[Recess '12] Steal Away Jordan—Last Defense of the Quilombos

[lula]

I've been aching to run this game for a while now and the chance has finally appeared …

IT IS THE TWILIGHT of the seventeenth century. The Portuguese invader dominates the South American region we now know as Brazil, strangling the native American tribes and working their cruel plantations with kidnapped and enslaved West and Central Africans. The only beacon of freedom in a hell that masquerades as civilization comes from the quilombos: hidden fortresses in the Amazon rainforest's depths where free Africans and Amerindians study the martial arts, stockpile weapons, and plan daring raids and guerrilla campaigns against the European oppressor.

NOW, IN THE WAKE OF the great African King Ganga Zumba's demise, Armageddon is close at hand. The Portuguese have summoned their generals and massed their artillery for a final crusade to exterminate the quilombos' resistance once and for all. Can you halt the European advance and change the course of history forever, saving the nascent Brazil from herself? Play as a hard-boiled African or American Indian rebel fighter, a cunning conjurer, or the newly crowned warrior King Zumbi of Palmares himself in a desperate battle for freedom against overwhelming odds. May God make mighty your hands, for they hold South America's fate and future.

STEAL AWAY JORDAN: Final Defense of the Quilombos. FIGHT BACK.

•••

Steal Away Jordan by Julia Bond Ellingboe is one of my favorite RPGs. You play as slaves, usually but not exclusively somewhere in pre-Civil War America. I decided to take one of my favorite historical events and use Steal Away Jordan to represent it, which is to say, to run it completely off the rails and give the players the chance to rewrite history. I don't know how many of you guys have heard of King Zumbi or of the Quilombo dos Palmares, but he/it was one of history's most notable concentrations of badass.

Who's excited about this game? Who has questions? Who thinks it's a terrible idea and wants to knife fight me on a subway platform?

[Leftahead]

It's a great idea, and SAJ is a great game.

Sorry, no knife fight, just the hope that I score a high enough priority slot to play this game, assuming it's not cross-scheduled with one of mine!

-JC

[urbwar]

It definitely sounds like a cool idea!

[jenskot]

This sounds amazing!

History:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quilombo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumbi

[lula]

Hokay so I am going to post something cool about the game every day from now until Recess. Today, you guys get a picture of a little treasure from my last trip to the Compleat Strategist:

This is the Alabama Die. Julia Ellingboe suggests that instead of, or in addition to, the Skull Die, which sits in the middle of the table for the duration of any Steal Away Jordan game, has a skull for a 1, can be rolled at any time for a slim chance of getting a benefit, and instantly kills your character if you roll the skull, you can set out the Alabama Die, which gets you sold to a plantation down in Alabama (kind of like death, but worse) if you roll the AL. Since this game is set in South America, though, rolling the AL will get you sold to a plantation in the West Indies, where slaveowners decided that working your slaves to death and then just buying new ones to replace them saved more money than keeping them alive.

[lula]

Today, you get to see what you're up against.

[Marcilda]

Thanks for a great game! Best 6 I ever rolled!

[PirateQueen]

Thanks for a fantastic game. I really enjoyed the setting and the secrets!