Okay, I posted this over at rpg.net too, but I'll try it with this much more discerning, interesting, good looking and cool group of RPGers.

What RPGs or RPG settings are there based on Hindu mythology?

I have this crazy idea for an animal fantasy game set in Ancient India. You know, where the players are monkey paladins of Hanuman or elephant priests of Ganesh.

Off the top of my head:

Sahasra, land of 1,000 cities by Dog Soul Publishing (PDF)



Mindshadows by Green Ronin Publishing

Then there is a free India based RPG floating around the net called LILA: A Vedic Role Playing Game.

I knew therpgsite wouldn't let me down.

Have you read/played any of those? Are they any good?

Quote from: noismsHave you read/played any of those? Are they any good?

I've read Sahasra, and sadly can't recommend it. it's just kind of bland, and the author sounds like he or she just read up on Indian culture on wikipedia for a lazy afternoon. It substitutes the glorious complexities of the Indian subcontinent for a stripped down fantasy equivalent which is very lacking in cool bits.

I think the niche still remains to be filled by a really kickass product.

Quote from: The_ShadowI've read Sahasra, and sadly can't recommend it. it's just kind of bland, and the author sounds like he or she just read up on Indian culture on wikipedia for a lazy afternoon. It substitutes the glorious complexities of the Indian subcontinent for a stripped down fantasy equivalent which is very lacking in cool bits.

I think the niche still remains to be filled by a really kickass product.

I know a bit about Indian history, but only from the fall of the Mughal Empire onwards. Not really enough to do such a product justice.

There must be plenty of India experts out there, though.

I recall from a couple of years back that Brand Robbins over on RPG.net (and other parts, I'm sure) was working on an India-esque sourcebook, something akin to how Atlas Games' Nyambe treated Africa.  I don't recall off hand if it was intended to be d20 or not, but that sounds familiar.  Sadly, I wasn't able to Google it up, and I've long since given up on using RPG.net's search engine for much of anything.

!i!

[Edit: Holy crap.  On a lark I used RPG.net's search engine...and it worked!  I found this post about Brand's d20 title Suryamaya.  Further Googling under the title, though, suggests that perhaps it was never released.]

Quote from: The_ShadowI've read Sahasra, and sadly can't recommend it. it's just kind of bland, and the author sounds like he or she just read up on Indian culture on wikipedia for a lazy afternoon.

As I understand it, this is quite off; the author is actually involved in Indian history academically. Where I think the book fails is in translating the concepts into game terms in a fashion that gamers will find intriguing; it's mostly thin translations to existing game concepts.

Still, I thought it was a good, flavorful read.

I can't find a place where the free downloadable RPG LILA: A Vedic Role Playing Game is hosted, so I have attached a PDF copy to this post.

I'm not sure how good it is, but you can't beat the price!

Quote from: ConanMKI can't find a place where the free downloadable RPG LILA: A Vedic Role Playing Game is hosted, so I have attached a PDF copy to this post.

This is just a preview of a planned book.  It certainly looks nice...

!i!

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaThis is just a preview of a planned book.  It certainly looks nice...

!i!

oh, apologies.

That was all I could find.

I was interested in what I saw, so I started to dig around a bit.  From what I gathered, that may be all that was ever produced for Lila.

It's kind of sad, really -- two of the most interesting looking Indian/Vedic games appear to be stillborn.

!i!

About Mindshadows by Green Ronin Publishing:

I did a lot of the preliminary work for a campaign using this subsetting and system.  While it has an Indian Flavor, it is more "losely based on" than actual Indian in orrientation. I find it more of a unique fantasy setting based upon a yogi/psionic based magic system centered on schools/ masters, than an Indian game.

Gurps India died a heavy death. Per the SJG boards, SJ Games was unsatisfied with the first draft. The author apparently dropped the project. Unfortunately, this was all around the time that SJ Games decided that the historicals just weren't worth producing, so if the project is ever resurrected, it will probably be an e23 item only.

I would be a bit concerned with running a Game Set in India.  It is the same problem most gamers have running a game of Empire of the Petal Throne/ Tekumel, and more directly with Qui or Tibet the RPG.

* It is alien enough to be out of most gamer's experience

* It might require a lot of reading/ work for someone to "come to understand" the game. Most gamers do not like investing effort into their "fun" (even though they will read a rule book cover to back four or five times).

* It is real, thus anyone who spends enough time/ money can easily know more than them by just picking up real books.  

* Since it is real, prepping for it would be like studying/ school and thus players will be adverse to it.

These last two are kind of odd to me even though they come from players I have talked to, because players will dig into and read through all the various WoD books for each clan, setting, group, etc, and spend more time studying it than a "real" setting.

Qui addreses this point about half way through the game.  Before this point, unless you had taken a College level Chinese History course, it just seemed like a fantasy world with Chinese Influences (The magic elements are minor and almost ignorable). The reason why the writers of Qui avoided all references to "China" and "History" was to avoid the stigma they found when they said it was a Chinese Historical Fantasy game.   Most people who read it when it said that "up front" kind of looked at it and shrugged.  When people thought it was a real fantasy, they read through a good chunk of the book and throught it was "cool, innovative, and wanted to play".  It is an odd effect, but I have found it to be true when I have tried to run any number of fairly historical games.

First, I feel obliged to point out that Lila is an RPG that was created by a hardcore follower of the Hare Krishna movement, and reflects their (very highly skewed) concept of Hindu mythology and faith.  Its about as accurate an RPG about hindu mythology as an RPG about early Christianity designed by an Opus Dei member would be likely to be.

Second, I agree that there's really no good RPG product for detailing mythological India out there.  What we desperately need is for someone to for India what Qin did for China.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditFirst, I feel obliged to point out that Lila is an RPG that was created by a hardcore follower of the Hare Krishna movement, and reflects their (very highly skewed) concept of Hindu mythology and faith.

Ah, so it is. That's what I get for skipping over the "Welcome" page where the author pretty much comes out and says so.

As for a Qin-like treatment of an Indian setting, I agree.  Furthermore, I'd suggest that a really good treatment of a Japanese setting has yet to be done (always the same, tired emphasis on the Sengoku period).

!i!