If so, how's it going? Any pitfalls? Cool elements?
Also, how did you get the players up on the cultural aspects so they could pick and play characters?
Never played it.
I've contemplated running it with 5e because
A) It would be a refreshing change of pace culturally, B) Sine Nomine has the Midas touch, C) the reviews and summaries are tantalizing, and D) fuck anyone who tells me I'm not allowed to explore African fantasy landscapes because I'm too white.
The reasons I haven't launched myself into it is A) The main villains are undead and I dislike undead, B) my French patriotism keeps pulling me back to euro-fantasy, C) I'm still debating moving out of medieval fantasy for a while, and D) I want to experiment with domain-level play in D&D soon and expecting players to swallow an unusual setting along with the expectations of running a realm feels like a bit much.
I'd like to play it.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;876060The reasons I haven't launched myself into it is A) The main villains are undead and I dislike undead
I felt the same way, then I got Silent Legions, and using the tables to create critters, etc in that, you can ignore the undead (or change them into something more to your taste)
There is a brief section in Spears addressing setting and cultural unfamiliarity, which boils down to "everyone expects Spears to lack social graces etc etc."
I don't really think that beyond the history that you really need to make the undead the primary villians. There is definitely room to have the night-men or the snake-men be the main villians.
Quote from: AxesnOrcs;876182There is a brief section in Spears addressing setting and cultural unfamiliarity, which boils down to "everyone expects Spears to lack social graces etc etc."
I have to say I don't really dig that as a solution to the cultural-ignorance problem. Not that I dig the answer that says "you have to take an anthropology class before playing this game" either.
Quote from: RPGPundit;876972I have to say I don't really dig that as a solution to the cultural-ignorance problem. Not that I dig the answer that says "you have to take an anthropology class before playing this game" either.
Surely one class isn't enough to overcome your preexisting ignorance and cultural misconceptions.
For pretty much any second person value of "your."
Quote from: RPGPundit;876972I have to say I don't really dig that as a solution to the cultural-ignorance problem. Not that I dig the answer that says "you have to take an anthropology class before playing this game" either.
Me either,
Of course actually getting anyone to be interested in Not-Africa as a setting is pretty challenging and I can't get my group to read rule books or research things they are actually interested in much less do research on something kind of alien to our ways of seeing things.
Still If I were to play SPOTD or a game like it, I'd really prefer to understand the culture and do it right. Heck I feel that way about games set in Feudal Japan or something like Privateers and Gentlemen or our very own hosts Arrows of Indra and I have at least some knowledge of those cultures and groups .
Making an enjoyable game from foreign cultures is is hard especially when only a few of the players have clue one.
In my experience, you have precisely one text page worth of attention from any randomly-selected potential player. If your setting or game requires more than one page worth of buy-in before they can start playing, the GM is going to have a bad time. If the players get hooked after that point, it's all well and good and they can go all Tekumel on things, but if you can't equip them to play the game with only a trivial amount of invested effort, you're going to cut your potential player base enormously.
When you're dealing with an intimidating setting, the very last thing you want to do is build your default campaign setup to require substantial setting mastery from the players. You're already going to have a hard time finding people to give the setting a spin; you can't afford to raise the barriers any higher than they have to be for the default entry point into the world.
Quote from: SineNomine;877000In my experience, you have precisely one text page worth of attention from any randomly-selected potential player. If your setting or game requires more than one page worth of buy-in before they can start playing, the GM is going to have a bad time. If the players get hooked after that point, it's all well and good and they can go all Tekumel on things, but if you can't equip them to play the game with only a trivial amount of invested effort, you're going to cut your potential player base enormously.
When you're dealing with an intimidating setting, the very last thing you want to do is build your default campaign setup to require substantial setting mastery from the players. You're already going to have a hard time finding people to give the setting a spin; you can't afford to raise the barriers any higher than they have to be for the default entry point into the world.
Agreed, but as a new player in Spears I need at least a basic grasp on the setting, highlights of my home culture and an idea of what the different classes are so I can make a sensible choice. Is there a one-pgaer for that stuff? I don't recall it.
By the way, I'm not trying to throw rocks. I'm asking as I want to run it.
Quote from: D-503;877253Agreed, but as a new player in Spears I need at least a basic grasp on the setting, highlights of my home culture and an idea of what the different classes are so I can make a sensible choice. Is there a one-pgaer for that stuff? I don't recall it.
I parcel out the attention budget in chargen by wrapping the background listings into the world description. Each nation has a 2-page spread in the character creation chapter, where the PC backgrounds for it implicitly embed the culture. On page 11-12, for example, I've got a half-page Kirsi culture overview, and then ten background packages that encapsulate the basic traits of the culture. The idea is to give the reader the idea, "Okay, these guys are hard-ass martial rider-types who worship the Sun Faith." without having to make them consciously sit down and read a large chunk of exposition.
In terms of the general world setting, that's the first page of text in the game. Since Spears of the Dawn, I always stick a one-page summary of what a game's about as the first page in the book. A player who reads that gets an idea of what the game's about, the basic shtick of each of the five kingdoms, and the idea that being a Spear of the Dawn is what they're probably going to do.
I'm currently running a campaign set in 1876 in the United States. The amount of cultural information that players require is ENORMOUS. And that's nothing compared to medieval Europe, which is nothing compared to India or Africa or China.
But I think the best solution to this is a process of "learn while you play". As the GM you should be able to differentiate between what the player may or may not know yet, and what the PC OUGHT TO KNOW. Then whenever it comes up, stop the player and explain some detail about culture that his PC knows but he didn't yet. In this tutorial style, we can actually get to playing, and after a few sessions, they'll get acclimatized for the most part, in a mostly painless way.
Character 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.
Of course the thing is, when you are playing in a game, you aren't really playing in that setting, you are playing in the version of the setting as defined by the GM's knowledge of it.
Sometimes what the GM knows is from the setting in the rulebook (or setting books), sometimes it's just made up, sometimes it's from things he's read or watched.
Anyway, the thing with Spears is that while it's African inspired (as opposed to Europe), it's also pretty firmly based on standard swords & sorcery tropes. One of the bigger inspirations for it was Charles Saunders' writings and they read very much like Robert Howard (if he weren't a racist/ignorant).
Indeed, Mr Saunders apparently wrote two '80s sword & sorcery movies (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4884222/?ref_=tt_ov_wr).
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.