Favourite Mediaeval Setting?

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I have to admit that Byzantium has a certain attraction. I am running a pre-Islamic Persia, and Byzantium travelogue, with no magic. And the players have added tons of minor conflicts, and romance. It’s not one for one, but it’s been fun.  

 

Byzantium is a cool place to base a campaign because you can really mix it up culturally.  You have Persians, Turks, Russians, Varangians, European crusaders, Italian city states, Spanish kingdoms, Asian Khanates, and African caliphates all a boat ride away.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Honestly I think a Roman Empire era fantasy game could be a lot of fun.  But my real dream is to create a bronze age fantasy setting -- very low magic, very low tech.  Conanesque.  Akkadian empire, etc.

[Lord Liaden]

52 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Honestly I think a Roman Empire era fantasy game could be a lot of fun.  But my real dream is to create a bronze age fantasy setting -- very low magic, very low tech.  Conanesque.  Akkadian empire, etc.

 

I'm guessing you're familiar with Aaron Alston's Mythic Greece ? It does outline the contemporary lands and peoples of the surrounding region.

 

Another ICE publication, Mythic Egypt, approaches the same subject from the Egyptian perspective. Together they offer quite a bit of useful info. (Unfortunately ME isn't available from Hero Games.)

 

Edited January 27 by Lord Liaden

[Old Man]

2 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

(Unfortunately ME isn't available from Hero Games.)

 

 

Why is this, does anyone know?

[Lord Liaden]

3 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Why is this, does anyone know?

 

Yes, I asked Jason Walters regarding that. He said that Hero Games does not have permission to sell it, because the rights to that book are legally unclear. That's true of the rest of ICE's Campaign Classics series, except for Mythic Greece. Aaron Alston's family did give Hero the right to sell it, because that's what Aaron wanted.

[Christopher R Taylor]

It took me years but I finally managed to get all those books.  The Vikings one took the longest, people charge outrageous amounts for them for some reason.  Some of them are better than others (I think I like the Robin Hood book best).

[Lord Liaden]

The Vikings book would be quite germane to this topic, if one wanted to focus on that era of European history from the Viking perspective. Very good historical, cultural, and game-mechanic material, plus some decent maps and illustrations. I expect the Robin Hood one would be too, for a campaign with that focus; but I've never seen that book, so can't speak to it.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

The Vikings book would be quite germane to this topic, if one wanted to focus on that era of European history from the Viking perspective. Very good historical, cultural, and game-mechanic material, plus some decent maps and illustrations. I expect the Robin Hood one would be too, for a campaign with that focus; but I've never seen that book, so can't speak to it.

 

The Robin Hood Campaign Classics book is by far the best of the series, if not the best sourcebook ever printed for FH.  There's an incredible amount of detailed lore about life in England in the Middle Ages, including folklore and mythology.  There's FH stats that were actually developed by someone who knew FH (as opposed to just converting the RM stats).  There's even--gasp--adventures, in defiance of the ban on published modules for FH.  Even the art and layout are top notch.

 

It really stands out because it's the one book that shows what Hero is capable of at the lower end of the spectrum.  (Robin Hood himself comes out to 80 points IIRC.)  And it actually makes you want to play low fantasy.  Ultimately, though, that is the book's one fatal flaw--it's low fantasy when the rest of the world is playing D&D video game fantasy.  But if you can get hold of a copy, do so; it's worth it even if all you do is read it.

[tkdguy]

The Robin Hood book is one of my main resources. Low fantasy makes for a great change of pace.

 

Edit: If you need coats of arms for the different houses, look here.

Edited January 28 by tkdguy

[Jmonty]

On 1/27/2024 at 5:42 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Honestly I think a Roman Empire era fantasy game could be a lot of fun.  But my real dream is to create a bronze age fantasy setting -- very low magic, very low tech.  Conanesque.  Akkadian empire, etc.

 

There is a Spanish RPG with a setting like that, "La puerta de Ishtar". Sargon made some magic and is immortal, and his empire last centuries, and the world is like his people thought it was.

Add barbarians, and Lovecraftian deities and forbidden magic.

But, for my taste, was a setting a bit depressing. Liked very much the chapters of culture and archaeology.

[Christopher R Taylor]

There is a "Christian RPG" called Testament that is set in that kind of time period too, has a lot of interesting source material.  I think there's some interest in a Bronze Age Hero book, but probably not a huge amount.

 

Quote

But, for my taste, was a setting a bit depressing. 

 

For some reason Europeans like really dark, doomed, miserable stuff, especially the Brits.

Edited January 28 by Christopher R Taylor

[tkdguy]

There are a couple of products available in DriveThruRPG that deal with the Bronze Age, but you'll need to convert them to HERO: 

 

Into the Bronze (OSR): https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/318919/Into-the-Bronze--OSR-Bronze-Age-Sword-and-Sorcery

 

Mythic Babylon (Runequest): https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/355333/Mythic-Babylon

 

Glorantha, Runequest's default setting, is also has a late Bronze Age or early Iron Age level of culture and technology.

[assault]

2 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

There is a "Christian RPG" called Testament that is set in that kind of time period too, has a lot of interesting source material.

 

Testament was by Scott Bennie and is a good read.

[Lord Liaden]

I believe Testament is Iron Age, though.

[L. Marcus]

I think the Iron Age in that part of the world started in about 1200 BC, so ... Moses was Bronze, David was Iron. Or something. 

[assault]

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I believe Testament is Iron Age, though.

 

I just checked. It's Bronze and Iron.

It goes with "Iron is better" rather than "Iron becomes cheaper", although there is a bit of the latter in that iron becomes the default in price lists for the later period.

Edited January 29 by assault

[Lord Liaden]

For my part, I've always been fascinated by cultures and worldviews that are the most different from my own, whether historical or alien. The closer an era or location gets to modern Earth, the less it appeals to me.

[assault]

The problem with alien cultures is that you need a degree of familiarity at the same time.

It's the difference between "yeah, I get it" and "no, I am not going to read forty pages of mediocre prose just to be able to play". Much of the skill in worldbuilding lies in that difference.

[Ninja-Bear]

10 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I believe Testament is Iron Age, though.

The tagline line is Men of Steel in the Age of Bronze. Iirc.

[Ninja-Bear]

8 hours ago, assault said:

 

I just checked. It's Bronze and Iron.

It goes with "Iron is better" rather than "Iron becomes cheaper", although there is a bit of the latter in that iron becomes the default in price lists for the later period.

It’s been awhile but I believe the book has rules for Iron against Bronze. It acts as AP iirc.

[Steve]

That would be a significant tech advantage.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

It’s been awhile but I believe the book has rules for Iron against Bronze. It acts as AP iirc.

 

Most people make assumptions like that. But until iron started being carbonized to make steel, it was not as hard as bronze, and more brittle. Its advantage is that it's far more abundant on this planet than copper and tin, so when the technology to smelt it became available, it was much cheaper to arm large numbers of fighters with iron weapons than with bronze. Steel remained expensive and uncommon until mass produced during the industrial age.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Iron had its advantages in a lot of areas even in its crudest form, just not for stuff like swords and armor.  Arrowheads, for example, could be harder and sharper, and thus better.  Armor was heavier and more brittle so not as good.  At least that is how I understand it.

 

One of the things that archaeologists are finding is that people were working better material earlier than previously understood.  Vikings were making damasked steel from lumps of rock found in swamps, for example.  Many of the assumptions of the "dark ages" etc from the 20th and earlier centuries are being undone.

[Lord Liaden]

Yup, my merely superficial research on the subject turned up the first archaeological samples of carbon steel in Turkey from around 1300 BCE. But it remained difficult to mass produce for millennia.

[Lord Liaden]

10 hours ago, assault said:

The problem with alien cultures is that you need a degree of familiarity at the same time.

It's the difference between "yeah, I get it" and "no, I am not going to read forty pages of mediocre prose just to be able to play". Much of the skill in worldbuilding lies in that difference.

 

Most aliens in fiction are extensions of recognizable human traits and/or composites of human cultural elements, and if the story intends for humans to interact with them in any meaningful way, or for them to be protagonists in the stories, that's pretty essential. OTOH there's certainly a place for Deep Ones or Mi-Go, where the point and conflict of the story is based on them being incomprehensibly alien.