(Monday) History in Your Game (Barbarians)

[alsih2o]

Borrowing from here- http://www.nonzero.org/chap10.htm "Historians use "barbarian" more loosely: Barbarians are peoples with a culture less advanced than their neighbors', and perhaps with a tendency to violently exploit their neighbors' advancement."

Sounds about right to me. The intro there covers the fact that the barbarians almost never write the history.

EUROPEAN BARBARIANS-

This site- http://www.wizardrealm.com/barbarians/history.html offers a view only on North European barbarians, but has a pretty good overview. Right down to village drawings for your campaign.

"A Civilized Barbarian and a Barbarous Roman", Tow letters from Sidonius Apollinaris about these folks- http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/sidonius2.html

"Barbarian or nomad?" http://members.tripod.com/~whitebard/nomads.htm Mostly geared towards SCA folks, but very interesting.

"Sons of Norway" offers a cool look into Viking life. Games, religion and even measurements to cheat your players with- http://www.vikingage.com/vac/hugin.html

Here we have another great page by the BBC, the BBC rocks. This one covers wepaons and warfare amongst the vikings- http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/vikings/weapons_01.shtml

A big Viking database- http://viking.hgo.se/Files/VikHeri/Viking_Age/default.html

Viking treasures from the Met- http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/vikg/hd_vikg.htm

Cool stuff from a Celtic chieftains grave- http://home.bawue.de/~wmwerner/hochdorf/h_fund1d.html

A timeline of European barbarian invasions...in case you are making a history- http://barbarians.netfirms.com/

An economicist looks at the barbarian invasions, 3rd to 5th centuries. Some neat text, but this guy needs help with the graphics- http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/barbarians.htm

MONGOLS-

History and chronology- http://www.coldsiberia.org/webdoc3.htm

A mongol glossary, just to add some vocab to your game- http://members.tripod.com/~whitebard/terms.htm

Mongol physicallity- http://www.coldsiberia.org/webdoc5.htm

Mongol loot- http://www.kz/usr/ale/eng/tab1.html

The Mongols were closer to the earth than you, Nyah!- http://www.coldsiberia.org/webdoc7.htm

And they were spiritual- http://www.coldsiberia.org/webdoc8.htm


Have fun, Game well.

 

[MonsterMash]

Of course the original meaning was just non-Greek speakers, which would be most of us.

Very useful, thanks Mark.

 

[fusangite]

Great work! This should waste my whole morning!

 

[alsih2o]

This should waste my whole morning!

*sniff*

My work here is done.

 

[Old One]

Sigh...

More bookmarks for my bloated favorites !

Thanks!

~ OO

 

[KB9JMQ]

Thanks once again.
I see I have a lot of Monday reading to do

 

[alsih2o]

Ideas for next week?

I am thinking about one on al the earliest airships.

I have been wanting to run a "Zeppelins and Zhivago" campaign for a while...

 

[TerraDave]

Of course the original meaning was just non-Greek speakers, which would be most of us.

Very useful, thanks Mark.

It was later expanded to exclude the latin speakers (though I am sure many Greeks disagreed). And from the teachings of Aristotle, it was well understood that barbarians where inferior in a number of ways.

Japanese has a similar word, gaijan, used very much in the same way. Of course, in the US we just say "foriegner"

Edit: given what week it is I shouldn't leave out gentile

 

[alsih2o]

Barbarian=Them

 

[tetsujin28]

And they were spiritual- http://www.coldsiberia.org/webdoc8.htm

This site is, unfortunately, full of a lot of complete and utter hooey. There's a lot of Mongol revisionism that goes on in Eastern Europe. Weird that someone from Norway would be in on it, 'though maybe not too surprising considering the Viking fetishism that goes on.