An American Mythology Setting

In honor of Memorial Day, and because I've been watching Ken Burns' Civil War on Netflix a lot this last week, I'd like to talk about American fantasy. There were a few threads about this last week as well.

youtube.com/watch?v=k-s51B66Sl4

Last week's threads mostly concerned themselves with Native American mythology forming the basis for a "fantastic" America, or bringing in the various threads of folklore and tall tales that once formed the bedrock of American's cultural touchstone. But these aren't really "American" in the same way that castles and dragons are European, or spirits and rice are Asian. Really, truly American, if we're referring to the United States, fantasy should focus on the two great mythological periods of US history: The Revolutionary War and The Civil War.

The Revolutionary War gave birth to the ideals and attitudes that would shape American lives and civilization for centuries, in the same way that a lot of European fantasy settings have some ancient, glorious empire shape the culture, language, and faith of their medieval successors, or how D&D has pantheons of deities who shape the values and traditions of nations and people. The Civil War, on the other hand, really unified the country and fed the industrial boom that opened up the West for the sorts of opportunities that adventurers crave, while also offering great opportunities for players and DMs to be creative.

Other urls found in this thread:

gutenberg.org/files/22994/22994-h/22994-h.htm
1d4chan.org/wiki/Deathworld
hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/
hplovecraft.com/writings/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

I hop you realize that this thread, if it really kicks into gear, is going to be chock full of extremely divisive politics.

Sherman did nothing wrong

Both could be great sources of pantheons, if you wanted them, the Founding Fathers or the generals, senators, and presidents of both the North and South. Some of the greatest American heroes come from these two periods: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Warren, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Robert E. Lee. Both wars opened up frontiers for the good and evil of a fantasy America to explore and exploit, where you can have adventures with Indians, explore the myths and monsters of native tribes, and without forcing it into the framework of a Medieval Fantasy swords-and-sorcery setting by torturing bits and pieces of half-learned history textbooks into something that resembles D&D. But the great thing about that period, especially after the Civil War, is that you could have a pseudo-Medieval Fantasy kingdom set up in the wilderness by colonists leaving a war-torn nation. You could set players to explore the ruins of British forts or Apache cities, salvaging treasure in the wake of war or plagues that they could instantly recognize. The Jersey Devil could be a real devil, born of a wealthy American politician's family seeking to aggrandize themselves in a republican era by making forbidden pacts with the creatures of hell. There's a lot of fertile ground in these eras that I think gets overlooked in favor of more overtly fantastical and exotic cultures that most fa/tg/uys don't really know anything about.

Well, that's not quite true. He could have burned MORE.

What's more American than talking politics? And what would be divisive about the Founding Fathers, unless you really would prefer to make them a Lawful Evil body of men conquering the Chaotic Good Indians?

I think the Civil War would be a better focus. The sheer number of battles between two parts of a greater nation is the breeding ground for tales of heroism, villainy and magic, much like the Sengoku or the Three Kingdoms period.

It would also create much more opportunities for characters to have a more colorful range of traits that are still inherently American.

Frederick Turner's Frontier Thesis would also be really useful if you want an American fantasy setting that's based on US history and not just generic New World.

gutenberg.org/files/22994/22994-h/22994-h.htm

>unless you really would prefer to make them a Lawful Evil body of men conquering the Chaotic Good Indians

Well. I mean, they Were. People talk about how interested in freedom and liberty they were, but let's be honest: they were wealthy property owners who were fighting to protect their investments and using the common man to do it. All their talk of freedom and equality rings hollow when you look at how they treated slaves and the Natives. It was all pretty words conjured up to make people take their side and support their newly established regime.

Well, except for Franklin. He was an okay dude.

The Civil War is really good for it, especially since there's so much documentation about it. But the Revolutionary War has a lot more potential as a Myth, I think, and then your actual setting would be around the Civil War period.

>Well, except for Franklin. He was an okay dude.

If he had sold out the states we could have giant mecha and flying ships and have hot girls with lime green hair and gold eyes. He screwed the world over

The Civil War has some of the best fucking names in US history.

>Battle above the Clouds
>Rock of Chickimauga
>Unconditional Surrender Grant
>The Wilderness

Oh yeah, the names alone are an excellent source for artifacts and locations.

He burned what he needed to burn id est a major enemy supply depot before he left it to his rear and crossed into enemy territory without reinforcements.

I'd love to see someone take Jesse James and other ex-Confed felons as a basis for adventurers or their enemies. It's almost perfect.

>Banner of Cold Harbor
>Roll two dice when using a fate point. Take the lower.

I think the problem with that idea is that most people want to play a game that is medieval fantasy for a reason. They don't want to deal with guns and shoddy. They want plate and princesses. You could try converting Only War, but then it really wouldn't be an American setting, just Only War converted.

>Ben Franklin be all like "I fucked more bitches than all of you suckas put together!"

Isn't there an RPG system for Warhammer Fantasy Battles? Can't that be used for magic and muskets in the same setting?

I've said this before and I say it again. Google Skinner's "Myths and Legends of our own Land"
Everything you need is right there sorted by region.

>1d4chan.org/wiki/Deathworld

The best thing Veeky Forums has ever written.

Shitposting aside, Sherman is a classic example of what the Federal Government is willing to do to its own citizens (because the official US policy of the CSA was that they were American Citizens in rebellion) in order to win. They would rather burn an entire state (and one that was pretty wealthy at that point) to the point of mass poverty and complete economic subjugation than concede defeat.

Just something to think about, no matter how you slice the Civil War.

That's more of a monster manual though.

>1d4chan.org/wiki/Deathworld
That's seems more dieselpunkish. The setting here seems more like WHFB, where people are still experimenting with technologies and something like a rifle that can hold more than one shot is 'advanced'

>so many people complain how Sherman burned/stole their shit
>most cases he never even came close to them

Anybody here ever play Colonial Gothic?

I'm a canadian and what is this?
No really, fantasy america seems like a fun setting if played out correctly.

I'm intrigued, but what kind of fantasy elements could we bring into a uniquely US setting? I've got at least one idea.

The Revolution was between the USA and British Empire, so maybe we make it so that the conflict is one between more traditional fantasy actors (like wizards, paladins, etc) and some kind of uniquely American fantasy actors. We'd have to think of what those things would be. Maybe variations of traditional fantasy tropes.

Like instead of paladins, they've got patriots, and they draw their power not from their deity, but their belief in their country or dedication to national ideas or something. It could make them stronger, braver, more resistant to mind control (muh freedom!). Maybe magic users, instead of being high and mighty wizards in towers and Royal courts, are more like everymen and really downplay their status, trying to just present their abilities as something normal and humble. Maybe add in a strong gun culture, or maybe even gun-specific magic users (like Powder Mages) to reflect US belligerence.

Lovecraft was American, so his stuff is fair game for the spookier corners of our country (especially Massachusetts and northeast). I'm mostly talking the more earthly witchery because I think his spooky space-tentacles have dominated his image to the detriment of his other work.

hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/
hplovecraft.com/writings/
>the terrible old man
>the electric executioner
>the music of erich zann
>the dunwich horror
>pickman's model
>Herbert West - Reanimator
>fuck it just read all of them that weren't co-authored

Basically if you took the Sengoku Jidai but added in Fantasy magic, muskets, and set it during the civil war. Ronin would be ex-Union/Confederate soldiers looking for work even as the war raged around them. Wizards would have their place in battles like Gettysburg and Antietam, and the Revolutionary war would be a lot more like says.

I know it may be getting tedious me repeating this over and over, but it's basically Warhammer Fantasy set in America instead of the Empire, and different factions/nationalities instead of races.

No. But now I want to.

>what kind of fantasy elements could we bring into a uniquely US setting?

You can get a lot from the Wild West, and even move some of them into other time-periods
>bounty hunters in ponchos and trenchcoats roam the land, ready to trade a bandit's head for a stack of cash
>natives fighting soldiers and settlers with horse, bow, axe, and gun
>brutal bandits armed with revolver and rifle, for whom no crime is too low
>bank-robbers and train-robbers scheme in cramped taverns and dream of riches
>gun-running gangsters lure young urchins to their ranks with promises of power and respect
>scheming businessmen pull the strings of lesser gangs to steal land and contracts for their own profit

Player archetypes could include the following:
>Fastest-gun-in-the-west grizzled gunmen types
>Rich gentlewomen or lowly harlots whose delicate appearance conceals the skills of a hardened badass
>A wandering salesman or professional con-artist, using a pretty face and a silver tongue to make his way in the world
>Native tribesmen or tribeswomen, left their native lands with tomahawk and arrow to seek his fortune or spiritual fulfillment.
>An immigrant, used to the culture and fighting-style of the old country, but came to seek fortune and freedom in the New World
>Gentry lost and trained by natives, whose mixed history combines a settler's knowledge with a native's brutal cunning
>Loose-cannon cop, might have been kicked off the force, but still lays down the law under a hail of hot lead

There are a lot of American fantasy archetypes to go around. Those were just off the top of my head.

That's all cool, but are there any fantasy elements? Any magic or supernatural stuff going on? If so, what?

I just remembered that the Headless Horseman is supposed to be an undead Hessian mercenary who fought for the British during the Revolution. He could easily be some kind of freaky spectre that runs around New England cutting off the heads of Revolutionaries.

>But these aren't really "American" in the same way that castles and dragons are European, or spirits and rice are Asian

are ferkin 4 real - the millennia of spirits and monsters and warriors discarded for USA!USA!USA!

my house is older than your country fuckwit - maybe reread the thread from last week then go deep fantasy - I dunno like not fucking over the actual inhabitants and playing the clock forward 500 years ( I know, I know, nearly 200% over your current downward spiral toward MAD ), or maybe Founding Father + Native Tribes vs ( Sleeping Elder/Nazis from the Future/Little Green Men from Uranus ).

sooooo much material just discarded - I guess its the Americun way.....

>fantasy elements
Oh, I thought you meant american mythology and tropes rather than "jam D&D into the USA regardless of how messily and poorly it fits". Which is kind of ironic because D&D was made in good ol' Murica.


We do have stories involving people who don't stay dead. If you recall the opening to Fallout: New Vegas, that's a thing used in wild west stories. Someone shoots the protagonist in the head and goes to bury him, but he wakes up and hunts down his would-be killer. Those people aren't overtly magical, they're just determined and lucky enough to have survived something they shouldn't have. Sometimes they are actually immortal and just keep getting up to hunt down people who wronged them in life.

Native Americans have their own brand of magic, which usually means they go on a spirit journey and become super badasses. Sometimes they can curse people, and buildings built on native american graveyards are said to be haunted. Once in a while you get a spirit who actually goes out and kills people, often in revenge for something awful that whitey did to his people.

There are the traditions we got from the Caribbean (lumped into "voodoo"), that involve necromancy, mind-control, and making oneself unkillable by mortal means. Lovecraft played off of that by having a cult turn out to be worshiping tentacled spookies.

Obviously, we have good old-fashioned witchcraft that we got from Europe. Witches do the obvious witch stuff like riding broomsticks, raising the dead, cursing people, baking children into pies, and all that. And the inquisitor is the witch's natural enemy, although our version of the inquisition is generally portrayed as overzealous, corrupt, and foolish, burning lots of innocent people.


Of course, our magic-users are generally antagonists, although a native wiseman or voodoo priest will sometimes help a hero.

but the natives were almost always responsible for burning everything just to prolong a lost cause

Yeah, I'm thinking if we were to do a "uniquely American" set of fantasy tropes, it would probably be a mashup of several otherwise disparate traditions, owing to the USA's historic role as a melting pot. So what makes the USA unique is that it takes all these things and blends them together into a new, hybrid magic.

Natives and Slaves don't mean jack shit when you're building a Democratic Republic in the midst of Empires, Kings, and Tyranny you fucking limp wrist Royalist.

Let me guess, you think the Civil war was about slaves?

PDF?

There is a lot to get from the early western march past the Appalachians. From around say 1789-1843. You have a lot of great American heroes (Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, James Bowie, Winfield Scott etc.) and a still wild frontier setting with everything from forests to plains to deserts. A lot of different enemies and possible allies if played from an American perspective (The Native Americans, British, French, Mexicans, Texans, Spanish and such) and some cool conflicts including the war of 1812 and a culmination in the Mexican American war which featured Civil War heroes like Robert E Lee in the field and Abraham Lincoln on the home front, both of whom found their fame through the war.

>blends them together into a new, hybrid magic

As an American, I think we don't really have that as an idea regarding the supernatural; like you don't have anyone learning spirit talking, voodoo, and witchcraft and actually combining them into one. Each of them are generally distinct, and mostly live in their own regions.

For the idea of mixing magic, I'd just have practitioners of each move to the same place, probably one of our huge cities, and they can have interactions that generate further lore. Mostly violent, of course. You could have voodoo guys doing their own thing, but occasionally getting into turf wars with whatever native tribe happens to be around.


..And then you put those conflicts into a colorful mix of immigrant gangs, cops, various criminal organizations, nativist/xenophobe gangs like the KKK and neo-nazis, crooked mafia-cops, mercenary companies like the Pinkertons, vigilantes trying to clean up the streets, independent crooks and drug-dealers, corporate thugs, serial killers from all walks of life, violent anarchist groups, maybe even the national guard if things get really bad, and other groups associated with violence and terror. There's your god damn melting pot: a heap of beautiful unique cultures all set up to scheme and murder each other in brutal fashion. Needless to say, such exaggerated sort-of-historical chaos sets a perfect stage for tabletop violence roleplaying.