African Adventures

Celebrim

Legend
[MENTION=4937]But I REALLY want to know is, have you USED any of this?

To be honest, no, I haven't. I've researched it, just as I've researched all sorts of myths and legends and cultures as part of nothing necessarily more ambitious than coming up with new ideas for cool monsters or magic items or other game elements. I've just never used any of it.

I grew up in the Carribean, with the Anansi tales, and those have roots growing back into Africa but they are no longer simply African. So in my games you might find talking animals. But I can't say that those things are simply African, just influenced second or third hand by things that centuries ago were African.

But even more so, there is no 'Africa' on my imagined world's map. The history of the dark skinned peoples on the map aren't the same as the history of the people of Africa. Nor for that matter is the history of humanity the same as the history of humanity in this world. Indeed, skin color per se is a relatively minor feature, considering you've got all sorts of fey, dwarves, goblins, elves, idreth, and orine laying claim to the title of 'people' plus an enormous number of things that aren't considered 'people' but are sentient. It's a different world, and I try not to draw too obvious of parallels.

So in my game, if African things were to show up, they are just as likely to be showing up amongst a culture of people with fair skin or ruddy skin as chocolate or ebony colored skin. You have white slave boys with cockney accents riding hairy elephants, and it's just as much India as England (or New England) that in my head goes into the culture of someplace like Ansedomo or Lazipoli.

Among other things, I'm not interested in making any statements about real world nations (in every sense of the word) in my game. I don't feel I have a moral obligation to address historical wrongs - even if I could do such a thing, which I can't - by making proclamations in my game. I creating something that I hope feels real and vibrant, and I'm shamelessly and wildly borrowing and stealing from everything I can get my hands on both historical and literary. So if there was some little snippet of culture, ritual, or belief that I could steal from Africa to season my game, I would. But I've got zero interest in having Africa on my map somewhere.
 
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doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
I'm not sure you should be lecturing anyone on attitude.

How did you go from the OP's statement that he didn't intend this to become a political debate, to the idea that he wants a setting based on false stereotypes and broad generalizations?

You've obviously got a big chip on your shoulder. Let's just get a few things out of the way:

1) No one in the thread is denying the size and diversity of Africa or that it indeed occupies a unique place in real world history.
2) No one in the thread if they played with or in an African setting would prefer a setting filled with false racial stereotypes or other demeaning generalizations.
3) No one in the thread thinks that Africa is just Europe with black people, although you then immediately did go on to say, "So, don't be afraid to fill places with European style cultures with dark skinned humans.", so I'm not certain exactly where you stand on this

Now, on a side note, I haven't watched the particular youtube videos you linked to so I can't judge it particularly, but from of my few past viewings of the channel I do associate 'CrashCourse' and vlogbrothers with some of the lamest, most poorly reasoned, one dimensional, illogical, poorly sourced populist trash you're ever likely to find in something purporting to teach history (or anything else). I suppose its slightly better than getting your history from a conspiracy theorist, but only just. I basically see that face on a video, and go "Oh no. Not him again. Can't he just recite Wikipedia instead." I mean, I know it's just supposed to be broad overview, but if there was a word that meant distilling things down to broad to the point of erroneous generalizations based on misconceptions and partial truths, like I don't know 'stereotyping' maybe, then John Green's face would beside it. Just an opinion, take it or leave it, but those links do the opposite of impress me.

In any event, you are just proving to me that this sort of stuff is nearly impossible to incorporate into your campaign because someone will always have some definite opinion of how it should be done and will find be offended otherwise.

Not sure which part of this post is most absurd.

Do you get your info from Fox News? That's about the quality of knowledge I expect from people who think vlogbrothers explanations videos are 'populist trash'.

But hey, people think all kinds of things. I'll leave you to your nonsense.
 

Connorsrpg

Adventurer
[MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION]
Seriously? Are you just here to pick a fight? Can you PLEASE READ the rest of this thread to see where I am trying to come from? Celebrim too. Read his first post in the thread. That might provide some context to what has been said.

In any case, now the thread is becoming more about what I did not want it to be.

[MENTION=6667844]eve[/MENTION]ryone ;)
Has anyone used some African-influenced ideas in their games? Would they? I am talking from as little as a piece of equipment to races, to monsters and even cultures/kingdom ideas.

I am even more interested in how you mashed/mixed it with what you already have, rather than having an African-influenced stand alone continent etc.

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]
Among other things, I'm not interested in making any statements about real world nations (in every sense of the word) in my game. I don't feel I have a moral obligation to address historical wrongs - even if I could do such a thing, which I can't - by making proclamations in my game. I creating something that I hope feels real and vibrant, and I'm shamelessly and wildly borrowing and stealing from everything I can get my hands on both historical and literary. So if there was some little snippet of culture, ritual, or belief that I could steal from Africa to season my game, I would. But I've got zero interest in having Africa on my map somewhere.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?458297-African-Adventures/page4#ixzz3zuXyZ6rP

Thanks. That is sort of where I am going with this. All cultures get mixed up in my worlds too. Glad to hear you mix things up.
[MENTION=6667844]eve[/MENTION]ryone again
Still seeking whether any of those 'things' are African-influenced and how they worked from anyone. Some specifics would be great.

Is there anything worth writing for general use? Monsters, Deities, Classes, Subclasses, Races, Equipment, etc. Anything people would like to see?
 

Having just reread the thread, I see there are a lot of people stating sources where you can get info for real-world Africa and plenty of fantasy Africa too. Thanks. But I REALLY want to know is, have you USED any of this? Is there anything you would like to see developed? Which parts/ideas? Have you mashed any of this with other fantasy elements in your setting? Like the red-skinned dwarf pirates mentioned above - don't care if it is not 'true to real world' - just where the idea came from and how it went.

Yup I did.

I have references from common African themes, to historical events, to mythological concepts and ideas, and heck chose a big bad that is a common theme to African sorrow that we all can hate responsibly. :D

I also have references to multiple cultural ideas and honestly, if you want a specific theme or part of the continent to be highlighted, let me know. :)

edit: however, I do want to throw up something that's bugging me.

I'm trying to find a way to do Egypt without seeming like several hundred hack jobs we've seen since robert e howard. so any resources to use for inspiration on a unique spin?
 

Celebrim

Legend
Is there anything worth writing for general use?

So here is where you get to the real problems. You see, before the Europeans show up, most of sub-Saharan Africa was occupied by a patchwork quilt of small iron age kingdoms numbering under 200,000 people, and often basically city states of no more than 20,000 people. Again, see pre-Classic Greece or something equivalent. And with the exception of Ethiopia, which being an empire itself had traded ideas with groups outside of Africa and had its own literary tradition, most of these nation states relied entirely on oral tradition and produced almost no written records and had no direct contact with anything more than a hundred miles or so away. Very little can be definitely said about the beliefs of this period, as they got obliterated almost as thoroughly as the Druidic beliefs of the Britons and survive mainly as oral tradition that has itself probably been influenced by contact with Europeans in much the same way that we can see the underlying pagan tale of Beowulf being influenced by its contact with Christianity. But in general what we are dealing with is a typical animistic society beginning an early transition to polytheism without the benefit of widespread literacy similar to what you see in a lot of the worlds stone and bronze age cultures.

Monsters...

There is almost nothing monstrous in the African mythic tradition that can't be replicated (and usefully replicated) by reskinning monsters from other cultures already documented in D&D as African. This is probably because most fears that give rise to monsters - plagues, cannibals, flesh-eating animals, human psychotics, and so forth - are pretty universal, and lacking literature those monsters didn't have a significant body of uniform lore around them. Think about for example how much we know about the very ancient plague monster we call a vampire is defined by literature of the last 150 years or so. Also, there is a pretty solid theory in my opinion that the great diversity of monsters we know of from eastern Mediterranean myth (largely passed down through the Greek tradition) are artifacts of ancient attempts at what we'd know call paleontology. The Greeks would dig up these bones of say a mastodon, and try to reconstruct what sort of creature it must have come from, and come up with a Cyclops. And further, ancient Bestiaries served as those literary sources for making sense of all the disconnected stories about these monsters. In Africa, you really didn't have much of that, nor did you end up with a heraldic tradition, so you can pretty much rough approximate the monsters of Africa with things like D&D dopplegangers, lycanthropes, ogres, ogre magi, redcaps, imps, windigos, thunderbirds, ghosts, and various dinosaurs to serve as cryptids. Throw in real world animals and an animal spirit template and you are just about done. If you want to get more specific than that, you'll need to dig up a book recording oral tradition, but I suspect that will get you not much further than trying to do the same thing with Gaelic or Slavic fairy tales will get you - a bunch of stories but not necessarily any coherent monster traditions.

Deities...

African religions on one level are incredibly diverse, representing the incredibly ethnically and linguistically diverse peoples of Africa where you might have 150 distinct ethnic groups in one smallish country. But on the other hand, coming from only an oral tradition the body of lore accessible to you on any on of them is pretty darn small. But there are some general features. They all tended to believe in a universe that had always existed in a steady state and wasn't changing or at least hadn't changed in a very very long time. They all believed this universe was ruled by a supreme deity that was largely remote and unconcerned with human affairs and who was himself not worshiped because it would be pointless. They all believed the supreme deity was served by a vast array of lesser deities with province over things down to individual rocks, trees, or bodies of water, and these lesser deities were themselves not particularly concerned with human affairs but which could at least be bribed or propitiated by making offerings and performing the proper rituals. They all had a scholarly caste of persons who studied the natural world and whose job it was to deduce via a very broad range of divination techniques which deity (or ancestor!) had been offended and was asserting negative influence over the person's life, and to then advise on how that being might be either appeased or thwarted. This role in D&D terms was less clerical than it was shamanic or wizardly, and religion as such had a disorganized character compared to cultures that have reached true polytheism. For example in most polytheistic cultures, the dominate buildings in a settlement would be one or more large temples, serving as the communal center and focal point of worship. You don't really see that in Africa.

There are of course exceptions on pretty much all of those points, which true creator deities, near mono-theistic faiths were most of religious life nonetheless revolved around reverence for ancestors (the chief of which was the first person), and so on and so forth. But in D&D terms, it's not that hard to appropriate an existing pantheon suitable for your fantasy culture, give the Sky God and the Earth Goddess an African avatar, and then largely make the religious life shamans and wizards with few true clerics, and have a fairly close approximation good enough for gaming purposes. And that certainly makes much more sense than trying to import 500 different supreme deities, most of whom had the same characteristics and differed mainly in their names.

Classes...

I've long been of the opinion that if your class can't serve as a basis for every culture, then it has too much culturally specific baggage. So, if your 'Barbarian' can only serve as Norse beserkers, you might need to rethink. If your 'Druid' can only serve as Northern European shamans, you might need to rethink. If your wizard or cleric can't be a wizard or cleric in any culture, you need to broaden out.


Pygmy peoples, who are basically humans with a 'small' template. That's about it. Again, the idea of things like elves or dwarves living as a race of humanoid peoples that are peers of humans is actually largely a recent literary invention more or less paralleling the development of D&D in many ways. It's not even really a feature of ancient European myth.

Which to me sort of suggests the real African tradition is in our future as the growing literacy and prosperity on the continent leads to them, as Tolkien did, reinventing their own stories.

Equipment, etc. Anything people would like to see?

I feel about equipment very much like I feel about classes. In particular, the range of numbers and attributes you can use to distinguish one weapon from another is fairly small and tightly constrained. There just aren't a lot of gaps in most weapon tables that need to be filled. Mostly you'd be taking the word for "sword" or "dagger" or "spear" in one language and calling it a completely new item, which always to me felt a little silly. A good weapon entry for something like morning star, short sword or scimitar ought to encompass a very broad range of weapons from a great many cultures of the world. And while it might be good to deal with stone, bronze, and iron age materials, in my experience as a DM you'll often be loath to actually apply the penalties for using such materials because it adds mental overhead and makes CR calculation difficult. Humanoids tend to be gimped as it without saddling them with inferior weapons with penalties to hit and damage, or more realistically, with penalties when attacking armored targets.

What in practice is this going to leave you? Well, from my experience very little unless I want to go about faithfully representing African cultures in my fantasy game, which from my perspective is pretty much nonsense or at least well outside my intention. There are no faithful representations of European cultures in my fantasy game, in part because Europe doesn't appear in my fantasy game either.

Nyambe is pretty good for what it is.
 

Connorsrpg

Adventurer
[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION].

Okay, wow. All true, but again, all very 'historic'. As you have mentioned a lot of races etc aren't really Euro either, I am again interested in African-influenced. Not direct stats/writings based exactly on what was there (or believed to be).

Your last statement is about the best though. Maybe Nyambe covered everything ;)

Was just thinking about whether there was anything left to convert.

I already have a large extended equipment list (that includes some African weapons I don't think fit what is in the PHB). Just wondering whether there were some cool races you could knock up or subclasses etc.

But, I think I am drowning in the 'real-life' Africa at the moment. ;)

If anyone has something D&D/5E-related to share please do.
 

Connorsrpg

Adventurer
[MENTION=10869]Shades of Eternity[/MENTION]

RE Egypt. In our campaign setting of Kage (linked above) I have had several games played in our 'Egyptian-influenced' realm of Nyaat if you wish to have a look.

In fact our massive campaign was picked up 800 years later after the initial heroes were turned to stone. Heroes from another time found them and converted them back to flesh. It was great b/c I got to show how the culture had changed.

We had a few unique spins on the Egyptian themes, but most of them revolved around the different roles of the different races I used for the setting. Nothing totally original, but feel free to check out.
 

Nice thread! (apart from the deviations into Real World issues...)
If you have Tales of the Black Kingdoms (for the d20 Conan game) it provides lots of interesting stuff for African-inspired scenarios. Also, Road of Kings (again d20 Conan) provides some background info for the southern parts of the Hyborian nations. In general, the Hyborian Age setting is a good example of how you can easily mix different historical tropes/myths/archetypes in a fun way (given that Howard used real-world cultures to define its view of the antediluvian Hyborian Age.)
 

[MENTION=10869]Shades of Eternity[/MENTION]

RE Egypt. In our campaign setting of Kage (linked above) I have had several games played in our 'Egyptian-influenced' realm of Nyaat if you wish to have a look.

In fact our massive campaign was picked up 800 years later after the initial heroes were turned to stone. Heroes from another time found them and converted them back to flesh. It was great b/c I got to show how the culture had changed.

We had a few unique spins on the Egyptian themes, but most of them revolved around the different roles of the different races I used for the setting. Nothing totally original, but feel free to check out.


ty kindly.

still need to put my analytical back into it, but it looks good. :)
 

Nytmare

David Jose
I have had one continent built somewhat like our Africa, but the desire of the players to be in a stereotype Africa for the most part and my desire to do justice to African cultures clashed somewhat so the campaign there didn't last all that long.

This was the same problem I ran into. Granted it was mostly a combination of me being really inexperienced, and that it was the wrong (excuse me I mean THE WRONG) kind of game for the group was a part of at the time. I saw the game I was planning as an interesting exploration of a culture that wasn't another medievaley Euro-centric clone, the rest of the group saw it as an excuse to air a bunch of 20th century African stereotypes safely behind closed doors.
 

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