assault Posted January 18, 2022 Report Share Posted January 18, 2022 It might be fun to talk about barbarians. In your game, where are they from? What makes them barbarians? How do they live in their homelands? Can they become Conan style kings? How do they do it and how do they stay in power? Do they establish dynasties? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted January 18, 2022 Report Share Posted January 18, 2022 While I've never actually tried to mirror the career of Conan in my gaming campaigns, I've had PCs who wanted to play "barbarians," and I wouldn't have been loathe to take a campaign in that direction if the players wanted it. Historically there are a number of precedents for how barbarians can gain power in more "civilized" lands. Genghis Khan is the outstanding example, of course, but the careers of Odoacer and Theodoric, as well as the history of the Varangian Guard, also demonstrate the routes that barbarians can take to rise to power in civilized nations. As with Conan in fiction, these more often involve the barbarian becoming part of the existing military power structure, and rising in rank while developing enough of a following that they can seize rule themselves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted January 19, 2022 Report Share Posted January 19, 2022 I have done campaigns with and without barbarians; I suspect I shouldn't be so honest, but mostly it boils down to whim as to whether or not there will be barbarians, and just what it is that qualifies them. A few of the more memorable: One campaign featured a race of giants that were the barbarians. They were barbarians because they lived on a large (think "the size of Italy) island / mini-continent that was a line of dormant / smouldering volcanoes. The toxins, etc, given off by the regular emissions of gas and smoke stunted neurological and brain development. As a result, they tended to travel in bands not much larger than nuclear families, had only the most rudimentary basics of language, and that was usually unique to each clan, were aggressive on sight, and occasionally were cannibalistic. Why? Why would a GM do this?! Well, they were giants, and as such were physical powerhouses. Other side effects of the neurological stunting included a staggering amount of Stun-only defenses on top of everything else. They could periodically be found as slaves elsewhere, but were extremely rare outside their native lands. So they _could_ be encountered or seen-- and perhaps the party should free this slave! But what of the fallout of a free giant with zero rage control, etc? Made for interesting moral and social conflicts. Also, because of the rage and intellect issues, _no one_ wanted to have one as a PC, in spite of their ability to go toe-to-toe with a squadron of any other race. Typically, at least when I do barbarians, they are simply a race of tribal natives discovered by one (or more) of the dominant races, and are "barbarians" simply because they don't have fancy clothes (or... clothes....), wagon wheels, brick buildings, agriculture, and some form of financial system more complex than barter. In this case, "barbarian" is applied the same way white settlers to North American called the natives "savages." I have had a couple of games where the "barbarians" were simply extreme warlike or heavily militarized people-- in one, the society was every bit as "advanced" as everyone else, but all success was measured in terms of conquest, be they financial, military, raiding other lands, what-have-you. Violence was typically embraced as the first-choice tool for getting what you wanted; shopkeepers existed, as did a class of wealthy people, but they were well-armed, with a well-armed entourage, and were always very vigilant, even against their own hirelings. They may or may not have been based very vaguely on House Harkonen-- I say may or may not, because it wasn't done intentionally, and I never even realized it until it was pointed out to me after nearly a year of playing the setting. My favorite "barbarians" of my devising-- and I _think_ I have spoken of them before-- were desert nomads who travelled the continent along well-organized routes, each family having established their own route hundreds of years prior, and all families meeting for a festival once a year in the middle of Sea of Sand. Their social structure was Byzantine, as where there rules of conduct and interaction with each other. They were "barbarians" because they went out of their way to eschew machine-made or slave-made goods, all warfare was conducted with swords and spears (though there were a few bow users, specifically for combat with "outsiders," as killing at a distance was a deep insult to the bloodline of whoever you were trying to kill). Everything was handmade and food was hunted or foraged: agriculture was an affront to the "natural" nomadic lifestyle. Wealth-- gold or what-have-you-- was a means to an end, and never to be hoarded, but used to the benefit of all-- family first, of course, but for all. Fancy complex fabrics and beautiful artistry in wood-- for wagons, weapons, furnishings, or what-have-you-- glass, copper, and brass-- these were the trappings of opulence, as were furs and food stores. The pantheon of seven-hundred gods and goddesses was impenetrable to outsiders, but the religion guided almost the entirety of everyday life. These people were "barbarians" simply because their idea of a society was so far out-of-sorts with everyone else's: most people travelled to support a fixed location. The barbarians travelled because all free creatures are migratory by nature. People wanted homes in which to pack their riches, but hoarding was as unthinkable to the "barbarians" as is giving away wealth to modern Christians. Short version is that the simple difference of opinion about what was universally "valuable" made it impossible for a "civilized" person to make much sense of their behaviors, other than their violence. No; they weren't Conan-level violent, but they thought in the exact terms of "the People (being all the tribes of the nomads), the Clan, and the family." If you made an enemy of any one of the nomads, you made an enemy of not just his family, but his entire clan, and to declare an outsider an enemy of the Clan was tantamount to taking out an irrevocable contract on his life. Amongst Nomads.... it got complicated. No one ever made an enemy of "the People," but likely because of all the stories of the three empires throughout history that had made that mistake.... Their ruins still stand, in some places, where the earth is hard and salted.... Strangely enough-- or perhaps sensibly enough-- they were extremely gregarious, generous, and polite people-- you know: so long as you were, too. Steve, drunkonduty and Chris Goodwin 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Ruggels Posted January 21, 2022 Report Share Posted January 21, 2022 The Current "No Magic" fantasy game, is centered on Barbarians. They are temperate herd following nomads, that do trade with the empires they interact with. The current group have been hired as caravan guards, and they have run up against hostile horse nomads. That's the fight. In the background, barbarians have integrated into the the various empires after a couple of generations of worshipping the Imperial gods, and becoming sedentary. It happens in waves. The Caravanners are happy to have them as they have better skills for being out in the forests and grasslands they are traversing. They are also a talkative bunch. Duke Bushido and drunkonduty 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spence Posted January 21, 2022 Report Share Posted January 21, 2022 I always went with the definition of Barbarian being "uncivilized" with civilized being defined as permanent settlements, cities and technology. This of course makes the scale sliding. Duke Bushido, Lord Liaden and archer 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted January 21, 2022 Report Share Posted January 21, 2022 Hero's Turakian Age setting includes a variety of peoples classified as "barbarians" -- hill and mountain folk, forest and jungle tribes, and steppe- and desert-dwelling nomads. All terrain types which aren't generally conducive to the construction of cities and their stratified, specialized societies, although historically there have been notable exceptions. TA is quite lacking in sea barbarians, though -- no Viking or Oceanian analogues. (I added some, of course.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DShomshak Posted January 21, 2022 Report Share Posted January 21, 2022 My "Plenary Empire" setting has barbarians as appropriate to the quasi-Byzantine setting. First are the barbarians within the Empire. I remember reading about "Hill Tribes" in India, maintaining their separate cultures and sometimes acting as "professional barbarians" -- outsiders the settled lowland princes sometimes hired as mercenaries. Orcs are the mst notable such professional barbarians: the orcs of the Bone Desert, the Togrian Hills, etc. still live as semi-nomads or in rough little villages, allowed to govern themselves by their traditional folkways, as long as they don'tbother their neighbors. The orc tribes supply a steady stream of recruits for the Imperial Legions: See the world, get paid to fight and kill people, maybe come home with a bit of swag, what's not to love? And the chow is good! (Good compared to orcish cooking, anyway.) The orc drill sergeant is a trope of popular culture in the Plenary Empire; the orcs' chief god, Gruumsh, now has extensive worship among non-orc legionnaires. Outside the Plenary Empire, the human Savaxi are the former horse nomads who conquered a swath of Imperial territory and still press for more. A century after the Savaxi swept down from the highland steppe to conquer the fertile Macrine plain, Savaxi live off tribute from their subjects rather than herding and stealing cattle, but they maintain skills of roping, riding and war, and a culture of extreme aggression. The uniter of the tribes, Harix the Great, served the Plenary Empire as a mercenary in his youth -- which is where he learned Imperial military doctrines, and how the highly mobile Savaxi could break them. Harix also pushed the natural arrogance of the horse nomad, confident in his ability to rob and kill settled folk and get away, into a code of Master Race megalomania as a tool to unite the feuding Savaxi tribes. So the Savaxi aren't just pseudo-Mongols: They are pseudo-Mongol Nazis. Yeah, they are one of the villain groups. Since this is a D&D campaign, there is also the barbarian class. Only within the Plenary Empire, most members of this character class don't come from barbarian cultures. They are just people who practice channeling rage into combat prowess. Could be a Bone Desert orc, but more likely a streetfighter or a really badass farmer. Dean Shomshak Steve, drunkonduty and assault 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Ruggels Posted January 22, 2022 Report Share Posted January 22, 2022 On 1/21/2022 at 10:12 AM, DShomshak said: My "Plenary Empire" setting has barbarians as appropriate to the quasi-Byzantine setting. First are the barbarians within the Empire. I remember reading about "Hill Tribes" in India, maintaining their separate cultures and sometimes acting as "professional barbarians" -- outsiders the settled lowland princes sometimes hired as mercenaries. Orcs are the mst notable such professional barbarians: the orcs of the Bone Desert, the Togrian Hills, etc. still live as semi-nomads or in rough little villages, allowed to govern themselves by their traditional folkways, as long as they don'tbother their neighbors. The orc tribes supply a steady stream of recruits for the Imperial Legions: See the world, get paid to fight and kill people, maybe come home with a bit of swag, what's not to love? And the chow is good! (Good compared to orcish cooking, anyway.) The orc drill sergeant is a trope of popular culture in the Plenary Empire; the orcs' chief god, Gruumsh, now has extensive worship among non-orc legionnaires. Outside the Plenary Empire, the human Savaxi are the former horse nomads who conquered a swath of Imperial territory and still press for more. A century after the Savaxi swept down from the highland steppe to conquer the fertile Macrine plain, Savaxi live off tribute from their subjects rather than herding and stealing cattle, but they maintain skills of roping, riding and war, and a culture of extreme aggression. The uniter of the tribes, Harix the Great, served the Plenary Empire as a mercenary in his youth -- which is where he learned Imperial military doctrines, and how the highly mobile Savaxi could break them. Harix also pushed the natural arrogance of the horse nomad, confident in his ability to rob and kill settled folk and get away, into a code of Master Race megalomania as a tool to unite the feuding Savaxi tribes. So the Savaxi aren't just pseudo-Mongols: They are pseudo-Mongol Nazis. Yeah, they are one of the villain groups. Since this is a D&D campaign, there is also the barbarian class. Only within the Plenary Empire, most members of this character class don't come from barbarian cultures. They are just people who practice channeling rage into combat prowess. Could be a Bone Desert orc, but more likely a streetfighter or a really badass farmer. Dean Shomshak Sounds like Fun. The Murtani Horse Nomads in the No Magic game, are very similar to your Savaxi, but the Murtani are influenced (read: paid) to attack or bully other peoples by one of the princely fragments of a former empire. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted January 22, 2022 Report Share Posted January 22, 2022 My homebrew low-end-of-high-fantasy world has a few barbarians, mostly defined by being uncivilized (i.e., not having cities). Apart from the people in the focus land (semi-civilized, based on Sweden circa 1100-1200), there's head-hunting sea raiders on an island chain (Iron Age Celts with longships), forest-dwelling farmer-hunters to the north with spirit warriors (Finns with powers borrowed from L.M. Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt), horse nomads on the steppes over the eastern mountains, and the hill folk in the foothills of the southern mountains (humans and dwarves in a loose confederation, no banjos). The vast highlands are infested with goblins, trolls, ogres, and the occasional giant. The forest beyond the southern mountains have more of the same, and hound- and catfolk. There is an elf kingdom along the coast to the north, but they are very cultured, if lacking in cities. drunkonduty 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted January 23, 2022 Report Share Posted January 23, 2022 2 hours ago, L. Marcus said: My homebrew low-end-of-high-fantasy world has a few barbarians, mostly defined by being uncivilized (i.e., not having cities). Apart from the people in the focus land (semi-civilized, based on Sweden circa 1100-1200), there's head-hunting sea raiders on an island chain (Iron Age Celts with longships), forest-dwelling farmer-hunters to the north with spirit warriors (Finns with powers borrowed from L.M. Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt), horse nomads on the steppes over the eastern mountains, and the hill folk in the foothills of the southern mountains (humans and dwarves in a loose confederation, no banjos). The vast highlands are infested with goblins, trolls, ogres, and the occasional giant. The forest beyond the southern mountains have more of the same, and hound- and catfolk. There is an elf kingdom along the coast to the north, but they are very cultured, if lacking in cities. I was really, _really_ hoping you would join in on this discussion, just so I could say-- with nothing but love and respect, of course, but I can't pass up the joke-- "Well, now that we've heard from an actual barbarian...." (seriously, Dude: nothing but respect, but I know so few people from your part of the globe) L. Marcus 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted January 23, 2022 Report Share Posted January 23, 2022 Hey ...! I just need my beard trimmed ... Duke Bushido and Hermit 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DShomshak Posted January 23, 2022 Report Share Posted January 23, 2022 Speaking of horse nomads, I must recommend a movie called Nomad: the Warrior. It's from Kazakhstan, and Borat jokes would not be appropriate because it's an excellent movie set in central Asia of long ago. Is it historical fiction, or Fantasy? There is no magic, but there is a force of Destiny that one character can perceive. It has battles, love, courage, villainy, friends turned deadly rivals, and cinematic horse-worship like you've probably never seen before. Also an excellent music score of epic romance, worth acquiring for its own sake. Dean Shomshak Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Ruggels Posted January 23, 2022 Report Share Posted January 23, 2022 1 hour ago, DShomshak said: Speaking of horse nomads, I must recommend a movie called Nomad: the Warrior. It's from Kazakhstan, and Borat jokes would not be appropriate because it's an excellent movie set in central Asia of long ago. Is it historical fiction, or Fantasy? There is no magic, but there is a force of Destiny that one character can perceive. It has battles, love, courage, villainy, friends turned deadly rivals, and cinematic horse-worship like you've probably never seen before. Also an excellent music score of epic romance, worth acquiring for its own sake. Dean Shomshak Netflix, or Amazon? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DShomshak Posted January 24, 2022 Report Share Posted January 24, 2022 On 1/23/2022 at 11:22 AM, Scott Ruggels said: Netflix, or Amazon? I wouldn't know. IIRC I got the DVD from a local library after hearing the soundtrack on a radio program. Sorry! What can I say, I'm technologically backward. Even the laptop I'm using now runs on steam.😉 Dean Shomshak L. Marcus 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted January 24, 2022 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2022 For other nomad inspiration, see any song by The HU. Not all the video clips are in historical clothing, but there's lots of Mongolian landscapes and general awesomeness. The first episode of the series Epic Warrior Women covers the Scythians. Horse? Check. Bow? Check. Hawk? Check. Griffon tattoo? Check. Massive horde of female and male followers? Check. The other episodes in the series are interesting too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 27, 2022 Report Share Posted January 27, 2022 On 1/23/2022 at 7:43 AM, DShomshak said: Speaking of horse nomads, I must recommend a movie called Nomad: the Warrior. It's from Kazakhstan, and Borat jokes would not be appropriate because it's an excellent movie set in central Asia of long ago. Is it historical fiction, or Fantasy? There is no magic, but there is a force of Destiny that one character can perceive. It has battles, love, courage, villainy, friends turned deadly rivals, and cinematic horse-worship like you've probably never seen before. Also an excellent music score of epic romance, worth acquiring for its own sake. I have three books covering the history of central Asia that are almost indistinguishable from fantasy novels. There's two millennia of dynasties, war, intrigue, trade, and religion that in U.S. popular culture gets watered down to "Mongols and Genghis Khan". DShomshak, assault and Scott Ruggels 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Ruggels Posted January 27, 2022 Report Share Posted January 27, 2022 Nomad: The Warrior is on Amazon Prime video. So I guess I may watch it tonight. https://www.amazon.com/Nomad-Warrior-Jason-Scott-Lee/dp/B009RXXOQS Duke Bushido 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theinfn8 Posted February 11, 2022 Report Share Posted February 11, 2022 On 1/24/2022 at 3:50 PM, DShomshak said: I wouldn't know. IIRC I got the DVD from a local library after hearing the soundtrack on a radio program. Sorry! What can I say, I'm technologically backward. Even the laptop I'm using now runs on steam.😉 Dean Shomshak I acquired my copy on DVD several years ago and have never watched it. I will have to dig through my stacks of DVD books and find it now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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