Advance Series: Concept

[Ultramyth]

Ultramyth Design - www.ultramyth.com will shortly be releasing the first in a line of d20 supplements with a unique concept:

The 'Advance' series are designed to provide the information necessary to push any fantasy campaign setting forward into the future, starting with Advance: Renaissance, a guide to bringing the 'rebirth' to d20.

All the books will use the d20 fantasy rules, as the idea behind Advance is to present new eras as they might happen in a rich, magic and high fantasy setting. Imagine what periods of earth's history might have been like if magic was a reality, or if the earth was populated by a plethora of sentient and sub-sentient species. Renaissance artists might have idolised elves and nymphs as the vissage of beauty instead of the human models they used, for example.

Basically, each book presents four basic chapters:

Characters
Technology & Equipment
Campaigns
Case Study

Characters provides notes on modifications necessary to classes, races, plus new or altered skills, feats and the odd (quality) prestige class, only those reflecting new lines of work in the new era.

Technology & Equipment encompasses not only information on the technological feats of the new age, but also on the weapons, armour, equipment, as well as seige engines, vehicles and property costs.

Advance: Renaissance introduces early gunpowder firearms, though with more realistic rules than presented in the DMG, with armour penetration, weather limitations and more. The book features the Arquebus, Matchlock and Wheel Lock, in addition to a host of period blades, polearms and equipment. Armour encompasses plate armour variants, brigadine, and a new kind of dwarven plate armour designed to be more effective against gunpowder shot.

Campaigns encompasses the 'how to' in upgrading your campaign, and introduces period concepts across the board.

Case Study presents one historical country in its entirety, from population to military. In the case of Advance: Renaissance, it is Elizabethan England.


Now that you've recieved a little bit of information on the concept, I'd like to ask, what sort of things would you expect to find in a book like this? And what would you like to see in it that hasn't been listed? Do you think the series is a good idea? I'm anxious to get feedback.


Release dates may be 6 weeks to two months away.

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Ben Mowbray
Ultramyth Design

 

[Moulin Rogue]

I see kind of an interesting challenge here, because in many ways D&D already looks more Renaissance than medieval: the economic system feels post-medieval, some of the weapons and armour are already Renaissance-era, gnomes already write tomes on engineering, and so on. I think a Renaissance d20 book should address this right away in the early pages and establish what a Renaissance campaign "feel" is. If this is a bright and confident age, what new conflicts and adventures could there be instead of "orcs at the gates"?

Does the campaign world need to have recently finished going through a "dark age"? If the world is being "reborn", what was holding back the flowering of technology/learning before? (There could be supernatural explanations). Do dwarves dress in ruffly things? Is Leonardo da Vinci a gnome?

I'd want enough to flesh out the Renaissance era but still let me bring in swashbuckling if I want to go this way, or political intrigue if I want to go that way (this was the age of Machiavelli, after all!) So some inspirations/suggestions there without bringing in new mechanics incompatible with my d20 naval sourcebooks or Dynasties and Demagogues would be real nice.

 

[Ultramyth]

I see kind of an interesting challenge here, because in many ways D&D already looks more Renaissance than medieval: the economic system feels post-medieval, some of the weapons and armour are already Renaissance-era, gnomes already write tomes on engineering, and so on. I think a Renaissance d20 book should address this right away in the early pages and establish what a Renaissance campaign "feel" is. If this is a bright and confident age, what new conflicts and adventures could there be instead of "orcs at the gates"?

Does the campaign world need to have recently finished going through a "dark age"? If the world is being "reborn", what was holding back the flowering of technology/learning before? (There could be supernatural explanations). Do dwarves dress in ruffly things? Is Leonardo da Vinci a gnome?

I'd want enough to flesh out the Renaissance era but still let me bring in swashbuckling if I want to go this way, or political intrigue if I want to go that way (this was the age of Machiavelli, after all!) So some inspirations/suggestions there without bringing in new mechanics incompatible with my d20 naval sourcebooks or Dynasties and Demagogues would be real nice.

You've made some excellent points here, all of which are of keen interest. Indeed, d20 fantasy campains are in a shift towards the renaissance, at least as far as the social aspects go. The 'dark ages' historically were undoubtably caused by church dogma, which of course is unlikely to occur in a d20 setting, especially one such as the forgotten realms for example.

The issue of how a society arrives at a renaissance is an issue I've been struggling to tackle. The focus on the actual renaissance is a social and technological one, and one of the things I was going to go over is a revision of the same basic elements presented in the DMG discussing creating a campaign world. One of the directions I am going is toward the economical reasons for the Age of Exploration, that also takes place during the renaissance. Trade is the reason for this, and while religious freedom is not necessarily the catalyst for a renaissance in a fantasy campaign, trade is far more likely.

As far as weapons and armour are concerned, indeed, yes, there are the foundations of renaissance era arms in the PHB, however, you might have noticed for example, the rapier looks more like a sabre in that book. The artwork in general does not reflect historical weapons. That always bothered me, and so, every 'real' weapon in this book shall be based off a historical weapon.

The 'new' arms are there, even if many of them only reflect cosmetic changes, to provide variety to players:

The above is a sample of the weapons artwork.

Armour too, changes some things. Historically, it was in its height at the start of the renaissance, and in its decline by the end. I've added penetration rules to firearms that reflect this change, though I've also added some fantasy components - dwarven-forged armour designed in such a fashion that incoming bullets are likely to bounce off it. In this way, perhaps in later eras armour will still be common.

Again, here variants are what is offered: Different types of plate armour, and ideas for customising it. Also, there's rules to encompass cheap plate armour manufacture. This is where the savage races become more deadly, because now cheap, moulded plate armour is available en masse.

Equipment covers basically everything from the globe map, to the pocket watch and kegs of gunpowder, as well as a few authentic alchemical compounds, basically, a more complex version of alchemist's fire. Also you'll find early telescopes and microscopes, and some prices will fall as items become more common.

I also wanted to feature ship variants, since this is indeed the time of exporation. In a short span of two hundred years, ships evolve from the galley to the galleon, and all manners of cannon are mounted on ships. I've not heard of your d20 naval products, but if you could email me a copy of your d20 rules that are open game, I'd be happy to conform. A ship list or statistics of any relevant vessel types you might have also in OG could be good. That is what the licence is about after all.

 

[Moulin Rogue]

Oh, by "my" naval sourcebooks I should have specified ones that I own, not anything I've made myself. I have Living Imagination's Broadsides! and Mongoose's Seas of Blood, both 3.0e. I haven't yet picked up Mongoose's Book of the Sea which is 3.5. I also tried making a couple of sailing ships with GoO's d20 Mecha SRD, but the gp costs came out as way too expensive to me (maybe I didn't do them right, I dunno).

In my first response I didn't answer the question of whether the concept for a whole series was good or not, but you could guess I'm pretty interested in seeing how this one will go. Over the past year d20 has seen some well-received stuff covering pre-medieval times (Testament, OGL Ancients, Trojan War looks good), but there's still not much d20 coverage for Renaissance thru early 20th century and I'd be interested in seeing more.