This kind of topic has always been of great interest to me and I can see value to both CSL and rasgon's approaches. For me the key is to foster consistency in my gaming world to help create a strong sense of identity whilst avoiding stifling creativity. I like to have a clearly envisioned sense of the different cultures but if I need something a bit different I can use those cultural definitions as a starting point to diverge from.
I particularly enjoy looking at how factors in the Greyhawk setting (magic, monsters, gods, wars etc.) would have impacted and changed the baseline Earth comparisons because that is what turns Greyhawk into a world that makes sense (asmuch as a magical world can) without being too similar to the world I already live in.
This is exactly what I was going for in this thread. I love trying to explore how non-European might be impacted by the presence of demihumans, humanoids and Vancian magic.
When I talk about 'broad cultural trappings', I'm referring to commonalities that some groups of societies might share. There was a lot of overlap between European countries, as well as between Middle Eastern countries, between North American First Nations, and so forth. I use those to inform how different human cultures might have evolved and share certain cultural traits, even if individual nations had their own different practices.
I don't put much stock in Gary Gygax's claim that the Flan are based on black African people, not when he said in the same thread that Thrommel was abducted by the Scarlet Brotherhood at Nyrond's behest. Everything in the source material about the Flan suggested 'First Nations' to me, from their physical appearance to their social mores.
In the illustration on page 15 of the 1983 Guide, one of the humans talking to the dwarf is wearing face paint and has what looks to me like a Native-like facial profile. The man in an Oeridian-like plaid talking to the woman while handling cloth also looked like a Native guy to me too, so it seemed pretty obvious that they were both intended to be Flan.
And as an amusing postscript, explorer Giovanni di Verrazzano described the Native American people he met in his travels as similar to Ethiopians. Go figure.
This kind of topic has always been of great interest to me and I can see value to both CSL and rasgon's approaches. For me the key is to foster consistency in my gaming world to help create a strong sense of identity whilst avoiding stifling creativity. I like to have a clearly envisioned sense of the different cultures but if I need something a bit different I can use those cultural definitions as a starting point to diverge from.
I particularly enjoy looking at how factors in the Greyhawk setting (magic, monsters, gods, wars etc.) would have impacted and changed the baseline Earth comparisons because that is what turns Greyhawk into a world that makes sense (asmuch as a magical world can) without being too similar to the world I already live in.
This is exactly what I was going for in this thread. I love trying to explore how non-European might be impacted by the presence of demihumans, humanoids and Vancian magic.
When I talk about 'broad cultural trappings', I'm referring to commonalities that some groups of societies might share. There was a lot of overlap between European countries, as well as between Middle Eastern countries, between North American First Nations, and so forth. I use those to inform how different human cultures might have evolved and share certain cultural traits, even if individual nations had their own different practices.
I don't put much stock in Gary Gygax's claim that the Flan are based on black African people, not when he said in the same thread that Thrommel was abducted by the Scarlet Brotherhood at Nyrond's behest. Everything in the source material about the Flan suggested 'First Nations' to me, from their physical appearance to their social mores.
In the illustration on page 15 of the 1983 Guide, one of the humans talking to the dwarf is wearing face paint and has what looks to me like a Native-like facial profile. The man in an Oeridian-like plaid talking to the woman while handling cloth also looked like a Native guy to me too, so it seemed pretty obvious that they were both intended to be Flan.
And as an amusing postscript, explorer Giovanni di Verrazzano described the Native American people he met in his travels as similar to Ethiopians. Go figure.
The Flan=Amerind seems to come down to the Rovers entry. Who-ever wrote the blurb for them was thinking Amerind but Gygax's notes were describing them as Cossacks. Their chief is an Ataman which is only used as by Cossacks, Vlek Vlekzed is slavic, Sevvord is Swabian, and the last name used (which I can't remember offhand) is arabic which generally sums up the cossack mix. In a pseudo-european setting with imitation vikings to one side and imitation huns and mongols to the other, imitation Amerinds seen wildly out of place.
I think the mistake is the general lack of familiarity with eastern european/asian horse nomadic culture. The pseudo cossacks are a perfect fit right down to their defeat by the horned society.
The Flan=Amerind seems to come down to the Rovers entry. Who-ever wrote the blurb for them was thinking Amerind but Gygax's notes were describing them as Cossacks. Their chief is an Ataman which is only used as by Cossacks, Vlek Vlekzed is slavic, Sevvord is Swabian, and the last name used (which I can't remember offhand) is arabic which generally sums up the cossack mix. In a pseudo-european setting with imitation vikings to one side and imitation huns and mongols to the other, imitation Amerinds seen wildly out of place.
I think the mistake is the general lack of familiarity with eastern european/asian horse nomadic culture. The pseudo cossacks are a perfect fit right down to their defeat by the horned society.
Vlek Col Vlekzed - Who Loves Ya Baby
Actually, the Flan=Amerind comes from their physical descriptions (up to and including illustrations of them in early canon), their cultural descriptions, their general situation in the Flanaess (being displaced and colonized by the later-arriving Oeridians and Suel), their wrongly being assumed to not have made any civilizing efforts (similar to their real-life counterparts).
They only seem out of place if you consider the Flanaess to be pseudo-European. If you consider the Flanaess pseudo-North America like I do, then they fit nicely. It might seem strange to have Greyhawk North America next to Greyhawk Middle East, but if you consider the Flanaess Greyhawk Europe you still have Greyhawk Europe next to Hepmonaland, which is Greyhawk South America. Adventures like Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and Dwellers of the Forbidden City had players exploring Mesoamerican-inspired settings.
As for the name origins, I'd note that early canon names don't necessarily correlate with whatever real-life cultures they could be affiliated with, not when so many of the early prominent characters were named for puns and anagrams. Tenser, Melf, Keoghtom, Vecna, etc.
The Flan=Amerind seems to come down to the Rovers entry. Who-ever wrote the blurb for them was thinking Amerind but Gygax's notes were describing them as Cossacks. Their chief is an Ataman which is only used as by Cossacks, Vlek Vlekzed is slavic, Sevvord is Swabian, and the last name used (which I can't remember offhand) is arabic which generally sums up the cossack mix. In a pseudo-european setting with imitation vikings to one side and imitation huns and mongols to the other, imitation Amerinds seen wildly out of place.
I think the mistake is the general lack of familiarity with eastern european/asian horse nomadic culture. The pseudo cossacks are a perfect fit right down to their defeat by the horned society.
Vlek Col Vlekzed - Who Loves Ya Baby
Actually, the Flan=Amerind comes from their physical descriptions (up to and including illustrations of them in early canon), their cultural descriptions, their general situation in the Flanaess (being displaced and colonized by the later-arriving Oeridians and Suel), their wrongly being assumed to not have made any civilizing efforts (similar to their real-life counterparts).
They only seem out of place if you consider the Flanaess to be pseudo-European. If you consider the Flanaess pseudo-North America like I do, then they fit nicely. It might seem strange to have Greyhawk North America next to Greyhawk Middle East, but if you consider the Flanaess Greyhawk Europe you still have Greyhawk Europe next to Hepmonaland, which is Greyhawk South America. Adventures like Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and Dwellers of the Forbidden City had players exploring Mesoamerican-inspired settings.
As for the name origins, I'd note that early canon names don't necessarily correlate with whatever real-life cultures they could be affiliated with, not when so many of the early prominent characters were named for puns and anagrams. Tenser, Melf, Keoghtom, Vecna, etc.
Gygax's home campaign was based on the north american map. The published Greyhawk setting is not. Also you are confusing physical appearance with culture. The areas depicted as having unadulterated Flan cultures are based on welsh for Geoff and cossack horse nomads for rovers.
The early history of europe matches the Suel and Oeridian migrations far more aptly than the colonization of north america.
Everyone is free to run the greyhawk they want but the folio and boxed set depict the Flanaess as a fantasy-medieval-ish european setting not a north american setting.
Gygax's home campaign was based on the north american map. The published Greyhawk setting is not. Also you are confusing physical appearance with culture. The areas depicted as having unadulterated Flan cultures are based on welsh for Geoff and cossack horse nomads for rovers.
The early history of europe matches the Suel and Oeridian migrations far more aptly than the colonization of north america.
Everyone is free to run the greyhawk they want but the folio and boxed set depict the Flanaess as a fantasy-medieval-ish european setting not a north american setting.
The LGG also describes Nakanwa Daychaser as a "war sachem". The title of 'sachem' is affiliated with the Algonquin nations of eastern Canada and the U.S., and is also used by the Iroquois Confederacy in modern times.
And when was Geoff portrayed as Welsh? Was it only the Living Greyhawk triad, or were there earlier sources that indicated it?
The Duchy of Tenh is also described in the LGG as having provinces stemming from ancient intratribal conflicts, and having many different groups of Flan come there from other parts of the Flanaess. That made me think of the Iroquois Confederacy, or perhaps the pan-Native state that Tecumseh was hoping to found. What do you see Tenh as?
How does the history of early Europe parallel the history of the Flanaess? What prominent empire did the Flan have that equated to the Roman Empire for the Suel or Oeridians to topple the way the barbarians did Rome? Which real-life group does each Flanaess human group parallel?
I'm having trouble seeing the connection, particularly when there are so many more parallels in my mind between the Flan and Amerinds. I'm not asking this to be insulting or contradictory-I'm genuinely curious.
Gygax's home campaign was based on the north american map. The published Greyhawk setting is not.
The original Castle and Crusade Society Great Kingdom Map used in Gygax's home campaign wasn't particularly based on North America except that the Nyr Dyv is clearly Lake Superior, and this was still true in the Darlene Map version.
CruelSummerLord wrote:
And when was Geoff portrayed as Welsh? Was it only the Living Greyhawk triad, or were there earlier sources that indicated it?
Grand Duke Owen's name is Welsh.
But then, Duke Ehyeh of Tenh has a Hebrew name. Perhaps that was Gygax's way of presenting the Flan as "Hamitic."
Gygax's home campaign was based on the north american map. The published Greyhawk setting is not. Also you are confusing physical appearance with culture. The areas depicted as having unadulterated Flan cultures are based on welsh for Geoff and cossack horse nomads for rovers.
The early history of europe matches the Suel and Oeridian migrations far more aptly than the colonization of north america.
Everyone is free to run the greyhawk they want but the folio and boxed set depict the Flanaess as a fantasy-medieval-ish european setting not a north american setting.
The LGG also describes Nakanwa Daychaser as a "war sachem". The title of 'sachem' is affiliated with the Algonquin nations of eastern Canada and the U.S., and is also used by the Iroquois Confederacy in modern times.
And when was Geoff portrayed as Welsh? Was it only the Living Greyhawk triad, or were there earlier sources that indicated it?
The Duchy of Tenh is also described in the LGG as having provinces stemming from ancient intratribal conflicts, and having many different groups of Flan come there from other parts of the Flanaess. That made me think of the Iroquois Confederacy, or perhaps the pan-Native state that Tecumseh was hoping to found. What do you see Tenh as?
How does the history of early Europe parallel the history of the Flanaess? What prominent empire did the Flan have that equated to the Roman Empire for the Suel or Oeridians to topple the way the barbarians did Rome? Which real-life group does each Flanaess human group parallel?
I'm having trouble seeing the connection, particularly when there are so many more parallels in my mind between the Flan and Amerinds. I'm not asking this to be insulting or contradictory-I'm genuinely curious.
Flan is akin to European. It is not describing a single monolithic culture. The expansion of Rome, especially under Ceasar and the germanic migrations from Scandinavia in the 2nd century BC (Goths and Vandals) to the migrations of the Teutons and Cimbri a century later nicely parallel the oeridan/suel migrations with a good deal of Gygax's hodge-podge mixing making the Suel both technologically advanced Romanesque people and Scandinavian pseudo-vikings while the Flan appear to be a combination of Balts, Helvitii, Gauls, Celts and Franks as well as Slavs, Huns, Magyars and Mongols invaded by an Oeridian Völkerwanderung.
Amerinds as horse nomads only appeared after the Spanish age of exploration and conquest. This and subsequent destruction of the Amerind culture was do to exploitation of resources and colonization not migration. Since all of the surrounding cultures in the Flanaess are fantasy medieval european-esque, in the eastern flanaess, an Amerind is out of place in this particular area (though I use northern Amerind cultures far to the south in my Greyhawk, unexposed, as of yet to modern Flanish cultures)
Some Post-Gygax material on the subject appears to make the same mistake or choice as the individual who confused cossack horse nomads from Gygax's setting outline with Amerinds. These are fantasy parallel's rather than fantasy-alternatives as Gygax later presented in his Aerth setting so possibly the individual wanted to mix cossack/amerind cultures but it appears to be simply a misunderstanding by the person fleshing out Gygax's very sparse outline.
The suel/oerdian migrations parallel the Roman expansion/germanic migrations exceedingly well. They do not parallel the exploitation and colonization of the western hemisphere. Modern Flanaess is very fantasy-medieval-esque european. Hammering in a post Spanish conquest era Amerind pseudo-culture seems ill-fitting and absurd.
The Flan=Amerind seems to come down to the Rovers entry. Who-ever wrote the blurb for them was thinking Amerind but Gygax's notes were describing them as Cossacks.
JasonZavoda wrote:
Some Post-Gygax material on the subject appears to make the same mistake or choice as the individual who confused cossack horse nomads from Gygax's setting outline with Amerinds. These are fantasy parallel's rather than fantasy-alternatives as Gygax later presented in his Aerth setting so possibly the individual wanted to mix cossack/amerind cultures but it appears to be simply a misunderstanding by the person fleshing out Gygax's very sparse outline.
The suel/oerdian migrations parallel the Roman expansion/germanic migrations exceedingly well. They do not parallel the exploitation and colonization of the western hemisphere. Modern Flanaess is very fantasy-medieval-esque european. Hammering in a post Spanish conquest era Amerind pseudo-culture seems ill-fitting and absurd.
Who's this mysterious person or individual that would have fleshed out Gygax's outline? Wouldn't Gygax have written it himself?
And what about the illustration that showed the Amerind-looking men? Was that another example of Gygax apparently getting his wires crossed with his illustrators, like how he didn't originally intend for orcs to be pig men?
The Flan=Amerind seems to come down to the Rovers entry. Who-ever wrote the blurb for them was thinking Amerind but Gygax's notes were describing them as Cossacks.
JasonZavoda wrote:
Some Post-Gygax material on the subject appears to make the same mistake or choice as the individual who confused cossack horse nomads from Gygax's setting outline with Amerinds. These are fantasy parallel's rather than fantasy-alternatives as Gygax later presented in his Aerth setting so possibly the individual wanted to mix cossack/amerind cultures but it appears to be simply a misunderstanding by the person fleshing out Gygax's very sparse outline.
The suel/oerdian migrations parallel the Roman expansion/germanic migrations exceedingly well. They do not parallel the exploitation and colonization of the western hemisphere. Modern Flanaess is very fantasy-medieval-esque european. Hammering in a post Spanish conquest era Amerind pseudo-culture seems ill-fitting and absurd.
Who's this mysterious person or individual that would have fleshed out Gygax's outline? Wouldn't Gygax have written it himself?
And what about the illustration that showed the Amerind-looking men? Was that another example of Gygax apparently getting his wires crossed with his illustrators, like how he didn't originally intend for orcs to be pig men?
Can you post or page reference the Amerind illustration?
I was recently reading a Gygax quote about the published setting where he talks about using it instead of his home campaign version. The '83 boxed set mention Steve Winter and Lawrence Schick. Schick was just interviewed on twitch and it would have been great to ask him. He did say that Gygax would hand him notes to flesh out. I will have to watch that interview again.
Can you post or page reference the Amerind illustration?
I was recently reading a Gygax quote about the published setting where he talks about using it instead of his home campaign version. The '83 boxed set mention Steve Winter and Lawrence Schick. Schick was just interviewed on twitch and it would have been great to ask him. He did say that Gygax would hand him notes to flesh out. I will have to watch that interview again.
I already posted the reference to the Amerind illustration. Here it is again:
CruelSummerLord wrote:
In the illustration on page 15 of the 1983 Guide, one of the humans talking to the dwarf is wearing face paint and has what looks to me like a Native-like facial profile. The man in an Oeridian-like plaid talking to the woman while handling cloth also looked like a Native guy to me too, so it seemed pretty obvious that they were both intended to be Flan.
And as an amusing postscript, explorer Giovanni di Verrazzano described the Native American people he met in his travels as similar to Ethiopians. Go figure.
Can you post or page reference the Amerind illustration?
I was recently reading a Gygax quote about the published setting where he talks about using it instead of his home campaign version. The '83 boxed set mention Steve Winter and Lawrence Schick. Schick was just interviewed on twitch and it would have been great to ask him. He did say that Gygax would hand him notes to flesh out. I will have to watch that interview again.
I already posted the reference to the Amerind illustration. Here it is again:
CruelSummerLord wrote:
In the illustration on page 15 of the 1983 Guide, one of the humans talking to the dwarf is wearing face paint and has what looks to me like a Native-like facial profile. The man in an Oeridian-like plaid talking to the woman while handling cloth also looked like a Native guy to me too, so it seemed pretty obvious that they were both intended to be Flan.
And as an amusing postscript, explorer Giovanni di Verrazzano described the Native American people he met in his travels as similar to Ethiopians. Go figure.
Jeff Easily work so definitely unique to the '83 boxed set. Could be a fantasy Amerind but any of the horse nomads. Those look more like facial scars to me. This would have been Brian Blume approval of artwork rather than Gygax.
Some Post-Gygax material on the subject appears to make the same mistake or choice as the individual who confused cossack horse nomads from Gygax's setting outline with Amerinds. These are fantasy parallel's rather than fantasy-alternatives as Gygax later presented in his Aerth setting so possibly the individual wanted to mix cossack/amerind cultures but it appears to be simply a misunderstanding by the person fleshing out Gygax's very sparse outline.
The suel/oerdian migrations parallel the Roman expansion/germanic migrations exceedingly well. They do not parallel the exploitation and colonization of the western hemisphere. Modern Flanaess is very fantasy-medieval-esque european. Hammering in a post Spanish conquest era Amerind pseudo-culture seems ill-fitting and absurd.
I do not believe that this was a mistake. In the Guide writeup, "People of the Plentiful Huntinglands sounds much more Native American than it does Cossack, for instance. And there are indicators beyond the original Guide that suggests Native American inspiration.
The '83 Glossography encounter tables, for instance, mention bone armour for the Rovers. Bone breastplates were manufactured by American Plains tribes. These however, are also possibly from Steve Winter.
However, Gygax wrote Dragon columns on "Events in the Flanaess", and there's no ambiguity that they were penned by someone else based on outlines, as has been suggested for the Guide. Dragon 56 is the relevant column. In it:
- There is a mention of the "Yepita Tribe" and a member of that tribe is "Golden Dove", married to the tarkhan of the wolf nomads
- The Rover Clans names are grey lynx, red horse, black horse, Wolverine, , Etc
- Other named individuals are Kishwa Dogteeth and Chada-Three-Lances
No specific etymology here, but in general these all sound (to my ear) more like made-up pseudo-Native American names than Cossack names
In addition:
- the "White Wardogs" are referred to as a fighting society. Fighting societies were common among native groups such as the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota.
- There is also a mention of "census sticks". Such sticks were historically used to tally Native American populations.
- The most telling, however, is the reference to making Chada-Three-Lances the "War Sachem" of the Rovers. Sachem is definitely a Native American term (Algonquian however, rather than plains)
So I believe that there actually is concrete evidence that Gygax was drawing aspects of The Rovers from Native American populations. That said, it is also very clear that Ataman and Vlek Col Vlekzed sound Cossack.
Which leaves us trying to awkwardly amalgamate two rather disparate cultures into a cohesive concept.
It might be awkward if you look at it from that perspective but, speaking as a wargamer, it doesn't seem so strange to me. In fantasy wargames campaigns (well, the ones I've played in at least) it is quite common for players to correspond with each other using military titles from some other army/culture in order to obfuscate exactly what sort of troops their opponents might be facing.
I've been giving this some thought myself, but mainly in reference to languages — and still with the understanding that not everything can or will fit on a 1:1 basis.
For example, since my group uses Modern English to represent the "Common" tongue of the Flanaess I tend to compare its ancestor languages to those of English: the Aerdian dialect of Old Oeridian being akin to Anglo-Saxon and Ancient Baklunish being akin to (Norman) French… which, of course, really only makes sense if one were to imagine the Baklunish as being reflective of an Umayyad Caliphate being successful in the Battle of Tours and conquering Gaul, perhaps leading to a French-with-Arabic-elements-speaking, Islamic-inspired culture.
…but my main focus was comparing Old Oeridian to the West Germanic language family, although if we assumed there was no "Kingdom of the Franks" to stop the Umayyad Caliphate, then they also would have never conquered the Germanic "Kingdom of the Lombards" in Italy, perhaps resulting in a similar situation — a Germanic-speaking Italic population, making the Oeridians akin to a Germano-Mediterranean mix regarding appearance and culture.
So with "Old Oeridian = West Germanic" comparison in my head, I decided to treat Keolandish being akin to Modern German (being descended from Old High Oeridian similar to how Modern German descends from Old High German, which differs from other West Germanic languages due to significant changes in consonant pronunciations), Velondi being akin to Dutch (resting "in between" Keolandish and Common, and German and English, respectively), and Nyrondese, a High Oeridian dialect of Common being akin to "Pennsylvania Dutch English" (a heavily "Germanified" English). I suppose that would leave Ferral as a kind of German military jargon?
The Suloise are probably a bit simpler in imagining a cross between the real life Aryan people and the Nazi "ideal" of the Aryans — especially with regards to the Scarlet Brotherhood — with the North Germanic/Scandinavian-inspired Frost, Ice, and Snow Barbarians being the obvious outlier (unless we assume they're speaking the unrelated Finnish language!). I also can't help but toss in some Eastern European/Slavic elements into the Rhenee.
The Flan are an interesting group. Points have been made about them being a mish-mash of Native Americans/Celts/Welsh, and that works well enough...if one is familiar with those cultures. Celts/Welsh are more easily defined, but there is massive cultural variety among Native Americans. We can see that with the Flan to some degree as well. Despite what we see the Flan as in about CY 576+, The Flan did once have massive empires across Oerik, and they rose, existed, and fell into ruin long before the Migrations. That is a really interesting detail about the Flan. It is akin to the concept of antediluvian empires. Of course not all Flan cultures need have achieved empires. That is also an interesting detail. In the real world, some cultures achieved empire when others did not, either due to geographical isolation, or inability to consolidate power, a lack of knowledge, or just a plain lack of resources/people.
I really do not like taking the shortcut of portraying any Greyhawk culture as a copy of anything in the real world, because Greyhawk is a fantasy setting. That being said, many of the articles I have written for Canonfire! do not take this to heart, but that is because I have purposely written some of them to make use of what extant canon material there is so that it works with what there is, and if somebody wants to diverge from that then more power to them. To each their own.
I very much like the idea of cultures being as unique as they can be. There will always be comparisons to real world things, as that is the point of reference we have; the baseline that we have to work from. There is no escaping that, but doing it in such a way as to be familiar, yet unique, well, that is the prize to chase after. In cinema, there are two examples of this that I really like, and both have to do with primitive cultures.
The first example is the Wendol from the 1999 movie The 13th Warrior. You've probably all seen it, but if you haven't then you should. Just the whole look of the Wendol is well done. They are portrayed as a totemic culture of unknown racial/ethnic origin. If I had to pin them down, I would say they are the last surviving remnant of Cro-Magnon Man, which is a cool idea to use as a springboard. The Wendol don't match up to any real world culture, having more in common with some sort of fantasy barbarian culture. For me, if I am going to copy something, or come close to doing so, this is the type of thing to copy. Could there be an all albino Schnai tribe in my campaign that reveres bears for their strength, includes a fair number of werebears among their number, and might also have ice witches? Maaaybe... I like the idea of players being familiar with the Suel or Suel-Oerids in the more civilized areas of the Flannaess, and then have them travel to the Thillonrian Peninsula and meet Suel barbarian tribes there and hear them say, "If you wander too far into the wildlands of the Schnai, you better watch yourselves. Even they avoid those lands."
The second example comes from the 2005 movie King Kong. Yes, the one with Jack Black in it. The Skull Island natives are, well, islanders obviously, but not in any remotely obvious ethnic/cultural sense. They are no copy of any island culture anywhere in the world - they are what we would call a lost world culture. That is of course perfect for this movie, which is pure pulp, and lost world cultures are a pulp trope. They pull it off brilliantly precisely because the Skull Islanders are not like any real world people - they are a lost people. Once again, this is the sort of thing I will steal liberally from. Forget cut-n-pasting Aztecs into Hepmonaland. I'll use something more like Skull Islanders, thank you very much. They could instead be used for the Isle of Dread, if anybody uses that area in their Greyhawk.
It is easier to talk about more primitive cultures though. The more advanced cultures, that is where it is harder to keep them unique and not just make them "boring" real world analogs. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
Last edited by Cebrion on Thu Jun 25, 2020 8:47 pm; edited 2 times in total
As a bit of a followup I was just looking through the LIVING GREYHAWK™ Gazetteer and then at Anna's maps and… I guess I wasn't too far off with my "Keolandish '=' German" comparison since in the Pomarj east of Keoland I'm seeing names like "Drachensgrab" ("Dragon('s) Tomb"), "Drachenskopf" ("Dragon('s) Head"), and "Prinzfeld" ("Prince Field"). Granted, it could all just be coincidence ,but it works for me.
Cebrion wrote:
The first example is the Wendol from the 1999 movie The 13th Warrior. You've probably all seen it, but if you haven't then you should. Just the whole look of the Wendol is well done. They are portrayed as a totemic culture of unknown racial/ethnic origin. If I had to pin them down, I would say they are the last surviving remnant of Cro-Magnon Man, which is a cool idea to use as a springboard. The Wendol don't match up to any real world culture, having more in common with some sort of fantasy barbarian culture.
You're not that far off, actually; from the original story, Eaters of the Dead:
Michael Crichton wrote:
The academic debate on Ibn Fadlan's creatures can be neatly summarized by the viewpoint of Geoffrey Wrightwood, of Oxford University. Wrightwood says [1971]: "The account of Ibn Fadlan provides us with a perfectly serviceable description of Neanderthal men, coinciding with the fossil record and our suppositions about the cultural level of these early men. We should accept it immediately, had we not already decided these men vanished without a trace some 30-40,000 years previously. We should remember that we only believe this disappearance because we have found no fossils of a later date, and the absence of such fossils does not mean that they do not, in fact, exist.
Objectively, there is no a priori reason to deny that a group of Neanderthals might have survived late in an isolated region of Scandinavia. In any case this assumption best fits the description of the Arabic text."
Some Post-Gygax material on the subject appears to make the same mistake or choice as the individual who confused cossack horse nomads from Gygax's setting outline with Amerinds. These are fantasy parallel's rather than fantasy-alternatives as Gygax later presented in his Aerth setting so possibly the individual wanted to mix cossack/amerind cultures but it appears to be simply a misunderstanding by the person fleshing out Gygax's very sparse outline.
The suel/oerdian migrations parallel the Roman expansion/germanic migrations exceedingly well. They do not parallel the exploitation and colonization of the western hemisphere. Modern Flanaess is very fantasy-medieval-esque european. Hammering in a post Spanish conquest era Amerind pseudo-culture seems ill-fitting and absurd.
I do not believe that this was a mistake. In the Guide writeup, "People of the Plentiful Huntinglands sounds much more Native American than it does Cossack, for instance. And there are indicators beyond the original Guide that suggests Native American inspiration.
The '83 Glossography encounter tables, for instance, mention bone armour for the Rovers. Bone breastplates were manufactured by American Plains tribes. These however, are also possibly from Steve Winter.
However, Gygax wrote Dragon columns on "Events in the Flanaess", and there's no ambiguity that they were penned by someone else based on outlines, as has been suggested for the Guide. Dragon 56 is the relevant column. In it:
- There is a mention of the "Yepita Tribe" and a member of that tribe is "Golden Dove", married to the tarkhan of the wolf nomads
- The Rover Clans names are grey lynx, red horse, black horse, Wolverine, , Etc
- Other named individuals are Kishwa Dogteeth and Chada-Three-Lances
No specific etymology here, but in general these all sound (to my ear) more like made-up pseudo-Native American names than Cossack names
In addition:
- the "White Wardogs" are referred to as a fighting society. Fighting societies were common among native groups such as the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota.
- There is also a mention of "census sticks". Such sticks were historically used to tally Native American populations.
- The most telling, however, is the reference to making Chada-Three-Lances the "War Sachem" of the Rovers. Sachem is definitely a Native American term (Algonquian however, rather than plains)
So I believe that there actually is concrete evidence that Gygax was drawing aspects of The Rovers from Native American populations. That said, it is also very clear that Ataman and Vlek Col Vlekzed sound Cossack.
Which leaves us trying to awkwardly amalgamate two rather disparate cultures into a cohesive concept.
People of the Plentiful hunting grounds was most likely added by the person fleshing out Gygax's notes. Very telling is the original 'Ataman'.
My main objection is that Amerind culture makes no sense in that area. Amerinds were only briefly horse nomads. The various tribal names sound perfectly cossack in slavic. The history of slavic and turkic horse nomads goes back for millenia. Amerinds are a wide and diverse group who deserve better than just being tossed into fantasy pseudo-european setting. What a senseless waste.
For myself I will keep my Amerind culture to the south or east or west where it makes more sense.
People of the Plentiful hunting grounds was most likely added by the person fleshing out Gygax's notes. Very telling is the original 'Ataman'.
My main objection is that Amerind culture makes no sense in that area. Amerinds were only briefly horse nomads. The various tribal names sound perfectly cossack in slavic. The history of slavic and turkic horse nomads goes back for millenia. Amerinds are a wide and diverse group who deserve better than just being tossed into fantasy pseudo-european setting. What a senseless waste.
For myself I will keep my Amerind culture to the south or east or west where it makes more sense.
It makes perfect sense given that how important horses became for some Amerind cultures. You correctly point out how diverse Amerind culture is, and just as horses became extremely important to some of them, that wasn't the case for all.
Same thing with the Flan-the Flan of the southern lands may not attach the same importance to horses that the Rovers do. Ditto for some other elements of culture like music. Some Flan may value fiddles and drums for music, while others prefer throat singing. And if the Rovers' names fit the Turkic/Cossack tradition, they also fit many Native traditions just fine too.
And as I've said before, to me the Flanaess is fantasy pseudo-North America, not fantasy pseudo-Europe.
I very much like the idea of cultures being as unique as they can be. There will always be comparisons to real world things, as that is that is the point of reference we have; the baseline that we have to work from. There is no escaping that, but doing it in such a way as to be familiar, yet unique, well, that is the prize to chase after. In cinema, there are two examples of this that I really like, and both have to do with primitive cultures.
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It is easier to talk about more primitive cultures though. The more advanced cultures, that is where it is harder to keep them unique and not just make them "boring" real world analogs.
Ah, but the presence of magic, monsters and sentient non-human races means they're going to made somewhat unique by default. No one would claim that D&D has ever been an authentic recreation of medieval Europe, not when its default assumptions include socially acceptable magic and polytheistic worship, both of which would horrify your typical feudal European.
So it's fun to think about how real-life cultures, not just European but African, Asian and others, might be impacted by these circumstances. The Cree and Cherokee languages did not have syllabics made for them until the 19th century. If wizards need spellbooks to relearn their spells, people would realize that non-magical writing can be useful for all kinds of other things too. So just about every human language in a D&D world could organically develop its own writing system.
Hence why the Flan developed syllabics, pictographs or similar things for their language long before the Great Migrations. Modern Flan could a polyglot of everything from syllabics to pictographs, which accounts for why translation between Flan and other languages is so difficult!
When I first started exploring the various cultures of Greyhawk in depth I tried to apply a single defining cultural parallel to the various ethnicities, races and countries. It was very much like trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. The Greyhawk setting has evolved via the input of many minds each with their own perceptions on these things and it isn't neat and tidy it's a vast creative soup of ingredients that don't necessarily go together. In the end, to save my own sanity, I had to take a less dogmatic approach and ended up feeling much like Cebrion, that Oerth isn't a diect parallel of our own Earth, despite the similar name, it's its own unique world.
Instead of trying to shoehorn anything into place, it was much more liberating and creatively satisfying to start using real world analogies simply as a springboard and then look at how factors unique to Oerth might have altered them; magic, climate, geography, non-human races & monsters. On top of this there's the fact that the deities are proven to exist and not only that - have specific driven interests (how would a whole faith driven to landscape gardening [Phyton] or educating women [Lydia]). I think this was the intent of CSL's thread - to consider these things.
The Rovers debate, Cossacks or Native Americans is a good one but it will never be resolved because there isn't a correct answer. It doesn't mean it isn't fun to debate but what would be exciting would be take the springboard approach and see how we can combine those two different elements to create something more uniquely Rover.
I'm not an expert on Cossack or Native American culture but is there any common ground to use as a starting point? The point about cultures adopting military titles from other cultures is a cool one. Could that be the case here? Most of the material I've seen seems to indicate either a more Native American religious style (Red Fox comes to mind) for the Rovers or a kind of Green Man Celtic kind of faith in the form of Obad-Hai. How would Cossack culture have differed if they had such beliefs? I'd love to here if anyone had some thoughts on this.
When I first started exploring the various cultures of Greyhawk in depth I tried to apply a single defining cultural parallel to the various ethnicities, races and countries. It was very much like trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. The Greyhawk setting has evolved via the input of many minds each with their own perceptions on these things and it isn't neat and tidy it's a vast creative soup of ingredients that don't necessarily go together. In the end, to save my own sanity, I had to take a less dogmatic approach and ended up feeling much like Cebrion, that Oerth isn't a diect parallel of our own Earth, despite the similar name, it's its own unique world.
Instead of trying to shoehorn anything into place, it was much more liberating and creatively satisfying to start using real world analogies simply as a springboard and then look at how factors unique to Oerth might have altered them; magic, climate, geography, non-human races & monsters. On top of this there's the fact that the deities are proven to exist and not only that - have specific driven interests (how would a whole faith driven to landscape gardening [Phyton] or educating women [Lydia]). I think this was the intent of CSL's thread - to consider these things.
The Rovers debate, Cossacks or Native Americans is a good one but it will never be resolved because there isn't a correct answer. It doesn't mean it isn't fun to debate but what would be exciting would be take the springboard approach and see how we can combine those two different elements to create something more uniquely Rover.
I'm not an expert on Cossack or Native American culture but is there any common ground to use as a starting point? The point about cultures adopting military titles from other cultures is a cool one. Could that be the case here? Most of the material I've seen seems to indicate either a more Native American religious style (Red Fox comes to mind) for the Rovers or a kind of Green Man Celtic kind of faith in the form of Obad-Hai. How would Cossack culture have differed if they had such beliefs? I'd love to here if anyone had some thoughts on this.
There is definitely a confusion in the Greyhawk sourcebooks regarding the Rovers but cultures develop in contact with other cultures. The greater the contact the more the cultures blend. In this world you have Cossack culture which is a blend of many peoples and cultures with the late 19th and 20th century predominently christian slavic-speaking. The origin of the Kozak's goes back over 1,000 years and includes tribes from not only eastern europe but western siberian and turkic people from the southern urals. They are also an amalgmation of many earlier cultures from the area.
Western Siberian and pre-islamic nomads from the eastern urals were a shamnistic, tribal society with siberian shamanism and animal/nature worship documented at the end of the 19th century. The Kozak's from the 10th century could easily have been called the wardogs or Boyvasodak and other animal/nature tribal names.
The Kozak's fit the bill of the Rover's to a T while tossing in an amalgamation of Amerind cultural tidbits seems ridiculously out of place. Save Amerind culture for a region near the Olman rather than trying to unnecessarily hammer it into a Kozak shaped hole.
The Kozak's fit the bill of the Rover's to a T while tossing in an amalgamation of Amerind cultural tidbits seems ridiculously out of place. Save Amerind culture for a region near the Olman rather than trying to unnecessarily hammer it into a Kozak shaped hole.
That's fine if you want your Rovers to simply be Cossacks but the point some people, including myself are making, is that Oerth isn't Earth and rather than a case of shoehorning in Native American elements it's instead fun to do so and see what blend we can organically arrive at that makes the Rovers a unique Flanaessi people in a fantasy setting.
I totally get some people will be, no, they're Cossacks and that's that and others will be no, they're Native American. Full stop. Which are both legitimate. What I was suggesting is those opinions aside, lets see if we can blend them. If you can only see it as 'shoehorning' then you're not doing it right! That's why I suggested considering any similarities between the two cultures first.
The Kozak's fit the bill of the Rover's to a T while tossing in an amalgamation of Amerind cultural tidbits seems ridiculously out of place. Save Amerind culture for a region near the Olman rather than trying to unnecessarily hammer it into a Kozak shaped hole.
That's fine if you want your Rovers to simply be Cossacks but the point some people, including myself are making, is that Oerth isn't Earth and rather than a case of shoehorning in Native American elements it's instead fun to do so and see what blend we can organically arrive at that makes the Rovers a unique Flanaessi people in a fantasy setting.
I totally get some people will be, no, they're Cossacks and that's that and others will be no, they're Native American. Full stop. Which are both legitimate. What I was suggesting is those opinions aside, lets see if we can blend them. If you can only see it as 'shoehorning' then you're not doing it right! That's why I suggested considering any similarities between the two cultures first.
My point is that the original intention is for Cossacks and someone fleshing out the notes who had no understanding of the subject matter could only Amerinds. Gygax was always fooling with alternate Earths (take a look at Dangerous Journeys) but he also understood history and culture. Im pointing out that robbing Amerind culture to flesh out the Rovers is inconsistent and makes little sense.
Im not telling you to run your game in any particular way
This has been a very interesting thread to read and digest. I have a thought I would like to throw out there.
Regarding the history of Amerinds and their recent cultural adaptation of horses as it might apply to the Rovers of the Barrens:
As I understand my Oerth history, the Wolf and Tiger Nomads, being part of a Golden Horde, or some such, charged into the northwestern Flanaess and drove the ancestors of the Rovers eastward. The Flan living in what is now Perrenland were able to defend their land against the invasion, so preserved their culture intact, for the most part. The Rovers, however, were forced to pick up and move constantly. That would explain why their culture changed from an agrarian one to a nomadic one much more reliant on horses than surviving Flan cultures in other parts of the Flanaess.
Alternatively, the Rovers who lived on the great northwestern plains before the Chakyik and Wegwuir drove them out could have been nomadic to begin with. That would provide a good explanation as to why their culture survived being driven out - they had the means to pick up and leave before being overwhelmed.
Like Cebrion and Wolfling, I like my Greyhawk cultures to be combinations of parts of real-world cultures. A cross between Amerinds and Cossacks is a good fit for the Rovers of the Barrens in my campaign. Of course, Amerind cultural influences may be found in other parts of the map (eg. the Amedio) while Cossack influences may also be found elsewhere (eg. Chackyik, Wegwuir, Paynims).
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I like the idea of players being familiar with the Suel or Suel-Oerids in the more civilized areas of the Flannaess, and then have them travel to the Thillonrian Peninsula and meet Suel barbarian tribes there and hear them say, "If you wander too far into the wildlands of the Schnai, you better watch yourselves. Even they avoid those lands." 
