Hi all! NUNA goes live tomorrow so I want to tell you a few things about it.
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| A scene from the adventure The Silver Machine. |
If You Don't Know NUNA By Now...
First, if you're new to NUNA and want to read the backstory, there are tons of fiction and descriptions on the Kickstarter I ran back in 2024 after winning the Chaosium RPG design contest. We didn't fund due to my lack of familiarity with the platform, but it was worth it to make community and connections, and gain experience.
TLDR Nuna is a BRP system game set in a post-apocalyptic Labrador where the Land has healed from resource exploitation and the Inuit are back as its stewards. Various Outsiders have also survived as Riggers out on the oil platforms and they all have to work together to build Community against the threat from magic and mythic monsters that have also returned.
Kickstarter link is HERE.
Link to my interview on the World of RPGs podcast episode about indigenous roleplaying HERE.
The Politics of NUNA
Indigenous roleplaying is, due to the history of colonialism, inherently political. Look at Coyote & Crow, which avoids the historical reality of Columbus and his start of the indigenous apocalypse by replacing it with a natural phenomenon. But like all good RPGs, it also echoes real world politics. There is the stigma of slave ownership of the Keetoowagi Federation, and the imperialist aggression of the Ezcan Empire, the North Korean cognate of their world. This inclusion or politics makes the gameworld all the more compelling.
Being a NunatuKavut (Labrador Inuit) is inherently political. What do I mean?
As a youth in Labrador I was Inuit, full stop, and enjoyed the strong family ties and casual discrimination that comes with it. No Inuit organizations existed before 1971, the year of my birth, and the first, entitled the now unacceptable Brotherhood of Eskimo, started that year. The Brotherhood changed its name several times until it called itself the Inuit Tapirisi Kanatami (ITK) in the 2000s.
The ITK slowly consolidated its power eastward until it covered Inuit Nunagat, of the 4 Inuit Homelands of Nunavut (central), Inuvialuit (west), Nunavik (French), and Nunatsiavut (Labrador).
The ITK has never fully accepted Labradorians. Unlike in the other 3 regions, where the Inuit were isolated from colonists and intermarriage was rare and started later, Labrador is on the Atlantic Coast and so settlers came and married Inuit from the very start. The Labradormuit were displaced from the north two times, first by Moravian missionairies in the 1700's, then again in the 1950's after Labrador was given to Newfoundland and joined Canada as one province, so we have lost much of our language and culture.
The Labrador Inuit long faced neglect from the UK and Canada, and rejection from other Canadian Inuit. In the 80's and 90's Labrador Inuit started two groups, the Nunatsiavut (originally Labrador Inuit Association) and the NunatuKavut (Labrador Metis Association). Now, the Nunatsiavut and ITK have attacked NunatuKavut as not being Inuit enough, accusing them of changing the name of their organization (despite the fact that all 3 organizations having changed names), of not having blood ties (my mother is Nunatsiavut, as are many family members), and of hoarding tens of millions of government funds (although the Nunatsiavut gets 3 to 5 times as much).
It is important to note here that NunatuKavut members were victims of Canadian residential schools and recognized by the Canadian government in 2018. If we are Inuit enough to be victims recognized by the colonial state, we are no different from other Labrador Inuit.
The insane part is, in my family, my mother and her generation are all Nunatsiavut, and my generation are NunatuKavut. So this political distinction is in reality a result of the Indian Act and its policy of reducing indigenous populations by instituting a racial cutoff or blood quantum on the matriarchal line, and is useful to the ITK to access Labrador's mineral resources and Canadian government funding. This exclusion of indigenous people from there identity is a big problem in Canada, and has resulted in pretendian withc hunts, and I admire America in this respect, where percentage of blood does not count, and all indigenous are invited to reconnect to their roots and the land they grew in.
So NUNA, my game, is a fantasy where Inuit of the North and South Labrador are brothers again, and their land is all they know. The Inuit are large and in charge, and lead the other peoples of Labrador in reconnecting to The Land and building healthy Communities there.
(But there is still resources to be salvaged and monsters to be defeated, have no fear!)
The Low Low Price of...
I have consciously set the price of the NUNA Quickstart at $1.99 for several reasons.
First, I see lots of Quickstart PDFs for $15 to $20 dollars on Drive Thru RPG. I think this is scandalous. I'd agree to paying that for a full game PDF, but not a Quickstart. NUNA Quickstart has the full actions, skills, and combat engine, some cool PCs, a mind-blowing psychedelic first adventure scenario, and lots of history about the world. But it is missing the Community building and Status rules, as well as a bestiary and full gazeteer.
Second, my goal with the Quickstart is to build buzz by getting as high as a medal for sales on Drive Thru RPG as possible. So every sale pushes us higher on the DriveThru ranking system as the price exceeds the minimum need to earn medals.
Whatever is earned on the Quickstart will be seed money for the Corebook, and a nice dinner with my son.
Where Do I Get NUNA?
If you want NUNA, the following links will be live July 15th.
For the FREE preview (7 player characters), click HERE.
The link for the 66 page Quickstart rules, written and illustrated by me, is still being processed and I will share it as soon as I get it.
Thank you for supporting NUNA, and spread the word!
Nekkumek!
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