Here there be dragons...

Are you interested in an RPG featuring anthros that doesn't center around being animalistic or indulging in kinks? Have you been looking for a science fiction setting that isn't star wars or star trek or so "out there" that you hardly understand half the stuff the book is talking about? Do you have a preference for playing something other than the seemingly ubiquitous D20 system? Interested in a more narrative based that actually mechanically supports approaching the same problem, or even using the same skills, in differing ways and interpretations?

Then I highly recommend you take a look at a new system released not long ago called HC SVNT DRACONES, often referred to as HSD. Here's how it's creator explains the theme of what the system is all about:


"The Theme

A quick page-through of this book will give you a general idea of what you’re in for in a HSD game, but only a general one: space fantasy, animal-like characters, an apparent lack of humans and the presence of a few creepy looking monsters, all pretty cut and dry. But if this setting were only about being a fox person in a space suit, this book would be dramatically shorter. There’s much more in here than just that, and it’s in those nuances that even people who aren’t fans of the visual motif can find fascinating possibilities.

THIS IS A GAME ABOUT HUMANITY.

I know, it’s a curious thing to see in a book with a bunch of animal people wandering around and no apparent humans to speak of, but at its core, humanity is what HSD is really about. As you go through the lore for this environment, you’ll learn about the last days of humanity and the things that led them to it, and how the Vector race (one of whom you will play as!) came to be. HSD presents a unique situation in cultural evolution: a reset switch. It proposes that at a point in history 700 years before the current day in the narrative, human-kind effectively stopped and “started over”. Through war and strife their bodies were destroyed, changed, and born as something new on another world. Their old planet was leveled, as was the vast majority of its cultural history and heritage, and all the previous biases associated with slavery, racism, classicism, sexism, and so many others that all grew out of thousands of years of human cultural growth and change were effectively wiped out as the old race died and the new race took its place. Are such biases gone forever? Of course not. But the history, the social momentum, the inexorable force of thousands of years of slighting each other, that was all halted in a brief, fiery moment.

When humanity died and the race called Vector was born fresh and clean on Mars, they were presented with the greatest gift and most terrifying punishment any sentient species could receive: a completely blank slate.

Vectors are, at their core, more human than animal. In their original design they were crafted from blank human fetuses and given animal traits and appearances, not the other way around. They possess no history before their creation, no exploration before their society, no natural evolution outside of a test tube, and every member of their gene pool is separated by no more than 50 years. They have always known the entirety of each other, they have all grown together from the first day, and they have all heard the story of what befell the race that created them. For 700 years, this new life form has had to learn to live with each other without the lessons and atrocities of humanity to point back to, for better or worse. They are human inside, but they lack human form, human context, human history and human tradition. All they have left is the husk that is Earth hanging overhead and the single, clear message:

“These people did it this way, and it destroyed them.”

HSD is not about ‘getting in touch with your animal side’, as so many anthropomorphic systems encourage. You’re welcome to, if that’s the way you’d like to play it, but the setting is intended to allow you to get in touch with your human side instead. Not the culture you were raised in, or the history you’ve experienced. Not whether you’re black, white, red, yellow or polychromatic. Not your geographical history or the wars your species has been in. Your humanity. Just that. Devoid of the centuries of cultural momentum that currently governs our thinking and thrust into a brand new world with its own unique challenges.

How do we define ourselves when we lose everything we were, and become only what we are?”


For more information, you can check the official website (though it's still admittedly a work in progress) here: http://hsdroleplayinggame.com/

There's also a lot of information on its Kickstarter page, even though the funding is over: https://www.kickstarter.com/project.....es/description

And, after all that, if you find yourself intrigued, you can download it free at DriveThruRPG here: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/produ.....-Svnt-Dracones

It's a "pay what you want" setup for the core rules from the success of the kickstarter, though if you like it, I would highly encourage to donate via the tumblr page here: http://hcsvntdracones-game.tumblr.com/ to help this franchise, which I think has a lot of potential, grow and expand.