Aunties, Uncles, and Elders of the Third Path
Walkabout is using an occupation system that is similar to the career path system in the Warhammer RPG. Basically this means that a character starts with a few abilities granted by their culture and childhood, then those abilities open up the opportunity to gain occupations, which in turn allow new abilities and special advantages to be gained. It is feasible for characters from any background to eventually find themselves in any of the game's occupations, but due to certain skills and abilities being naturally found and respected among certain cultures it is easier for members of specific communities to work specific jobs.
At the moment, I'm working through a matrix ensuring every ability can be acquired through two or three different potential occupational stepping stones (with more common abilities being more readily available through multiple sources), and that there are enough links between various occupational pathways that players don't find their characters restricted to choosing occupations that don't seem to fit in order to expand and develop.
I've resolved this basically by having a working concept that I'm calling character elements... this isn't something that will be indicated in the text, it's more of a "backstage" working mechanism that drives things that are visible. Character elements are a range of abilities, minimum attribute levels and other factors that might be gained during the course of play. More powerful occupations require a higher combination of elements before they are accessible.
With these in mind, it's possible to gauge certain things. Basic occupations require 2 character elements, while more complex occupations require 4, 6 or 8 character elements. Most of the elements needed will be abilities, I've only added a few occupations that require a single attribute among their elements (and haven't added any occupations that require 2 attribute minimums...but I'm considering it), and I'm still considering the specific nature of the narrative elements that might contribute here. Those narrative elements will really determine the focus of what the characters do in the game.
One of the elements I'm getting a bit stuck on involves the nature of sexuality. This game has a strong presence of Indigenous Australian spirituality, and one of the problems here is that much of that spirituality is both closely guarded, and at odds with decades of indoctrination from colonial forces. There are still snippets and fragments that linger. I don't want to just throw everything Indigenous into a melting pot and claim that's all that's left of the traditional ways, but moving through some of the higher levels of occupations for those who follow the traditional ways brings some challenges.
In many of the Indigenous Australian communities I've worked with, the elders are referred to as Aunties and Uncles. If you respect them, and if they have welcomed you enough into their community to accept your respect, you refer to someone as Aunty (if they are female) or Uncle (if they are male). In some communities the gender division is fairly static, but this is often where colonial missionaries have wiped out elements of earlier culture through a program of evangelism and ethnocentrism. In other communities, there is still a sense of a more fluid division between the aunties and uncles, a male who engages in "women's work" and identifies more strongly in this way might be referred to as "Aunty" and it is still considered a sign of respect. Conversely, a female might perform "men's work" and be identified as "Uncle". Outside their communities, this might be seen as strange, but inside those communities, it is the soul not the body that is respected. This is not a choice, this is something ingrained, something deeper.
While the concept has mostly been eradicated by missionaries and a colonial government that deliberately chooses ignorance over Indigenous cultural matters, there are also those who follow a third path of identifying neither male nor female, but instead focus on being those who join the two sides with the spirit world. Shaman isn't the word, but from an outsider's Western perspective it comes close enough to function as a basic shorthand for the role. For this setting I'm simply referring to them as the Elders of the Third Path, drawing on Polynesian ideas for this because those communities were more carefully studied by anthropologists before their cultures could be too heavily influenced by Western/European "values". It goes against my intentions for the game, where I'm trying to avoid blanket generalities or blending disparate cultural concepts, but again it works as a general shorthand for getting people to think in the right direction.
Thankfully, with Mad Max as an inspiration for the setting, we have a great role model of an Aunty in "Beyond Thunderdome".
When a character reaches the point of their story where they might become an Aunty, an Uncle, or an Elder of the Third Path, they should have identified the type of character they are playing. It should be obvious which of these roles best suits the type of path they have been progressing along. A character cannot be portrayed with more masculine energy then adopt the occupation of "Aunty", this just isn't how people would see them. Similarly, once a character has accepted the responsibilities of an "Aunty" or "Uncle", they can't switch across to one of the other elder roles. I feel this should be obvious in the way characters are played, and shouldn't need specific mechanisms in play to restrict choices. In fact I see many player characters belonging to groups who try to hold the lingering values of the colonial cultures, and such characters wouldn't be interested in these elder roles, and similarly the vast majority of player characters not surviving long enough to reach the point where these decisions become a factor. Still, as I indicated previously, the occupational stepping stones are linked in such a way that a character with any starting point could theoretically end up at any end point, and will probably have an interesting journey as they move between them.
Meanwhile, I'm still walking the path of trying to be inclusive in this game, while addressing concepts and stories that I feel are important in the world.
- Possessing a certain ability counts as one element.
- Possessing d8 in an attribute counts as one element, a d10 counts as two elements, a d12 as three.
- Accomplishing certain feats in the narrative count as an element (examples might include being convicted of a crime, honouring a deal with a spirit, successfully hunting a bounty, besting someone in combat who possesses a specific trait, etc.)
One of the elements I'm getting a bit stuck on involves the nature of sexuality. This game has a strong presence of Indigenous Australian spirituality, and one of the problems here is that much of that spirituality is both closely guarded, and at odds with decades of indoctrination from colonial forces. There are still snippets and fragments that linger. I don't want to just throw everything Indigenous into a melting pot and claim that's all that's left of the traditional ways, but moving through some of the higher levels of occupations for those who follow the traditional ways brings some challenges.
In many of the Indigenous Australian communities I've worked with, the elders are referred to as Aunties and Uncles. If you respect them, and if they have welcomed you enough into their community to accept your respect, you refer to someone as Aunty (if they are female) or Uncle (if they are male). In some communities the gender division is fairly static, but this is often where colonial missionaries have wiped out elements of earlier culture through a program of evangelism and ethnocentrism. In other communities, there is still a sense of a more fluid division between the aunties and uncles, a male who engages in "women's work" and identifies more strongly in this way might be referred to as "Aunty" and it is still considered a sign of respect. Conversely, a female might perform "men's work" and be identified as "Uncle". Outside their communities, this might be seen as strange, but inside those communities, it is the soul not the body that is respected. This is not a choice, this is something ingrained, something deeper.
While the concept has mostly been eradicated by missionaries and a colonial government that deliberately chooses ignorance over Indigenous cultural matters, there are also those who follow a third path of identifying neither male nor female, but instead focus on being those who join the two sides with the spirit world. Shaman isn't the word, but from an outsider's Western perspective it comes close enough to function as a basic shorthand for the role. For this setting I'm simply referring to them as the Elders of the Third Path, drawing on Polynesian ideas for this because those communities were more carefully studied by anthropologists before their cultures could be too heavily influenced by Western/European "values". It goes against my intentions for the game, where I'm trying to avoid blanket generalities or blending disparate cultural concepts, but again it works as a general shorthand for getting people to think in the right direction.
Thankfully, with Mad Max as an inspiration for the setting, we have a great role model of an Aunty in "Beyond Thunderdome".
When a character reaches the point of their story where they might become an Aunty, an Uncle, or an Elder of the Third Path, they should have identified the type of character they are playing. It should be obvious which of these roles best suits the type of path they have been progressing along. A character cannot be portrayed with more masculine energy then adopt the occupation of "Aunty", this just isn't how people would see them. Similarly, once a character has accepted the responsibilities of an "Aunty" or "Uncle", they can't switch across to one of the other elder roles. I feel this should be obvious in the way characters are played, and shouldn't need specific mechanisms in play to restrict choices. In fact I see many player characters belonging to groups who try to hold the lingering values of the colonial cultures, and such characters wouldn't be interested in these elder roles, and similarly the vast majority of player characters not surviving long enough to reach the point where these decisions become a factor. Still, as I indicated previously, the occupational stepping stones are linked in such a way that a character with any starting point could theoretically end up at any end point, and will probably have an interesting journey as they move between them.
Meanwhile, I'm still walking the path of trying to be inclusive in this game, while addressing concepts and stories that I feel are important in the world.
.png)
Comments