There are so many things that are incredible about this, and by "incredible" I mean completely expected and depressing.
“We went back to the African Emperor Mansa Musa,” Walters said, referring to the leader of the Mali Empire, an Islamic West African state which Musa I ruled during the 14th century. “He was arguably the wealthiest man in history, who really existed and who sent a fleet to the New World. [...] For our story, this fleet departed and, through a mechanism that is yet to be revealed within the narrative, were transported to another planet.”
Honestly, this is a great premise for an RPG setting. It could be spectacular, if the designers actually committed. Imagine an isolated civilization of premodern Muslims, transported to another world, their worldview developing in
complete isolation from modern Western notions, utterly convinced that they have been unique chosen to spread the ultimate revelation of God into the
Dar al-harb of a whole new planet. Awesome.
The problem, of course, is that the creators aren't going to commit. The worldview of the Musalians isn't going to meaningfully resemble the culture of the Mali Empire except maybe in a few trivialities. No, the Musalians are just going to be a mouthpiece for an extremely 21st century worldview, because that is the whole point of the project. You know the Musalians are going to have modern Western notions of democracy, sexual libertinism, feminism, anti-colonialism, etc., despite the fact that those ideas developed uniquely out of Christianity in the West and these guys left the planet before all but the most rudimentary such notions came about. The designers don't actually give a shit about the beliefs and culture of 14th century imperial African Muslims. The Musalians don't exist to resemble a lost-but-fascinating historical civilization, but to serve as meat puppets for 21st century ideologues. Despite the claims that this setting is free of bad Western influence, it is essentially a reactionary work whose whole reason for existing is an obsession with the sins of Europe.
“It’s an original Afrofuturist TTRPG,” Walters said. “It is a science fiction universe where there is no colonialism. There is no expansionist rhetoric. That is not the root cause of the action.”
Instead, the Musalians and Vutoa’s existing populations coexist all around the planet, in high-tech urban centers as well as strange alien landscapes. When conflict does arise, it’s often about two or more groups competing for scarce resources.
What on earth? Setting aside the ludicrous lie we're supposed to swallow that "colonialism" and "expansionist rhetoric" were uniquely European sins that the Mali Empire would have had no truck with (lol), what do these two paragraphs even mean? Everyone "coexists" but they have conflicts over scarce resources? What do you call it when one group says "this is our land" and another says "actually we've decided it's our land, we need it, and we're going to take it by force." That's not expansionism?
we came up with a premise that would allow lots of different kinds of people of color to have a place where they flourish
Lots of different kinds of people of color? I thought every single human in the setting was West African? Isn't that... only one kind of people of color? Who are all the other PoCs supposed to identify with? The hyena people?
One quirk of the current crowdfunding campaign is that DePass and her team have not settled on a game system for Mother Lands. [...] “That is a small part of it as far as I’m concerned,” DePass said. “You get the overarching story, you get the setting book, and then when you sit down to play, the mechanics literally tell you you succeed or fail on a thing. And it’s the degree of success or failure. The mechanics drive how you play the game, but to me — at least as a player and a [game master] of other systems — that’s a small component.”
OH MY GOD this game doesn't even have a game yet. What the hell? Even in the world of woke video games, can you imagine someone saying "We're Kickstarting this game right now. We don't know if it's a first person shooter or a turn-based strategy game yet, but give us your money because hey, it has no white people and it has the correct ideology, what else do you need to know? Get out your wallet!" The "game" exists as a series of live-play web-shows first, a game a very distant second.
Honestly, I feel sad. DePass sounds genuinely excited for the setting she's created, and it doesn't sound like a terrible idea from the outset. I'm sure they've come up with some cool stuff. But the need for things like this to function as partisan propaganda first and foremost, to make ridiculous self-contradictory claims about how there is no "colonialism" despite having wars and empires, to pass a hundred intersectional purity tests and ensure that every single sympathetic culture in the game agrees with modern progressives about absolutely everything and that anyone who doesn't is portrayed as Evil. These things are just poison. They poison any genuine exploratory impulse, any ability to portray a historical culture, or a fantastical sci-fi culture, that is truly different from our own, rather than superficially and aesthetically different, but otherwise is just a mouthpiece for our grievances.