Nyambe

niggers

also most people dont see walking around naked and eating unrefined grain and anything you find on the ground as the highest form of civilization. iv had multiple college professors who would disagree though. never understand why they just didnt move to Africa though since it was so much better than the wast

Lack of demand. That's it, really. There was a lack because of this,

Generally when people say "Africa" in this context they mean sub Saharan Africa. North Africa is usually lumped in with eh Middle East due to the heavier cultural ties

Nah, there's a ton of cool lore stuff that can be done with African settings. It's just that, like the comment you quoted said, most westerners don't know shit about it and would rather stick to what they're already comfortable with.

sure you can do cool stuff with it. lole being explorers trying to set up your ow kingdom in a distant and hostile land for of aggressive ape people. or finding out the local ape people are sort of too dumb and incompetent to be slaves and importing poo-people from a different distant land to do their job.

i dont think thats the kind of stuff the people who want an africa setting would want to see though

damn those typos. fuck phone posting

What? You never played an american?

stop using American inventions user. turn in your phone, Internet, electricity, and Veeky Forums pass for starters

>phone

>american

Really now?

>who is Tim Berners-Lee

The guy was a scot but it was made over here

>never done a single noteworthy thing with their life
>thinks being american makes them superior

>electricity
hearty kek there freind

An inverse of the second statement could be said for you friend

Because African culture is more alien to most white people than actual fantasy/alien cultures. At least those are mirrored on stuff they recognize, like Greek, Roman, Asian, and Middle-Eastern. Why do you think elves and dwarfs and cat people and fairies etc etc are typically modeled after white people? Because that's what they know. It shouldn't come as a surprise that western civilizations would be taught in western schools, so it makes sense that westerners know so much more about them.

Hell, I'm black American with roots in Africa and even I only have a cursory knowledge of the traditions and cultural aspects of where my ancestors come from. It's just so different from what we know in the west that it can be very difficult to penetrate even for people who do want to explore it. Can't say I'm the least bit shocked that gamers, of all people, aren't particularly interested in doing so.

For the same reason Finn action figures were left behind when almost all the other characters were sold out.

People tend to like stuff that are similar to them, things they can relate to, and even people who look like them.

Its instinctive. We like being around people who look like us, think like us, dress like us and have similar tastes.
It makes us feel as part of a group and that makes us feel safe.

The vast majority of people who consume roleplaying games are not african or live in african cultures, so they end up relating more to a setting that is eurocentric.

Africans don't play D&D

OP here:

I hear you, bro. I still have my copy of Nyambe sitting in storage somewhere. But I distinctly remember buying it because the players I usually gamed with constantly complained that nobody could come up with any unique ideas for our games anymore (and also because I liked The Lion King). So I figured: "Okay, out with the European-derived fantasy games, oriental adventures also seems like it's oversaturated with anime and all, so that leaves me either fantasy Arabia or... oh look over there. "Nyambe". Fantasy Africa. How quaint! Let's give that a shot!"

I posed the idea to my usual gaming group and they thumbs-downed the idea right off the bat.

To this day I still wonder how my group would have reacted if I bought Al-Qadim, though. Given that the world setting never made it past 2nd Ed, I'm guessing they would have had a similar response though.

Hard to pull off delicately, I imagine.

>Americans inveted electricity

I have that book. someday i'll use it

>someone makes bants about X country
>"b-b-but AMERICANS!"

Why are other countries so soft-skinned when it comes to making jokes? Is it an inferiority complex?

Because I hadn't heard about this until now.

Tell me about this,user.

Too lazy to do a complete write-up at the moment. So here's a link directly to the page of the publisher:

atlas-games.com/nyambe/

>someone makes bants about Muricans
>starts acting like someone's clubbing bald eagles to death with the second amendment
Why are Muricans so soft-skinned when it comes to making jokes? Is it an inferiority complex?

You're country is the world hegemon weather people want to admit it or not and it has a reputation for being full of gun loving conspiracy nuts who are scared of the gubment and just genuine retards. Putting these two facts together when the word idiot is muttered in relation to countries america comes to mind for some people
Also its probably lefties who are think "wow 50% of people voted for the wrong guy must mean 50% is retarded"

Damn,this sounds great. A pitty that my gaming group aren't big fans of alternative settings; I've wanted to play Al Qadim with them,for instance, but to no avail.

Usually when people say "different", what they really mean is "interesting". And of course, what's interesting to people always comes with a ton of qualifiers, which means you always end up back where you started, except with a new coat of paint.

These things eventually come around though, just look at anime. 20 years ago it was considered the domain of only the most niche and outlandish shit, and now you can't go anywhere with being smacked in the face by the latest anime-themed hotness. Hopefully one day people will see African-themed fantasy not as some weird and strange place, but rather as an adventure waiting to be discovered and explored.

This often makes me wonder just exactly what people are crying for whenever they complain they want a "new and unique setting" or something like that.

Maybe a world inhabited by another flavor of elf. IDK

>you can't go anywhere with being smacked in the face by the latest anime-themed hotness
Have you ever been outside?
I live in a major city and the only people I know who like anime are some black guys who like dragonball and naruto

You know what he fucking meant.

It wasn't about a country. American literacy, I guess.

I dunno. I read it and it wasn't that great. Kinda lacking focus.

Seeing as this is Veeky Forums, I thought it was clear I was speaking in relation to things typically associated with geek and nerd culture. Don't worry though, I'm happy to spell it out for your apparently normie brain.

The point is that this thing that was once highly niche has seen a major resurgence into the mainstream over the last decade, and if it can happen for a thing that was once as ostracizing as anime, maybe it can happen for this other thing as well.

>/pol/ shitposter is also phone poster
Makes perfect sense

They want familiarity with a minor twist, not something that could be almost alien. So you either got pseudo-Europe or pseudo-Japan/East Asian mish-mash.

>most westerners don't know shit about it and would rather stick to what they're already comfortable with.

Not only that, but most westerners assume anything related to Africa will either be depressing "sticks and mud savages and slavery" or idealized "perfect utopia ruled by kangz n shit before the white man came" and would rather not deal with either.

Neither of which is accurate and the setting does a good job of depicting. It's just D&D with African trappings in the same sense Al Qadim is D&D with Arabic trappings and D&D has European trappings.

Got me legitimately into actual African history and culture, though. Spears of the Dawn is awesome too.

I crib so much from both settings into my D&D games.

Yup, took me a couple of years to gather this:
pastebin.com/PKFJzHfA
>AFRICAN FANTASY: tips, ideas and hooks

Spealing of which, I have to update it.

OP here:

While I'm very familiar with Nyambe and own a copy of the book, which I read cover to cover, this is the first I've ever heard of Spears of the Dawn. How does it differ from Nyambe?

>>Hell, I'm black American with roots in Africa and even I only have a cursory knowledge of the traditions and cultural aspects of where my ancestors come from

Even cursory knowledge puts you way ahead of most people in the US, white or black. Africa just isn't something people in the US ever really think about outside the context of slavery, war, disease, and famine.

thats copy pasta that wasnt even about pol you know right? you can just go through it and exchange pol for whatever the fuck you want

Probably would were it not for "FUCK DEY WHAYT MANG" culture which imbues most discussion about Africa.

>it wasn't even about /pol/
Out of the couple dozen times I've seen it, you're literally the first person to ever say that
Yeah I'm totalling going to believe a phoneposting /pol/ shitposter over an objectively correct image

Spears of the Dawn is an OSR style system. Goes to level 10 and uses 3d6 instead of d20. There's 4 classes: Griot (bard/expert), Marabout (priest), Warrior (warrior/rogue)), and Nganga (mage).

Takes place in a region that's basically West Africa. Once a larger empire until Egyptian Zombies nearly took over. They were beaten back but some still remain in tombs and all about.

The "Spears of the Dawn" is kind of an unofficial order of wandering undead slayers/troubleshooters/adventurers.

Like Nyambe, it has that very good mix of "familiar enough to be fantasy RPG, but inspired by people who actually did a little research" that lends it an interesting foreign flavor.

you dont have to believe me user. i dont care. i just pointed it out to make fun of you. not to convince you of anything

Too many HOTHEADS in this thread.

soundcloud.com/masketta-man

/bane/ I want you to understand why we hate you.

We dont hate you because what you say is "shitposting". Remember where the fuck you are, we are each about 1 click away from watching women with 12 inch cocks fucking each other. And at one point this site even had guro and loli boards. Oh my god you said FOR YOU! This totally shocks my unenlightened sheeple mind.

No, we hate you because you are the new furfags. You see, the problem with furfags, wasnt that they jerked off to furry shit, it was that they were so fucking obnoxious about it. Everything had to be made furry. Every forum avatar had to be a fursona. They had to constantly broadcast the fact that they were furfags to everyone, and when this was met with derision, they doubled down on their effort. They labeled the rational reaction to their faggotry "fursecution" and actively set out to be the biggest faggots they could possibly be to combat it.

Baneposters are exactly the same. I have yet to see a single board on this site that doesnt regularly have off topic derails about IT’S A PART OF MY PLAN or I’M CIA. Always with BANE.jpg and TDKR openings scene webms. It doesnt matter how off topic it is, /bane/posters cant help but broadcast the fact that they are BIG GUYS and will leave NO SURVIVORS after GRASHIN DIS BLANE.

What does the average IQ of HOTHEADS have to do with this thread? I mean, really what does it add to the conversation about the movie? Jack shit. All it does is send out a big loud signal to everyone in the thread that LOOK AT ME! I AM BIG GUY! YOU SHOULD BE IN MY AIRCRAFT!

>Probably would were it not for "FUCK DEY WHAYT MANG" culture which imbues most discussion about Africa.

Which is largely a backlash against Africa being shit on for so long. But of course their rhetoric just makes people want to tune out whenever Africa is brought up in anything other than a negative light.

And it's this sad state of affairs revolving around the very IDEA of Africa that keeps them from really learning anything about ACTUAL Africa.

>this thing that was very niche is now mainstream within a small niche of people
Just because there is a live action remake of an anime doesn't mean its mainstream infact the box office of that film shows that anime is still very much mainstream

Literally never seen that version of the /pol/ pasta before, and I'm on here almost 24/7
Nice try

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL WAS CANADIAN YOU CHUD

I think it'd be fun to have a campaign set in a fantasy version of Mali before it was united, with different cities all raiding each other, with the looming specter of all-encompassing war on the horizon. Add some fantasy shit because eh why not.

>Canadians aren't American
Fucking chud.

>Because that's what they know.
Can confirm. People will bitch about MUH RACISM but it's not so much a matter of bigotry as familiarity and only a retarded tumblrina would not know the difference.

Even asian settings are marginally less popular and that's because while westerner have much more familiarity with it through either kung fu movie or anime, in general it remain rather alien. Generic loosely-inspired-by-middle-ages fantasy is something most people have had exposure to. I ran a game which made use of Aztec mythology, which I absolutely love and yet is probably one notch ever so slightly above african myths in term of being known. Most people aren't really well-versed in mythology and history and asking them to know about a continent none of them have ever been, where a huge chunk of its mythology is purely oral and which few books have been written on is just not something with mass appeal.

Speaking of which, 'Africa' is a really big fucking place with a lot of people and trying to lump 'Africa' as a single place is about as convoluted and disingenuous as lumping every central and south american culture together. It would be easy to just say "They're a bunch of booga booga living in the mud" but that is about as helpful and crude a description as "Batshit crazy human sacrifices to the sun".

>bigotry

youkeepusingthatword.jpg

do liberals not own dictionaries or something? or do they think they are part of the secret patriarchal conspiracy?

for self described intellectuals they are pretty stupid

Man you have no idea how much stupid I've had to put up at a table, like someone saying people are bigoted for not liking exotic settings....and yet this virtue-signalling idiot of a player has barely ever cracked open a mythology or history book or poured hours into researching this shit for fun. Oh but he sure love to judge people based on their supposed lack of understanding of other culture.

Fucking Yanks trying to steal credit for Canadian shit AGAIN, what else is new. Next they're gonna be saying that they came up with insulin or the zipper.

I can understand. People prefer playing as people they can easily self insert into.

That being said, it is kinda annoying to see the Anansi wanking whenever someone thinks "Africa fantasy". He's the Akan equivalent of Bugs Bunny or Reynard the Fox. More of a fable than a myth. Not many know the epic songs and legends of Africa.

t. Black African

It's funny, I always catch shit from my more 'liberal' players yet I'd play the shit out of an african fantasy game provided its actually done right and not 'ancient black people with pyramid spaceships'...

....wait no, scratch that, it sound like the perfect cheesefest of a game. We need a KANGZ: THE WE WUZING role playing game.

Blame Gaiman, I guess.

Something "african" that could be used in RPGs pretty readily?

Gaiman is babby's first mythologically-versed author.

...

So anyway: Spears of the Dawn is great and you should play it if you want a mix of OSR and African D&D. Also avoid either extremes of the portrayal of africa, which is nice.

But I love Egypt and Egyptian settings.

Egypt doesn't count as Africa beside geographically.

Are there GOOD Egypt RPGs tough? Strangely enough I always felt there is the token sub-region in which go mummy-hunting for a session or two and not much more.

>Speaking of which, 'Africa' is a really big fucking place with a lot of people and trying to lump 'Africa' as a single place is about as convoluted and disingenuous as lumping every central and south american culture together.

Oh man, the geography of Africa. It's all jungles, deserts, and "the Serengeti". Acacia trees everywhere.

No mention of wetlands, temperate rainforest, mountain ranges in East Africa as long and tall as the Rockies (even some Alpine regions), and more.

Yeah, Africa actually has cool vista and places beyond the savannah and jungle (and maybe desert) but it's just they are rarely shown in media. Kind of a shame, its like thinking the US is either nothing but the great plain or the coast or maybe that Canada is all tundra and shit.

Hey, it's not Anansi's fault that trickster stories are the best stories.

Well, to be accurate, when the name "Africa" came about, it was referring to the Mediterranean coast. So Egypt is more "Africa" than, say, Ghana is.

only "racists" know that Africa is full of resources and diversity

only the actual racist liberals think its nothing but desert since admitting that it does complicates the narrative that the only reason sub-Saharan Africans are subhuman is because they never had the resources to advance

You know I think the issue is that Africa doesn't really lend itself well to classic D&D style, namely because of its crappier weapons and non-existent armors as well as general low level of civilization.

Now what it DOES lend itself well to is a more sword-and-sorcery style of setting, with tribes at war with one another, where some big strong hunter-dude can rise to become 'king by his own hand' and fight sinister sorcerers and horrible, monstrous beasts and vengeful spirits. So yeah, African fantasy would be more like Conan than Lord of the Ring or Forgotten Realms.

>Canada is all tundra and shit.

>Visiting folks in Ohio for Spring Break
>Let's go to Canada
>Sure
>It's 80 fucking degrees, not a moose, eagle, or grizzly bear to be seen
>Go back to Ohio
>Temperature drops to the 50's that afternoon and 40's that night

But there's no tradition of African-inspired sword and sorcery pulp novels.

Can't blame the source material for that one, the resources are there.

And Ethiopia always had a "fantasy realm" vibe to me. I mean, even outside of the Prester John story, it was an isolated (but christian) realm on temperate (more or less) highlands in a sea of badlands. Something pretty much adventurer-y.

To be fair it's pretty normal for any larger country (imagine if it's about continents). As an italyfag I don't think people outside of western Europe know much about our Alps, the central Appenines (eerily underpopulated in many places now), Puglia, the Sila, Sardinia (kind of Mediterrenenean Australia) or whatever. I can see why people stick to Veneto and perhaps have an idea about coastal Sicily, sure, but still.

Funnily enough I think the LOTR style of very large swats of land without a soul could be reflected in an sub-saharian setting. Make your Sauron use plagues, say your "elves" relocate in the forest, use (sparse?) ruins of ancient realms and we might be on something.
It's the forgotten-realms style that couldn't make sense.

The material is all there indeed:
-Lots of tribal warfare, meaning weaker enemies are most likely to be ordinary men than 'goblins' or something similar
-Magic is generally more something steeped in superstition and witchcraft
-Even mundane animals make badass monsters, especially if you are fighting them half-naked with a spear
-As pointed out by there is a lot of cool terrain to travel to

>>You know I think the issue is that Africa doesn't really lend itself well to classic D&D style, namely because of its crappier weapons and non-existent armors as well as general low level of civilization. Now what it DOES lend itself well to is a more sword-and-sorcery style of setting, with tribes at war with one another, where some big strong hunter-dude can rise to become 'king by his own hand' and fight sinister sorcerers and horrible, monstrous beasts and vengeful spirits. So yeah, African fantasy would be more like Conan than Lord of the Ring or Forgotten Realms.

Considering the fact that D&D is pretty much LOTR races in a Conan setting, it's a perfect fit. And you did have your big Empires like the Songhai, Mali, Hausa Kingdoms, etc for when you need a big powerful state.

I always was a little disappointed in the Hyborean age in that regard. It had the sense to recognize that there was more than one culture in Africa, but then went on ahead with making them all one dimensional savages with barely any elaboration on their way of life.

When's Pathfinder going to release that Mwangi expanse book anyway?

>are not familiar
Are you sure they would want to play it even if they were famiiar with African culture and mythology? That's a pretty wild assumption, bruh.

Well, REH was pretty racist, to be fair. Blacks=not really a culture on their own.

A problem i see is monsters. I don't think killing humans or lions is really something players would expect too. They need to be wicked lions at least.

Oddly enough my superficial understanding of African culture was that the fear or sorcerers was pretty pervasive. It could even mean that a good deal of adventuring could be investigative.

Also, secret societies and shapechangers.

Personally, I think it would be much easier to get players interested in a campaign based off ancient Hindu myth than one based off Africa. Can we see more of that?

I don't get why people can't go the middle route. It wasn't paradise or hell. Like the European Middle Ages. Lots of stuff sucked, but lots of stuff was cool too.

Oh God you're a retard.
Swords, spears, axes, knives, clubs, arrows, shields, and chainmail where the climate allowed. It's a normal selection.

About 1/3 of sub-saharans lived in completely autonomous tribal villages. The other 2/3 were various kingdoms and republics.

Mysterious and dangerous, but populated with outcroppings and ties to the wider world. The balance of civilization just within reach and terra incognita a mere wrong turn away gives the "Dark Continent" an exciting position for adventures. Like the stories of missionaries getting up to piss and coming face-to-face with a leopard in the village. Or the discovery of a thriving secretive kingdom after a hellish river journey.

I'd say there's room for many sorts of adventures. If I told you the epic of Sundiata but changed the names and kept the little cultural details vague you'd probably assume it was a European medieval romance.

>When's Pathfinder going to release that Mwangi expanse book anyway?
They writers are too busy bitching about Drumpf on twitter.

>Well, REH was pretty racist, to be fair. Blacks=not really a culture on their own.
I really don't get why people get their panties in a twist at westerners having a poor view of Africa when its a perfectly reasonable conclusion. I'm not saying its 'right' or 'accurate', the point is when you come from a culture with industry, medicine, art and science you're going to look down at people with sticks and huts. It would be like future humans finding alien life, only they're still trying to figure out bronze and act like a bunch of barbaric tribals...which is exactly what they would be.

>It's another episode of "people who call other people racist are the REAL RACISTS"

Because the desert is fucking boring.

Kill yourself OP

Shiet, Journey to the West turned me into a kung fu & gentleman-scholar obsessed Chinaboo for a few years.

I doubt anyone thought much of Japanese fantasy until experiencing anime based on Japanese folklore.

So, Exalted?

He didn't diss on his Vanir, which had the same tech level of his africans, tough, and were at least as ferocious and tribal.

At the same time Picts were worse than both. And I don't think scottish people were exactly at bronze level in the 1920s. So yeah, kinda random racism.

Hindu mythology suffers from being cruelly underrated.

not really although thats pretty true. its a matter of people literally not understanding the word. maybe you should look it up some time

as in, you are using a word you dont understand and when people point it out, you are so full of your own shit you just ignore it and never educate yourself

but continue outing yourself as a brain dead faggot repeating talking points from reddit and taking your life lessons from a comedy central show

How would you get your target demographic ( somewhat racist white male nerds ) to even read African fantasy?
I'd assume the best way would be to simply remove any and all references to race, skin color, and keep the names ethnically neutral.

Fuck you.

Incidentally, holy shit the Journey to the West movie on Netflix. If that doesn't get your plums tinglin' for some chinese martial-arts fantasy, I don't know what will.

I have been discovering this while building the world for my current session. I'm lifting a lot of Hindu stuff and accrediting it to a fallen Troglodyte empire, so it's a common ruins motif.