Veeky Forums creates an Ironclaw setting:

You know what to do.

Are we doing it in the add a fact way again? Because I personally prefer a more intent worldbuilding discussion, but those don't seem to be done anymore.

Intent worldbuilding? that sounds fun, and probably be more cohesive of a setting. I am not sure how it is done, however.

Oh wow, other people actually play this game. Neat.

Nothing special, we just talk and work things out. Go with the flow and follow the vague consensus wherever it carries us.

Now as a starting point I'm thinking maybe something colonial, but not necessary something with Indian analogues.

It would go well with the whole species stat and atavism angle, but I don't find it that thematically appealing to drop too many close to nature tribes. It would be a bit corny in a game with furries.

I am not using Ironclaw as a game, but I am using anthro characters in my next game. Or at least I plan to, if I can get players for it.

I wasn't thinking humans would be disallowed either, I was actually considering a kind of weird mythological setting where (at least in the past) people fucked mountains and trees and different animals which made all the weird races in the world. At least the furry ones.

I'm currently planning on running it more like a medieval fantasy game, but I'm not sure.

I currently running a pair of Iron Claw games in a homebrewed setting. One of the things players in both games really seemed to like is this major cult that's basically the food-chain enshrined in a religious order. The closer to apex-predator a species is the higher esteem its held. Some of the more extreme elements even engage in ritualistic hunting and consumption of members of prey species.

>colonial
So what are some themes and ideas?

Technology gaps and difference.
Juxtaposition of cultures and aforementioned technology (sailing ships next to tribal canoes).
Exploitation of people and resources.
Discovery and sharing cultures and ideas.

Superior culture teaching an inferior one how to rise above superstition, diseased practices, and poverty.

Maybe more of a colony - homeland dynamic. I wouldn't want too much of that noble savage nature romanticism. And no faction should be able to monopolize more animal-ness that way.
A Egypt/Rome or Ionian expansion situation perhaps.
I almost regret having said colonial because it's married so much to a big tech gap in perception.

>Egypt/Rome or Ionian expansion
>Superior culture teaching an inferior one how to rise above superstition, diseased practices, and poverty.
Could go the other way with it too and have various parts of an "inferior" culture influence the other with their mysticism. If you go with the roman/egypt hypothetical example you could go with an egyptian influence on the romans with their icon worship becoming combined with mummification. So when a soldier dies his body is interred in the Company Crypt to rise and fight again in undeath when his legions demand.

But a general blend of cultural epochs?

So what are our cultures.

And how species centric are we doing cultures?

Alright. Since we're kind of at an impasse on what to do, why not roll for it?

Roll 1d6 for geographical location.

1-2: Traditional European setting.
3: East Asian (with Pacific Islanders if you feel like it).
4: Arabian Nights/Africa.
5: South American (Mayaincatec, with some colonial elements).
6: Fantasy kitchen sink

Where is the impasse? We where having a dialogue.

If you do colonial remember horses aren't native to the united States

They originated in central Asia

So Mongolian slav horses

Wise is the great horse Khan, tengrii is pleased

Let's say there's this great Empire that's part Roman Empire and part Tsarist Russia. It had colonies nigh everywhere, but the biggest one is in (next user fill this part!)

Africa, where the Horse Imperialists oppress the Monkeys and Apes terribly, who only resist by virtue of their superior technology and feet hands

Ironclaw has dinosaurs. And it isn't decided that the colony destination wouldn't have mounts. And since we are making a new setting we could change the Mounts up too, if so inclined.

Here's an idea I've thought about using:

The world used to have a powerful animist magic system - almost everything natural had magic and was attuned to magic, and the more important or prominent something was in nature, the more potent its magical power.

Then, for an unknown reason, the magic seeped out of the world. One group of creatures from one part of the world taught themselves advanced toolmaking and technology in the absence of magic, and convinced themselves that it had all been fairy tales. The other parts of the world that were slowly colonized began to forget as well, but many of them still believed, and carried on the old rituals needed to summon the magic that had abandoned them.

Then, for an equally inexplicable reason, the magic began to come back.

I thinks if you do species=culture the world feels very plain. Like how there's a few million elves or dwarfs that basically just act the same and do the same things.

I don't really into ironclaw is it just mammals?

If not it could be interesting to match the animals to the cultures they represent or at least take inspiration from.
So say with Egypt you'd get Croccos, Ibix, Tigers, Lions/other cats, Jackals and other lean dogs, Foxes, Hares, Snakes, Hawk, Hippos.

It is just mammals in the omnibus Ironclaw. Jadeclaw brings in others.

Right, so the Horse Empire has its main colony in the Darkheart Continent, where they make use of the local Apes and Monkeys' natural abilities to make them work in their factories. But the Apes and Monkeys, smart as they are, knew they were subjugated and conquered - now, why didn't they revolt? Or is this colony very rife in revolutionary antics? If there are plans to revolt, or revolutions happening, what is the main way the Apes and Monkeys do it?

maybe the apes and monkeys start circulating radical literature, think Marxist type stuff. The horses start getting wind of it, but they have trouble stamping it out, and factory sabotage starts to happen regularly.

I read that more as the Horse empire is in !Afrika, which I like better.

Maybe the tsarists took advantage of the local tensions to gain the colony.

The original 16 core species are all mammals. The rules though let you make anything, Squaring The Circle introduces two bird species to core and Jadeclaw and Book of Jade have a massive variety of core species.

I prefer to allow mammals only for my game since i like the idea of a wide variety of options but every species having it's own culture, but by making it only mammals I hold back a lot of bloat. It's that or core only and let the species creation rules go to waste.

Oh yes, the Tsarist gain the colony but they got more than they bargained for, because now the monkeys are exporting ideology to the homeland.

That picture is my favorite for ironclaw. I always wanted to play a donkey after that picture.

I'm not even a fiery and I love the art in this book.

Some if the best PnP art ever. It's a shame the cover is such cancer.

I read sword of glass too.

I second the motion that all mounts and beasts of burden should be humans.

This could be something to toss in too. Old, dying magic is returning, the Horse Empire had forgotten and uses advanced tech while the apes and monkeys still remember the old ways. And who knows, maybe they mix the old ways with advanced Horse tech?

So, a local Ape/Monkey intellectual has created a controversial socio-political treatise/manifesto, and some Ape/Monkey tribes or factions have rallied under its banner. But, the Horses are cunning, and uses old tribal feuds and created new divisions in the Ape/Monkey ranks. But, unwittingly, some of the manifesto ended up back in the Horse homelands, fomenting unrest there as well.
What's the level of unrest in the Horselands? Are Horse manifesto-supporters in league with their Ape and Monkey brethren, or would it mutate into a different version?

And back in the colony, how many separatists are there? How organized are they?

And then there's the question of the Horse Empire's other colonies. What other colonies are there?

It's Game of Thrones with only Beast Men playable and they choose the Disney cover for the second book, with the Salyers parody for the first book...

Honestly what the fuck is wrong with them?

I have no idea but I want bats because bats are cool.

>The monkeys and apes start disseminating literature about the Natural Selection of History, in which forms of animal civilization will destroy each other in a thesis-antithesis dialectic, until the only creatures to seize the means of production are the workers of hand and foot, also known as the Prime 8: chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, gibbons, baboons, macaques, howlers, and the mysterious and possibly extinct Gigantopithecus.

Thoughts on ?

The ape/monkey thing seems like it could be an ethnic ideology, not quite like Nazi/ubermensch ideology, more like a We Wuz Black Muslim sort of thing. The peaceful attempts to be emancipated have failed, it's time to draw on ancient tribal monkey knowledge and unify the Prime 8 once more.

In the grimdarkness of the far future, there is only furry rape.

I like it! But I wonder how it would create separatist/revolutionary groups in the mainland Horse Empire though. A revised manifesto that omits the 'hand and foot' part and expands on the 'work hard' part? Maybe a counter-ideology that works against the Tsar, or put him in a bad light? Fatalist death-cults welcoming their simian overlords?

For my own history of Ironclaw I have the Bats in ownership of there own nation named Chirostan, giving to them by the settings Alexander the Great equivalent as payment to the myraid bat mercs and armies for helping him conquer and control it.

While he had an easier time conquering the Afghanistan equivalent than his RL counterpart, he still got bored when seeing the other side and then died on the way back home... but this time it was FASTER.

Maybe the idea of the Gigantopithecus in monkey/ape ideology was mistranslated as "The Great-Footed One", making it popular among disaffected and reactionary parts of horse culture who hate the Tsar. But was it mistranslated by accident or on purpose?

Maybe the translation instead gives them 'the Down-Trodden', which works with the peasants of the Horse Empire, who were similarly oppressed in their agricultural fields. So instead of referring to one missing 'family', it's referring to all of the oppressed around the world.

Man, I like this setting so far! OK, so, what is the technology level? I know it'll be anachronistic, but at least there's a baseline tech level to add or subtract from.

Also, should we include Chirostan in the grand geopolitical game?

A good technology level could be Renaissance. Metallurgy, large-scale engineering, clockwork, gunpowder tech, primitive medicine, alchemy, good shipbuilding, powerful central bodies (analogous to the Catholic Church) and small or weak secular kingdoms and duchies. Still plenty of swordfighting and other melee weapons coexisting with firearms. Also, it's not more than a few centuries after the period when the Mongols were near their peak in real history, so the horse archer tech that's being emulated here wouldn't be completely outclassed by "modern" weapons and science. Certain things like assembly line production might be accelerated in order to make a "proletariat" storyline believable, but otherwise that could work?

That bit with the Catholic Church got me thinking. What religions are there in the Horse Homelands and the Darkheart Continent?

Also would there be steampunk or other anachronistic bits in this setting?

only furfags.

So half of Veeky Forums, yes.

Where the fuck are you supposed to get anthro chatacter art that isn't some autists OC or two fox boys fucking each other in the ass?

Slipped somewhere in between. Only if you know where to look, and what to avoid.

Literally just make the setting Redwall+

That is all

Or find a furry friend that is willing to wade through the degeneracy that they have become inured to for you.

Escape the magical realm by making it so that it was Gods who fucked all those things and created the mythical forefathers of the weird hybrid races (à la greek)
Now please stop posting your stale idea in every single thread, or add substance to it, because "lol trolls exist because people fuck hills once xD" is pretty lame

Soooo hate to ask but does anyone by any chance have a pdf of the Ironclaw PHB? I'm interested in the system but I've never even seen the mechanics before

FA, Deviantart, e926 (aka the SFW version of e621)

All you have to do is set it to SFW mode on any of those websites, plug in your search terms, and away you go. The rest is just slogging through the art till you find something good.

You could also try pinterest (which is shit to search through), and simply googling what you want through various search engines.

e621 after you flood your filters to remove filth. You can try to do the same on Furaffinity bu no-one tags for shit on that site. Otherwise just browse Deviant Art, tumblr or wait for a beast/anthro themed art thread here.

Heroic mustelids band together to save the world from the vile rodent threat!

I always liked the idea of a setting without normal humanoids but all anthros. It makes the races different yet familiar so not boring but not hard to pick up either.

But then you'd have to go about hammering out the culture: are kingdoms based on specific race (lion kingdom), broader group (feline kingdom) or by habitat (savannah kingdom with lion rulers, rhino soldiers and wildebeest laborers)?

Lots of possibilities I think but it'd likely just perceived as furry bullshit rather than an interesting thought experiment.