So how come we rarely get any fantasy settings based off Africa when its the closest thing in real life to fantasy tropes?
For example, the histories of Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and many others could be lifted straight from a fantasy novel or a video game.
People in the developed world (the ones who spend money on RPGs) have less pop-culture knowledge of Africa than other continents, and most of what they know is "AIDS lol".
There was a d20 splat for fantasy Africa, but... d20.
Luke Clark
Most of us don't know enough to write settings based on it.
Africans don't write anything either.
Dominic Garcia
Quick! Name a African king who wasn't that really rich guy or one that fought against the Europeans in the 20th century.
Owen Davis
No one could read it
Brandon Sanders
>most of what they know is "AIDS lol". Well, that, and guerrilla warfare. >inb4 guerrilla/gorilla jokes
Aiden Taylor
Literally every Egyptian Pharaoh
Mason Allen
Simple answer is because RPGs are mainly a product of Western culture, not African. We have plenty going on in our own traditions.
Alexander Robinson
Motherfuck El Hajj Umar Tall.
Paul Kagame.
Samouri Touri
Zachary Richardson
Modern Africa would be pretty great for a campaign. Between crazy dictators, constant civil wars, weird folk beliefs and soldiers acting like literal murderhobos it's awesome.
The party can be a bunch of paratroopers.
Lincoln Stewart
252628 is blatantly false. The goal of the french foreign policy in Africa is to have EVERYONE kiss their ass.
Ryder Green
African as in negroe
Joshua Scott
Wherever I go I must also magical realm.
Blake Harris
So you confirm his point?
Hudson Martinez
*was, now their policy is to have it the other way around. That said, their old policy wasn't bad. It's a hellhole that needs a sheriff, but a sheriff needs a spine.
Zachary Martin
It's not like more than half of Africa still kiss their asses, including some of the old brit colonies.
Nathaniel Edwards
The only thing I can add to this is that jumping out of planes is indeed awesome.
William Perez
The Near East and Europe blend into a huge Mediterranean culture, anyway, due to Greece and Rome. It's not this bloc that people are unfamilar with. When talking about genuine African culture, one should consider those that were isolated from the North, since the Sahara allows a quite neat split (apart from coastal regions that were influenced by muslims).
Isaac Foster
Oda Gosh of Ethiopia
Jason Phillips
I was watching this show about the Nile through history, and it talked about how 5000-6000 years ago the Sahara had become lush because of weather patterns, and civilizations extended all the way through it, but then the weather changed again, it all dried up, and the classic pyramid Egyptians clustered along the Nile that we think of are just the post-apocalyptic survivors of a much larger culture.
Anybody here more knowledgeable on the ancient history than Wiki and wants to blog about it, feel free.
Chase Diaz
Because -you- haven't done one.
Zachary Fisher
Shaka Zulu.
Jaxon Rivera
The Solomonid Kings of Abyssinia/Ethiopia.
The Jewish Kings of Semien/Axum.
Blake Bailey
>or one that fought against the Europeans in the 20th century.
Which one? There were a lot. I assume you mean Haile Selessie?
Cooper Gonzalez
Because /pol/ can't shut the fuck up and get out of Veeky Forums.
Hudson Lewis
Nobody wants to talk about your pancakes.
Owen Nguyen
For the most part true but it wasn't like their was some great civilization there in the sahara. Basically just sporadic fishing communities settled around lakes.
Jackson Thompson
Do darkest Africa with slavery tribal warfare crazy animalist totemisitc shamanistic faiths and other spooky dark stuff My DM did this 3 times and everyone was an intense adventure
Elijah Hill
>I was watching this show about the Nile through history, and it talked about how 5000-6000 years ago the Sahara had become lush because of weather patterns, and civilizations extended all the way through it, but then the weather changed again, it all dried up, and the classic pyramid Egyptians clustered along the Nile that we think of are just the post-apocalyptic survivors of a much larger culture.
Pretty much, yeah.
One of the reasons why major state-building civilizations (at least as non-Africans would recognize it) never endured over a long period of time in Africa is because of its frequent, rapid, and somewhat unpredictable climate shifts. Every couple of centuries, weather patterns will change all across the continent of Africa, and regions that were previously lush and fertile would suddenly become very barren and arid, basically nuking whatever major empires existed there (unless you lucked out and controlled salt mines, which was the currency of Africa for literally thousands of years). We're talking climate shifts occurring every 200-500 years, and massive weather shifts changing over the course of a single generation at the slowest.
This unpredictability has HUGELY impacted Africa state-building and most importantly agricultural techniques. Unlike Europeans, Asians, and even New World civilizations, Africans simply could not afford to run the risk of "innovation" of new techniques, because if it failed literally everybody would die. You stuck with what you KNEW was going to work, even if it was inefficient, because you KNEW you would get at least some crops out of it (It also did not help that a significant portion of arable land was populated with the deadly Tseste fly, and still is to a lesser degree today). As such, innovation was a MASSIVE risk to any society, and major changes typically only occurred in stable regions like the Great Lakes where relative continuity enabled individuals to branch out without fear of horrific failure.
Joshua Taylor
muh cultural appropriation
Blake Taylor
Don't joke about gorillas user, they have the ability to rustle the jimmies of others.
Thomas Sanders
Eh, this argument kinda falls flat whenever new crops are introduced. Bananas, plantains and yams caused a massive agricultural revolution when they entered Central Africa in the 500s.
And from 1500 to 1700 everyone in Africa learned how to farm corn, causing the population to explode (and another round of violent statebuilding as kingdoms were eager to flex their new manpower)
Nathaniel Parker
>Every couple of centuries, weather patterns will change all across the continent of Africa Seriously? Why were such changes occuring across vast continet isolated from the rest of the world? I know volcanic eruptions in the Pacific caused Little Ice Age and events on the other side of the Earth affected Eurasia.
Mason Lewis
Mswati III of Swaziland, to name but one currently-reigning king in charge of an absolute monarchy.
Xavier Sullivan
Then say niggers, blacks, colored or whatever brah, for the majority of people the few interesting places of Africa are Egypt or carthage (or the moors), less so Ethiopia, Zulues, South Africa or Mali.
Jason Ward
Ahmad Al Mansur Kasanje
Andrew Moore
Yugurtha, Ramses, Keops, Akhenaton etc.
Hunter Garcia
>An old Tower stands in a quiet area >Inside is an old, powerful wizard >Can do amazing things with magic >Lives a life unknown to the feral tribes that live near >It's not actually magic but modern technology >They call him The White Wizard/Warlock
Daniel Collins
Yeah, it doesn't really make sense for one continent to get climate changed constantly. Explain more please.
Jeremiah Cruz
>Yeah, it doesn't really make sense for one continent to get climate changed constantly. Explain more please.
>North African climate cycles have a unique history that can be traced back millions of years. The cyclic climate pattern of the Sahara is characterized by significant shifts in the strength of the North African Monsoon. When the North African Monsoon is at its strongest annual precipitation and subsequent vegetation in the Sahara region increase, resulting in conditions commonly referred to as the "green Sahara". For a relatively weak North African Monsoon the opposite is true, with decreased annual precipitation and less vegetation resulting in a phase of the Sahara climate cycle known as the "desert Sahara".[1]
Variations in the climate of the Sahara region can at the simplest level be attributed to the changes in insolation due to slow shifts in Earth’s orbital parameters. These parameters include the precession of the equinoxes, obliquity, and eccentricity as put forth by Milankovitch theory.[2] The precession of the equinoxes is regarded as the most important orbital parameter in the formation of the "green Sahara" and "desert Sahara" cycle.
Asher Baker
Because not even american blacks care about sub-saharan Africa, as evidenced by their obsession to claim non-black history.
American blacks are the only blacks relevant in the world, since they're american apart from black.
Jonathan Davis
Tragically, this has a big grain of truth. Apart of mandela and some pop musician, people identifies blacks with american ones.
Cameron Hill
Mansa Musa
Daniel Hall
pol get out
Josiah Lewis
He was "that really rich guy". You're proving him right here.
Isaiah Jackson
>You will never marry a pure berber waifu.
Carson Johnson
>M*slims
Joseph Morris
Better than niggers, always.
Although africa is full of worst of both worlds.
Logan Thompson
>Not having a qt from another religion and have her slowly convert to your religion because she loves you Plebeian.
Landon Campbell
Just looks like an advanced stage of hipster desu
Nicholas Morgan
You do know Muslim women can't marry men from other religions or else they will be considered apostates with all related consequences?
John Torres
I said berber, not Muslim. I can change her ways with my righteos dick. The same I say about afar. Pls don't mix pure east african with central and western niggers.
Aiden Watson
There is such a thing as Christian Arabs. Not everyone in the Middle East is Muslim.
Jace Gutierrez
Berbers don't live in the middle east and they're not arabs. I don't know if there's christian berbers, but if so they would be an extremely small minority (even compared to the small minority that christian arabs are).
Jace Wilson
>Pls don't mix pure east african with central and western niggers.
Varying degrees of shit to be honest, sorry.
Daniel Gray
Berbers are just berberized arabs anyways
Adam Williams
I know I also know, thus why the words "she loves you" is in the greentext.
Anthony White
This, you have to pretend to convert to islam to marry them. I don't know if you have to cut your dick, but most people in Veeky Forums are judaized americans who don't need to care about that anyways.
Ayden Taylor
The only people who like Africa are historyfags and people who are interested in modern Africa. Most people care more about Europe and Asia, and see Africa as more of a backwater. Any attempt to look at Africa positively will be seen as being an apologist; any negative view will seem racist. Few people care for the inbetween enough to add it.
Even then, it can be hard to get easy information on facts about Africa. A lot of it is stuck in books rather than circulated on the net. I can't even explain the clicking sound needed to pronounce !Xhosa.
Ethan Edwards
>impliying it's not the opposite and everyone east of Libya is an arabized berber
Logan Taylor
...
Austin Turner
>click languages
Not even racist but that's too much for me to tolerate
Tyler Bennett
And it's also hard to get past the idea that, outside of Egypt and Carthage, African history only started with European exploration and colonization.
Dominic Jones
Those guys look like early indians desu.
Adrian Garcia
Because Africa doesn't really export a whole lot of culture. That's pretty much what most things come down to.
Motherfucking Kaleb of Axum.
Parker Bell
I personally find it pretty fucking cool, since it's so unique from indo-European languages. It's exotic in a way that people want to include in their campaigns, but never do because it's too weird.
They could very well be. Considering there's not a single african (not even north african) in his third picture, I'll say that user is just posting whatever he fucking wants and will post a samurai next.
Justin Sanders
Nah, Ethiopia and North Africa (not only carthage) have a lenghty history.
Landon Lee
Sounds like ق are un-indoeuropean and exotic. A click is just inhuman, would only include for the sci-fi race of insects you're not supposed to empathize with or lovecraftian horrors.
Joshua Adams
Work on that reading comprehension, user.
Nathan Ramirez
Nelson Mandela
Josiah Davis
This is pretty interesting and I had never heard of it, so thank you for the information! At the same time, it is referred to as the "North African" cycle, and the page refers to its effects on the Nile, etc. Does this actually impact southern Africa enough to explain its history?
William Thompson
But humans made the sound, it's cool. And it's not like their only sounds are clicks.
I admit, those were just some pictures I found while trying to find art from the states on the east coast of Africa - a mix of city states, sultanates, etc. I couldn't find anything definitely from those places, unfortunately, and even relevant related images were scant, but I thought sharing some of what I had found might be useful.
Alexander Wilson
Ethiopian history is totally baller. Like the Axumite invasion of Yemen, and the religious and political situations surrounding that. They invaded so hard the Ḥimyarite king gave up and drowned himself in the Red Sea, and his centuries-old kingdom ceased to exist.
Noah Long
All of Africa has a lenghty history. Just like the rest of te world. Except maybe 'Straya.
Owen Morgan
Australia has been inhabited for large amount of time, at leas 40 000 years. New Zeeland, on the other hand, has by all accounts been inhabited for around 700 - 800 hounded years, which is a rather short time.
Owen Hall
Go home Australia, you're drunk
Jack Martinez
>Zimbabwe You take that back.
Blake Reyes
Sundatai
Jaxon Rogers
this. I hate how /pol/ has become the new /b/ except they cant even contain themselves to their own shithole of a board.
Noah Ortiz
...
Ryan Bennett
>But humans made the sound
Irrelevant. A lot of things deviate from what they are and what they're perceived as. You can't just make them click and then say "but they're normal guys!". It's weirder than what defines a lots of fantasy races.
Also it's not about making them but communicating with them that it's alien.
Jason Barnes
Why don't you just use your mod powers to delete the thread?
Bentley Gutierrez
No, we don't
Alexander Ross
>his centuries-old kingdom ceased to exist
They eventually retook the kingdom with persian help and it was the persians, not the Aksumites, who in time finished the existence of the kingdom. The conquest by aksumites was more of a foreign occupation and it wasn't even part of Aksum since the general who conquered the place declared himself independent and ruled as a king of Yemen.
It is indeed an amazing and terribly unknown episode of world history.
Justin Flores
You only think it's strange because you grew up in a culture where a clicking sound wasn't part of your lexicon. It's not like I'm screaming at Germans for using umlauts, or claiming that Hebrews are inhuman for their written language having no punctuation and there being no equivalents to certain common English sounds.
Zachary Anderson
But we don't. In fact, there's usually long periods of time between Africa-related threads.
Daniel Rogers
>Eh, this argument kinda falls flat whenever new crops are introduced. Bananas, plantains and yams caused a massive agricultural revolution when they entered Central Africa in the 500s.
The problem with these crops was that they were either not a "staple crop," in that they were not able to provide a major source of life-sustaining nutrients and calories (like wheat, grains, corn, etc.) or in the case of yams were EXTREMELY labor intensive, making them inefficient from a sustainability standpoint.
The locations used to grow them were also infested with extremely lethal Tsetse flies, which put a serious dampener on agricultural production (because there were large swathes of land you simply couldn't work without risking death) and the fact that elephants happen to also love these crops, and will stampede and trample land to get to them (and there wasn't a whole lot you could do to deter them).
This is also ignoring the fact that none of those crops can be stockpiled like grains can, which is what enables societies to invest and innovate without risking long-term stability.
And, to reiterate again, climate shifts meant that arable land could very rapidly shift in fertility to be next to useless, meaning that states could essentially dissolve in a matter of months if enduring famine struck.
Zachary Johnson
Bzzt, wrong. Who DIDN'T fight Europeans.
Jonathan Lewis
He didn't fight Europeans, though. He fought other tribes, which were forced into European-held lands, and his successors fought against Europeans, but during his reign he had only peaceful contact with Europeans.
Benjamin Lewis
>Does this actually impact southern Africa enough to explain its history?
Yes and no.
The conditions that cause North African cycles also affect the climates of sub-saharan climates. Because Africa is surrounded by so many individually powerful and influential oceanic currents, as well as stretching from above the Equator far into the Southern Hemisphere, with widely varying terrain features to create unique weather patterns, even the smallest changes in the temperature, direction, or strength of the jet stream, any one ocean current, global temperatures, ocean acidity, etc., will have far-reaching effects across a huge part of the continent.
The places that were the most stable were the regions with ready access to large sources of fresh water (like the Great Lakes) and/or were nestled between mountain ranges to protect from the worst of the weather.
Adrian Powell
The Fantasy market's primary audience consists of white guys who want to see a primarily white fantasy landscape. Or at least fantasy publishers see their primary audience of white guys and thats just as important.
Its sad, because it would be really cool to see a fantasy world set in one of the historical African kingdoms but hey /shrug, thats just the way it is.
There are some books that depict black focused fantasy. The genre is called "Sword and Soul" a play off of sword and sorcery. Check some of them out.
Christopher Bennett
>There are some books that depict black focused fantasy. The genre is called "Sword and Soul" a play off of sword and sorcery. Check some of them out. Sounds like cheap marketing trick without any real merits
Camden Bennett
This. >Soul is a black thing, right? Just stick that on the cover and sell it as "Black Fantasy".
Brody Reyes
What the fuck would "black" fantasy even be? Some cunt butchering African mythologies even though they are probably more familiar with western lore? Racism and slavery allegory/metaphors all that time?
Adrian Nguyen
I would touch that woman appropriately.
Gabriel Murphy
I haven't read any of the books myself, but from what I've seen its mostly just black fantasy authors who wanted to write fantasy with black characters, and black settings.
The title is silly but I mean, its kinda necessary to aggregate this stuff so people can find what they're looking for.
Connor Nguyen
I know of exactly one fantasy game based off Africa. It's pretty cool, and the (three) main cultures in it are actually well differenciated. But it's the only one. And it's a video game. I really wish there were other settings like that. I don't know much about Sub-saharian cultures, and I regret it.
Kevin Baker
>So how come we rarely get any fantasy settings based off Africa when its the closest thing in real life to fantasy tropes? No black people play RPGs.