Idea got shot down because its not "PC"

My friends and I have only played fantasy RPG's and were starting to get bored with going through cookie-cutter setting with the same old Orcs, Dwarves and Elves.
I suggested we try playing a "loosely historical, low-fantasy game". My friends were intrigued at first but actually looked disgusted when I elaborated on what I had in mind.
I wanted to run a game in which the players would be European knights on an expedition/crusade into Africa. I thought it would be interesting since very little is known about what was going on in Africa during the middle ages. My friends thought it would just turn into blatant racism to show the Africans at a more primitive technological level (pic related) and using trained war-beasts (think Gorillas, Rhinos and Lions trained for war).
Am I in the wrong here? Is there a way I can convince them to give it a shot?

Other urls found in this thread:

pastebin.com/PKFJzHfA
orias.berkeley.edu/resources-teachers/travels-ibn-battuta
blackpast.org/view/vignettesGAH_places
sourcebooks.fordham.edu/africa/africasbook.asp#African Societies
historyguide.org/earlymod/prester_john.html
blackpast.org/gah/prester-john
amazon.com/Darkest-Africa-Retreat-Governor-Equatoria/dp/1589760441
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Caliphate
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Caliphate
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

If you don't say "nigger" at least once a session, yr in the wrong group

play up the shit they had, which was quite a bit actually. surprise them, if theyre expecting pygmies and spears give them blast furnaces and great zimbabwe

Find better friends, preferably ones that know what racism actually is.

I was actually planning on showing both. I had an empire in mind with vast keeps, lots of gold and ornate armor/weaponry. While also having more savage cannibalistic tribes farther out into the jungles.

this too, but seriously using africa without the stuff they actually had is just a straight up wasted opportunity

sounds like a bunch of fags

sounds like a cool idea to me. Playing medieval rorke's drift could be fun.
It sounds like you'll have to convince them that the africans arent at as big of a disadvantage as they think.
Maybe have them take penalties for wearing medium or heavy armor in the blazing sun.
The wildlife could be another issue. Have wildebeest trample through their campsite and fuck everything up or have a predator stalk them for a few nights.
thats about all i got.

This teebeeheitch familia

As long as your group aren't all edgy /pol/acks you guys missed out. I've always wanted to do a Not!Africa fantasy game.

Is there a good resource I can use to see what middle ages Africa actually had?

that sounds good, you using irl locations or same-society type stuff, also you going west africa, sahelian, east africa, or kongo/zimbabwe?

Don't forget an Ethiopia. Ethiopa's culture is quite different from the rest of Africa with their Christianity, stone structures, and trade connections with India and possibly Ancient Greece.

no single one that i can think of off the top of my head, but its gonna really depend on where in africa. kongo, ethiopia, mali, or nri are basically completely different settings

Okay, so there is some subtext here that needs to be picked up:

They might think you're a racist. Something you've done have made them decide they don't trust you to not portray this as something racist. Or you've done nothing and they're just assuming you have bad intentions for no reasons. But either way, I can see where discomfort starts - You're crusaders. This means that, by default, your characters are faith driven invaders. Part of the PC's mission will likely mean having to violently oppose the native culture due to matters like their faiths being unchristian.

If you're genuinely only in this because you think setting something in middle ages Africa sounds cool, here is my recommendation. Get some books of the subject matter - history, anthropology, mythology and the like. Consume them. Then once you feel like you've got enough, come back to your players, and pitch the idea of playing a game set in middle ages Africa where you are playing middle ages Africans.

If they still turn you down, then unfortunately, you've just got lame friends and you should catalog your ideas for a better group

true, honestly ethiopia is kinda standard medieval setting with black people though

>group complains that it won't be PC
>/pol/acks
If this isn't muh bogeyman, I don't know what is

OP consider adding a rival group of adventurers from a not!Muslim empire trying to convert as many people as possible. That'll vary the encounters quite a bit and allow you to have the option of having a Vatican/Islam proxy war and all kinds of interesting religious intrigue.

Not entirely certain. I was probably going to use west/central Africa or hopefully have the group travel from one major region to the other so I could really throw some variety in. Maybe start in Egypt, complete with sphinxes and jackal headed guards, and slowly move further south.

if its irl-type location relations, thats gonna need the sahelians too, look into Kanem-Bornu, Songhai, and the Hausa

Okay I've done a bit of this sort of thing in the past, pick a region and I'll try to give you the best, most RP-usable bits

>European knights on an expedition/crusade into Africa.
Why would you be on a crusade in the interior of Africa? There's nothing there to be on a crusade for. I guess some a bunch of Not!Africans came into Not!Europe and stole the holy grail or something? But if they are as technologically inferior as you're implying that shouldn't have happened in the first place.
What if a PC dies? They obviously don't want to be playing as the natives, otherwise the "European invaders" part wouldn't be necessary at all. Do you just drop the campaign as soon as one of them inevitably catches disease and kicks the bucket?
This is why

I can see why that could be a problem. The crusader bit was more for their reason for being there because as much as I want to run this I can't quite think of a reason why this would be going on.
I really like that idea. I think they would just jump to the conclusion of me making them out to be evil because they're Muslim.

if the "muh evil muslim" is a problem, play up the conflict angle. dont cast it as muslim bad, cast it as we, the morally questionable protagonists, have to be against them

>the holy grail
That's actually a good idea, not stolen but possibly hidden there. As for what happens when a PC dies I had imagined a world that was a bit more connected via trade and alliances that the real world actually was at that point.

make it a detective quest, have them following the grail's trail as it goes further into africa, play up that while places like Ethiopia and the like might almost feel like home, Zimbabwe and Kongo definitely won't, but they have to keep going to do their job

>wildebeest trample through their campsite
I didn't even consider what kind of encounters could be had with just run of the mill wildlife. Chimpanzees that try to steal their equipment, water sources could become traps in and of themselves with crocodiles lurking just beneath the surface. Have any other suggestions?

Quest for the scattered parts of the holy corpse and a portal to hell opening at the end for an ultimate battle against Satan himself a la Berserk

if its low fantasy are other primates smart enough to do magic

How exactly would I handle curing wounds/diseases in a setting with low-magic?

shamanic healing, alchemy/herbalism, its not fast but its probably less likely to kill you than the mundane ways

Magical herbs crushed into paste applied to bandages rapidly accelerate healing.

I like the way you think.{/spoiler]

Probably not. Although I could throw in something like a tribe of people that can assume the shape of an animal with the help of wearing it's pelt.

if you do the satan portal stuff its gotta be in the plains of South Africa, theyve got ludicrous cavern systems, and its the furthest into Africa you can go.

If it's total fine to have a stereotypical Muslim shiek antagonist or something, make the knights not religious crusaders, but rescuing a princess who was stolen in a slave raid or something like that. Then you don't have to violently smack down on everyone, and maybe have them visit the Christian Ethiopians as heroes or something.

snakes could be around every fucking corner to the point where the invasion force has to work it into the prep time to set up camp to check for snakes.
Army ants eating people alive.
Piranhas also eating people alive.
Territorial gorillas/chimps.
This could all be natural stuff or the work of tribal shamans. Either way it would be a bitch to deal with.

Oh here's an idea, the player party bungled up a witch extermination and all got branded with a sign that attracts monsters, creepy crawlies and all the things that go bump in the night to them. They got banished from their knight order and their only hope is to find the Holy Grail and wash their brands off with the holy blood that spills from it. They heard a rumor that it was to the south so now they are going through all of Africa to find it. Along the way, they run into regional problems to fix, new people to help on their quest for redemption, and rival orders sent by both the Vatican and the Muslims to convert the inhabitants, gain a foothold in Africa and find the grail. Local tribal leaders and warlords also get into the power struggle to find the grail first and also grab as much land as possible now that the stalemate between the various African tribes has been broken by these new arrivals.

That's all I got for a rough outline.

eh it would have to be a bit of a variant on standard antagonist #17 to fit in africa instead of the middle east but otherwise yeah

If the knights are searching for the Holy Grail/Corpse parts, are the Muslim empires searching for something?
Are there lost Islamic holy relics?

>the protagonists find the grail in South Africa
>manage to finally scrub off their brands and are free from being chased by demons, spirits and all other magical creatures
>just as they do this, all the other factions converge on the cave and a massive free for all fight starts with the player party trying to escape and potentially take the grail with them
>someway or another some of the spilled blood from the soldiers gets mixed with Jesus's blood
>the grail becomes corrupted by the blood spilled in anger and hate and begins to turn into something evil
>a portal to hell begins to open and all kinds of demons begin to pour out
>the enemy factions who never ran into the magical creatures that the PC party did are caught by surprise and slaughtered
>Satan himself manages to force himself partway through the breach
>the party has one final mission
>beat back Satan and his demonic army at all costs and save the world
>once they win, the world is safe from incursions from the other side but since the grail has been destroyed, Earth and humanity have lost their connection to the supernatural
>the magic is gone and no one will know or believe their story
>still, they can go home now with their names cleared

I assume they are also searching for the grail/corpse parts.

>beginning of the quest for the Grail
>the party's first stop is in Cairo or Alexandria
>as they begin investigating for the Grail's whereabouts, their brands awaken Egypt's latent magic
>the biblical plagues start to happen again
>ancient pharaohs reawaken with magical powers
>party now has to find a way of stopping this while finding the grail
>after doing multiple sidequests and killing Pharaohs now and then as minibosses, the party finds their first clue to where the Grail might be
>just as they are about to leave, a weakened version of Apophis *blocks their path*
>first full fledged boss is the party having to kill the shadow of the Egyptian god of chaos

Find a better group.

What time does this take place in specifically? You can have things like primitive muskets and pistols.
>Jaguarmen being charged by pistol cavalry

>PC party spends the whole night fighting giant mosquitoes and crocodilemen because they made their camp too close to a river by accident

I was thinking pre-pike and shot. Probably closer to the time of the first crusade or maybe 13th century.

Some of this might help:

>AFRICAN FANTASY: tips, ideas and hooks
pastebin.com/PKFJzHfA
Although fantasy, I put sources for africans with carbon steel and a cannibal tribe, in the Middle Ages timeframe.

Ibn Batutta is the best primary source for some of Africa's Middle Ages.
orias.berkeley.edu/resources-teachers/travels-ibn-battuta

blackpast.org/view/vignettesGAH_places

sourcebooks.fordham.edu/africa/africasbook.asp#African Societies

They want to find Prester John. Both Ethiopia and Mali were thought to be the land of this great king at some time. The first, because it was a hidden christian land, and the second because it was so filthy rich.

historyguide.org/earlymod/prester_john.html

blackpast.org/gah/prester-john
>By the late 15th Century Portuguese explorers did make contact with the Christian king in Ethiopia and wrote descriptions of the court, the state, and its people. These descriptions and their correspondence provide historically valuable insight into the Ethiopian kingdom of the time.

Thanks for all the resources.

I'm shocked how well this thread is going.

I did this in my !africa setting, along with giant ants when they found some dirt mounds and decided they needed to see what was inside.

That game was great and too short thanks ot IRL changes breaking the game up.

whys that shocking

they wuz kangz

That's why.

Because /leftypol/, reddit and /pol/ all crawl out of the woodwork to debate historical accuracy

okay now im curious: basic topic: 1200s West Africa, what does /pol/ say, what does reddit say, what does /leftypol/ say?

Because everytime /pol/ bursts in and tries do convince everyone that Africans aren't people.

What do you THINK /pol/ says user?

And why would reddit and leftypol say different things when they're the same people?

>They want to find Prester John. Both Ethiopia and Mali were thought to be the land of this great king at some time

Being the lone Christian Kingdom in Africa, doesn't Ethiopia totally count even if Prester John isn't real?

>/pol/
They wuz kangz but squandered all their wealth and became irrelevant. Also niggers are dumb.
>reddit and /leftypol/
They wuz kangz and you're racist if you don't think they were the master race.

Make an incredibly racist bog standad fantasy setting.

These sound great. Frankly I always liked Magic requiring practical knowhow to function best

You're welcome.

Some though it did, but it was an incredibly tall order to achieve the contents of that fake letter.

amazon.com/Darkest-Africa-Retreat-Governor-Equatoria/dp/1589760441

Required reading for inspiration. I'm lucky enough to have a first edition in near perfect condition ($1800) that I picked up at an estate sale for $100,

Truly an amazing story.

reddit needs a bit more incredibly well known "Little know facts" from a five year old pop history article

Ethiopia was also fantastically wealthy, so, again... totally Prester John

Possibly even the origin of the myth.

Oh yeah
>muh Mansa Musa
>crashed Alexandria's economy, haha whiteys BTFO
>confusing saharan Africans with sub-saharan Africans and saying that people like Ibn Batuta and Avicenna wuz kangz n sheeeit
>Egyptposting in general

The myth first refered to some vaguely asian land, that's why the first contender to Prester John was a Khan.

not sure if anyone suggested it earlier in the thread but you could start out the adventure by making the pcs a ragtag group of knights who are sent from outremer to africa to find Prester John's kingdom and forge an alliance between him and the king of jerusalem against the saracens.

Actually, we know a lot about the arab world, which was northern coastal africa and parts of western asia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Caliphate
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Caliphate
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world

Have fun!

...

>what does /pol/ say
DEUS VULT

>what does reddit say
You're a racist for killing these poor oppressed African kings you imperialist fascist nazi bigoted scum, now I'll never find someone to sexually satisfy my wife.

>/leftypol/
Niggers are spooks anyway

...

Aari cute
Amhara perfidious chaos worshipper
Bacha cute but kind of aaaayy
Basketo same
Bena same
All the rest 2 spooky

maybe im looking at the wrong parts of reddit but I expected more pseudo-intellectualism than straight up, well, whatever than was

They are in the wrong. Your idea is fantastic and I would def play that.

/pol/ fucked reddit hard over the past two years. For example, the space subreddit got mad that NASA was going back into space because it was under Trump's orders.

Perhaps that statement was more in line with tumblr. The only contact I've had with reddit is them absolutely infesting /pol/ with the Trump circlejerk.

i can see that being a thing, but how is that related to /pol/?

>being mad about space

I don't care if fucking Hitler ordered it, as long as we aren't burning jews to fuel the rockets we need to get fucking back into fucking space

Unless Trump gets on a rocket himself no one will associate him too greatly with whatever NASA pulls off, even today JFK is just remembered for the End of Decade promise and not much else. The President is an enabler, the Buzz Aldrin's are more important.

say what you will about Trump cultists they are definitely not SJWs

...

Because /pol/ has basically been raiding reddit 24/7 since Trump announced his presidency (/r/The_Donald was made as a /pol/ colony to disrupt Bernie and Hillary's subreddits aka the bulk of their online base).

wow this thread got derailed quickly

Shit now I want a King Solomon's Mines/She game. Darkest Africa, the Noble Savage, shamanic magic, lost cities, hidden civilizations.....
Beats the same old Not!Europe dungeon crawl any day.

...

but why would that make reddit turn into tumblr

Mostly by the act of expressing suprise at the lack of derailment.

There is probably a lesson in there somewhere.

...

Because in response to the constant raiding, reddit mods and admins went off the deep end. For example, if you try to post a neutral or pro-Trump article in /r/news or /r/politics, your post is deleted and multiple times could resort in a ban. The administrators of reddit themselves were fucking around with stuff I don't understand because I'm not a redditor in order to get /r/T_D out of their website.

...

Polarization, the more one political side pushes to an extreme it becomes more and more likely their opponents push to the opposite extreme.

There's also a lot of non-magical early healing techniques you can draw on.

For instance, Ancient civilizations as far back as Egypt knew that honey was an antibacterial (despite not knowing what bacteria were). And maggot-therapy is a proven way of curing the early stages of gangrene on wounds.

You PC's would be more likely to die from their injuries of course, but some players will find that fun.

>Piranhas also eating people alive.
Piranhas are actually not that dangerous, only re-bellies get aggressive and that's only when their rivers dry up and someone basically steps right on top of them

Luckily for /pol/, their extreme left counterparts aren't as competent as they are (yet).

>the left is capable of anything vaguely resembling competence
Lost it.

thats a blatant troll you retard

Tumble: are you black? Are you certified black? Have you been properly raised in a black community? Which one, some of those are full fake black people.
OK, you're black. You may acknowledge what 1200's Africa was like without being a racist for knowing about it existing.

Nah those are legit. You can go see them on /r/anarchism I believe.

that lesson being: don't poke the hornet's nest?

Piranhas are south american, seus gringos malucos.

Plus, their fame is mostly because we starved some of them for when Roosevelt visited.

Our pink dolphins eat piranhas like popcorn, they are as understimated as regular dolphins.

just because it actually got posted doesn't mean it was serious or genuinely believed

>Tumble
for some reason that's funny to me and I don't know why

I believe those accounts had a history and were legit accounts.