Using Colonial Brazil for your Hexcrawl OSR

Let’s talk about how you can use Colonial Brazil as a template for your OSR hexcrawl campaigns. No, I’m not talking specifically about history, but on how some of the general concepts behind Colonial Brazil can help. Long story short, Brazil was colonized at first just as a way to enrich the Old World by extracting all the natural resources and goods they could get their hands on. That also included slavery and when the natives wouldn’t “cooperate”, a massive traffic of slaves was brought from Africa to brazilian shores. The first brazilian colonizers were mostly explorers, mercenaries and criminals. In fact, it was typical to leave convicted criminals at unknown shores and if they managed to survive when the ships returned they could even be pardoned (you will find more stuff here) - and yes that is a great hook for a game.

I believe Colonial Brazil can be an awesome approach for a different hexcrawl or Points of Light campaign. Instead of civilization being a distant Great Kingdom or isolated villages, your only safe havens here are very specific points of the shores. EVERYTHING else is hostile and unknown wilderness. Only at the shores you can trade, rest and get access to special equipment (you can even tailor specific rules, maybe certain types of rest, training or item magic creation would only work at the fortified ports in the shores).

That said, it is obvious that you can play D&D by going into the wilderness and facing hostile monsters and humanoid tribes but - frankly - that is rather uninteresting so: apply a twist! Again, using Colonial Brazil as an example: Europeans believed that the had a sacred mission to conquer and convert (even through slavery and genocide) the natives; that the local tribes were savage and inferior. That was their propaganda and was, of course, bullshit. Show - don’t tell - that to your players. In the same way that Brazil had native civilizations (not savages) before colonization, do the same to your wilderness. Even better, fill it with orcs, bugbears, goblins and all other humanoid races from D&D that you love so much; but place them here as cultures, not as evil bags of humanoid-shaped HPs. I addressed something similar in another post. You can even make the character think that they will be facing “evil humanoids”, but let all that Monster Manual “flavor text” be fake propaganda from the Powers That Be in the Old World. After getting into the wilds, let them meet rich cultures, like those found in Brazil. Let the character decide if they want to take part in the genocide (and suffer the consequences) or if they want to take a stand. This can be especially interesting if you use the convict exiles approach mentioned before: one of the most famous and mysterious characters of Colonial Brazil was probably a convict, but he became a respected leader among the natives (check here, unfortunately the link is available only in Portuguese). Steal that idea! Make the character feel welcome among one of “monster” civilizations of your wilderness, and despised among the powers of “civilization”. Let that feeling sink in and see how they behave.

Another cool concept to steal from Colonial Brazil is the exploration aspect. Ok, Portugal used Brazilian land and slaves to plant vast amounts of sugarcane, a valuable good; however, that came later. Initial exploration was often of local plants and animals. The name of the country, according to some, came from the brazilwood, used for expensive red dye at the time. I would change that. What if brazilwood (or its equivalent in your campaign) was a potent magic component that could be used to increase the effect of spells? If you make it addictive to magic users that is a plus; maybe it has to be smoked to empower the spellcaster (which would be nice because tobacco came from the Americas and shamans among in Brazil used it in their rituals). I just would keep this “magical spice” as a vegetable resource, to keep things interesting (later Brazil would see a gold rush, but mines don’t encourage you to preserve the environment and so are less interesting at this point of the campaign).

OK, we have local “monsters” and a unique supernatural resource so lets steal another thing from Colonial Brazil: Bandeiras! Like other historical themes that we are working here we don’t want the “real” Bandeiras and their members - the Bandeirantes (whomever they were). Actually, probably the historical Bandeirantes were brutal slavers and killers… like pirates, samurai, cowboys, vikings, and other famous archetypes, Bandeirantes were later romanticized into “national” heroes. Who were the Bandeirantes? (Long version is here). Short version is that Bandeirantes (literally “Flag-carriers”) were members of huge expeditions that braved the wilds in search of riches (like the famous Mountain of Silver) and slaves. Now, history aside, the awesome thing about Bandeirantes is that they really were adventurers’ parties! Exactly like OSR parties: adventurers, followed by followers and tons of hirelings. Some served the powers of the Old World, others were independent or worked as mercenaries, but it is definitely hard for a D&D player to read about them and NOT think on a campaign (there is a reason the first Brazilian RPG based on Brazilian history and folklore was called Desafio dos Bandeirantes or The Bandeirantes’ Challenge). You can use all your favorite party tropes from D&D as an official and socially recognized part of society in Colonial Brazil (i.e. adventurer partie were common and had a social niche). You can even play with party x party rivalry (c’mon, the most dangerous monster in D&D is nothing like the Tarrasque, but actually a high-level party of NPCs).

My third RPG and still a great game!

Now, you have the three main elements that I wanted to share with you:

• A vast “wilderness” full of “monsters”, with the powers of Civilization and Order holding small “Points of Light” at the shores.
• Legends of riches and exotic goods in the depths of the wilderness, like our supernatural brazilwood (spell empowering drug) or maybe a huge megadungeon sitting above a mountain made of silver, gold, adamantine or whatever precious metal you want.
• Organized (and probably rivals) parties of explorers sanctioned (or not) by the powers of Civilization.

I mentioned that you could use classic D&D monsters as strange and different cultures but you can move forward and use a setting just with dwarves, elves and other races from the Player’s Handbook (like this approach here). The “monsters” here are other humans, elves, dwarves etc. That would be a lot better to drive home some of the themes behind this theme (however, these days I believe that using all the humanoids is better, because it gives you A LOT of good options). Finally, you can do yourself a favor and do some research about the tribes that lived in Brazil at the time (the mythical and the historical), like:

• A historical tribe whose warriors were so fierce and feared that they used to jump in the sea, drenched in animal blood, so that they could hunt sharks with spears!
• Another tribe, with a rich religious culture, believed that each person had from 5 to 6 souls. And those souls could change daily or even be lost (like when you were sick).
• A mythical third tribe that lived in caves and had bat wings!
• The curupira, a forest spirit with backward feet who would lead raiders and those that disrespected the wilderness to other monsters dens.
• A monster known as the mapinguari that acted, basically, as a bigger bugbear. The mapinguari would grapple a victim (like a character in a party) by surprise, and run while carrying the poor soul into the woods (while EATING him alive, I forgot to mention). Usually trying to follow or catch up with a mapinguari would leave most parties lost.
• A type of epic monster known as the Earthshakers, of which only three survived. These ancient beings from a previous world have a vibe that mixes kaiju and Lovecraftian horrors in one place.

I love that art!

That is not even a tiny sample of the material that you can find. A good primer for gamers would be the outstanding The Elephant and Macaw Banner. Author Christopher Kastensmidt gives us an unlikely party of two adventurers in Colonial Brazil that adamantly refuses to employ slaves (one of them was actually a slave from Africa) and that travels in the wilderness to help people and battle monsters (real monsters!). The best part is that you have not only an awesome novel but also a great RPG recently made available in English (even if you don’t use the system, the bestiary and the art alone are more than worth the purchase). It is really a shame that Desafio dos Bandeirantes is out of print (and not available in English) as it had amazing ideas and concepts (like an african-based blacksmith magician known as the “Iron and Fire Sorcerer"... what a badass class).