A team of South American RPG designers is creating a DnD setting called Koboa. Its mission statement? “To make a world that not only represents all South Americans, but celebrates them and their culture”. The project, a 150-page setting book, came to Kickstarter May 9, and hit its $10,000 funding goal in just four hours.
“I’ve spent the last five or more years thinking a lot about wanting to see more people like me in Fantasy and why I don’t,” says Ecuadorian lead designer Adrián Mejía. “There’s a lot of factors involved in the dearth of latine representation in Fantasy as a genre, and as I got back into D&D and made a campaign for my friends I decided to make a very latine setting.”
Koboa is an idea five years in the making (and two years in active development). It’s a land healing from centuries of occupation, whose inhabitants can use magical Maps to change their ‘form’. It features 13 forms to use as DnD races or instead of races.
Mejía says the forms system was designed to be simple, but allow players lots of choice to combine different attributes. “As a Mestizo myself, I always like to play mixed characters but never really liked how no major system gave me a way to do that that worked well and didn’t require me to check for permission with the GM.
As well as its forms, Koboa also includes two new DnD classes, and a whole bunch of subclasses. It’s compatible, not only with Dungeons and Dragons 5e, but also Pathfinder 2e, and Kobold Press’ Project Black Flag.
The new DnD setting contains five territories, each allowing different South American themes and cultures to shine. To enable them to cover such a wide variety, the team made sure to involve a diverse bunch of contributors. It has creators from six different South American countries, as well as members of the Xukuru, Quechua, and Kichwa Indigenous peoples.
“We’ve put great efforts into forming a team of creators with diverse views and life experiences from all over the continent,” says Mejía. “We want Koboa to overflow with our stories and our culture.”
The Koboa Kickstarter has raised $17,000 at time of writing, with 29 days to go. Backers can get PDF or hardcover copies of the book.