Into the Mother Lands: A Sci-fi RPG by PoC Designers

When Eugenio Vargas spoke to us on our podcast back in November about this Afrofuturist RPG, it was still months away. Now the game has hit Kickstarter, and has made over $100K in the first couple of days!

Into the Mother Lands - An Original Afrofuturist TTRPG

Setting book for Into the Mother Lands RPG!!!

www.kickstarter.com

Imagine if African explorers had set sail for the New World long before Europeans did... but got transported to a new planet instead! This planet is developed by a civilisation of African descent.

Choose from five cultures and several professions such as the Bio Priest or the Spine Ripper.

The team behind Into the Mother Lands is a group RPG designers, all people of colour, led by Tanya DePass, the founder of the non-profit group I Need Diverse Games.

You can pick up the PDF for $25 or the hardcover for $50, plus an array of dice, screens, maps, sheets and more.

Podcast #127 Into the Mother Lands with Eugenio Vargas

This week, Morrus and Peter are joined by Eugenio Vargas to talk about Into the Motherlands. In the news, Gale Force 9 sues Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything released, Comic Relief Plays D&D Part 2, and more plus a brand new sketch about the...

www.enworld.org

 

[Bagpuss]

Fandom charges people to use the Cortex Prime system? I didn’t know that!

And I suspect that it isn’t a nice set announced price but negotiated and if Kickstarter announces your budget you don’t start in a good negotiating position.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

This bit stuck out to me:

"We're still going with a dice pool, but streamlined to be easier to learn and to flow better for streamed sessions."

I get that streaming is a big part of the hobby how, but this strikes me as obnoxious. Are they building the best system for people buying and playing the game--virtually none of whom will be streaming those sessions--or ... a system tailored to their own streams?

Even the opening of that update, acting as though, months after the campaign ended, it's somehow pushy or weird that people "keep...asking" about the system, is just bizarre to me. I feel like this is nothing more than a streaming enterprise that'll now use the associated RPG as nothing more than a marketing tool. I'm an old fart, to be sure, but the whole thing grosses me out.

 

[Michael Linke]

Cortex Plus (and by extension Prime) already claimed to be written with special attention toward supporting online play.

I agree that a game optimized for streaming sounds like a terrible game to actually play.

 

[BRayne]

I mean "optimized for streaming" might just mean rule lite in way that minimizes time spent checking a rulebook and also minimizes rules lawyer types yelling about how "you're playing it wrong". With mention of dice pool and having Gabe Hicks involved with designing it I'm inclined to think it might end up being a development of the Mythic Tales System he designed for his recent run GMing for Dimension 20 which does fit what they're talking about.

 

[J.Quondam]

Is there something that actually differentiates a system "for streaming" as opposed to another streamlined system? I mean, there are plenty of systems that have been designed with a "lite" approach in mind, including the Cortex they were initially going to use.

I don't really see the issue here. The only newish thing here is attaching the word "streaming" to it. But what specific sorts of changes in a lightweight system "for streaming" would really impact how that game plays at a non-streaming table?

 

[MGibster]

Is there something that actually differentiates a system "for streaming" as opposed to another streamlined system? I mean, there are plenty of systems that have been designed with a "lite" approach in mind, including the Cortex they were initially going to use.

I'm not a backer or anything, but it wouldn't bother me save for the fact that I don't know what it actually means to be designed for streaming. But we're talking about the bare minimum of bother here. It doesn't throw up any alarms for me.

 

[Bagpuss]

It doesn't throw up any alarms for me.

The biggest alarm is they still don’t have a system months after the Kickstarter closed less than a year before they are meant to deliver.

Either it’s going to be late or it is unlikely to be decently play tested and most likely rushed.

Although most Kickstarter tend to be a bit late.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Eloy also knows his way around dice pool systems (I believe that's what used in Ninja Crusade, and it absolutely is in Part Time Gods). I'm personally suspicious about "streamlined" but then I often find that games focused on that lose most nuance from my point of view, but that just says I'm probably not the market.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The biggest alarm is they still don’t have a system months after the Kickstarter closed less than a year before they are meant to deliver.

Either it’s going to be late or it is unlikely to be decently play tested and most likely rushed.

Although most Kickstarter tend to be a bit late.

The key word in this last sentence is "bit" though. Like you say, I don't find it ideal that they're now having to drop back to doing a set of mechanics this late in the day.

 

[Eltab]

I have a sinking feeling that the organizers raced too fast to be "First!" and did not get themselves fully ready to produce their game. Of course "watching the sausage be made" is always a letdown, so I won't draw any conclusions.
I hope they show me wrong, and that their game will turn out to be awesome to play.