Current Fantasy settings that are not England/France/Japan/China inspired?

[shadzar]

Actually, except for the atlatl and a few others nearly every setting only has british/French weapons and Japanese weapons. I've never seen a Gada in any RPG, nor an Urumi or any of a bunch of other ones. It always comes down to the same very few weapons. Granted, from a gamist point of view there is not a whole lot to differentiate most weapons, you could easily call a Gada a "great club" and call it a day. It's really only when you get very simulationist and go for tiny differences for no reason other than to have a difference. But I do get sick to death of the omnipresence of the same four sources.

And the two specific reasons I am looking for an in-production game, are #1 that while I absolutely CAN make adaptations myself, I don't have a lot of time so I prefer something I can grab and go and only need minimal change.#2 I want to vote with my wallet and support the development of more of this variety of product. buying and using a 20-year-old book doesn't help anyone. The company that is getting the money already fired everyone who made the 20-year old book and moved on to other things. Sure they're going to take my money but they're not going to make anything new.

i think you will find your biggest problem in your search is as you said, the mechanics are pretty much the same give or take, so why bother for most people. and then when you want people to create new weapons in fantasy you end up with what this guy explains... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ40GzR8kDk he has a lot more videos details the problems in RPGs.

except you have to understand, the majority of RPGs arent form a simulationist standpoint, but a fantasy one. so they arent going to reflect real like... you get those same 4 sources because "if it aint broke, dont fix it".


this is why, for 40+ years, people running games have been encouraged to create their own stuff. people would support AD&D, WotC wont release or promote it, so people can't support it. same for the settings with the items you are looking for. you can convert anything from 2e to 5e or 3e and then anything else, since everything now is pretty much 3e and 5e based....

the settings glut from 2e is over and most companies probably wont go down that road again, and niche concepts will remain in niche games. now games are all about boiling the entire thing down into the simplest form and just tweaking that concept and adding "diversity" to it. thus The Witcher TV series ... still set in Europe. new concepts die to 5e, like Etherscope, and other "strange" games, that strive to attract a niche. as they come in strong, then just a quickly fade away since they can't run with 5e.

you will just have to hope someone puts something up on DMs Guild that meets your niche needs.

buying and using a 20-year-old book doesn't help anyone

this is wrong. if it is a WotC book it supports 5e and MIGHT show interest in the product type for future releases. and if it inspires you, who cares if it is new or old. we are talking about ancient technology with these weapons anyway...

[GavinRuneblade]

i think you will find your biggest problem in your search is as you said, the mechanics are pretty much the same give or take, so why bother for most people. and then when you want people to create new weapons in fantasy you end up with what this guy explains... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ40GzR8kDk he has a lot more videos details the problems in RPGs.

I don't have a sound card at the moment, what is the TL/DR of that video?

the settings glut from 2e is over and most companies probably wont go down that road again, and niche concepts will remain in niche games. now games are all about boiling the entire thing down into the simplest form and just tweaking that concept and adding "diversity" to it. thus The Witcher TV series ... still set in Europe. new concepts die to 5e, like Etherscope, and other "strange" games, that strive to attract a niche. as they come in strong, then just a quickly fade away since they can't run with 5e.

I'm fine with niche, I'm just no good at finding them. Hence my asking and hoping to be pointed at one. ^.^

this is wrong. if it is a WotC book it supports 5e and MIGHT show interest in the product type for future releases. and if it inspires you, who cares if it is new or old. we are talking about ancient technology with these weapons anyway...

I certainly hope so, I've bought almost all the old Mystara books and am currently running Horde of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat set in Mystara instead of Forgotten Realms. Heh. Tragically, I see no evidence of it. But I sincerely hope I am wrong.

[GavinRuneblade]

Ben said Spears of the Dawn is also a good pick

That is a funky product a fantasy setting for a sci-fi game. Hits every target: still being produced, unique, and one of my requested settings: African. Bought it, looking forward to trying it out. Thank you!

[Valarian]

There's been a few tries at Viking settings, but far too many have images of Vikings with horned helmets and in my "young and stupid" days I defaulted to ignoring those as having been made by ignorant people so probably not worth my time (which ironically made me even more ignorant because those might have had great developers who were capitalizing on the expectations of their target demographic). Were any good? The basic DnD/Mystara book about them has a prominently horned dude so it's one of the few Gazeteers I never bought.

For an authentic pre-Viking era Skandia, you might want to take a look at Yggdrasill by le 7ème Cercle. The game captures the cultural and supernatural aspects fairly nicely, and the game mechanics are pretty good too. There's also Keltia from the same company, for an Arthurian Celtic Briton setting using the same system. For a decent Arthurian setting, there's also Age of Arthur by Wordplay Games that uses the Fate system.

[Valarian]

I can't recall any games or settings for pre-colonial Africa other than a few rifts expansions.

I've not got anything here myself, but I've heard some good things about the Nyambe setting by Atlas Games, in that it manages to capture the culture without falling back on European/American pulp stereotypes of African cultures.

[shadzar]

I certainly hope so, I've bought almost all the old Mystara books and am currently running Horde of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat set in Mystara instead of Forgotten Realms. Heh. Tragically, I see no evidence of it. But I sincerely hope I am wrong.

Sadly Mystara is practically Germany based. so there might not be too much there, but it is good stuff from OD&D.

I think you already mentioned the settings or countries in RIFTS, there are a few variants from Forgotten Realms like Maztica the Aztec setting which Tomb of Annihilation takes place in. Sadly with the passing of 2e into WotC hands everything will likely follow 3.x or 5e and be Europe based. I know DragonTurtle Games is working on something, and other probably can't mention what they are working on. Research on a civilization like the 2e green splatbooks did and adapt to your game is the best you will likely do.


Maybe some of those board games out there have story or setting to them to mine for ideas? There is so many board games coming out daily i can't keep up to begin to tell you where to look. FFG seems to be the talk of the town most times.


if you can find them, there might be something in the old netbooks. this is some, but not all of them for various flavors. can't guarantee they will have everything you are looking for, but good sources to mine for things that spruced up games 20 years ago. https://www.acc.umu.se/~stradh/dnd/m.../NetBooks.html

[Nylanfs]

Here's the rest of Ben's suggestions.

Yoon-Suin (more a SE Asia analog)
Mythic Russia: Heroism and Adventure in the Land of the Firebird (eastern Russia != Europe)
Tales of the Caliphate Nights (The Levant)
Razor Coast (very Polynesian)
Tekumel is the great great grand-daddy of such settings (Science-Fantasy Asian/MesoAmer culture on a terraformed planet 60K+ years in the future)

And possibly Northern Crown

7th Sea also has a lot of different worldwide settings

[seycyrus]

Sadly Mystara is practically Germany based...

I don't see how you can say this, at all.

[shadzar]

I don't see how you can say this, at all.

because it felt like it prior to Hollow World and Blackmoor being shoehorned into it.

[seycyrus]

because it felt like it prior to Hollow World and Blackmoor being shoehorned into it.

No it didn't.

Ylarum? Ierendi? Atruaghin? Karameikos (Slavs are not Germanic and Byzantines certainly aren't), etc.

How can you say HW was shoehorned into Mystara? And blackmoor was as much shoehorned into Mystara as it was into anywhere else.