Colonial Gothic?

[Jkeown]

I'm about halfway through converting Rogue Games' Colonial Gothic. It's an interesting setting. America, April 1st, 1776. Your character is a warrior in a different battle waged alongside the Revolution. A battle against the forces of the Dark Native Gods, angry animal spirits, Old World Sorcerors, Amerindian Vampires and the maddened Land Itself that rages against the on-coming European Tide of colonization.

 

One thing that bugs me about the original rules is that it applies different stat modifiers to Native Americans and those that are adopted by them. For example, Natives get extra STR and CON (in HERO terms) and Adopted get extra INT and EGO. Why is this? Amerindians are just as smart as any European, with the exception of Tech Level.

 

Anyway... I'm going to push ahead... and start on the magic system. If there's interest, I'll post some stuff later.

[jtelson]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

I love the Colonial Gothic Setting, the system, however, not so much. So I'd definately be interested in seeing a Hero system take on it.

[Jkeown]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

I'm keeping things intentionally simple. Package deals are little more than Cultural in nature at the moment. Here they are.

 

Let me strees... this is a very rough draft... I added some disads, mostly Distinctive Features. If a GM doesn't want to deal with the ugly reality of Race Relations from those days, I think such a GM should delete any references to appearance. I myself am not sure how I'm going to run it. Heroes are different from the masses, so they might not worry that one of their number is a freed slave or a Native... other groups might go for Ugly Reality, though... to each his own.

[Jkeown]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

Here is the Skills and Knowledges stuff, plus one possible version of Witchcraft... the game doesn't go into to much detail on casting times, but in the interest of not having fireball flinging Colonial magi running around, I settled on longer casting times.

[Sociotard]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

The CON may make sense in that the natives were generally a lot cleaner than the europeans. Unfortunately they also had immune systems that weren't used to infectious disease. But yeah, applying racial modifiers to humans really brings out how silly (and racist) the concept is.

[Maur]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

The CON may make sense in that the natives were generally a lot cleaner than the europeans. Unfortunately they also had immune systems that weren't used to infectious disease. But yeah' date=' applying racial modifiers to humans really brings out how silly (and racist) the concept is.[/quote']

 

Uhh, their immune system was just as good as a europeans. It just hadn't encountered some of the diseases that europeans did in their youth and so, were more susceptible to said diseases. Smallpox didn't wipe out europeans as quite a few were exposed to the non-lethal pox virus, cowpox, from raising cattle. Same thing with other diseases. Get chickenpox as a child and you are pretty much immune and won't suffer from Shingles as an adult (same virus, just in an adult vs a child).

 

As for a higher con, well, I think that is to represent some things like the amount of endurance exercise that some spent their life doing (e.g. Plains Indians ran long distances since horses were introduced by europeans) vs spending a lot of time in cities or such.

[Sociotard]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

"A" is exposed to Smallpox but doesn't die, because he had been exposed to nasty bugs before.

 

"B" is exposed to Smallpox and does die, because his immune system had never faced anything like that.

 

"A" had a better immune system than "B".

 

Anyway, I hear it was also to some degree an inherited thing. Europeans had spent centuries in stinky European cities wading through their own filth. Native americans were much more hygenic. The ancestors of the settlers were all people with the genes needed to survive in a giant cesspool of disease and decay. The Native Americans did not have those kind of ancestors.

 

Even the few big cities that were in the Americas (in Mexico and Peru) were generally a lot less nasty than London or Paris.

 

Adding to this, the Native americans were less likely to live with herd animals. They hunted and ate them, but with the occasional exception of Dogs (and llamas I guess) they didn't live with them and sleep alongside them. The european diseases most often came from horses and cattle and sheep. Genetically, the Native Americans were not set up to face those diseases.

[Maur]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

"A" is exposed to Smallpox but doesn't die, because he had been exposed to nasty bugs before.

 

"B" is exposed to Smallpox and does die, because his immune system had never faced anything like that.

 

"A" had a better immune system than "B".

 

A has been taught Calculus

B has not

A can do integrals, therefore A is better than B...

 

Those diseases still exist, but now they get types of exposure that most of the rest of us do and, SURPRISE, their immune system has the same capacity to fight it off.

 

Again, I'm not sure that you can truly make the claim about genetic disposition towards diseases since European children suffered from smallpox, chickenpox and cowpox every year. Quite a few died every year from those diseases, but those that suffered cowpox and chickenpox at a young age and survived were then, generally, immune to the pox diseases when entering adulthood. Native Americans weren't and commonly were hit by epidemics of these diseases every decade or so, which meant that quite a large percentage of their population was previously unexposed when the new wave swept through and might have been more likely to be hit by the virulent strains (smallpox) instead of the milder form (cowpox).

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

A has been taught Calculus

B has not

A can do integrals, therefore A is better than B...

 

With regard to calculus, this is true. With regard to smallpox, Native Americans had, at that time, weaker immune systems. Sociotard is not saying anything about potential, but about facts as they existed at the time.

[Maur]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

again, untrained does not equal weaker, heheh.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

again' date=' untrained does not equal weaker, heheh.[/quote']

 

Yes, it does, actually.

 

It doesn't mean that the weaker party can't become stronger, or that the weaker party in one situation is necessarily weaker in all.

[SuperPheemy]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

For a Native American in 18th century Colonial New England, it would be appropriate to have a particularly nasty Vulnerability of 1 1/2 to 2X BODY vs European Viral Diseases (Uncommon).

 

By the time the 20th century rolls around that Vulnerability would no longer apply to the culture in general.

 

You could also make a case for a similar Vulnerability to high-alcohol-content substances (that is distilled spirits and the like) because of Vitamin K deficiency. Again a few generations worth of exposure between cultures would make that irrelevant in he end (today's perceived high rate of alcoholism among Native Americans is more of a symptom of the rates of poverty and unemployment suffered on reservation communities than anything inherited from their families).

 

I'd reflect the cultural differences with Everyman Skills and Skill/Perk based Package Deals.

[runescience]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

this could easily lend itself to a translation to savage world solomon kane.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

With regard to calculus' date=' this is true. With regard to smallpox, Native Americans had, at that time, weaker immune systems. Sociotard is not saying anything about potential, but about facts as they existed at the time.[/quote']

 

Actually, we don't know this at all. We can posit that Native Americans were more vulnerable to disease, but that represents a very large assumption in evolutionary immunology --or indeed immunology in general

.

Or we can posit that disease death rates, which are basically made-up numbers anyway, were exaggerated for effect. Which is something that we know happened.*

Occam's razor, my friends.

 

Of course this leads to the conclusion that all those Indians didn't really die. Maybe, like Bob the Dinosaur, they're still hiding behind your couch.

 

More likely, they're sitting on your couch.

At least, if you have ancestors who lived on the American continent before roughly 1900.

 

 

*All other evidence apart, how about Chicago's 1882 cholera epidemic that never even happened?

[Eosin]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

I think you guys are searching for herd immunity - something that all cultures have. Until the last 20 years Westerners had a fair herd immunity of Small Pox which means that the impact of the disease is milder.

 

We no longer have herd immunity to Small Pox which is why we will all kack like a run over dog if there is an outbreak. We have a weakened immunity to Small Pox because we don't have humoral antibiodies.

 

Babies have the strongest immune system but are the most likely to die of a viral or bacterial illness (other than Great Granny Goodness who gets a whiff of viri and falls over dead). You can have the most souped up Computer in the world with all the whiz-bang hardware. If it doesn't have software you are hosed. Humoral antibodies are software.

 

Shots/vaccines train humoral response. Cool.

 

Equine Encephaloviris of the West Nile variety is a routine illness in Israel and Egypt where 95% of the teen population has a positive titer (they have had it). Here in the USA it is seen as the apocalypse because we don't have years and years of dealing with it, so some folks will get a swolt up brain and die. Herd Immunity. It is a wonderful thing when it is working for you and a real bear when you are in the crosshairs.

 

 

My herd immunity is strongest of them all.... That means I die first if the Bird Flu ever goes domestic. Dang.... I knew their was a down side.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

Actually, we don't know this at all. We can posit that Native Americans were more vulnerable to disease, but that represents a very large assumption in evolutionary immunology --or indeed immunology in general

.

Or we can posit that disease death rates, which are basically made-up numbers anyway, were exaggerated for effect. Which is something that we know happened.*

Occam's razor, my friends.

 

Of course this leads to the conclusion that all those Indians didn't really die. Maybe, like Bob the Dinosaur, they're still hiding behind your couch.

 

More likely, they're sitting on your couch.

At least, if you have ancestors who lived on the American continent before roughly 1900.

 

 

*All other evidence apart, how about Chicago's 1882 cholera epidemic that never even happened?

 

There's pretty good evidence that native villages in New England were decimated by European diseases before the Pilgrims got there, and pretty good evidence that people of European descent traded blankets infected with smallpox to the Indians, and that in so doing, the devious traders weren't sickened and the Indians were. You may have some knowledge that I don't, but from what I see, Occam's Razor and all, Native Americans weren't immunologically prepared for European diseases.

[Markdoc]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

There's pretty good evidence that native villages in New England were decimated by European diseases before the Pilgrims got there' date=' and pretty good evidence that people of European descent traded blankets infected with smallpox to the Indians, and that in so doing, the devious traders weren't sickened and the Indians were. You may have some knowledge that I don't, but from what I see, Occam's Razor and all, Native Americans weren't immunologically prepared for European diseases.[/quote']

 

Speaking as a real live, professional immunologist, it's quite possible for a disease to have a devastating effect on an unexposed population, without any immunological defects (in fact, this is usual). Suggestions that native americans had "weaker immune systems" isn't actually borne out by any evidence at all.

 

The mortality rate for smallpox in Europeans was about 30% (meaning about 30% of people who got infected died). In Native Americans, the rate was estimated at 50%, but these numbers are generally thought now to be way too high. There are several reasons for that. The first is that the indian tribes (and the settlers who came into contact with them) didn't differentiate between smallpox and measles very well - both cause spots and fever in the early stages, and when you have a smallpox epidemic, your average trapper is not going to go and mess with the bodies to determine cause of death. Secondly, there was no attempt to actually determine cause of death. If you have a smallpox epidemic and half the population dies, then they died of smallpox, right? Actually, no. In many cases, when you have an uncontrollable epidemic, often people flee and shun contact with others from their group, or flee the area where the disease is rampant for fear they might be infected. Often, many of them of them then die from other causes: malnutrition, exposure, influenza, etc. Europeans by that time understood - however crudely - disease transmission and would quarantine infected areas and people from those areas. Native cultures didn't - at first - and treatments like taking infected individuals into a sweat lodge where everybody crammed in tight with infected people just made things worse.

 

At the time, the European colonies had documented outbreaks of smallpox, bubonic plague, typhus, mumps, influenza, yellow fever, and measles - all of which passed onto the native populations they cam into contact with. The unfortunate natives were exposed to a whole panopoly of new diseases - sometimes simultaneously - of which smallpox was only the most obvious and worst.

 

And finally you add to that the fact that the Europeans still up and walking came from populations that had been exposed and survived - and had also been exposed - via drinking raw milk - to cowpox, which partially protects. So even though newborn Europeans, as far as we can tell, were no more resistant to the pox than newborn native americans, their population included many resistant individuals, so the disease was less likely to spread. This is the "herd immunity" Eosin mentioned. You can be protected by being around resistant people, even if you are not resistant yourself.

 

A couple of other minor points. Although we know from letters that British officers considered giving the indians "smallpox infected" blankets to try and start an epidemic, we don't know if they ever did. Secondly, if they did, the chance that it caused an epidemic are vanishingly small - the virus does not survive very long outside the human body, unless it's inside a substantial scab, and even with the best modern techniques used on bandages right off a pox sore it is almost impossible to recover live virus. The indians most likely got infected the old fashioned way - by contact with a European who had it.

 

cheers, Mark

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Colonial Gothic?

 

There's pretty good evidence that native villages in New England were decimated by European diseases before the Pilgrims got there' date=' and pretty good evidence that people of European descent traded blankets infected with smallpox to the Indians, and that in so doing, the devious traders weren't sickened and the Indians were. You may have some knowledge that I don't, but from what I see, Occam's Razor and all, Native Americans weren't immunologically prepared for European diseases.[/quote']

 

Actually, there's not. There's a huge amount that we think we know, but don't. A scenario has been painted in vivid terms, but the evidence is assumed, not extant.

In particular, the amount of first hand documentation we have from the first decades of New England settlement is minute. We have several synoptic descriptions by participants from decades later that sometimes talk about deserted villages. But we do not know why they were deserted, and Eastern Woodlands cultures practiced seasonal residency, so there is no reason to blame the disease epidemics that certainly occurred.

We do not have: i) estimates of pre-Contact native populations;

ii) estimates of post-Contact populations;

iii) an etiology of disease epidemics that would allow us to identify the diseases actually present in the New World or those introduced, or from where;

iv) A disease history of the New World;

v) An explanation for why Eastern Woodland Indian communities were still said to have declining numbers in the 1700s, after centuries of interbreeding with Europeans and adopting the entire suite of European agricultural activities;

vi) Any reason for limiting the documented tendency for settled Francophone metis to be identified as Canadians immigrants, while their kinfolk who kept up a hunting lifestyle were labelled "Indians;"

vii) An explanation for how all the White Okies who moved to California in the 1930s turned out to be part-Cherokee in the 1940s --a trend that also includes non-Okies like Jack Dempsey and Roger Clinton;

viii) An explanation for why there are no orphans in America before the early 1800s (in other words, we know nothing about who might have been adopted and by whom. So when Robert Remini points out the well known fact that "Black" Daniel Webster was the only Webster with a massive build and a swarthy complexion, we literally have no information about interracial adoption to go on.

viii) "Passing."

ix) an explanation for why Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge and arguably Martin Van Buren did not suffer electorally from being highly plausibly identified during campaigns as being of mixed race;

x) And, as an aside that may not really be so irrelevant, why opposition to human evolution has developed into an American folk movement among self-identified politically and culturally marginal White populations, one that seems to split along the same lines as "elite" versus "ordinary folk."

Moving right along....

We also have

i) No plausible demographic history of the 1600s that excludes racial intermixture. As many as 9 out of 10 Whites who crossed the Atlantic before 1700 were male, up to 3 out of every 4 Blacks. Yet these populations had the highest rate of increase recorded in human history.

ii) Any available immigration records before the mid-1800s. (Except for isolated ports, so that we can for example say that Andrew Jackson is lying when he claims that his family came in through Charleston.) In terms of theories of the disease theory, this is most interesting for the earliest period. There is no complete account of exploration/fishing expeditions that establishes who came over to the New World, and when. And leaving aside Cartier, Roanoke, or early Spanish activities, we don't even have a line of attack to get at private, or, say, Algerian activity in the New World. There is plenty of reason to think that such unrecorded activity occurred.

iii) However, we have to ask about the era before 1700--1830, too. Generation after generation, both White and Black populations continued to double in just over 20 years. For the period in which this continued while under Census scrutiny (1790--1830), it is very hard to reconstruct. Birthrates must have been at or above the biological maximum (and yes, that is no typo), and yet that means that the Census hugely undercounted children. The unrecorded migration from Canada was huge, and we still put "and then a miracle occurred" into calculations for the increase of Black populations. for no reason that we can think of, this increase rate collapsed starting in 1830, just when Jacksonian Indian Removal began, showed signs of recovery in the 1850s (when data for slave emancipation goes wonky), and has never since recovered, even though we see no change in American family patterns. Although the number of children per family falls, there is little evidence (and admittedly this is all anecdotal) of a change in the number of pregnancies/woman. It is normally assumed that the median age of death fell in a great epidemic of ill-health, but it is by no means anecdotal to say that there is little direct evidence for this.

iv) Pointing specifically to a huge pre-Census anomaly, the Scotch-Irish population, in particular, went from near zero to over 400,000 in just 70 years, in a period of minimal immigration. Moreover, in contrast to population breakdowns in Ireland and Scotland, these migrants were overwhelmingly Presbyterian. Significance? There are no available baptismal records or wedding certificates for Presbyterians in the Old Country, or any expectation of finding them in the New. On the other hand, Presbyterianism was a very popular missionary religion during the early years of the Scotch-Irish emigration. Or, should I say, "emigration."

v) As Presbyterianism was tamed, new versions of Christian sectarianism broke out, mainly on the frontier. The most notable one (which included but was not limited, to, Mormonism), occurred in the Iroquois heartlands of western New York, just at the time that the Iroquois belatedly "disappeared."

Just like my readers....