Has anyone here ever run a campaign based on the scramble for africa?
A fascinating period of history with great potential for the supernatural that I feel is severely underutilised.
What systems could be used? Is there one dedicated to it or that could be easily adapted?
Will be dumping cool images from the era
Has anyone here ever run a campaign based on the scramble for africa?
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That could be an awful lot of fun, honestly. To clarify, the party would likely be playing the explorers, soldiers, surveyors, and others from Europe I assume?
Of the systems I play, I think you could manage it in Stars Without Number if you cut out the psychics and higher-tech stuff, limiting to say, tech level 2 and 1.
Not perfect, but it's the only one I play that could work
RIFTs too, maybe
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The party would likely be explorers, but that doesnt limit them to being Europeans, most if not all expeditions had native guides amongst their number. Stars Without Number could work but i feel it isnt fleshed out enough in regards to the technology available at the time.
Pic related, Maxim Gun
Savage Worlds is practically tailor made for exploring the Dark Continent
mediafire.com
The Sword and the Flame also has a great small-unit variant called The Sword in Africa for small scale adventures in the depths of the Congo
mediafire.com
Second in for Savage Worlds, this is the sort of thing it's made for. Definitely think it can work well. Plus playing cards for initiative is super cool.
I've always thought The Ghost and The Darkness could very easily be turned into an adventure.
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This could be very interesting setting, maintaining the feel of the small, skilled band of adventurers in a large unkown land while keeping the setting more real world-ish.
As for systems, my first thought for a non-magical not-Africa would be song of swords, but it does not really feature the weapons tech from the later era's oof colonisation (and it's primarily focused on armoured hand to hand combat, most of which won't be used in this setting.)
Personally, i would use FFG's system from Only War, stat period weapons and maybe tweek the balance a bit to compensate for the lack of armour. I've been thinking about doing something like that for WW1, this would be a natural addition to that.
Isn't this the sort of thing Call of Cthulhu was made for? Hell there are at least two love craft stories you could use as a jumping off point for an Africa campaign (5 if you include Egypt in all of this)
Good shit so far lads
>tfw no 1930's pulp congo exploration campaign with man-eating brontosauruses and racist caricatures
I was considering COC but I've heard that combat wasn't its best focus, which might be to the detriment of a campaign like this. Does it have rules for starvation and disease and the like?
Not specifically that I recall, then again if combat is your thing then CoC is probably not what you're looking for then.
I would imagine combat would be somewhat prevalent dealing with natives and the horrors of the dark continent, though the whole madness aspect of CoC could work incredibly well in regards to ending up like Kurtz and losing any shred of civility they began with.
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Well thats the last of my shit
It's not to say you can't build a character for combat only that CoC isn't meant for the heroic sort of combat so you're not going to shrugging off bullets and wrestling great old ones, then again it could make it more tense that way knowing that you arn't plot invincible.
After all, a bunch of dudes with guns may not be as scary as a bunch of Ape Men with great clubs and stone axes in crude armor bearing down on you.
Savage Worlds sounds like it might be good. I haven't played it, but it's a common suggestion for stuff like that
>Isn't this the sort of thing Call of Cthulhu
Considering that lovecraft thought blacks were actually reptilian inhuman horrors, yes.
Alright im currently looking through the Savage Worlds stuff I downloaded, any chance someone can tell me where to start?
Like jesus look at all this
>unicycle through a jungle swamp
What would your goals and objectives be? What are some example quests?
>Locate the golden statue
>Reestablish contact with the lost battalion
>Kill the legendary man-eating crocodile
>Find Solomon's Mines
Just Ctrl+V Jules Verne, really
It's a tool for measuring distance. There is an odometer hooked up to it.
I personally like to use it for encountering supernatural shit as people desperately try to find ways to escape invaders and other shitty stuff that comes hand in hand with colonialism.
Makes for some VERY relatable villains.
Colonial governors and agents of the crown keep dying in horrific ways, find out why.
>you will never lead an expedition into the Congo jungle to reach the wreck of a German zeppelin and rescue the survivors, only to discover that they have taken over a local tribe and don't want to be rescued, and are willing to kill you to keep their new life a secret
borrow liberally from this film
youtube.com
Dude, that's the point of Veeky Forums
Go run the game.
isnt this movie meant to be shit?
>A trio of women from a neighboring native kingdom have arrived at your outpost, seeking asylum.
>They claim they were forced to marry an abusive warlord.
>Said warlord is now baring down on the outpost with his whole clan.
>Resist? Call for help? Turn the women over? Negotiate?
it's mixed at best, but the premise and aesthetic are still worth cribbing and repurposing
Depends. Are they hot? Or they have a treasures ?
Heart of Darkness
I love this idea. You could have it build where the warlord asshole starts rallying other groups in the guise of repelling the invaders and the players have to deal with learning of the fucked up shit that the other outposts (or even theirs) have been up to.
Getting an in with poachers who are known to trade with your nation's political rival. Do the hunting missions and organization, have a stealth segment where you get it past the security of your own people as you take the goods for your own faction. Or.. root out the rival's buyers/sellers for a hitman execution.
Lots of potential.
Wait. Do you not have the solomon kane book for SW?
Because I'm not seeing it. And it is literally built for this shit.
>holy.... shiit. Check out dis shit, man. It's like... transparent and shit.
>these people look friendly. Maybe they'll let me hug them
I love this more "low scale" shit, really helps bring the players into the world
I disregard your reality.
>Find Dr Livingstone
>Hunt down Arab Slavers on the frontiers of the colony
>Put down a rebellious tribal shaman said to harness the powers of life and death
>Frantic reports from Boer survivors indicate that Shaka Zulu has been reincarnated and his Impis seemingly appear from thin air
>Safari hunting for shoggoths
>Egyptologists decipher hieroglyphs that indicate a sunken city beneath Lake Victoria
>King Leopold of the Belgians requires surveyors to map out his newly aquired territories and prospect for ivory, rubber and gold in the deepest part of the continent
>As you enter the Congo delta aboard your small paddle steamer, the river is suddenly shrouded with deep fog, once it subsides the native guides are restless, claiming the ship is no longer on course and that they have been led astray into the land of the spirits
>On the deathbed of the last Prince of India, he laughs with what little strength he has left and says that the undoing of Britain is at hand, thanks to "His friends in Zanzibar". The Colonial Office dispatches the party to the newly acquired German Colony to investigate and eventually you uncover the Germans mixing recent technology with ancient magics to create hellish weapons of war
No, but now I want to, OP. Savage World would be the best system for it except for GURPS.
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What about a neo scramble?
private entities and government back corporations going in to mold regional governments to their favor after the spectacular collapse of the emerging African Union.
Cyberpunk Africa.
Will Belgian characters get bonuses for each native hand they collect?
I'd like to imagine that it's just, straight up a unicycle that the explorer is making the african guy haul around so he can show off later.
Explains the guys face really.
>Good characters arriving into the frontier to fend off the "savages" that live there
>Seeing the truth of the matter, and the ugly underbelly of colonialism
>Seeing how they deal with that
If handled well, this could lead to some seriously cool shit.
>A bunch of tumblrina's who've really drunk the "peaceful and oppressed" koolaid visit. This ends exactly the way you'd expect.
If I was going to do cyberpunk Africa I'd do The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm, not colonialism.
For a while people thought dinosaurs lived in darkest Congo
The leopard man cult was terrifying
And the Madhi in Sudan honstly believed he was heralding the apocalypse
>A fascinating period of history with great potential for the supernatural that I feel is severely underutilised.
First of all, stop playing D&D.
Second - it's only good on paper. When it's actually played, it turns into repetitive slog, where you fight savages, hunt dangerous game, chart land and raid ruins. Gets stale after single medium-lenght campaign under competent GM and with average one after just two scenarios, because the only thing that differs it from any other dungeon crawler is the setting itself.
If you think that then not the setting but your lack of imagination is at fault
Also, is the tg the board with the highest density of smug cunts who like to act smart?
Not him, but user, you defeat your own point by acting like a smug cunt and then complain about smug cunts on board
That's Veeky Forums job anyway
And some settings are under-represented for a reason. Like being actually awful for game setting. For example we don't have too many stone age games not because they are not interesting, but because any other approach than Flintstones would turn it into extremely lethal and boring game about trying to get something to eat without being eaten.
>Doesn't know what the leopard man cult is
>Googles it
That's fucken metal
I honestly expected you to jump at
>the tg
Instead
Still kinda disappointed that the irony wasn't recognised though
Nah. His racism was mostly against miscegenation, you do find sympathetic negroes in his works.
Anyway you guys really, REALLY need to try Committee for The Exploration of Mysteries.
You'll thank me, be sure of that.
Space: 1889, remove the space, bingo bango bongo I don't wanna leave the Kongo oh nononono.
You'll wanna tweak combat though, I made and integrated a custom system halfway thru a year long campaign and it drastically improved enjoyability.
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Who said anything about dungeon crawling? Seems to me it would be great for a political campaign.
Well, now he's gone and given away the twist.
Loosely inspired by one of the incidents that led to the Zulu War, in fact. Glad you cats liked it!
Cyberpunk Africa is one of those ideas I wish I saw more examples of. I feel like the West African coast is ripe for Shadowrun, but they haven't been delved into at all.
I think the main thing is making it sufficently "Afican" I mean, even in a future where people are able to replace their limbs with cheap prosthetics and what not you'd have this mix of westernized cities/arcologies/whatever and walled off areas where the ultra rich live and then you have the forest, the savannas and the plains with all the native folks.
I think one of the more striking images for me is seeing guys with expensive looking suits hanging around huts and tin roof houses barefoot. One in particular had a guy in a nice suit, pants, and shirt slaughtering a bull and pulling it's stuff out of the cut he made all covered in it's blood Or even the various images of Punk rock africans who are really into rock wearing leather with spiked studs.
Even then with people living in fairly traditional ways the technology and touch of the modern world is still their probably some native in their traditional garb with a !AK strapped to their back relaying info to the elders back in the village with a cell phone that someone was fucking with their moble solar panels.
Ever heard about Poe's Law, summerfag?
Then go ahead - describe it.
Because this is a classic bullshit you always get about "great ideas". A notion they are great, without ever explaining why or how, and if asked about it, it's instantly rebutted with something in tune of "not gonna spoonfed idiots".
For political campaign you have exactly three scenarios: there is rebellion, there is competition, there is corruption affecting profits. That's literally it.
Face it, buster - scramble for Africa is extremely monothematic. Want something similar, but actually interesting? Try conquests and colonization of both Americas, especially South and Central. Because your scenarios can grow above this shit, while Africa bounds you
Didn't play a Africa game, but played a game where we heading into South America in the 1700's. Was a bit of fun till one of the PC's went full retard and immediately started burning down the first fucking native village we found.
>no fun allowed.jpg
not that far from the truth
>No argumentation other than appeal to emotions
Just as predicted