Quote from: D-503;878480Character choices sound pretty easy though Pundy. East-coast tenderfoot fleeing his debts. Grizzled trapper. Civil war veteran turned private security contractor.

Spears has classes with inbuilt cultural concepts. Medieval Europe you could play a forester then learn culture as you play. Any western gamer will know roughly what a forester is.

So the point is the first challenge comes before play with each player deciding what to play.

If your point is that the baseline familiarity in a Wild West game, in terms of what you can even play, is much higher than what you would have in an African game, that was pretty much my own point too!

Quote from: RPGPundit;879184If your point is that the baseline familiarity in a Wild West game, in terms of what you can even play, is much higher than what you would have in an African game, that was pretty much my own point too!

Then you were right!

Quote from: D-503;879431Then you were right!

I usually am.

Quote from: RPGPundit;879864I usually am.

Dude, goes without saying. That you think that anyway...

Am on year 559 of the GPC bt the way. Fucking. Brilliant.

Quote from: D-503;880064Dude, goes without saying. That you think that anyway...

Am on year 559 of the GPC bt the way. Fucking. Brilliant.

It sure is. I remember running that campaign very fondly.

I avoid playing in the real world or slightly altered real world.  I think the only reason to play in a quasi-real setting would be if the GM has deep knowledge of it.  Otherwise, what's the point?  It's not like you'd know, anyway.

I prefer playing in one of those many settings that is roughly "based on" a real world setting.  That was, the game designer can take all the heat for inaccuracies.  Take Yoon Suin.  I love the shit out of that setting.  The nice thing is, I don't have to take a graduate seminar in Himalayan history and culture to play it.  And if someone gets insulted, they can blame David McGrogan.

To be honest, I feel woefully unqualified to GM even a wild west game.  Hell, let us not forget that a contingent of people complained for years about CoC being set in the early 20th century.  It's not even about being culturally sensitive so much as breaking immersion.  To me, there's always the question: if the GM isn't an expert, then why bother?

I say this without having so much as glanced at SoD, because I'm speaking in general terms.  Is it set in real Africa or "Aphriqua"?  Because if it's the latter, I wouldn't even worry, and if it's the former, I wouldn't even bother.

Quote from: Edgewise;880653I avoid playing in the real world or slightly altered real world.  I think the only reason to play in a quasi-real setting would be if the GM has deep knowledge of it.  Otherwise, what's the point?  It's not like you'd know, anyway.

I prefer playing in one of those many settings that is roughly "based on" a real world setting.  That was, the game designer can take all the heat for inaccuracies.  Take Yoon Suin.  I love the shit out of that setting.  The nice thing is, I don't have to take a graduate seminar in Himalayan history and culture to play it.  And if someone gets insulted, they can blame David McGrogan.

To be honest, I feel woefully unqualified to GM even a wild west game.  Hell, let us not forget that a contingent of people complained for years about CoC being set in the early 20th century.  It's not even about being culturally sensitive so much as breaking immersion.  To me, there's always the question: if the GM isn't an expert, then why bother?

I say this without having so much as glanced at SoD, because I'm speaking in general terms.  Is it set in real Africa or "Aphriqua"?  Because if it's the latter, I wouldn't even worry, and if it's the former, I wouldn't even bother.

Yoon Suin is fantastic!  But have you seen Arrows of Indra? I think it's also pretty fantastic, if I say so myself, and it also doesn't require that players take a graduate seminar.

I think there are ways to make a game of this sort (historical or not, look at Tekumel for instance) so that it requires a ton of culturewank to even start; and ways to do it (and to run it!) that don't.

Hey Pundy, I haven't taken a hard look at AoI yet, but I think Dark Albion kicks ass.  I'd probably be more comfortable adventuring in mythical India than DA, just because DA seems a lot closer to the real world (and thus more demanding of accuracy).  But I really dig it, and I get a chuckle out of some of the things you've done (demonic Frog Men in France, the cult of Mithras replacing Christianity, etc.)

The truth is, I always run my own settings, and steal what I like from excellent published materials.  Yoon Suin is so good I'm just going to drop it in the corner and see if anyone wonders where all that tea is coming from.  Sadly, as good as it is, I can't find a place for much of Dark Albion, but the Frog Men were able to make the trip.

Quote from: Edgewise;882366Hey Pundy, I haven't taken a hard look at AoI yet, but I think Dark Albion kicks ass.  I'd probably be more comfortable adventuring in mythical India than DA, just because DA seems a lot closer to the real world (and thus more demanding of accuracy).  But I really dig it, and I get a chuckle out of some of the things you've done (demonic Frog Men in France, the cult of Mithras replacing Christianity, etc.)

The truth is, I always run my own settings, and steal what I like from excellent published materials.  Yoon Suin is so good I'm just going to drop it in the corner and see if anyone wonders where all that tea is coming from.  Sadly, as good as it is, I can't find a place for much of Dark Albion, but the Frog Men were able to make the trip.

Well, one of the most wonderful things about the OSR is how you can loot books for stuff.  If you like Yoon-Suin (and I love it), you have a natural pairing with it through Arrows of Indra.  A person could add Yoon Suin (for the himayant mountain regions, for example) to weird it up, and likewise you can use Arrows of Indra for a Yoon-Suin game to add a ton of extra material, classes, magic, miraculous powers, magic items, and of course monsters.

As for Dark Albion, I hope that at least some of the tables, dungeons, appendix-P mods, and the Demonology Rules are something you might find use for in some of your homebrew stuff.

Quote from: RPGPundit;882912Well, one of the most wonderful things about the OSR is how you can loot books for stuff.  If you like Yoon-Suin (and I love it), you have a natural pairing with it through Arrows of Indra.  A person could add Yoon Suin (for the himayant mountain regions, for example) to weird it up, and likewise you can use Arrows of Indra for a Yoon-Suin game to add a ton of extra material, classes, magic, miraculous powers, magic items, and of course monsters.

As for Dark Albion, I hope that at least some of the tables, dungeons, appendix-P mods, and the Demonology Rules are something you might find use for in some of your homebrew stuff.

You know what, you've sold me on checking it out.  Recently I've been impressed by some of the sandbox table tools I've encountered lately in Yoon Suin and stuff by Kevin Crawford (Silent Legions is another amazing one for that, even if I don't currently have much use for it).  I confess that I didn't look much at that material in DA because I wasn't much interested in sandboxing back when I picked it up.  But I've been thinking of trying it out, so I'll give AoI a peek this weekend.

I would use the DA demonology rules (the LotFP system is too quirky), but I'm doing something very different with demons in my campaign.  Actual demons can't even enter the real world, because they are beings of chaos that exist "outside time" (whatever that means; it sounds good).  Devils, on the other hand, can occasionally be encountered on the road, in relatively peaceful circumstances.  That's because the devils are actually space aliens ("devil" as in "foreign devil") that belong to a body-swapping galactic collective.  The players haven't figured that out yet, so the devils scare the crap out of them.  Not that the aliens are genuinely benign, of course.

Quote from: Edgewise;883059I would use the DA demonology rules (the LotFP system is too quirky), but I'm doing something very different with demons in my campaign.  Actual demons can't even enter the real world, because they are beings of chaos that exist "outside time" (whatever that means; it sounds good).  Devils, on the other hand, can occasionally be encountered on the road, in relatively peaceful circumstances.  That's because the devils are actually space aliens ("devil" as in "foreign devil") that belong to a body-swapping galactic collective.  The players haven't figured that out yet, so the devils scare the crap out of them.  Not that the aliens are genuinely benign, of course.

That sounds great!  In Dark Albion, there's no distinction between demons and devils because no such distinction existed in medieval thought (at least, not a racial distinction like you see in D&D).  But that's a great representation of what you can do with OSR products like Albion.

I just purchased Spears of The Dawn. I'm really digging what I've read.