Favourite Mediaeval Setting?

[Steve]

The 13th century had the Mongol invasions, so it would be an opportunity for lots of adventure and fighting. Almost like a medieval world war, I suppose. As I recall, they went on for a couple of generations before the Turks managed to repel them.

 

I also find the politics of Italian city-states to have lots of potential. Plotting, scheming and knives in the dark.

 

Like others have said, there’s always fun with Vikings. I would go for an older era for this. Perhaps 7th or 8th century.

[Doc Democracy]

On 1/17/2024 at 5:42 AM, L. Marcus said:

Deep-fried Mars bars aside, the Scots are alright.

 

Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Less hate for a dessert you probably have never tried.  There are a lot of scandi-snacks that I might point at that are, health-wise, as questionable as the modern classic you are trying to denigrate.

 

😄

Edited January 18 by Doc Democracy

[Lord Liaden]

Scotland and Sweden... FIGHT!

[tkdguy]

If you're going to set your campaign in Medieval England, you may find one of the calendars here useful.

 

Just for grins and giggles, you can find the phases of the Moon here. Why? Because werewolves, that's why.

[Doc Democracy]

4 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Scotland and Sweden... FIGHT!

 

My favourite player on my favourite team is a Swede.  Hendrix Larsson is a god.  Sweden is the last country I would find fault with....

[L. Marcus]

Henke is a bit of a legend, true. Almost as good as Ibrahimovich and much more personable! When he went from Celtic to Barca in '04, the two clubs met in the Champions League, the game played in Glasgow. Larsson scored on his old club -- and refused to celebrate. Class act.

[Cancer]

I've been working on a campaign in Asia and the Indian Ocean, starting about 780 AD, with an emphasis on maritime trade.

 

In medieval Europe ... I'd probably do North Germany (only because I've lived there), and I would again go for early-ish Middle ages.  That's  Charlemagne's era in nearby what is now called France, and includes the conquest of Saxony, but I would want to include land east of there out to Brandenburg or so, and maybe as far south as the Harz mountains, but that makes the area bigger than I'd want.  The lower tech includes agriculture still on the two-field system, fewer kinds of hardware.

[Mark Rand]

Arthurian England, based on the animated Prince Valiant, but with Queen Guinevere as a Knight of the Round Table and Rowanne as a soldier and, when necessary, Guinevere's squire.

[Lord Liaden]

Just as an aside to that, do you favor something close to gender equality in the world's society? Or would Guinevere and Rowanne be exceptional in that regard?

[L. Marcus]

Equality. In my little world, the oldest recognised child inherits title and land. If, by some random events, someone would inherit more than one title, the next generation with more than one eligible heir would divide the titles among them, the eldermost child taking the most prestigious title/richest holding.

[Rich McGee]

That gives me an idea, albeit a contrarian one.  Forget gender equality, make the starting state as awful as it was historically.  Then take the Black Plague and make it far more lethal to people with a Y-chromosome than others, so most of the deaths are male rather than female.  Then take my post-apocalyptic campaign above and run it as a less-comprehensively fatal Medieval Y the Last Man, with more men but much, much more social disruption as the previous order gets turned on its ugly head.

 

The historical bits are barely going to be recognizable, but it's an interesting scenario.  If it went over well you could run a sequel later on where the poor benighted Europeans are trying to fend off colonization from Africa, and maybe even from the Western Hemisphere if enough time has passed.  For added irony, the colonizing forces find themselves struggling to deal with native European diseases themselves, and the continent earns a lasting reputation as a backward pestiferous hellhole.   

[Mark Rand]

9 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Just as an aside to that, do you favor something close to gender equality in the world's society? Or would Guinevere and Rowanne be exceptional in that regard?

A few women have taken up arms, including Elaine and Aleta, the impetuous, and often prideful, Princess of the Misty Isles, but most don't.

[Lord Liaden]

3 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

That gives me an idea, albeit a contrarian one.  Forget gender equality, make the starting state as awful as it was historically.  Then take the Black Plague and make it far more lethal to people with a Y-chromosome than others, so most of the deaths are male rather than female.  Then take my post-apocalyptic campaign above and run it as a less-comprehensively fatal Medieval Y the Last Man, with more men but much, much more social disruption as the previous order gets turned on its ugly head.

 

The historical bits are barely going to be recognizable, but it's an interesting scenario.  If it went over well you could run a sequel later on where the poor benighted Europeans are trying to fend off colonization from Africa, and maybe even from the Western Hemisphere if enough time has passed.  For added irony, the colonizing forces find themselves struggling to deal with native European diseases themselves, and the continent earns a lasting reputation as a backward pestiferous hellhole.   

 

I remember reading a sci-fi novel years ago -- don't remember the author, apologies -- dealing with an alternate Earth time-line in which the bubonic plague had been much more lethal in effect than in our world, cutting European population by nearly three-quarters. Western Europe never recovered, and by the mid-Twentieth Century was under the dominion of the Turks, except for Russia which had expanded its empire into significant parts of the New World. But European contact with the New World came centuries later than on our Earth, and did not dominate the aboriginal populations to remotely the same extent. In fact the Meso-American civilizations had evolved to become among the strongest and most advanced in the world.

Edited January 20 by Lord Liaden

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

If I have to pick a place in Europe, I pick somewhere on the Mediterranean coast, where I can dip into Classical Greece and Rome.

[Lord Liaden]

On 1/18/2024 at 1:14 AM, Steve said:

I also find the politics of Italian city-states to have lots of potential. Plotting, scheming and knives in the dark.

 

In the 12th Century Venice, Genoa, and Pisa were all major naval and mercantile powers in the Mediterranean, and vied for control of important trade routes and strategic colonies. Intrigue between them could thus extend to other other parts of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

[Rich McGee]

19 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I remember reading a sci-fi novel years ago -- don't remember the author, apologies -- dealing with an alternate Earth time-line in which the bubonic plague had been much more lethal in effect than in our world, cutting European population by nearly three-quarters.

I don't recall that particular one, but I've read at least a half-dozen similar stories over the years.  The Plague makes a good change point for alt-histories, as does fiddling around with when Europe and the Western hemisphere make contact (and who initiates it).  Authors seem to love putting Europe under the thumb of colonizing outside powers, which does make good irony if nothing else.

 

   

[Steve]

4 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

I don't recall that particular one, but I've read at least a half-dozen similar stories over the years.  The Plague makes a good change point for alt-histories, as does fiddling around with when Europe and the Western hemisphere make contact (and who initiates it).  Authors seem to love putting Europe under the thumb of colonizing outside powers, which does make good irony if nothing else.

 

   

I read somewhere that the labor shortages caused by the Black Death contributed to the end of feudalism in Europe. If the Black Death had been smaller or never occurred at all, feudalism would have likely continued for far longer.

[DShomshak]

On 1/20/2024 at 8:51 AM, Lord Liaden said:

 

I remember reading a sci-fi novel years ago -- don't remember the author, apologies -- dealing with an alternate Earth time-line in which the bubonic plague had been much more lethal in effect than in our world, cutting European population by nearly three-quarters. Western Europe never recovered, and by the mid-Twentieth Century was under the dominion of the Turks, except for Russia which had expanded its empire into significant parts of the New World. But European contact with the New World came centuries later than on our Earth, and did not dominate the aboriginal populations to remotely the same extent. In fact the Meso-American civilizations had evolved to become among the strongest and most advanced in the world.

I believe it's The Gate of Worlds by Robert Silverberg. (I also read it years back.) But the Wikipedia article lists several other novels using similar conceits.

 

The Gate of Worlds - Wikipedia

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

Filing the numbers off the Abbasid Caliphate, the Mongols, or the Ottoman Turks can form the basis for an epic existential threat to one's European analogue. The Mongols work especially well for this, as their deliberate ruthless terror tactics in promotion of their conquests need little embellishment to make them appear as monsters to be defeated at all costs. That's certainly how Europeans viewed them at the time. The Mongols were in fact preparing to advance into western Europe when Genghis Khan died, causing their leaders to withdraw to meet for a kurultai to choose a new Khan.

Edited January 21 by Lord Liaden

[Rich McGee]

1 hour ago, Steve said:

I read somewhere that the labor shortages caused by the Black Death contributed to the end of feudalism in Europe. If the Black Death had been smaller or never occurred at all, feudalism would have likely continued for far longer.

That's a deep rabbit hole to get into.  The increased value of labor is often credited as a factor, but the general shakeup in the social hierarchies from so many deaths probably doomed the old order no matter what.  I'm inclined to think true feudalism would still have transitioned to more open forms of manorialism even without the Plague, but that's an unscientific opinion, not anything I've properly researched.  The European economy in general was already changing before the dying started, and if anything that might actually have been slowed a bit by all the chaos around the Plague.

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Filing the numbers off the Abbasid Caliphate, the Mongols, or the Ottoman Turks can form the basis for an epic existential threat to one's European analogue. The Mongols work especially well for this, as their deliberate ruthless terror tactics in promotion of their conquests need little embellishment to make them appear as monsters to be defeated at all costs. That's certainly how Europeans viewed them at the time. The Mongols were in fact preparing to advance into western Europe when Genghis Khan died, causing their leaders to withdraw to meet for a kurultai to choose a new Khan.

 

If we ditch the European requirement, central Asia is an outstanding source of inspiration.  I have a history of central Asia that reads exactly like a fantasy novel with intrigues, wars, dynasties, and entire civilizations that no Ur-Murrikan has ever heard of.    Largely because they were erased by the Mongols, and later the Russians.

[L. Marcus]

"Oh, yes ... good old Merv, we used to go there for chai."

[DShomshak]

Just now, Old Man said:

 

If we ditch the European requirement, central Asia is an outstanding source of inspiration.  I have a history of central Asia that reads exactly like a fantasy novel with intrigues, wars, dynasties, and entire civilizations that no Ur-Murrikan has ever heard of.    Largely because they were erased by the Mongols, and later the Russians.

Speaking of which, may I recommend the movie Nomad: the Warrior? Made in Kazakhstan, and skip the "Borat" jokes, it's a crackerjack Fantasy epic. With no magic as such, but there's prophecy, destiny, and battles both glorious and terrible. And never since the glory days of Hollywood westers, and maybe not even then, has a camera so loved horses.

 

 

[assault]

Good conversation and ideas so far.

 

Perhaps the next thing might be to reduce some of these ideas to a playable form. Something of a microcosm of the big picture, with the basic ideas and conflicts reduced to something more PC scaled.

For example, instead of a conflict between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope, one between a Duke and a Bishop. Or something like that. I don't find that specific situation particularly compelling, but something broadly along those lines.

[Scott Ruggels]

I would be the outlier in the other direction, around 1580-1604, with developed gunpowder weapons, pike squares, burgeoning nation states, and exploration and conquest. Magic is becoming another branch of science, and trade and banking are developed. Poor quality kings may cause spasms of Republicanism. Gender equality only applies to player characters.