Written by Riwhi Kenny. Catch Riwhi in the Māori Creators Panel alongside Liam Stevens (Toa Tabletop), Sascha Stronach (The Dawnhounds), and Te Aihe Butler (Fury of the Small), on the KiwiRPG Twitch at 1pm-2:30pm NZST Friday 10th July  / Friday 2am BST / Thursday 9pm EDT.

Please note that due to many Māori doing Matariki kaupapa (events) around this time, this panel is pre-recorded. It will be put on the KiwiRPG youtube after the week ends, and linked here once posted.

Tēnā koutou, he uri ahau nō Ngāi Tahu me Te Ātiawa. Ko Riwhi ahau, my name is Riwhi! If you’ve been paying attention, you may know my name from my account being the one posting all these amazing blogposts this week, and man, I have been loving all of them!

This is a blog post about manaakitanga, and the role it has in TTRPGs, at least to me. It’s a collection of a few different topics that I feel align to manaakitanga. It might be a bit scattered, but hopefully the thread of manaakitanga is made clear throughout.

Te Aka Māori Dictionary defines manaakitanga as:

(noun) hospitality, kindness, generosity, support – the process of showing respect, generosity and care for others.

I was taught that most words in te reo Māori (the Māori language) can be broken into parts. Manaakitanga, I was told, can be broken into mana-a-kī-tanga.

To break these down further:

Mana

Te Aka defines it as ‘prestige, authority, control, power, influence, status, spiritual power, charisma – mana is a supernatural force in a person, place or object.’ (This is just the first few lines, we don’t have all day!)

Okay, I really have not started this off smoothly. Mana is often translated into English as simply ‘spiritual power’, but this is, in my view, a completely inadequate translation. (And don’t get me started on the coopting of the term mana from its Pasifika roots into it’s current use in video games and some TTRPGs to mean magical power. Ew.)

There are two ways for someone to have mana. Mana Tipuna, the mana one is passed down from their ancestors; and mana tangata, the mana they have from acts that they take.

It is a deeply cultural term, and not even just specific to Aotearoa (so-called New Zealand)! It has whakapapa (lineage) across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa (the Pacific ocean). Mana is a concept that is genuinely so hard to explain if it is a new term, so I fear I am not at all doing a good job in defining it.

It’s a weight, a duty, an honour, a constant, a privilege, a burden, a strength, a hope, a promise, and more. It ties us all together, it puts us on different levels, it means something different to everyone.

A related term is ‘whakamana’. ‘whaka-’ as a prefix makes something into an action. So to whakamana someone is to, according to Te Aka:

to give authority to, give effect to, give prestige to, confirm, enable, authorise, legitimise, empower, validate, enact, grant.

One term that is still sometimes used is ‘mana enhancing’. There’s some mixed feelings about this one, as you cannot ‘enhance’ someone’s mana, you cannot change someone else’s mana, and also putting this English word next to it is a bit jarring!

Anyways, hardest part of this breaking apart, done, and we’re moving on.

A ki

to, into, towards, on to, upon – indicates motion towards something.

Tanga

I’ve heard two different whakaaro (thoughts) about this part of this kupu (word)! The first is the more traditional: -tanga, as an ending, turns something into a noun. So, using this interpretation, manaakitanga is a noun that is about moving towards mana.

The other interpretation I’ve heard is that tanga here relates to the kupu, ‘tangata’. Tangata means person/people. So, manaakitanga, can be described as mana moving toward the people.

While manaakitanga has elements of care, hospitality, generosity, etc etc, it’s a very very deep term that goes far beyond.

One other thing I’ve heard folks say about manaakitanga is that it holds a deep sense of reciprocity. Similar to ‘utu’, which Pākehā often think just means ‘revenge’ (when it’s often used for things as simple as payment for an item, not always that deep!), implies a relationship beyond a kind word.

How’s that for an intro? Now that I’ve broken down the word manaakitanga from what I’ve heard (disclaimer: certainly there will be Māori who disagree with my interpretations of the words here! Māori spaces thrive on deep kōrero (discussion) and wānanga (discussion but More) spaces), I’ll get into how I think manaakitanga can look within TTRPG spaces, or at least the ones I’ve been in.

The GM is a player too

I know that in a lot of Dungeons and Dragons TM circles (or at least some of the ones that pop up in my facebook algorithm), there’s a view that the DM is there to facilitate the game, and be in service of the players, and that’s all.

I reckon, and I know I certainly am not alone in this, that the GM is a player too! If we look at Indigenous models of leadership, the leader, in Māori spaces, the rangatira (loosely and euro-centrically translated as chief), is still a member of their community. They still are acknowledged to have wants and human needs outside of that role. Just as the rangatira takes care of their people, so do their people take care of their rangatira. While that rangatira often has a lot of mana tangata or mana tipuna if it’s a hereditary role, they are still a part of the community they serve, and deserve to be cared for.

In TTRPGs, we need to think about how DMs, GMs, facilitators, whatever the game’s term is, still deserve to be looked after! Especially the forever GM’s!

Now, I know many of us who play with our friends already do this, but I think we can all make clearer our appreciation for the mahi (work) and effort that our GMs put in! Go flick the GM for that game you’ve been playing for a while a ‘hey you said this killer line the other session, and it’s been sticking with me,’ or a ‘I know that you’ve put a whole lotta effort into running this game, and it is very appreciated’, is always going to be welcome.

Games about colonisation

I have been playing TTRPGs for almost 10 years, and it is only a couple of months ago that I had an Indigenous GM or DM. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had wonderful and incredibly enjoyable times with non-Indigenous DMs, and being the only Māori in a game (took me ~9 years to play with another Māori person, speaking to the whiteness of these spaces), can be… interesting. 

As I processed my feelings around my Māoritanga in everyday life, it’s only natural that this spilled into my TTRPG playing experience. I wanted to explore and process my Indigeneity through roleplaying. For me, this has gone one of two ways:

1. My experience with non-Indigenous DMs:

The theme of colonisation is built into the world, but it is held with caution. It is up to me to engage with this in the ways I want to. I give my character a Māori name. In a scene with an NPC who has also been colonised, I experience strong bleed (see more below!). I work through this, and have a scene that feels cathartic in the end. Between the bleed starting and the working through it, I feel that I can’t bring my distress up at the table. Not for any fault of my friends, but because I have that internal feeling of whakamā (shame/guilt) that I should be better than this. No one else at the table is Māori. My friends support me when I communicate what I can. It is a struggle nonetheless to explore Indigenous stories and themes when I am the only one at the table.

I have discussions with a friend who DMs for a fellow Māori person where we kōrero (chat) about how to tell stories that are meaningful to your Indigenous players while not being Indigenous yourself. We talk about how some stories are not a Pākehā (non-Māori)’s place to tell. You follow the Indigenous person’s lead, about what they want to explore within their character, but do not base the whole game around colonisation.

2. My experience with an Indigenous DM:

Colonisation is explicitly a theme. Indigeneity is built into every part of the world. From the naming systems, place names, the colonising force and expressions of rebellion and fighting back, this world oozes indigenous thinking.

I feel no whakamā in tying my character’s backstory to colonisation. I feel no apprehension about exploring that, only an excitement for my explorations of it to be met in ways that reflect what I am giving.

The former has certainly not been a bad experience, as said before! I’ve enjoyed games with non-Indigenous DMs greatly! It is has just meant that I have had to tread lightly sometimes, or choose to verbally express some things and not others, and have felt that whakamā at times. There’s a freedom to playing in a game with Indigenous players and DM. 

Manaakitanga is all over this topic.

Non-Indigenous GMs who have Indigenous players need to show manaakitanga frequently! Let the player determine to what level they want to, or do not want to explore Indigenous themes. If this means you need to do some research in the background to make sure you’re doing it right, have fun learning new things! This is where safety tools can be very helpful! More on that below. Giving the player that agency is not just showing manaakitanga, going at their pace and level of comfort and interest, but also respecting their tino rangatiratanga (loosely translated as self-determination). 

Indigenous GMs with Indigenous players also show manaaki to each other! A TTRPG is often a conversation. Sure, sometimes there are rules to guide that conversation, but any conversation needs manaaki to succeed. Manaaki to check in, to meet the other person where they are at, to respect the edge of where they are willing to go. Intergenerational trauma is unfortunately present for Indigenous peoples, and sometimes it gets pinged by accident or unexpectedly. In my experience though, working through that with fellow Indigenous people means that there’s a base level of understanding there.

Bleed

I wrote something a few months ago that was my answer to a question I had thought about a little bit and wanted to explore: ‘what if something was designed to cause bleed?’ So, I wrote ‘BLEEDING HEART: A Character Creator’, which guides you through making a character, where every single facet of that character is taken from something in you, the player’s, life. 

This came after that experience I mentioned above, where I felt strong negative bleed after my Indigenous character met another Indigenous character. This was an overwhelming feeling, and as stated above, I felt unable to say anything to the whole table. Thankfully, one of the other players and I messaged occasionally during the game to make silly jokes where no one could hear us, and I was able to get across a feeling of distress to him somehow, and he called a pause for me, making up an excuse, and then after checking if it was okay with me, let the DM know I was having A Time. We skipped over the rest of the scene, and I was able to rest within the normal flow of the game. A couple of sessions later, my character had a deliberate conversation with that other character, and it became a moment of genuine healing for me, the player. 

Obviously after experiencing this strong bleed, the concept interested me. I wrote this character generator. And someone immediately confronted me on social media claiming that because I wrote a game about bleed meant that I thought it was a good thing. The convo spiralled once I brought up Aaron Trammell’s ‘Repairing Play: A Black Phenomenology’, and I realised that this person was simply not ready to engage with the kinds of conversation I wanted to have about bleed.

This didn’t mean that many other awesome people weren’t ready instead! So, I had wonderful conversation, and came to the conclusion that bleed is not inherently negative, nor inherently positive. My experience of bleed felt negative at the start, but with support, and care, and yes, manaaki, it turned to a positive one. I healed a part of my internal sense of intergenerational trauma. I got to imagine, through playing pretend, what it would be like if an ancestor was in front of me. What would I say? How would I act? What would I tell them, and what would I ask them to tell me? 

Bleed is neutral. It’s the care, the manaaki, that shifts it either to positive, in the holding of you, or the negative, if it is not done well.

GM-less games

Indigenous folks tell stories, that’s what we do. At least here in Aotearoa, Māori were an oral society. We didn’t have writing or letters or an alphabet. If something needed to last, we told it in carvings or weaving. If it was ready to be handed down though, it was through waiata (song), karakia (intention setting ritual), or whakapapa (~geneology). Oral communication was just how it worked.

Now, I will admit to this sitting slightly uncomfortably with me. I have a genuinely terrible memory, so I would not have been one of the ones able to recite the whakapapa lines. I do think though, storytelling comes quite naturally to me, as it does to many Indigenous people.

TTRPGs root in wargames, where there’s a single figure of authority, often lead many people to think that this is just how all TTRPGs work. Thankfully, that’s not the case! I’ve come across many wonderful GM-less games, about a range of different topics. Sometimes, it’s easier to write a game about something when the power is shifted from the head honcho method. 

Indigenous storytelling is not static. It shifts. With each telling, a good storyteller reads the audience and what they are reacting to, and will heighten that. They’re still telling the same story, the same content that has been passed down, but performing it differently. And as those people hear that story, they’ll pass it on, and tell it their way, and on and on. 

Stories are not isolated, they do not belong to one person. GM-less games bring that collaboration higher than the GM and player model can. Gives players an equal say.

Indigenous people are built from stories. What is whakapapa if not a collection of stories of your ancestors? To give room to them to tell stories, you are whakamana-ing them. You are showing manaakitanga. 

GM-less stories where control is shared and negotiated sit in a different space of power dynamics. They offer agency, in a world that tries to take it from Indigenous peoples often.

While manaaki can exist anywhere, I do think that GM-less games offer a particular spin on manaakitanga that starts from the ground up.

Aftercare

What is checking in with something after something difficult/intense/unexpected, if it is not showing manaakitanga? Checking in, asking how they are doing, is showing care, showing concern, showing aroha (~love), showing manaaki.

Maybe, using the term aftercare feels weird or gross. Think about that! All I am saying is that having language to describe the action of checking in and caring for someone after something intense is handy.

This is a pretty short section, as to me it feels pretty self explanatory, so moving on rapidly.

Safety (journeying) tools

If aftercare is reactive, than safety tools are preventative. I actually love the term that Jay Dragon uses in Wanderhome, in place of ‘safety’ as a kupu: journeying tools. 

To me, this feels more aligned to Māori ways of playing. Our ancestors traversed an extreme distance, and must have had things in place to ensure that haerenga (journey) was as safe as it could be.

Still, journeying tools, to me, implies a sense of curiosity and movement. You journey to seek something, or leave somewhere. Either way, things will change. 

Beyond the linguistic discourse of what we call these tools, they are ways that we keep each other and ourselves safe. There’s a lot of discussion on the role of these – some people argue against them in some circumstances, and some use certain ones religiously. 

This is the role of a session 0 if playing a longform game! Which, if any, will you use.

Setting these up is an act of manaakitanga. Acknowledging that pain exists, and attempting to define the edges of it, to ensure that those soft squishy places are not hurt is manaaki!

When these are respected in game, that’s manaaki! When they’re invoked, and you have already figured out how to solve/cope with that issue, that’s a wonderful preventative sense of manaaki.

Showing manaaki, and keeping someone at the level they want to be at to play a game means you get to play more game, yay!

He whakakapi – the end

Manaakitanga is foundational to Māori. It guides our relationships to each other, to ourselves. In this post, I’ve outlined a few ways that I think manaakitanga can show up in TTRPGs, and also started with defining the word. 

I invite you to reflect on how you can whakamana and show manaaki to the people in your TTRPG games and spaces, Māori or not. 

It is the season of Matariki, the Māori new year. KiwiRPG Week always aligns with it, and it offers us a wonderful invite to reflect on our lives in the past year, those we’ve lost, and what we want to do in the next year.

I personally, want to tell cool and interesting stories with my friends. I will be showing manaakitanga to my friends, and they will show it to me. Maybe sometimes we’ll stumble. Something will be done clumsily, or trauma will pop up unexpectedly, but I know that through showing manaakitanga to each other, we can work through those bumps, and tell wonderful stories once more.

Mānawatia a Matariki.