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Spears of the Dawn, a DnD retroclone set in a faux medieval Africa

Started by Don Coyote, October 15, 2012, 04:33:35 PM

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Don Coyote

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1637945166/spears-of-the-dawn-rpg
QuoteSpears of the Dawn is a new African-inspired fantasy role-playing game built with the free Stars Without Number game system. It contains all the tools and guidance players need to sample a pastiche of rich, delicious African-inspired fantasy gaming. From the very start, players can don the roles of praise-singing griots, holy marabouts, sorcerous ngangas, and cunning warriors, with these aspiring heroes banding together to face the innumerable perils of the Three Lands in search of glory and shining gold.



So this is a rather fortuitous find for me as I was thinking about making an medieval Africa based campaign.

Don Coyote

Alpha playtest rules just got released to backers. The brief read through of the mechanics leaves with the impression of oDnD, as is intended, with some minor extras like skills.

Miley Spears

This should have been called, "Britney Spears of the Dawn."  :lulz:
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Quote from: American Jackal on October 24, 2012, 04:05:02 AM
Alpha playtest rules just got released to backers. The brief read through of the mechanics leaves with the impression of oDnD, as is intended, with some minor extras like skills.

I've always liked the idea of running an African DnD game, but I've never known enough about medieval African culture and mythology to do it. I'm glad this game's getting made.
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Don Coyote

Quote from: Uncle Wallified on October 30, 2012, 12:20:46 AM
Quote from: American Jackal on October 24, 2012, 04:05:02 AM
Alpha playtest rules just got released to backers. The brief read through of the mechanics leaves with the impression of oDnD, as is intended, with some minor extras like skills.

I've always liked the idea of running an African DnD game, but I've never known enough about medieval African culture and mythology to do it. I'm glad this game's getting made.

I'm a bit on the fence as far as this game now, considering the devs didn't think including historically accurate types of grain was important, but yet going out of the way to specify that CORN is used to make beer in some nations. Makes me take their ideas as far as setting with a larger grain of salt. To my thinking, the less service you play to history and culture when doing something not Western, the more likely it will just up being DnD in black-face. The reasoning given behind it (the inclusion of anachronistic grains) seemed slightly insulting to the intended player base, as there was this expectation that making players deal with millet or sorghum instead of something like corn, would cause some kind of paralysis caused by setting information overload.
Also, corn, beer? DAFUK? Only shitty American "beer" uses corn to my knowledge.

That being said, I do think that it is important to support diversity of roleplaying settings.



Quote from: Reverend Roadkill on October 26, 2012, 07:24:27 PM
Quote from: Miley Spears on October 26, 2012, 07:09:38 PM
This should have been called, "Britney Spears of the Dawn."  :lulz:

Thread split on request, Coyote.

Please, even though I know the asshat got canned.

Don Coyote

Got my physical copy of the game today.
it's got a list of recommended reading, both fiction and nonfiction, along with a disclaimer saying that Africa is freaking huge and things that are true for one realworld culture are true other realworld cultures. It has some nice setting related stuff in it that might get lifted for my summer PF game.