Kafer Dawn (2300ad, Games Designers Workshop, 1987) | Retro Adventures

ife for colonists on Aurore was difficult at best. Native plant and animal life was deadly to humans and soil had to be brought in by the ton to grow imported crops. Tidal bores were scoured by half-mile tall waves twice a day. Earthquakes and volcanic activity were constant hazards. Then, the Kafers came…
The inhabitants of Aurore always took a special pride in their home - it was the most spectacularly beautiful and at the same time least hospitable of the garden planets in the French Arm. For years it was also the end of the line in a colonial arm that terminated at planetless Arcturus, a dull ruby in Aurore’s night sky. The Kafers were first encountered at Arcturus, and then their invasion fleet and invading armies struck Aurore. The battle was close, but the major population centers held out. Now, the remaining Kafers need to be hunted down and rooted out.
Kafer Dawn covers the campaign to mop up the Auroran “hotback” from the viewpoint of several adventurers who come to join the fight against mankind’s most bitter foe. Despite over a year of warfare, little is known of the Kafers, and so Kafer Dawn is a voyage of discovery as well. Are the Kafers necessarily our implacable enemies, or can better understanding bring peace to both species?
Kafer Dawn gradually introduces the players to Kafers over the course of four new separate adventures (all included in this booklet) which form a mini-campaign. From the time the players ground ship on Aurore as raw recruits to the time they participate in the final drive against the last major groupings of Kafers in the hotback, they will gradually learn more and more about their violent, complex enemy.
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[@h.s.lafever3277]

brings back memories, thanx!

[@RPGGamer]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@h.s.lafever3277]

@@RPGGamer in the video, you say you cant pronounce Tanstaafl. we pronounce it Tahn -stahf-ehl.
its actually an acronym for, There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. there is no social safety net on the frontier.
we spent a tour there bug hunting with the grenadiers.

[@wylde_hunter]

I loved this campaign, starts off as a 'turkey shoot', then gets real scary real quickly when the Kafers 'transform'. Thanks for the memories!

[@RPGGamer]

Glad to have brought back some good memories, like what they were doing, it just seemed like a lot of work left for the GM to flesh it out.

[@wylde_hunter]

@@RPGGamer It was but GM's always used to do that anyway, putting their own spin on a campaign.

[@RPGGamer]

@@wylde_hunter It's definitely lighter on information than many earlier adventures. While if it had come out in 1980 I'd just think it was a product of it's era, by the late 80's you were tending to get more fleshed out adventures.

[@kevingrozni]

TANSTAAFL--An expression from Heinlein: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

[@RPGGamer]

Thanks for letting me know, I actually thought it was South African as it reminded me of one of the names in Chappie.

[@NefariousKoel]

Didn't this one come packaged in the 2300AD boxed core set? Can't say much about the adventure hooks in the back, but I recall the example frontier planet info being helpful as an example of a planetary setting. Seemed more like a starter location for homebrews rather than a traditional adventure module.

[@RPGGamer]

Yep, it came bundled in the box of 2300ad, but had been released for Traveller 2300 as separate books.
It's a very nice setting, and I like the set up of it being just recovering from an invasion, which seems pretty unique to me, But did find the adventures to be sketchy on details with a lot of work from the Gamesmaster required, so not a great introduction to the game.

[@witchdoctor1394]

This always seemed to me like a *very* thinly veiled exploration of France's horrific colonial ventures into Africa... complete with dehumanizing the locals as 'aliens'.

[@RPGGamer]

I know 2300ad did take the Twilight 2000 background and had france become a dominant power. But I'm unaware if they used real world examples in creating that future. But there's a long history of using the terrible behaviour of the colonial powers in SF, from War of the Worlds forwards, so you very well might be onto something there.

[@danskkr]

Kafer was actually taken from the word 'bug' and is for real used as an insult from Apartheid south Africa.

[@chrissouthgate4554]

The thing I liked about the setting was the attempt to make genuine aliens, not men in rubber suits.

[@RPGGamer]

The Kafer's were remarkably well fleshed out, far more so than any other rpg of the time.