I've been doing this other thing for a while, not Ars, about failed colonial attempts in Africa, and how they led to the colonisation of Australia. The thing is, there's a pretty clear narrative shape of the thing, and when I was talking it over with some people, they said there's no way such a product would sell if I did an American skin of it, and thinking over their reasoning, it would kind of put paid to any attempt to write a 1220 Ars America. See if you follow it, and what you think:
Let me lay out the argument as I understand it.
Australians get the historical truth of what white people did when they arrived. The know it was effectively genocide. They have formally apologised, not just with a formal vote from the parliament, but with annual Sorry Day observances, and handed 75% of the country back to aboriginial people. Sure, it's the desert parts, and aboriginies still live shorter and more dreadful lives than white people, but when you discuss our founders with other Australians, they are more suprised that Arthur Phillip, the first governor, wasn't a racist scumbag than that later ones were. When you talk about the Dispersals, they get that this was an undeclared war. When you write about our history, Australians aren't suprised that actually, their ancestors weren't nice guys. Actually, some are suprised the convicts weren't nice guys, but they are used to the idea that early white Australians did terrible things, and not just because they were driven to it by extremes, but because killing black guys was convenient and profitable.
Americans, their argument goes, don't get this. Their national narrative is more heroic than that. Selling a product which says "This!" is just going to fail, because no-one wants to hear their ancestors were the Bad Guys. In 1220, the Americas are urbanised, by powerful civilisations. Way after 1220, the Europeans arrive, and plague sweeps through the Americas, killing off far more people than the Black Death did in Europe, and much of America fell back into a sort of terraformed wilderness that the white colonists thought strange or an example of the providential nature of God. But in 1220, that hasn't happened yet. Some of the cities are the size of London and, arguably, their codes of law are more advanced than the European ones. Early American colonies perpetually had trouble in that their people would bleed away into the surrounding Indian tribes. Not just men: women too.
An Ars America set in 1220, then, isn't about finding an almost empty land, its about finding a land so full you can smell the hearthfires for days before you hit the coast. If you try to play through the history of America, the player characters, by default, are in a historical position which isn't just uncomfortable, it's alien and it attacks their beliefs about their own country's history.
Let me give you an example: Pilgrim Fathers, land at Plymouth Rock seeking liberty? Well, they had freedom of religion in Holland already. They just wanted to stop other people from practicing their own (rather looser) religion, particularly near their kids. They chose Plymouth because it was an abandoned town whose (recently dead) inhabitants had helpfully planted the fields with corn before being wiped out by smallpox. The very first seed corn they find in America is pulled from an Indian grave they choose to violate. Can you design a game in which you treat Indian graves like Civilisation goodie huts without American gamers just saying "I will never use this."?
Does anyone see this as a problem for a 1220 American Ars setting? That American gamers kind of like to be the good guys, and their ancestors, by modern values, generally were, (and in saying this I'm not saying Australians were better, mind you) generally on the black hat side of the thing? Or is that central premise just rubbish?