Native / Meso American Thread

So I've been running a campaign for the past few years set in pre-eurpoean fantasy. (We're using pathfinder.) I feel like sharing some of the concept art I've gathered over the past decade and probably some blurbs about the game as I go. Feel free to contribute your own thematic art or ask questions!

Other urls found in this thread:

gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=378488
grognard.booru.org/
kamazotz.deviantart.com/
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Instead of making a lot of homebrew, I just reskinned races. Dwarves turned into dog soldiers - gnolls.

I was looking for a slightly Ice Age time frame - which makes no sense, but hey, Canada = Ice, and the PC's can ride around on woolly mammoths.

Or Druids that can choose among megafauna like this guy.

I reskinned Orcs as Neanderthal. Running around the frozen wastes, nomadic, not straight up evil. Fun times.

This guy is the basis for a neanderthal chief

Halflings I reskinned as Pygmies. It's maybe a little racist in an Indiana Jones / Tin Tin kind of way, but second breakfast is people is a fun battle cry

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Some random stuff.

I spent several years living in Central and South America - lots of photos of Mayan, Incan, and other nations' cultural leavings.

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I'm not really sure what this is. I think I pulled it off of a TG thread not long ago. For my purposes, it's a dire boar.

Creepy monster that may or may not be fae. The "fae" are generally treated as nunnehi. Not exactly nature spirits. They tend to pop out of pocket dimensions to stir up trouble.

gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=378488

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I've been toying with an idea of skinned warriors acting a magic "mechs". Not a long term thing, but fun for a session

Also, I got kinda hooked on a Lich as an NPC.

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Voodoo pygmy monk!

Too much time in the mountains makes you crazy.

BBEG - the evil wizard forsaken by the gods and cursed with immortality. Or something.

At the risk of turning this into a gnoll/furry thread, here are some more gnolls.

They're the only culture that's developed metalworking, so they get a bit badass.

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I also totally ripped off some WOD werewolf mythology. The world is made of spirit, material, and memory - the land of the spirit, the real world, and the land of the dead. Some of the game takes place running between the worlds.

Things in the land of the dead exist as long as people and things remember them - it's not so much black and white, but very blurry. When someone dies, they cross over, but don't retain the same information and drives as they did in life. (Handwavium to avoid shoot first ask later scenarios.)

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Oh Wendigo... If only you weren't a such a high CR.

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You know the Americas are pretty big, right? Gonna have to narrow it down a lot for anything worthwhile.

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There is a lot of down time, but there's also a system of teleporters, for lack of a better term.

They're scattered, but static in that they always link to the same places - the players have been building a map.

>dogs
>Neanderthals
>blue eyes
>pygmies
>giant cassowary and negro in cambodia
Maybe it would be good to learn a bit about the pre-columbian new world before basing a setting on it.

Additionally, the gods - Aztec, Incan, Mayan, Animist spirits, and some additional spirits meddle pretty regularly. Divination is more like texting god than reading chicken guts.

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>Maybe it would be good to learn a bit about the pre-columbian new world before basing a setting on it.
Yeah, those blue-eyed humanoids are going to really stick out in a world where people can cast magic spells to change their shapes into giant 20' animals

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Yeah, this is all concept stuff - I wanted a old guy that looked beat to hell. Bum Fight Hero for the win.

One of the hardest problems I've had is dealing with the alignment / outsider portion of the rules - I had an abyssal sorcerer that made me shoehorn some stuff in.

Colors matter.

Part of the reason I'm dumping all of this is to share. A GIS for Native American Fantasy brings up a bunch of truck stop art, so if any other lurkers out there are hunting, I hope this helps.

Isn't this basically what Veeky Forumsbooru is for? Not to disparage art-dumping, of course.

It's funny you mention that. I tried to build in clues based on color/meaning on some charts from the museum of the american indian but it got too complicated to settle on a regular meaning. I haven't had anything eventful enough in the campaign to warrant a white buffalo yet.

Probably because there's a lot of different native americans with different cultures.

Is it? I can't say I've seen it before, I typically lurk in the PF/5.0 and some other random threads.

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grognard.booru.org/
As far as I know there isn't a good tag in wide use for this stuff though, just Aztec and Native_American with fairly small number of tagged images.

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Heaps more like this on this guy's deviantart

kamazotz.deviantart.com/

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Oh! It's an art site! I didn't know. Here, I was hoping it was an online game.
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing!

So far as political stuff, I've bastardized things into a few "kingdoms" Aztec, Inca, Five Nations, Mississippian, and other. With the exception of Aztec and Inca, they're primarily cultural boundaries more than anything. The odd races and nomads fill in the gaps.

This isn't entirely relevant, but I really liked the look of it.

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If anyone's really interested I can post some photos of pyramids in Guatemala and El Salvador the last few times I was there. I'm not a great photog, but it's extra Mayan-y.

Air Domain Aztec Cleric. I love this image though I haven't used it in a game yet.

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Some extraplanar baddies

More gnolls - it's kind of surprising how popular they are here.

A little off theme, but I like it.

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I also threw in a race of lizard people - I remember the first Viashino card - a raptor-esque biped with blanket and staff. I realize MTG's made them traditional lizardfolk now, but man I wanted to see a civilization of velociraptors.

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Well, that was fun. I've got some more, but they're more setting and landscapes than anything particularly thematic.

I hope some of you got some use out of this!

>dogs

Problem, Whitey?
>Xoloitzcuintli
>Archaeological evidence has been found in the tombs of the Colima, Mayan, Toltec, Zapotec, and Aztec Indians dating the breed to over 3500 years ago.

Time to learn some fucking history you numale cocksuking limpwristed hillary-voting faggot. Whites that try to speak for other peoples will be the first on the Día de Cuerda.