Bronze or Iron

[Mr. R]

Given what I have just learned about metal deposits and how these metals were worked, I am wondering if I will place my world at a Bronze or Iron Age.  

 

So which way would you go?

[Scott Ruggels]

 Well, Bronze is more recyclable into other objects. Iron less so, and needs higher heat to work. But Iron is easier tro obtain, where as Bronze needs tin, and tin requires long trade routes to obtain.  I think it was the Romans and Greeks having to go all the way to the British Isles, to obtain the tin for their bronze?  The Japanese, with nearly no trade routes, were able to cook beach sand into Iron, though not of particularly good quality.

[assault]

Something I've used is an Iron Age after a Bronze Age collapse.

That gives you Ancient Lost Cities, including ones Of Evil.

That's not strictly necessary, since you can have a Bronze Age that's gone on for a really long time.

As you know, the main advantage of early Iron was that it was cheaper (more available) than Bronze. That compensated for the thousands of years of experience people had with working Bronze. But again, there's the benefit of needing to travel to get Tin... Of course that assumes that the "Bronze" you are using is a Tin alloy - there were other alloys that get called "Bronze" for these purposes. And that you want PCs possibly leaving your main campaign area and zooming off to "Cornwall".

[GDShore]

Actually, iron is not cheaper to produce than bronze, even with the long trade routes required. Iron is harder to mine (bog iron excepted), harder to smelt, harder to work and produces a nastier byproduct slag than either copper or tin. Bronze is easier to work, to recycle and does not have the rust problem that iron has. Yes, iron is harder, more durable, holds the edge longer and weight for weight repels attacks better. The major push for "iron" late classic wasn't the scarcity of tin  but rather the presence of deposits of iron in Roman territories. It is physically superior to bronze in combat, and is the primary reason Rome conquered Greece (along with Greek infighting, ancient combat tactics and the Greeks were warriors not soldiers) 

     So Bonze or Iron age, why not both, why not set it at the cusp, where bronze is coming to its end and iron starting to dominate. Their will be some trade offs, no plate armor for instance but you will have some interesting  mash ups too.

[Duke Bushido]

Of you are creating a world, there isnt necessarily a Britannia, and there does not have to be a long trade route to get tin.

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

Unalloyed iron is actually softer than bronze. Its main advantage over bronze was its relative abundance, once forge technology had advanced to create enough heat to smelt it. When carbonization of iron was introduced, the resultant metal was harder than bronze, although also more brittle.

 

If playing in a world where ancient predecessor civilizations exist, one could even reverse the technological paradigm. The earlier civilization could forge iron and steel, but when they fell that knowledge was lost. "Modern" society is at Bronze Age technology, but weapons, tools and other artifacts of superior crafting can sometimes be found.

 

If your world features magic, more exotic materials could be fair game. In some of Poul Anderson's fantasy novels featuring elves, with their traditional vulnerability to iron and steel, they used magic to extract and work the likes of aluminum and titanium.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I like bronze age for several reasons.  First, it limits technology, so you get to a point and no further: no guns, etc.  You can make bronze cannons but that was much later when metallurgy got a lot better.  Second, it limits defenses and damage.  Bronze can be plenty sharp but it blunts and especially breaks easier than iron or steel.  It makes decent armor but again not as good as other metals.  So you're in genuine threat when you face off in a battle.  Third, it allows iron and steel weapons to be things of legend and awe, something like mithril, creating easy and reasonable treasures from a distant past (atlantis?) or a far civilization that learned to make iron in limited quantities.

[Lord Liaden]

5 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Of you are creating a world, there isnt necessarily a Britannia, and there does not have to be a long trade route to get tin.

 

 

 

The earliest bronze-using civilizations arose in areas where deposits of copper and tin were found together, facilitating the discovery of their superior alloyed properties.

[Lord Liaden]

IMHO more important to fantasy Bronze or Iron Age than technology, are their other associations in the popular consciousness. Bronze Age is the era of the ancient civilizations like Egypt and Sumeria, far removed from our modern way of viewing the world, which adds a more exotic dimension to role playing. Within the Greek cultural sphere it's the Age of Heroes, when mighty demigods battled strange monsters and the whims of the gods, who are very present and active in the world. Iron Age covers great empire builders such as Assyria and Rome, warlike barbarian peoples like the Vikings and Mongols, up to feudal knights and samurai with their codes of honor, concepts more familiar to most modern people.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Bronze Age is the era of the ancient civilizations like Egypt and Sumeria, far removed from our modern way of viewing the world, which adds a more exotic dimension to role playing.

 

Right, that's what I mean, I think the limitations on technology and development that bronze puts on culture necessarily creates these kind of ancient, more alien settings

[assault]

24 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Right, that's what I mean, I think the limitations on technology and development that bronze puts on culture necessarily creates these kind of ancient, more alien settings

 

I like the early Iron Age for this. The Greek Dark Age is a good example. We simply don't know much about this period, due to the loss of literacy, depopulation and abandonment of cities. Until relatively recently, it was also largely overlooked by archeologists.

And no, early iron wasn't superior to bronze. That didn't really start happening until iron working methods improved, leading into the introduction of steel.

Nothing in this implies any particularly fancy advances in technology.

"Bronze" also included alloys that didn't include tin. Arsenic was a particularly common substitute. Horribly toxic to work, unless done with the right techniques, but producing a nice shiny silvery appearance. Brass (copper/zinc) was another alternative, although much rarer given that its exact nature wasn't understood.

 

And for the record, classical Greece was an Iron Age society, as was the Hellenistic Era that followed it. The Roman conquest of Hellenistic Greece wasn't a case of an Iron Age society conquering a Bronze Age one.

Edited April 10, 2023 by assault

[Lord Liaden]

Exactly. The Hittites of Anatolia were pioneers in the science of iron working, but the Assyrians were the first to apply large-scale forging of iron weapons and armor to their large standing army, which greatly facilitated their systematic conquest of their neighbors. It wasn't that their iron was superior to bronze, but that they were able to equip more of their soldiers with metal than their opponents could.

 

EDIT:  Come to think of it, that suggests what could be an interesting world/campaign premise. Small, relatively peaceful Bronze Age realms are conquered by a ruthless iron-using invader. In addition to fighting and evading the imperialists, goals of the campaign would include stealing the secret of iron working and spreading it among the subjugated peoples.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Lord Liaden]

For something really away from the commonly beaten fantasy path, one could eschew both Iron and Bronze, and go Neolithic. An outstanding example is the Mesoamerican cultural area, of the Aztecs, Mayas, and many others. That featured an urban, stratified society, monumental stone architecture, elaborate theology and cosmology, sophisticated astronomy and mathematics, detailed writing system, and other hallmarks of civilization, all with tools and weapons of flint and obsidian.

 

The history of that civilization also offers a story template for what happens when such a people encounter intruders wielding significantly superior technology.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[assault]

Mesoamerica also had a cool sequence of civilizations succeeding each other.

"Lost" cities, abandoned temples, forgotten gods. (Or gods assimilated into other cults in a subordinate role, because there was a lot of cultural continuity.)

[Lord Liaden]

Like the city of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico, abandoned over eight centuries before the Aztecs arrived there, where the Aztecs believed the gods gave birth to the universe.

 

(Sorry for going on about this. Personally, the farther a civilization is from the conventions of the modern Western world, the more it fascinates me.) 😌

[DShomshak]

Though there's the risk of players staring at you blankly because they don't understand any of it. Whaddaya mean the knights wear jaguar pelts and wield atlatls and clubs edged with shards of obsidian? Where's the plate armor and chainmail, steel swords and longbows? Where are the wizards shooting fireballs? Where are the elves? 'Cause I wanna play Legolas!

 

As always, know your players' limits.

 

If you think your players can handle at least a little exoticism, the idea of a bronze/iron overlap has possibilities. Maybe steal a bit from Exalted, in which magic weapons and armor are typically made of steel alloyed with one of the Magical Materials associated with the various Exalted types: orichalcum (Solar Exalted), moonsilver (Lunar Exalted), starmetal (Sidereal Exalted), soulsteel (Abyssal Exalted, a.k.a. deathknights), or jade (Terrestrial Exalted, a.k.a. the Dragon-Blooded). But let's change things up by saying only bronze can incorporate the Magical Materials -- it's already an alloy, and as assault points out there were multiple varieties IRL. Possibly common soldiers wield "democratic iron" (as Homer put it) but heroes wear and wield magical bronze.

 

Of course you'll invent your own magical materials or alloys. But for a start, Orichalcum is Latinized Greek for "Mountain Copper," which to me suggests the old concept was some kind of bronze alloy. Wikipedia tells me there was also a form of bronze called Hepatizon, for its liver-like hue. Magical bronze can give a hint of the exotic without throwing players too much of a curveball.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

In Hero Games' official multi-era universe, the Lemurians employ "magically-strengthened" bronze, because iron interferes with their magic. Hepatizon (my favorite metal name) is also mentioned in a couple of Hero books as a "magic metal," but without further elaboration. For my Champions and Atlantean Age games I conflated the two, declaring hepatizon to be copper and tin mixed with powdered crystallos (ultra-hard artificial crystal), forged in an ignateum furnace (magical fuel). The resultant metal is superior to mundane modern steel, although still inferior to the orichalcum-steel alloy employed by the Lemurians' ancient rivals, the Atlanteans.

 

I also adapted a metal mentioned in Worlds Of Empire, a source book for Hero's Star Hero line. "Vinarcium" is a naturally-occurring alloy of platinum on the planet Vinarcus, both lighter and stronger than the most advanced steel produced centuries in the future. I transferred the concept to my fantasy games with the enabling device of enchanted furnaces to smelt it.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

Though there's the risk of players staring at you blankly because they don't understand any of it. Whaddaya mean the knights wear jaguar pelts and wield atlatls and clubs edged with shards of obsidian? Where's the plate armor and chainmail, steel swords and longbows? Where are the wizards shooting fireballs? Where are the elves? 'Cause I wanna play Legolas!

 

As always, know your players' limits.

 

 

Of course it's the sort of decision one should discuss with one's players beforehand, to gauge whether they'd enjoy something off the beaten path. IME newer members of a game group almost always want what's familiar, but groups which have been together a long time may relish a more exotic setting, at least as a change-of-pace.

 

D&D's Maztica, a continent on their Forgotten Realms world of Faerun, could be adapted for that purpose, possibly eliminating the foreign invaders from the more "generic mainstream" portion of the world.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Ninja-Bear]

A while ago I watched (a rather decent) martial arts movie where the protagonist learned the new Iron/Steel swords. However it was taught in private because the ruling class wanted to keep tradition and still with Bronze. Naturally one of the evil rulers frames the steel using sect and there is a great blood shed and revenge. But its an interesting twist. 

[Khymeria]

I have to agree with those who feel bronze allows you to keep a lid on technology as we believe things to have been and to have developed. I’m not a fan of firearms and such in a fantasy setting so I’ve a definite bias. 

[Duke Bushido]

18 hours ago, assault said:

Mesoamerica also had a cool sequence of civilizations succeeding each other.

 

 

I hqve done that quite a bit, as well as aboriginal north Americans.

 

It's just-- well, bluntly, sometimes that is what it takes to keep someone from trting to turn it into Tolkien.

 

"We're doing a fantasy of ancient Peruvians" or "let's dabble,in Innuits and magic!  No, Davien, there are no freakin' _elves!_ "

 

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

Doing late classical as a play by post.  No magic, other than healing potions, everyone is a fighter and….  Lot of spear fights, coordination rolls, but failed rolls hav lead to character killing results.  The players seem to like it.  Bronze tends to be the cheap armor, with weapons being mostly iron.  The players want to get to civilization and buy good equipment, but they are armpit deep in horse archers who hhhhhhate them.  

[Mr. R]

On 4/10/2023 at 1:52 PM, Khymeria said:

I have to agree with those who feel bronze allows you to keep a lid on technology as we believe things to have been and to have developed. I’m not a fan of firearms and such in a fantasy setting so I’ve a definite bias. 

 

This is what I want.  Also I find Bronze age more mystical.  And since my main opponents are Goblyns/Giants!

[Opal]

Bronze!

And not just because I like Glorantha.

 

Ok, actually the Bronze/magic vs magic-incompatible iron thing, is cool.  The Glorantha version where Bronze & Battlemagic is the norm and iron rare is an intriguing variation. 

 

Next fantasy game I run I'm thinking of doing late Neolithic, with mystical-seeming metals being revealed as it progresses.