Fellow Mansioneers,

Just a quick Q: Is there a Native American Investigator in the Arkham Horror Files universe, or further than that has there been a Native American character in any of the past and present Cthulhu Mythos fiction?

Thanks in advance.

8 hours ago, Phoenix_FFG said:

Fellow Mansioneers,

Just a quick Q: Is there a Native American Investigator in the Arkham Horror Files universe, or further than that has there been a Native American character in any of the past and present Cthulhu Mythos fiction?

Thanks in advance.

None of the current Investigators in the Arkham Files games are explicitly Native American, no. I believe the closest we have is the ally Aquinnah in the AH:LCG. Maybe she'll get promoted to Investigator at some point?

As far as the fiction... considering Lovecraft's opinions of non-white people, if there are Native American characters in his fiction, they're probably not well represented. Some of the later Mythos works (Lumley's in particular) tend to have more diverse casts, so it's certainly a possibility.

8 hours ago, KBlumhardt said:

I believe the closest we have is the ally Aquinnah in the AH:LCG. Maybe she'll get promoted to Investigator at some point?

Thank you so much! Here she is. It'd be great if she became an Investigator in Mansions of Madness. I'd love to see that happen.

What had me asking was, while searching for images and logos from other Arkham Horror Files games that I could incorporate into Mansions of Madness accessories/tokens I stumbled across the picture below:

I would prefer a completely new Investigator rather then promoting an existing ally.
I was pondering over creating some new investigators in the few last weeks. Does someone have an idea for an interesting profession of a Native American investigator? We already have one Shaman.

Shaman is kinda cliche in my opinion. I think a "village elder" would be cool and they could be more of a lore investigator since many native cultures pass down lore/knowledge orally. Who would have more lore knowledge than someone who has been around a long time to accumulate it.

I would love a Native investigator, not enough representation.

16 hours ago, tsuma534 said:

Does someone have an idea for an interesting profession of a Native American investigator?

My thoughts were a Tracker, someone that goes looking for people that go missing under mysterious circumstances or helps in more remote areas, but still finds those skills needed in suburban Arkham. The Tracker, story-wise, would have found evidence of strange footprints in remote areas that also lead to and from the suburban areas. I'd love to see some cultural inclusions in the story too. There'd possibly be the same issues that Rita Young would face in a 1920s Arkham society with regards to race, and the Tracker's stories being labelled as 'spiritual mumbo-jumbo' or 'savage superstition' to those that don't want to believe the Tracker's findings.

4 hours ago, spoonman2084 said:

...a lore investigator since many native cultures pass down lore/knowledge orally.

I would love a Native investigator, not enough representation.

That would be great. The character's upbringing was never afraid to tell the stories passed through the generations.

In my head, I was thinking:

Health/Sanity: 7/7 or 6/8 (This Investigator has come from a rural and suburban upbringing. I'm leaning more towards 7/7).

Strength 3, Agility 4, Observation 5, Lore 4, Influence 2, Will 3. (An amazing observationalist, a detective forged in a different fire. Reasonable physical attributes for dealing with the great outdoors and keeping a step ahead of trouble, raised and trained to notice what 'civilised' folk wouldn't notice, raised with an assortment of mythologies, misunderstood or disregarded in 'civilised' society, and a mind unafraid to face the horrors of what really lies beyond.

I'm stoking my brain for a special ability. So far, something to do with Monster movement (maybe some form of anticipation such as counting as an extra space away from Monsters), or gaining a Clue after performing an Observation check, or maybe even starting with a specific spell at the beginning of the game to represent some mystical training alongside the tracking (I don't know any spells beyond the Core Set yet, so I'm not confident of this).

This is probably hard to get right. Before the "Indian New Deal" in the 1930s, American Indians had it really bad. There was an active effort to destroy Native culture, and assimilate tribal society into Anglo-American society. This went beyond racism, unfair laws and neglect, we're talking abducting children to boarding schools for brainwashing and removing land from Federal protection to sell it.

I imagine that doing an "outdoors-y" character that is supposed to represent any "typical" Native American living in a reservation in the 1920s will step on someones toes. It might be easier to just cast some pulp fiction role (the pilot! the inventor! the mortician! the stunt (wo)man! the mathematician! the bus driver! the groundskeeper! the accountant!) with an American Indian. Or pick a historical role with a mostly positive connotiation like Mohawk "skywalker".

Ah yes the skywalker thing. It would be cool to have a steelworker as their background. Agility 5 seems like it would be an auto include for that type of build.

Or Willpower… balancing along a steel girder hundreds of feet above certain death like walking down the sidewalk probably takes nerves of steel…

i agree on the will power as well. We have not had a gator with 2 fives that i am aware of. Points seem to total up to 21 so maybe.

3 strength
5 agility
3 observation
3 lore
2 influence
5 will

maybe power could be something around a skill check for agility, like you can convert an investigation to a success. Or maybe you get some kinda bonus for evade checks.

On 3.03.2018 at 3:50 AM, Samea said:

This is probably hard to get right. (...)

Depends on what do you mean by "right".
While I would like to be at least remotely culturally accurate I don't intend to put much effort in being historically accurate. I have just decided that in this timeline the "Indian New Deal" happened twenty years earlier than in ours.

This is still a game. This is mostly about trying to kick alien monsters in the tuckus. This is about the pulp stories of the 1920s and the evocation of the backdrop of all of Lovecraft's "contemporary" texts, not about actual history. So the focus should definitely not be on barbarisms of the past that, in a historically accurate setting, should hold back and hinder all investigators that are not rich anglo-saxon males.

But that does not mean that discrimination does not exist in the world of AH, the character backgrounds and AH fiction make it pretty obvious that there is lots if racism and sexism and classism going on. They're not hidden or redacted or retconned, they just do not stand in the way of the characters' ability to be effective investigators and they do not take center stage.

And that is what I'd want to "get right" — I'd actually be more okay with a dumb American Indian character background of "my family was swindled by corrupt officials, lost their land and then they fell sick and died, but that does not stop me from being awesome and kicking *** left and right" than with "this horrible historical event is inconvenient for my character idea, so I'll just leave or write it out of the setting". I'd at least wanted to acknowledge that the thing happened, not ignore it entirely.

This is my personal opinion, of course, everyone else's mileage may vary. But I'd not really feel ok doing something like this with the Holocaust or 9/11 and I'd not feel ok doing this with other tragedies just because they get less attention.

On 3/2/2018 at 1:37 PM, spoonman2084 said:

Shaman is kinda cliche in my opinion. I think a "village elder" would be cool and they could be more of a lore investigator since many native cultures pass down lore/knowledge orally. Who would have more lore knowledge than someone who has been around a long time to accumulate it.

I would love a Native investigator, not enough representation.

I like the Village Elder idea. I play all of the AH games, and this would fit nicely into the LCG as well.

As for the New Indian Deal and all Native Americans being treated equally poorly, that isn't the case. I think that those on either coast were probably not treated well, but that's not to say that Caucasian Americans were treated well if they were from other locations. Any Caucasian that moved to San Francisco during WWII to work on the war effort was called Okie, regardless of origin, because so many people immigrated to California from Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and Colorado during the Dust Bowl. Human beings suck.

I like this idea of getting native peoples into the game. I think Village Elder offers the most narrative options. It has the broadest range of skills, it isn't remotely limited to gender, and it's not remotely tribe-specific - if a tribe (or nation) is successful enough to keep people around and alive, boom, elder. Some tribes were pacifistic, they had elders. So, too, did those that warred.

OK. Any ideas for a name or other characteristics? Most of the Native Americans I know have boring Caucasian names (Luke, Ty, Russell, Colin, …).

On 3/2/2018 at 8:37 PM, spoonman2084 said:

Shaman is kinda cliche in my opinion. I think a "village elder" would be cool and they could be more of a lore investigator since many native cultures pass down lore/knowledge orally. Who would have more lore knowledge than someone who has been around a long time to accumulate it.

I seem to have some barebones idea for a backstory. Why is the village elder travelling the world and not in their village? I think that most (all?) of other villagers are gone and the elder is trying to learn what happened. In a more gruesome variant they could witness the others slaughtered by some monstrosities but this version might not be suitable for this game.