PDA

View Full Version : Original System Ki Khanga vs Ubantu - the many faces of Mother Africa



tantric
2016-10-06, 09:30 PM
[this is likely in the wrong forum, mods please move if needed]

in the mid 90s, Atlas Games released a campaign setting for the then current version of DnD called Nyambe (http://www.atlas-games.com/nyambe/). i was an undergrad at the time, thinking of majoring in linguistics and thereby in my third semester of kiSwahili. i got it, i was appalled. see, i'd been reading Myths and Legends of the Bantu (http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/mlb/) (<--full copy online at sacred-texts) and this bizarre fantasy Indaba, My Children (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/545399.Indaba_My_Children). (<--do not give credence to anything in this book, it's like scientology for the amaZulu). Nyambe was a hybrid pastiche of hollywood africa - there was nothing real about it. so, i decided to create my own bantu-based campaign setting. and i have...understand that i was a grad student at the time, so my sources are science journal articles, PDFs, and i kept all of them. oh, here.....uh, i got this so far as having Steven Long (HERO) look at it, and he nixed my name 'Ubantu' - so find/replace with 'Wajabu'. Ubantu is a kind of backconstruction that means 'land of the people'. 'Wajabu' means, roughly, 'of wonder'.

WajabuPDF (https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0By0YPcc_zNYnU0J5YjZNbHFQLTg)
MapofWajabu (https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0By0YPcc_zNYnMTdheTg2WDF3X1E)

Wajubu is NOT africa-for-americans. it's bantu, to the core. there's not a lot that african-americans can identify with, or any other -americans, for that matter. but how it shows africa is also distict. there's no 'dark continent' here. the main civilization, Milikyunjovu, the Empire of the Elephants, is a progressive continent spanning culture that uses magic for technology. technologogically, it's between Renaissance Europe and america's West. but still very, very bantu.

btw, Wajabu is part of a series, the world of Refugium, where cultures that failed to flower on Earth get another chance, with magic. and just because, they all reach the Age of Sail at the same time. i'm working on south american indian/afro-caribbean continent now.

now Ki Khanga (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mvmedia/ki-khanga-a-sword-and-soul-role-playing-game) comes. mind you, i read all those books it's based on, and i loved them. i've been aware of the project for ages. Milton Davis lives less than 50mi from me - i've tried corresponding. i *love* sword and soul, and dammit, i got tha funk. when i was 17 i followed this girl into a bootsie collins concert and for the first time in my life, got out on the dance floor and got the funk down. in my personal religion, Starchild, of PFunk fame, is the next buddha. but dammit, i get the cold shoulder from everyone involved.

and on a personal note, all y'all whinin' about being left out of scifi just wasn't listenin' to the right stuff. scifi was in hiphop, all over it. it starts with the cosmology of PFunk (http://stuckbetweenstations.org/2011/01/11/cosmology-of-pfunk/) but it never stopped. Deltron 3030 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deltron_3030_(album)) Dr. Octagon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Octagon) Digible Planets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digable_Planets) right up to the Beastie Boys doing Intergalactic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln-Jq6X6p-g).boo

Grand Arbiter
2016-10-06, 09:56 PM
Either Homebrew Design(you're in it now:smallwink:) or World-Building (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?57-World-Building) should be a good home for this. The World-Building subforum is better if you're looking for advice on the setting itself. Homebrew Design is better at helping with rules and mechanics.

Alas, I lack the time to give your work a good read-through, but the idea seems interesting.

You may want to alter the thread title to make it more clear that this is a new campaign setting, and edit your original title into your first post. Unless someone looks in the thread they may think its a spambot and ignore it (like I almost did).