India: Shiva's Dance

So I've been doing research for an India RPG for a bit of time now and while I'm far from done I've started to narrow my focus and head towards a key area to base the game on. My goal is to make a game that has enough basic information to make most of Indian history playable with minimal work, while still giving very specific and gamable information about one moment in history where everything went crazy. After all it's the times of trouble that make for the most interesting stories.

Here then is the very preliminary splash I've worked up for the game, which I'll follow with more detailed info as I go.

It took millennia of grandeur to build this realm India, a land of a thousand bejewelled kings and a million brilliant gods, where powerful priests compete with wandering sorcerers, great princes raise armies of drug-enhanced war elephants, pirates plunder merchant ships carrying diamonds the size of a child’s fist, and wandering adventures and courtesans decide the fate of crowns and temples.

But now it all rocks on the head of a pin, for a new force arises on the western horizon. Thundering through the desert with the zealous vision of a great prophet driving their conquest the Islamic storm is rising. Backed by fast hitting cavalry, masterful siege weapons, and a burning dedication to their One God, they come to cast down temples and kings alike, to plunder and convert, to change the face of the realm forever.

Enter one of the most turbulent, opulent, terrible, and unexplored eras of human history: a time when peoples and religions clashed and built a future that would create the world’s largest democracy and the threats that still threaten to bring it crashing down. Now it is your turn to play the great and low ones, to make the deals and fight the battles that change the world, to explore and conquer while Shiva dances the end of the old world into the beginning of the new.

India: Shiva’s Dance, 275 pgs hardback – Coming in August 2005.

(Hopefully) To be followed with the supplements:

India: Gods and Chariots – The Epic Age
India: Rise of Empire – The Mauryas and Guptas
India: Allahu Akbar! – The Slave Sultans and Great Mughals
India: The Raj – British Conquest and Rule