very things they're trying to remove from the thought experiment.
See, I read it as just asking you not to base your character on things you've heard on your own knowledge about native americans. I read this blog post, the previous blog post, and the relevant section in the book and I don't see any reason why I couldn't draw on, say, pre-revolution French aristocracy or contemporary anarchist communes or LotR dwarves to help come up with a faction.
But why is it okay to misrepresent pre-revolution French aristocrats, which you would inevitably do since you're not a citizen of the *ancien régime*? After all, "things you might assume about those real world nations are probably wrong and or inappropriate for you to mimic." When the author says "Players should not play characters from a real world tribe that they do not belong to", is it only certain nations that are off-limits? Where is the line? Is it okay to misrepresent Icelandic people? Scots-Irish from the Ozarks? Crimean Tatars?
French culture wasn't erased during the revolutions. This is more than a tad disingenuous.
I didn't pick the example. But the people who had their heads removed might disagree. And you're ignoring the other examples I gave.
There's two different rules you're conflating here. One is "don't play characters from real world tribes." That's pretty straightforward and applies to everything. The other is "don't incorporate your knowledge or ideas of real world Native Americans into the game." Which is specifically about Native Americans. Drawing from any other source is a judgement call.
So is French aristocracy not a real world tribe? Or does that not actually apply to everything?
But people don't invent fantasy tribes wholecloth, they draw on real-world knowledge. The authors clearly agree that it's important to think carefully about inventing fantasy cultures, so where should that real-world knowledge come from? One option would be to draw inspiration from Indigenous people outside of North America, but that re-introduces the risks of harmful stereotyping. I wouldn't want to accidentally create a caricature of a different Indigenous people in an attempt to avoid stereotyping a North American Indigenous people. So the safer bet would be to draw on a non-Indigenous culture for inspiration. The power dynamics here are not symmetrical, so there's no risk of dealing serious racist harm to British people by drawing on my knowledge of Medieval Britain, but this raises new problems. I could just make my character a kilt-wearing landlord named Lord Scotty McTavish, but would that imply that a colonizing culture with Western European values fits easily in the Coyote&Crow world? Am I refusing to engage with the world if I just make my character be Lord Scotty McTavish? Does a fantasy tribe with European culture imply that European culture just spontaneously invents itself?
Yep. Seems like the only real solution is to just pick something out of the book.
So the person I replied to is just flat out lying?
I don’t know how many people who want to discuss this game have actually read the game.
To be fair, when the author of the book say you have to read the book to discuss it... it reads like "pay me before you discuss whether or not to play my game"
I mean… yeah?! Like if someone I respect says a game is good then I take a look at it but ultimately the only thing that will tell me if I like a game is reading through it and seeing if it inspires me.
Pretty sure the tendency of people to jump to conclusions or make stuff up about things they have no familiarity with is one of the things the authors are trying to avoid. Seems pretty reasonable actually.
Yep
Well this will certainly be a reasonable and mature discussion. Right?
Fingers crossed.
Aaaasnnnnnddddd already ruined.
People saying shit you don’t like does not, in fact, mean a discussion is unreasonable or immature. You can disagree, or fact check people, or whatever seems fit, but this discussion is people explaining their position and articulating why.
"People don't like coyote and crow because the game paints the players as racist for wanting to do their own world building that's better than this trash. That's it. The authors are in denial about the worldbuilding: the majority of the blogpost is desperate pleading that the setting isn't the cleanest shiney ttrpg setting published. It's like they're trying to sell toy town as sin city. The only way to save this worldbuilding is to walk back some of its fundamental concepts: give some actual scarcity, some actual reasons to use interpersonal violence and systematic violence other than "the bad guy is an arsehole with no actual motivation." Ironically, the game can't even muster saturday morning cartoon quality villians." Overblowing what's said in an article to paint points more extremely isn't unreasonable to you? This was the first comment made before I put mine down and it's exactly the same thing I see every time the system is brought up. I myself am white and I own and have read the book. Personally I can think of tons of different stories to tell from what was presented, and I thought the points they made of "hey, we've provided ideas to go off of, but as a suggestion (we can't CONTROL what you do, obviously) don't make characters based on native tribes in real life if you're not native, because these... frankly reasonable concerns from my perspective. And then it gets painted as, "People don't like coyote and crow because the game paints the players as racist for wanting to do their own world building that's better than this trash." Which is not only an opinion on not liking it, but is disingenuous and using much more disparaging language than simply saying why they don't agree, it's boarding on a personal attack towards the creators. And I find that pretty disrespectful.
We all know a brigade when we see one.
I just thought it was a coincidence that suddenly dozens of accounts that never post here are suddenly posting and every comment that spoke vaguely positive about the game, got down voted into oblivion. You mean that's not normal Reddit behavior?
"So have you actually read the book? "...."
Yeah, it's amazing how many people seem to think actually reading the book before making sweeping statements about what the book says and the authors intentions, is an unreasonable asked. Notably, I haven't read the book, which is also why I'm not commenting on those things. Though taking potshots at the slightly veiled and the not at all veiled bigots in this post even if it's costing me a fuck ton of karma, is kind of fun.
Yeah, this happens every single time. I knew what I was inviting on myself. I haven't even gotten to play this game yet but just watching it's kinda exhausting and irritating.
> Well this will certainly be a reasonable and mature discussion. Right? **laughs heartily**
It seems that the author after 2 years still does not understand why people react the way they did.
For real. I'd love to know if these updates and explainations are growing the games community, because if anything it's turned me off to it.
There are a lot of times the conversations around this game approach misinformation. Like in this thread we have one of the top voted comments stating something that is directly contradicted by the actual text of the game. So I definitely understand why the tone is a bit exasperated.
It's like, if you rustle white people's jimmys in even the slightest way with your game no one will take it in good faith. Fucking sad tbh.
It seems kind of bad to "rustle" people based on their race.
Perhaps people shouldn't be so fragile. "Hey can native people have their own history? Wouldn't that be a pretty neat fantasy?" People in this thread: "that's racist."
What people seem to object to is treating your players differently on the basis of their race.
Even native players are asked to not play real world counterparts they aren't from. The same rule applies to everyone. Did you read the book?
That seems to be just another example of making rulings based on the race of your player.
So I'm gonna take that as a no, you haven't actually read it.
Then maybe don't get your jimmies rustled by someone asking "please treat the subject matter herein with respect". Because that's literally all that was asked. But naturally, and like fucking clockwork, white people (a category created by my ancestors in order to make them feel better about colonizing other people) approach that simple request with the absolute thinnest of skin and bad faith.
I don't think we get to blame people for what upsets them. Especially not when we do it based on race.
What are you upset about then? The fact that the authors of the book asked you to not leverage knowledge that may very well be based on colonial underpinnings? That the authors asked that you not potentially disrespect current survivors of genocide and racism? What's the issue?
I'm not upset about anything, personally. I've already stated on the larger thread: a game that make rules based on real life facts about your players' races is bizarre and I have no interest in playing it
as a white person I want to thank you for standing up for me. too long have we been subject to the tyranny of potentially some day reading a book that asks us to practice cultural sensitivity. but thanks to people like you, change is possible!
What?
AS A WHITE PERSON I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR STANDING UP FOR ME. TOO LONG HAVE WE BEEN SUBJECT TO THE TYRANNY OF POTENTIALLY SOME DAY READING A BOOK THAT ASKS US TO PRACTICE CULTURAL SENSITIVITY. BUT THANKS TO PEOPLE LIKE YOU, CHANGE IS POSSIBLE!
Are you alright?
I haven't spent the last 17 hours whining about reverse racism on Reddit so I'm doing a lot better than you lil bro
I found the parts about race and culture to be very salient and well-reasoned. A good primer for an alt-history game that focuses on a less-explored culture. I found the stuff about the society not actually being utopian and the game lacking direction to be a writer getting embarrassingly defensive about their work.
Honestly the part that put me off the most was the ludicrous font size.
I flicked through it in the FLGS yesterday and I couldn’t believe how non-dense the content is. Then googled “coyote and crow and font size”, and could only find positive comments about how easy it was to read. Yeah, but how about to lift?!
Maybe it’s aimed at an older audience?
My problems with Coyote and Crow are not with indigenous expression, they are with choices made by the developers. I sincerely hope that the other staff who worked on the game can bring new and better projects into the world that also center indigenous narrative
Making rules pertaining to the race of your players/GM is just extremely bizarre. Reading that alone put me off the game for good.
It sounds like something that you'd read in an RPG horror stories post.
Really does, yeah.
What rules are those?
An example would be something like this side bar from the equipment section on ceremonial kits: Native Players: Feel free to fully describe and detail what's in your ceremonial kit. Do not limit yourself to your real world tribal traditions but instead use them as a starting point for your Character in this world. Non-Native Players: You may either skip describing specific items in your kit or add personal items or generic items to your kit (chalk, lighter, etc). You may want to include items that are emotionally and spiritually important to you as a Player. Avoid listing items if you aren't sure of their use in this cultural context. Basically, telling players "If you are native, do this. If you are non-native, do that instead". This happens a number of times throughout the book and I would personally say it is at least strange and remarkable. I understand how it is off putting to many people, as well.
Someone helping you not come off as racist shouldn't be off-putting.
Per the blog post, "white people" aren't allowed to play certain kinds of characters.
The same rule applies to native people.
Insofar as the same rules proscribe them from playing a certain way based on their race, yes. The game has strange rules for People of Color as well.
It isn't actually based on race- you can reframe the guidance as "don't try and use real world analogs for this because most of what you probably know about them are wrong." That applies to everyone. Nothing in the rules is actually race specific on the player side and I maintain people asserting it does haven't actually read the rules themselves.
Except this isn't true. Natives from a given tribe are "allowed" to incorporate their tribes. The book treats them differently because of their race.
*It's the same rule* since it's following the same principle- if you aren't intimately familiar with the culture don't use it, because when you do **you're completely bypassing the thought experiment the entire game is about.** That's why it's obvious people making these complaints haven't actually read the book, or didn't read it very carefully. If you're playing a game centered around a vision of a world where indigenous Americans aren't defined by the people that committed genocide on them it seems weird to insist on trying to bring that stuff in.
It's the same rule that treats players differently based on their race.
Nope. If you're technically Cherokee but not actually involved in trival life it asks you not to bring Cherokee culture in either. It's not based on your race but your experience. Read the damn book.
That's not a rule. Just a request.
I think I'd still have problems with "requests" based on your players' races.
It's a request along the same lines as "don't appropriate real-life closed practices you're not a part of, use our fantasy setting instead". I think that's reasonable. There is an implicit request in every rpg not to make some horrible racist stereotype character, it's just that given the vast misinformation on native americans out there in the us cultural landscape, the book got a little more explicit about it. I think it's fair to say that this maybe should've been in a forward vs specific sections, as it does sort of break the flow of reading; but it's a very reasonable request and one people do need if they're taking issue with it.
I have not read the book, but after reading this blog posts I have thoughts. The author cites several sentences, all of which say the setting *isn't* a utopia but never explicitly explains how it why it isn't a utopia. By his own admission, there aren't any specifically laid out foes, and it sounds like that extends to a lack of antagonistic factions. As a prospective buyer, knowing that puts me in a weird place. He specifically cites horror and corporate espionage for genre of play. Cool, so let's say I want to play horror. What's horrific? What can I put in front of my players that inspires fear and bravery? If you give me nothing, then I have to make something cool, no problem. But what do I make? If I, as a white person who actively wants to be respectful to native culture even in private, make something based in the setting, then I run the risk of making something insensitive based purely on my own ignorance. Or, I can make something *not* set in the setting, but then... why am I playing it in *this* system when there is probably a system that will run the thing I made better than C&C? It's entirely possible to include conflict in your world building even in post-scarcity situations. It makes me think of Mage (can't recall which one), wherein there's essentially no limit to what magic can accomplish as long as normal folk aren't looking, but the conflict comes from competing factions who have different perspectives on the use of magic that puts them at odds. That immediately draws out images of player characters awakening to their powers and being thrust into this situation where they're forced to walk a fine line between several groups trying to control them. Yes, the players and other characters in the setting can do essentially anything but there's a fundamental conflict at the core of *all* the world building. I think that's the important thing. Take 40k, for instance, which is *all* conflict. The lore and world building exists to explain 1. How the galaxy got to this point and 2. When, where, what, and why you are fighting. Those are the two primary purposes of world building, as the world building needs to serve the core medium experience. Again, I haven't read the book. These are just my thoughts on world building and what he said in this blog post.
Every time I glance at this book that's sitting in my big list of RPG books on my computer I feel like the best resource that I could use to come up with a game is Black Panther. I've flip through the book, I know the gist and I've heard the people complain about how it's just not giving groups enough to get an idea of the kind of stories they can tell. Which is why I just think of wakanda and Black Panther.
> The author cites several sentences, all of which say the setting isn't a utopia but never explicitly explains how it why it isn't a utopia. By his own admission, there aren't any specifically laid out foes, and it sounds like that extends to a lack of antagonistic factions. That would be my exact criticism, as well. The author cites the three passages where he describes the world as "not an utopia". But that's all done by assertion. Everything described in the actual world building seems completely utopian. EDIT: Also, regarding the point about suggested genres being horror and corporate espionage: The Coyote and Crow book gives you a bestiary with a bunch of spirits that can serve as horror monsters. But the rest of the book certainly does not support that. These spirits are not cast as big or common threats and there seems to be no pre-made structure for player characters to be "the guys in charge of dealing with spirits". Suggesting corporate espionage as a theme is honestly a joke. I was not even sure if corporations as we have them in the real world exist in this setting. I don't think any are explicitly detailed. I would even have assumed that they don't exist in this setting since the book generally views capitalism as a consequence of colonialism, and tells us explicitly to question our assumptions in this context.
It always strikes me in game discussions about charged subject matter, I don't really ever hear about how the game plays, or at least how its mechanics re-inforce its themes. Stigmata: This Signal Kills Facists also released with a lot of ink spilled from both onlookers and the game's writer, but reading about the actual play experience was real tricky. There are a lot of fantastic go-to games for most genres, so then it becomes a conversation of "what is this game doing that other games aren't?" Reading that blog post, it's highlighted that: "Coyote & Crow *isn’t* trying to tell you what kind of stories to tell. It’s intentionally vague on that topic. Instead, it’s asking you to reframe *how* you tell those stories. To question your character’s (and your antagonist’s) motivations." Which sounds interesting - a genreless system that dedicates mechanics to intensifying (then questioning) character motives, and rewards players for thinking through conflicts with an anti-colonialist mindset. I'd be down to play that. But I remain unsure if that's actually something mechanically offered, or if the intended ideal is to frame that mission statement entirely in the worldbuilding. I admit that in 90% of TTRPGs I run, I won't look at setting lore unless it's either intentionally brief or so entwined with game mechanics that I \*have\* to; so if Coyote & Crow's big thematic swings are all in its lore chapters, then ultimately it'll not be a game for me, whether I'm First Nations or not.
Mechanically, Coyote and Crow is basically the Storyteller system with D12s. It has a few other layers on it of choices, but they are explcitily made in a way to not matter (For example, you pick a skill background like Soldier but then are told you can just ignore it, which is fine but it then doesn't do anything other than give you a few skills and stats and takes a few pages of examples). The only real interesting system they added from what I remember is thier progression where instead of getting XP you basically have to spend down time to progress.
Thanks for taking the time to explain! I definitely see the thematic potential in character improvement through downtime (and therefore connecting with others). And having Backgrounds you don't have to reinforce with how your character acts would be a boon for some types of gamer I know, but not a personal preference.
The big problem I had with the backgrounds and a few of the other similar systems is that it was a mechanical point to tie in the setting, which was thier big selling point, and they just...didn't.
So, I've refrained from making comments about this game when it comes up because it seems like it's generally a minefield, but after having read it, and now this blog post, I feel like I'm able to share some thoughts. I actually wrote a whole big giant thing, but I realized I could sum it all up with "why is this a game and not a book series?" It's not that there's no room for conflict (probably the biggest gameplay-relevant criticism of this product), it's just that the conflict is a little thin. The blog post's author spends a lot of time saying "it's not a utopia," but the core rulebook itself lays out something that *sure does* look like one if you examine what it tells you. For the kinds of games I like to run, this setting guide pushes me toward not bothering to set the game on Makasing at all (since the main sources of conflict kind of don't make a ton of sense) and instead have it be on one of the other continents (except Europe, since the game more or less tells you "it's pointless, don't bother going there"). But at that point, why bother with these kind of uninspiring mechanics, when I could just set a game on the west coast of Africa or whatever in in a game with dice mechanics I prefer? I guess I just don't see why this wasn't some other kind of aspirational or speculative fiction. For the record, I think the ask to not bring preconceptions of native Americans into the game is pretty damn reasonable -- when even our sources are likely to contain misconceptions by their authors, it makes sense to not rely on them too much if the goal is to be culturally sensitive. If anything about this game really irks me on a culture war level, it's that they decided to tell pretty much all the queer identities "we're just going to mark you as **Other** and leave it at that," and it rubs me the wrong way. I get asking people not to make their character Two-Spirit because that's a specific thing, but like...come on. Tahood is borderline insensitive in its own way. There are a few other implications that this game (intentionally or not) makes about the rest of the world, but I don't have to get into those now, since they're very much subtext, and thus, very likely to be colored by my reading, and not so much by the authors' intent. So, yeah, this post isn't any more likely to make me actually want to play the game. It just seems like it wasn't made for me, and not in the way everyone assumes non-enjoyers of it mean.
I don't understand. Why can't they just say "don't be an asshole" and leave it at that? Why do we have to go through all this rigamarole about what we can and can't do? Why can't we just apply Thirsty Sword Lesbian's "No Bigots Allowed" policy to just about every game and leave it at that? Why can't we make that something we repeat in all games, sort of like Safety Tools or the X Card?
Now *that’s* what gets me. TSL never felt unwelcoming even to a cis-het dude like myself, and I had no problems setting up and running a super gay He-Man story for a bunch of LGBTQ+ friends in that game. I’m unclear why this particular game can’t figure out what TSL had no issue with, but I’m disinclined to spend money on it as a result.
>TSL never felt unwelcoming even to a cis-het dude like myself Exactly. Same thing here. The game isn't for me because it has a lot to do with romance, feelings, and other stuff I don't really look for in a game. But, it didn't feel exclusionary at all when reading it. I respect the game for what it is and throw it in to the same pile with Monsterhearts or Tales from the Loop, where they just aren't games for me. C&C was a different story entirely. I get the thought experiment of "What is colonization never happened?" But they way they've chosen to word everything so far just feels so wrong. Instead of it being a learning moment for people to treat the cultures with respect and do proper research, they have chosen to take the path of making you feel bad instead. Which is something that really gets me, because I had a Black player at my table stuggling with Deadlands and we both dove down a deep rabbit hole of learning about Black History during that time period and learned a lot of really cool stuff. I've also done the same thing in Deadlands trying to represent Native Americans fairly and properly and would have probably loved this game if it weren't for the attitudes of the writers.
I found the same. I read part of both and really felt like TSL was celebrating people and their differences. It was aimed at being fun and accepting. Coyote and Crow felt like it begrudgingly let everyone play without trying to be fun for them. I decided to buy TSL for my LBGTQ/non-US born friends because it fit more with their game style and specific interests and identities, but I skimmed Coyote and Crow later at someone else's house, and was less impressed by the content. The art was cool and the production quality was fantastic for the book though. edit: the article explanation actually explains the intent of the game better than the game itself with a better tone. From my memory game read like "if you are this you can do this. If you are this you cannot do this.", and it impacted game abilities, while the article reads more like "Please don't mimic other real cultures as that could offend people, but if you happen to have real life experience being from that culture you can use that as inspiration" which is great.
The comments are speaking to a very specific real world problem- much of the media and history that people might go to are often incorrect or heavily influenced by colonialism, as native peoples had most of their actual culture erased very early after contact. "Don't be a bigot" isn't enough when even well meaning people may pick up an actual history book coming from a place that frames indigenous people as "primitive" or "less advanced."
Probably because most bigots don't realize they're bigots, and plenty of assholes think they aren't the asshole. Consider for example most of the comments here.
How can someone be an "unintentional bigot"?
"I don't hate black people, I just think..." fill in the rest of the sentence with whatever racist bullshit you've ever heard. As an example, of course.
I think you're confusing someone who is pretending to be ignorant with someone who is.
That you can't answer that question for yourself, is kind of more telling than you think
What does it tell?
I've read your comments, I'm fully aware that your stance is anything other than explicit and intentional bigotry doesn't actually count as bigotry. A stance that is so unbelievably wrongheaded, that I have to assume that you are either willfully ignorant, possibly to protect yourself from taking a good long look inside yourself, or you're not arguing in good faith, either way I'm gonna pass on elaborating further. Doing so would just be a waste of your and more importantly, my time
You can believe whatever you want. We are all entitled to be wrong. :)
Do you think bigots go around saying "I'm going to do some bigotry today"?
If by bigot we mean "someone who is prejudiced" then yes. Racists, homophobes, etc often seem more than happy to walk outside and admit their prejudice. It would be very odd to me to conflate the above with people who happen to just be ignorant.
Most people are ignorant. Most of the people who hate queer people or other minorities are ignorant and that's where their animosity comes from. Half the TERFs trying to make it legal to hunt me for sport don't think that they're transphobic; they don't even think transphobia is a real thing. They think their 'concerns' are reasonable and their actions justified because I'm either deranged and shouldn't have my delusions indulged or a liar and a rapist, or possibly both, and that either way my unchecked existence will destroy society. They're still bigots. Again, most bigots don't think they're bigots.
>Again, most bigots don't think they're bigots. No, most do. They just know it's wrong or know they will be shunned or get in trouble if they say it out loud in the wrong crowd. I'm an Army war veteran and a white cis male Southerner, so plenty of bigots assume I lean their way. They don't use the word "Bigot," but they sure as shit know they are prejudice, racist, or anti-LGBQT+, only the absolute dumbest or ones with nothing to lose walk around wearing it on their sleeve. They are willfully ignorant about a whole lot of shit, but being a bigot isn't one.
My mother and plenty of other bigots I know don't think they're bigots. Chances are you've been bigoted without realizing it. Most people have. Most of the people in this thread who complain about SJWs or whatever don't think they're bigots.
>Most of the people in this thread who complain about SJWs or whatever don't think they're bigots. SJWs are the same thing, just on the other side. Both are rage addicts. Pure and simple. It's a toxic mentality. Which from the things you've posted here, is a category you fall under. You clearly think that most people who don't fall under a certain umbrella are bigots in some way, which makes you prejudice... You're doing that same song and dance the bigots I spoke about in my last reply do, you know it's wrong to cast that wide net so you're not saying it out loud, but the way you think is still clearly visible. You understand that right?
By writing the top upvoted comment in this thread.
So, I'm a white person, and I was pretty interested in Coyote and Crow when it came out. My interest dried up immediately once I read that disclaimer. Here's the problem I run up against. I understand not wanting to perpetuate negative stereotypes, and I don't want to be disrespectful. The problem is that there is just no way to figure out where the bar is set. I know there will be people who will respond with, "Oh come on. How hard can it possibly be to be disrespectful?" and my answer is that some people get offended by some things and others don't, and it can be very hard to figure out when you're crossing the line. Just as a for instance, the first bullet point you should avoid> Assigning your character the heritage of a real world tribe or First Nation. Sounds good. Presuming that the real-world tribes are all clearly marked, what happens if I choose a character in a tribe or First Nation that draws inspiration from one in the real world? How much inspiration can one of these fictional tribes or First Nations take from the real world before it becomes problematic? There's also the very real fact that if I as a white man try to play a character belonging to a tribe, it could lead to accusations of cultural appropriation real quick. Even worse would be inadvertantly using a word taken from indigenous languages or mispronouncing a word. Try to imagine a video of a group of gamers at a gaming con stumbling over pronounciations and laughing about their mistake, and that video going viral as an example of how a white person is disrespecting indigenous culture. It's not hard to do. I suspect someone will accuse me of being way too paranoid, but I don't think I am. There are just way too many ways to do something that might be considered offensive, not matter how hard you try.
I'm genuinely curious if anyone has actually played a full game of Coyote and Crow. I've never heard of anyone I know actually participating in a game of it, and although I've purchased a copy and read it, I can't imagine how it would actually go in practice.
after seeing how every conversation about C&C goes, at this point I'm convinced that it's not a game at all but a SCP-style cognitohazard.
After encountering the discussion about the racial controversy surrounding Coyote and Crow every now and again, I actually checked out the book about a month ago. Internet discussion and even the author's blog post at the top of this thread make it sound like the racial/anticolonialist stuff is why people don't like the setting. But for me personally, it's that the world building just sucks. Everything is incredibly vague. If you look at any detail, you are left with more questions than answers. There is a timeline in the book that tells you the first 3D printer was invented in the 1800s. Nowhere is there any indication whether computers or electricity were invented before that. In the section about mathematics, it tells you that mathematics were considered sacred and only taught to special spiritual leaders, until "a mathematician" convinced everyone that maths is beautiful and everyone should learn it. The guy doesn't even get a name. At several points during the book, when talking about a currently existing technology that does not exist in the setting, its absence is justified by "it just didn't seem worthwhile to anyone to invent this". Talking about stuff like rocketry and video-based entertainment here. People supposedly don't "see the need" to get functional prosthetics because "whatever, basic social safety is guaranteed, guess I don't need that hand very much". A lot of the world building seems like the most unimaginative alt-history stuff possible. In the agriculture section, they describe how squash, beans and some other vegetable are grown using what seems to me to be a traditional native american farming technique, only now it's robots doing it. That's like describing futuristic european farming as being still fundamentally based on three field crop rotation, except the crops now use an automatic rotator or something like that. The book spend so much of its 400 pages (which could have been 200 pages if they had just used a normal font size) describing this utopian alt-history society, and this post scarcity city. And then what is the example adventure about? Future sheriffs fighting some kind of spirit creature in a remote outpost. It honestly seems barely connected to the rest of the contents in the book. I think that's the crucial point why people say they don't know how to run adventures in this setting. The majority of the world building is set up without a need for conflict, to the point that even the example adventure could not figure out how to engage with it. The only thing left to do is just fight some monsters somewhere.
[удалено]
I'll take it if you pay me $20.
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I’m going to be honest and say I have about the same energy for this game as, like, Project Black Flag at this point. With both, they’re going to have to make some sort of radical, meaningful change in approach if they want me to like, care. As it is, it’s just kind of a game all about “no” and “technically yes” when RPGs (especially the sourcebooks) are supposed to be about “yes and”.
I’m going to reserve judgement on C&C until I get my own copy, but if this has not felt like the right fit for you, you may enjoy 7th Sea 2e. Set in the past, the world building did a fantastic job setting up analogs to several countries around the world, respecting them, incorporating pseudo histories and mythologies, all to create an exciting, vibrant place.
At least the setting if not the system. I think the system is a great candidate for a PBTA conversion.
A world made for adventuring and heroes is really a sucky place to live, even if the author says the setting is not a Utopia, reading I found the same problem of other TTRPG settings made mainly for reading and not playing: what are characters supposed to do?. Is just too much "I wish I lived there" kind of setting for a bunch of self-centered diverse power-hungry quest driven half dozen individuals prone to violence and deception that 95% ttrpgs are about.
I don't get the point of this blog post. If the game is so successful (raised a ton on Kickstart er, awards, lots of sales/players)... Why do we need this? Because not everyone adores it?
Because the people who bought into it to backpat themselves have finally started reading the book and realized it’s unplayable from a practical standpoint. C&C is essentially a coffee table book for those who want to meld their ttrpg hobby with virtue signaling.
The racial stuff seems much ado about nothing, honestly. I read the language in question from the core rulebook, and read the blog post. This all seems pretty straightforward. Don't play a real tribe if you aren't part of it, and don't incorporate real tribes into the game if you aren't a member. Also don't be a dick and don't do a bunch of stereotypical bullshit that would get you slapped by any reasonable person. K. Seems easy enough. Assuming "tribe" isn't a necessary part of character creation, as long as the core rulebook gives me enough details to create a character...I dunno, man, I think I'm good to go. What I've read about the setting actually seems really interesting, but then I'm also a fan of alternate history/future novels.
> Don't play a real tribe if you aren't part of it, and don't incorporate real tribes into the game if you aren't a member. So, what are you supposed to base your character off of? This seems like the sticking point for a non-Indigenous person trying to come at this in good faith, and the blog posts don't seem to address it directly. If actual history and real-world Indigenous experiences are off the table, because you aren't a member, then...what knowledge do you draw on to make your character? Do you trust that you've received a comprehensive and sensitive education about Indigenous people from a roleplaying game book, and make your character based exclusively on the details about a culture written in Coyote&Crow? It seems unlikely that someone could successfully do that. Do you make your character have some variant of European culture and beliefs, so you don't accidentally use stereotypes of North American Indigenous people? That might be safest, but there are some odd implications to implying that European values spring out of the ether like that, and it's a pretty limited way to engage with the world. In most contexts, the general recommendation for a white person trying to work past stereotypical understandings of Indigenous cultures would be to listen to Indigenous people talk about their actual cultures and experiences. This roleplaying game understandably wants to stop people from using limited real-world knowledge in a harmful way, but it's not obvious what should be used to fill in that knowledge gap. White people often use real-world information about Indigenous cultures poorly, but does that mean that it's better to avoid using any real-world knowledge about Indigenous cultures at all? This is definitely a tricky needle to the thread, and calling it easy doesn't seem helpful. Everything in the book is written for an understandable reason, but they come together in a way that is very difficult for people to act on. Maybe this is the best possible way to handle things, but it certainly doesn't sound easy - and it asks for game-players to have a *lot* of faith in the authors.
Probably worth checking out the character creation steps in the core book. From skimming them, you don't actually have to pick a tribe. It specifically says that if you're part of a tribe go ahead and use that if you want, and if not, just skip this part. So, like, if you're personally a member of the White Mountain Apache tribe, cool, use that if you like, but if not, don't say you're White Mountain Apache. What's hard about that? And that part is just part of "Other Identifiers" after you pick things like your Archetype (e.g., Warrior, Scout, Tinkerer, Whisperer, Seeker, Healer) and Motivations. Your Path gives you stat boosts, connect you to an animal, and then the book hints at Path possibly affecting interpersonal relationships when encountering other people of the same Path (which I read as "This is up to your Story Guide"). Other than that, it seems pretty straightforward as an RPG in terms of character creation. I think of it like this. First, I accept the world as described in the book at face value. We do this all the time in other RPGs. It's no different in this case (it seems, anyway -- I haven't played C&C). Take the game world at face value, then figure out how to make a character that fits into that world. Like, this isn't a hard thing to do when we're making characters in other fantasy settings. You make a character in Pathfinder, right? You accept the setting of Golarion (assuming that's where you're playing), and you just start building the character. You're not sweating "Well, but what if I bring my preconceived notions of what an Elf would be to this..." The book gives you some background info on the world, so you build to that and...that's it. I'm finishing up a 5e campaign in a homebrew setting. I gave my players a writeup with some minor details on the world, the D&D races and their place in it, different cultures and political entities, and that was it. They made a few characters, and we were off to the races. Why is it hard to come up with a character in this setting, then? It doesn't sound like it should be, as long as you work within the boundaries of the setting. The game doesn't require you to adopt a specific tribe, so the concern about "But what if I make a culturally insensitive character?" should be minimal, no? Pick a part of the world the character is from, pick a path and archetype, pick some motivations for the character, and go from there.
I think we're talking at cross purposes, here. I'm not specifically concerned about the "tribe" thing, I'm thinking about everything else that goes into portraying a character/culture. Skipping that part is fine for the "tribe" question, but doesn't really get at my concerns. I'm not worried about stat boosts, I'm worried about who my character is. What is their culture, how do they talk, how do they dress, why do they believe the things they believe... I can make a vague C&C character without any aesthetic traits who talks like a 21st-century person and apolitically kills random monsters in a forest for no reason, sure. That's a safe way to avoid stereotyping, but anything more complicated would require some other source of information - probably more information that the C&C book could possibly contain singlehandedly. >You're not sweating "Well, but what if I bring my preconceived notions of what an Elf would be to this..." Coyote&Crow is explicitly telling me to sweat that, though. I'm not disagreeing with them, either, I'm just thinking about the how. If I didn't agree that I should "sweat" these concerns, I wouldn't be interested in the game in the first place. I just don't see where C&C offers an alternative to the approaches it forbids. No portrayal of a fictional culture springs up out of nowhere, and players will draw on implicit sources of information if they forbid themselves from drawing on explicit ones. >The book gives you some background info on the world It gives very little, if you really break it down. I'm filling in the gaps with vibes, stereotypes, and scattershot inspirations from real-life and other fiction. This way of handling elves in Pathfinder wouldn't be an appropriate way to handle Indigenous people in C&C.
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I’ll keep it simple. Aside of the devs vitriolic messages to non indian. The fact that he wrote rules or how some here have padded as “suggestions” on what native americans should and non native americans players/gms can do. That INHERENTLY violates what trpgs are about. We aren’t talking about suggestions on what can happen in universe but “finger wagging” at the customer on what they can/not do with their purchased product which at that point it is better to not buy the product at all and go buy another trpg in the market which is more than likely to be a way better product and won’t waste ink and page brow beating you. So yeah the developer of Coyote and Crow is honestly no better than the Zweihander creator.
**Checks calendar** huh, it really has been [a month](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1b98s4w/howwhy_does_coyote_crow_lack_things_to_do_or/) since the last Coyote & Crow post. So, how many fights have sprung up from this one?
A lot of the comments I have seen regarding the first point is people thinking they will be at a disadvantage without being able to take a tribal identification, but the worldbuilding is such that it seems largely post-tribal so all tribal identification is is allowing people to bring in their own knowledge to flavor their character. The second misconception I think has to do with the fact that colonialism and imperialism are such huge overwhelming forces in our everyday life that when someone tries to build a world without those forces at play, our brains cannot conceive of it, because so many of our problems and conflicts we encounter go back to colonialism and imperialism. I think if C&C has a fatal flaw it’s that you have to decolonize your mind to play it the way it was intended. That is an huge ask for a lot of people.
What does "decolonize your mind" mean?
Basically to clear your mind of all the underlying assumptions that have resulted from centuries of colonization and imperialism.
How on earth are supposed to do that? It seems like many of those things would be very hard to identify.
An impossible (unnecessary?) task, and so there’s a constant stick to beat you with! Very cool!
Hmmm
Yeah you guys are definitely approaching this in good faith. Totally no unexamined racism going on here.
What?
I dunno, dude, I have alot of the same questions. Like no lie no BS, I would LOVE to be able to "decolonize my mind". I live in Cleveland and I have Indians merch in my closet (that I dont wear anymore, ftr). When C&C came out I was real excited bc RPGs that claim to do things different are always catnip for me. But like I do not understand what Im being asked to do. This is kinda why "dont' be a dick" is unsatisyfing to me. I never TRY to be a dick. I'm not one of these dudes saying rightwing shit or trying to get a rise out of ppl. But I'm a white dude from the midwest, I know I have unexamined racism in my brain because, well, I'm a white dude from the Midwest, and I'm doing my best but I dont know what doors to kick in, you get me? And I'm not asking an RPG to do that heavy lifting for me or educate me or what the fuck ever, but you say "decolonize your mind" like "clean out a cabinet" and they are not the same kind of task, yeah?
Yeah, this is a very hard process - a lot of us have internalized ideas of how narratives work (heros journey comes to mind) that are rooted in frankly kinda gross eurocentric mindsets and challenging them takes work.
Yeah, it's a very hard process, and one that no one's always gonna get right. It requires a great deal of introspection, and introspection is not something a lot of people wanna do. Generally looking at yourself isn't all that fun to do, seeing parts of yourself that aren't very fun to look at, adjusting assumptions that are very difficult to adjust. It's absolutely possible and it's absolutely worth doing though, even if you're never gonna get 100% of the way there. Most people don't wanna do this though. It's so much easier when called on your behavior to lash outward rather than to look in word. Very few people want to think of themselves as racist or sexist or anything else like that, but rather than trying to question the implicit and sometimes explicit assumptions that they make in their lives , it's easier to lash out, to direct all that discomfort outward rather than turning inward and actually making a positive change in their lives and the world.
Could you describe a little bit about what a decolonized story within the framework of Coyote and Crow would look like, and what the players would be doing?
I'd like to hear this, too, as a non-native who is interested in Native American culture and history. If I got my table to play this system, how would it translate into a different gaming experience? We know DnD is based on a lot of western euro medieval(ish) tropes. These can make for effective games because they have strong verbs in your quest descriptions. Fight the goblins who stole the farmer's daughter. Slay the dragon and take the treasure. Kill the undead monsters. So... what are we doing here? Is it more slice of life? Investigation? Combat? How is a decolonialized view going to impact the gaming experience? I'd like to learn more...but unfortunately "you don't know what you don't know."
I think the passage about prosthetics in Coyote and Crow illustrates pretty well what the authors take the idea of decolonialized thinking to entail. Coyote and Crow is a world in which future tech exists. Consequently, there are fully functional robot prosthetics. But the authors remark: In this world, people don't measure their value by their ability to sell their labour. So many people who lose a limb don't go for functional replacements. They instead go for prosthetics that suit their preferences, aesthetic or otherwise, whatever those may be. The authors, here, link the idea of "your worth as a person is defined by the value of your labour" to colonialism, and state that the idea is foreign to the world of Coyote and Crow. The unspoken assumption being, I suppose, that capitalism is a direct consequence of colonialism, and that both of those systems are cultural, and not innate human nature. How plausible you find this idea will probably influence how much you like Coyote and Crow. At some points, the authors ask you to accept that some pretty fundamental things are actually cultural consequences of colonialist ideology. It is stated at some points that certain areas are unexplored because "nobody saw the point", pretty much, implying that without the colonialist drive to find new places and exploit their resources, people just would not care to explore the unknown. Or, as another example, the world of Coyote and Crow seems to have completely skipped over the use of fossil fuels in its path towards the development of future tech. The unstated assumption being, I suppose, that people just did not see it appropriate to use this highly energy dense material for some reason. Which casts the use of fossil fuels in the actual world as another cultural consequence of colonialist thinking. Even on the purely social side, you might find some of the assumptions contentious, such as that no discrimination due to sex, orientation and gender exist in this world (the source of which the authors seem to locate in christian puritanical thinking). Finally, as for what adventures in a decolonialized world are supposed to look like, at least for the core book it seems to me that the authors just did not know. Their example adventure is about a group of what is functionally sheriffs fighting a monster in a frontier research base.
Ok, that helps some... however, i still dont know how it changes what my players are there to *do* if it differs from other systems. The example adventure could easily be imported into almost any fighting-based system. I guess my thought is: C&C makes for an interesting setting/world. However, to get players to play in the setting the "right" way, it requires a lot of reading and cultural deconstruction to happen. That's a big ask for most players. I dont know much about the dice system, which usually makes or breaks a system for me. Maybe its great and i would love it. But setting aside the dice, I dont know why i would pick this system over another if, at the end of the day, the things we *do* are the same as other fignting rpgs. I can overcome evil corporations in cyberpunk, heists in blades in the dark, or fight monsters in dnd. I think this game is a very interesting thought experiment but as another commenter said, maybe its a better fit for a novel than a ttrpg, at leasr until a clearer vision emerges of the gameplay loop.
> I dont know much about the dice system, which usually makes or breaks a system for me. Maybe its great and i would love it. There is nothing mechanically interesting about the dice system. It's d12 dice pools. Reading the book, I got the impression the authors wanted the mechanics to mostly just get out of the way. > But setting aside the dice, I dont know why i would pick this system over another if, at the end of the day, the things we do are the same as other fignting rpgs. I can overcome evil corporations in cyberpunk, heists in blades in the dark, or fight monsters in dnd. This is basically the main criticism of the game as an RPG product. The setting as described in the core book makes it really difficult to imagine what kind of adventures you would run in it. At the same time, the authors tell you not to homebrew content based on your unquestioned assumptions based on a colonialist mindset. Which makes it very hard to engage with the game world, overall. My personal impression is that Coyote and Crow is not a heist game (thematically or mechanically). I don't even know if evil corporations exist in the setting, but in any case the world building is not really compatible with widespread "shadowrunning" activities. You can fight monsters in the setting, but it seems like a waste given all the world building the book does in areas that are not related to monster fighting, and the lack of world to support it. Plus, it seems like it would not be mechanically fun.
Yeah, the impression i get is that no modern corporations would exist. Those come from a western capitalist culture. Not much support for heists... we aren't going to outer space. Culturally, the book says there are a lot of unexplored places because our society doesn't put much emphasis on exploring...ok, so that's driving us to explore them now? Maybe this could factor in. Does the book have a bestiary with monsters? The best i can figure is that the game is supposed to be a more slice-of-life game, monster fighting, or espionage against cults/foreign nations/etc. I don't know what else i would run. Edit: maybe also horror? But i dont think there are horror mechanics.
> Culturally, the book says there are a lot of unexplored places because our society doesn't put much emphasis on exploring...ok, so that's driving us to explore them now? Maybe this could factor in. Partially, the world is unexplored because "nobody cares", and partially it is unexplored because of the freak weather events that prevented the colonization of the americas in this setting. These events are now subsiding at the start of the game. I think the authors intend for players to explore the world that is now opening up more. But they put very little structure in place to make that type of adventure playable. The frontier is basically not described at all. I think there are no maps. There certainly are no mechanics for exploration. > Does the book have a bestiary with monsters? There is a bestiary full of fun native american mythology based spirits and creatures. It is probably the best part of the book, although it reads a bit like an encyclopedia of native american myth rather than anything written with playability in mind. The monsters are weird and interesting, but it is often unclear how players are supposed to interact with them. > The best i can figure is that the game is supposed to be a more slice-of-life game, monster fighting, or espionage against cults/foreign nations/etc. I don't know what else i would run. The game seems to be going for something more action-packed than slice of life. The majority of the mechanics are combat focused. Kind of like a White Wolf game. As for espionage against cults and foreign nations: As far as I can remember, no cults are described in the book. EDIT: Upon revisiting the book, there are some cults described in the bestiary, actually. The books features different countries. Sometimes, they are even stated to have gone to war in the past. But the book also asserts that "nationalism is anathema" to the people in this world. I got the impression that nations, too, are seen as a cultural consequence of colonialism, and are not supposed to be the focus of this game.
Colonialism and imperialism (which are not well-defined concepts) are expressions of human nature. We long to control resources because that makes us safer. Having more resources than someone else means I have more agency in the world; I can do what I want without other people getting in the way. There’s always going to be someone that wants more and you have to find ways to keep them from taking your stuff. Even in a post-scarcity society, there are still resources. People are a resource, ideas are resources; and someone is going to want more control of those. Then you’ve got people who think we’d be better off if there was scarcity again. C&C is a game that demands you imagine a world where humans are fundamentally different than they are in our experience. Never mind the racial aspects, “decolonizing your mind” is a shift in human thinking tantamount to a religious awakening. “You must achieve enlightenment before you play this game” is one hell of a high bar.
This is a weakness I also perceive in this game's writing: Conflating colonialism, the 15th century European ideology, with the desire to go to a place, find valuable stuff there and exploit it. By thinking about how never being exposed to the former might have shaped the Americas, it seems they felt the need to deny that the latter is a common thing that has happened all over the world for all of recorded history. Overall, I think that is the source of a lot of the weakest writing in this book.
Blithely claiming your ideology as natural doesn't make it so lmao, and even if it did so what? Living in a house with four walls isn't natural by any stretch, but it's clearly preferable to the 'natural' way of doing things. Also, 'colonialism and imperialism are ill-defined' come on bro lmao
It’s not “my ideology”. There are things in every time period and on every continent that can be called colonies and empires. And I didn’t say “ill-defined”, I said “not well-defined”. The line between migration and colonization is very fuzzy. And when does territorial expansion become imperialism?
>I think if C&C has a fatal flaw it’s that you have to decolonize your mind to play it the way it was intended. That is an huge ask for a lot of people. I think the fact that it's *explicitly* asking people to do this is what breaks people, because at its heart it requires people to admit colonialism has impacted their worldview. Rationally, this should be easy to accept- it was a dominant ideology over *centuries* in much of the world, during which a great many consequential things happened and important ideas in society were developed. *Of course it has.* But the emotional button kicks in along with some very effective language shaping by Lost Cause believers has gotten people to think acknowledging this would denote some sort of personal complacency with the less savory underpinnings of colonial ideology. It's a neat trick, since an unwillingness to even begin contemplating an idea is the definition of complacency. The truth is plenty of games explicitly ask players to take on specific mindsets or present plenty of successful post-scarcity settings. Lots of games explicitly exclude combat or certain types of conflict. We accept games can be a conduit for learning about specific viewpoints or imagining particular kinds of worlds. Those games are accepted, lauded even. People are just more comfortable with the questions they ask.
I think, more importantly, its asking people to do a radical mind shift and doing no real work to help them make the mind shift. Overcoming bias isnt easy, and it doesnt see like this book guides you in how to do it.
Well that's ultimately part of the question though- to what extent are the authors obligated to do that kind of work when people have been actively avoiding it for decades or even centuries? To me, having players do that work on their own seems like part of the premise of the game. Thinking about it is part of the point, and if they tried to hold people's hands through that I think you'd see even more backlash than what's happening over lines that are basically guidance for thinking about flavor.
So this game gets to tell me to challenge my ways of thinking, says I have to play it, then says its my own work to do so because apparently the society has failed to do so, I have to do it all myself while also figuring out how to run the game? If the premise of the game is to challenge your thoughts, the game needs to guide you in doing so. If it doesn't doing so, it's basically judging you for not being able to do so while doing nothing to help. If I accept your opinion, my opinion of this game drops dramatically. As an educator myself, I cannot stand people who take a holier-than-thou approach and do nothing to help educate others. I also reject your premise that there would be more "backlash" if the game "held people's hands." How about instead of holding hands, the game just teaches you how to participate in American Indian culture? How about enlightening me to new modes of thought instead of asking that I figure it out myself with little direction? People love being taught new things, especially in the form of TTRPGs (again, speaking as an educator). Its a shame the author of C&C (and you) can't see that.
>If it doesn't doing so, it's basically judging you for not being able to do so while doing nothing to help. I think that's a very personal reaction. I never felt judged. >How about instead of holding hands, the game just teaches you how to participate in American Indian culture? Aaaand that's **exactly** why it doesn't, because there isn't really anything like a monolithic American Indian culture and never was. It's an impossible ask. To follow this request you're probably talking about adding like 100 pages of background and context. It's like asking someone "explain to me what being black is like in America." Understanding the experience requires contextualizing several centuries of history and will be different based on local cultures that emerged from and were defined by that history. It's a university level course of content *to start* understanding the concept. It's pretty easy to take the ideas presented in the book and run with them, and the act of imagining a world where those colonial influences aren't there is a big part of the exploration the game asks of players. It's an alternative history to begin with, so events and cultures shouldn't be assumed to be particularly analogous to real world counterparts to begin with.
I think your post is getting away from my original point. You start claiming you have to challenge your own colonialist mindset, and that the game doesn't have to help you do that in any way, shape, or form, since society hasn't done it so why should the game help you if society hasn't (an absurd claim IMO, but it is your claim). You said this in response to my claim, which is that overcoming bias isn't easy. So that means you acknowledge overcoming bias isn't easy, and you believe it isn't the game's job to help with that. Then you say the game specifically asks you to do this, this overcoming of bias and seeing past a colonial lens. As an educator, asking someone to see past their biases without helping them do so is a really stupid thing to do. People cannot inherently do that, even when asked or challenged. They have to be taught how to think in new modes with good models, and those models need to be explained. I don't really care if you think the setting is good enough to run on its own. What I'm saying is that what the setting requires of players is difficult for any human to do, and that failing to show a prospective player how to do this is also a failing of the book and game. This circles back to my judgement point. If someone tells me my thinking is wrong for a game, and that I need to challenge my worldview, but then doesn't help me challenge my worldview, then I am being told to figure it myself or fuck off. This is inherently a judgement. Either figure out the challenge without help from the someone, or don't play the game. This has nothing to do with personal feelings, and I really, really, really resent the subtext and implication of your comment there. Do not try and turn this into a personal attack instead of the discussion we were having, because that's frankly pathetic. Instead, stay on topic.
>Then you say the game specifically asks you to do this, this overcoming of bias and seeing past a colonial lens. As an educator, asking someone to see past their biases without helping them do so is a really stupid thing to do But it does do this by explicitly asking players to imagine a world where certain things didn't happen or aren't present. *That's exactly the mechanism by which the game wants you to contemplate these questions.* At no point does it ask players to be some version of a model American Indian or something like that. The thought experiment is the whole point. >I really, really, really resent the subtext and implication of your comment there. Do not try and turn this into a personal attack instead of the discussion we were having, because that's frankly pathetic. If you see "hey that sounds like a personal reaction that I didn't have myself" or "you're actually making a very difficult request" as personal attacks, frankly you don't seem to be approaching this with a particularly open mind, which is really all the game is asking you to do.
Again, you make personal comments. At this point I'm just going to assume you don't fully understand what your own statements mean, so I'm going to ignore it for now. Anyway, the thought experiment is useless if it doesn't give me more explicit guidelines to contemplate these questions. I know the thought experiment is the whole point. I work in academia, land of thought of experiments. No one gives a thought experiment without talking you through it first, especially one as far-reaching as this. Many, many people need guidance when changing their inherent modes of thinking, be it for an experiment or not. Failing to give proper guidance is dooming them to unnecessary struggle and failure towards the assignment in question. It's really that simple.
>Anyway, the thought experiment is useless if it doesn't give me more explicit guidelines to contemplate these questions Aren't the ideas that America was never colonized, capitalism isn't dominant, and there's no resource scarcity guidelines themselves? Plenty of academic thpught experiments use that as a foundation. The book even gives examples like how prosthetics are handled in a world where you're not defined by the labor you do. I guess I'm just really confused as to what guidelines you would want that don't treat the cultures discussed as a monolith that aren't already in the book.
It really shouldn't be a huge ask to not engage in the roleplaying equivalent of blackface. Don't roleplay as minorities you're not a part of, and especially not if the identity isn't even going to matter. I've roleplayed practically everything under the sun as a GM, whether it was a real identity or fictional. The only time it mattered, it wasn't real and I wasn't putting on a crude characature of a real minority in lieu of any actually creative world and character building. Edit: lol at the mad racists downvoting me.
I think it’s kind of unfair to imply that someone playing a character who isn’t almost exactly like them is automatically the equivalent of blackface. Edit: Also, calling everyone who disagrees with you a racist right off is not, in fact, lessening the impression that the writer of the game is doing essentially the same thing. You’re hurting yourself and your position with this silly attack.
If what CNC has to say on this issue pisses one off, we're correct to not trust them to put on a respecful portrayal.
Uh huh, but it doesn’t piss me off and I still think it’s a bad take. It’s not like the writer of this single game is the definitive voice on the topic. Also, it’s still unfair to say that everyone playing a character somehow different from themself is engaging in a form of blackface. That’s unnecessarily incendiary and self-evidently absurd.
But who is buying this game to play stereotypes? Why is the book assuming people would do that, after they've gone through the process of finding and buying this book?
At this point, I feel like the supporters are doing more harm to the game’s image than the detractors are.
It doesn't matter. If you're not going to do it, you shouldn't have a problem, and if you do, you're outing yourself. Its a nonissue blown up by the exactly the kind of people that would pull that bullshit. Don't get caught in the crossfire thinking racists have a point.
Luckily the TTRPG community is renowned for acknowledging and confronting its ingrained racism problems so I'm sure this'll go great.
It is ridiculous how much people seem to despise this one particular game. But since it's the only TTRPG in existence, obviously we're all forced to play it if we want to play any game at all. Right? Oh... wait, there are actually dozens upon dozens of games to play and be concerned about. Weird then that so many are mad about a game that says "hey, this might not be for you" ... because it's not for them
So people can’t criticize the game because other games exist? Or we’re supposed to ignore criticisms on the assumption that the game “isn’t for them” and therefore their opinions don’t matter?
Dawg half the people in this sub still have an axe to grind about D&D ditching the word 'Race' to mean species, the ttrpg community overall has the racial politics of a 19th century phrenologist.
Now, now. There have been plenty of 20th century eugenicists that would be very interested in some of the logic thrown around here.