D&D General Neolithic D&D

[Aldarc]

The fight for survival is a big part of the Neolithic world. Having visited Skara Brae, experienced the environment (more or less, considering it would've shifted over time) that they were contending with, that struggle is certainly evocative.

Agriculture, animal husbandry, and the first cities are a big part of the neolithic world.

While I agree that other systems might be a better fit, the premise of the OP is based on doing so using 5e. It would certainly require putting in some boundaries and house rules.

The premise is about using 5e to run a neolithic game, not to turn 5e D&D into a survival game. You can run a neolithic game or 5e as a survival game, but as @Reynard the OP says, nothing requires doing so and it can be (and often is) fairly handwaved to focus on more 5e style adventure.

 

[Reynard]

If you equate the Downfall of Númenor with the drowning of Atlantis c. 9,600 BC according to Plato, that puts it near the beginning of the Neolithic with the subsequent events of the LotR happening more towards the middle about 3,000 years later. Tolkien is on record as saying his stories are set in our world albeit in a "legendary" time period. I believe his intent was to place them far back enough into prehistory to give him a free hand to describe events on a fairly large scale. The fact that, in his novels, he describes a level of material culture matching more closely with AD 1,100 is, I think, part of the "translation" element in his work.

There is nothing neolithic about Middle Earth. What a weird thing to say.

 

[Hriston]

There is nothing neolithic about Middle Earth. What a weird thing to say.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

 

[Reynard]

Let's get a little specific with it.

• Barbarian. Easy. No notes. The axes might be stone, but they work the same mechanically.

If everyone is a barbarian, no one is?

• Bard. Also easy. Oral histories and musical traditions are as old as people. Might be fewer stringed instruments, and I'd maybe lean into the idea of bards as history-keepers and story-tellers, for that good campfire exposition.

The D&D bard is a minstrel though, not a skald.

• Cleric. Not too hard. There's no organized temples or anything, but what if the cleric was kind of the vanguard of civilization? It is clerics who know and teach farming, who study the cycles of the seasons, who figure out how to preserve grain, how to nurture communities. Many might serve powerful leaders, or BE powerful leaders themselves. Clerics are the ones who know how to brew beer. Early neolithic farming is their jam.

Clerics are inded the vanguard of civilization, and organized religion is the first major pillar of civilization to arise.

• Druid. If the cleric serves civilization, druids are the mediators between people and the wild world around them. Shamans. Probably very important, but there might be some cleric/druid rivalry as the tensions between foraging and agriculture form a bit of a conflict line in the setting.

No notes.

• Fighter. Also not too hard. If we keep this agriculture/foraging dichotomy, Fighters land on the agriculture side. Maybe they're organized into armies and have access to primitive metals (since full-time metallurgy should require the access to food that agriculture gives). This also works for the iconic cleric in heavy armor: yes, but only where the fields grow.

Ditto

• Monk. Pretty simple. The idea of an organized ascetic group is a little anachronistic, but possible, and might work very similar to how fighters work - they require an agricultural community to sustain them. If clerics work with the people of the community, maybe monks are approaching the gods more directly, or trying to become them.

I think you could turn the monk into a kind of spiritual warrior that embraces and emulates elements of the natural world and it would be okay.

• Paladin. Okay, very medieval vibes, but if we riff on the idea of an oath, we can get something very neolithic. There's very little law, no real enforcers, no way to ensure that people will do what they promise to do. Enter the paladin, whose oath is unbreakable, who can be trusted when no one else can. Definitely part of the agricultural world.

I would drop the paladin entirely.

• Ranger. Yeah, pretty simple. The best hunters, trackers, and scouts of the foragers are rangers.

Rangers are protectors of civilization against the terrors of the wild, and in this era that wild is RIGHT THERE.

• Rogue. Also simple. Probably connected to the agricultural world, but not exactly allied with it - rogues steal the grain, or are early traders and merchants.

The big problem with the D&D rogue as written is that "traps" are a pretty big stretch for the dawn of civilization.

• Sorcerer. Easy. Obvious. Magic is around and gives some people powers.

This is the main arcane magic I would use.

• Warlock. Also not too hard. It's a magical world filled with magical creatures, warlocks swear pacts with those creatures. They might be linked to the agricultural world - to a world of oaths and agreements. No one's ever seen a contract.

Lots of old gods and demons would be interested in servants among the newly civilized, I think.

• Wizard. A little wrinkly with the spellbook, but we can lean into the idea of wizards as masters of the magic of writing. They are the only literate people in this world, definitely linked with the agriculturalists, and might carry around clay tablets or just draw with ochre or charcoal on the walls. Spellbooks are tattooed on your skin.

I still like the idea of focusing at least a portion of the campaign on the rise of writing and thus also the rise of wizardry.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So neolithic is a setting detail, but what's the game going to be about? It'd D&D, so butt kicking for goodness in a high fantasy setting is a given, but what sets this neolithic world apart from Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, or even Dark Sun? What's our hook? Once we have our hook we can figure out the best way to adapt the species, background, and classes to the game.

So what's the hook? What makes this different from other settings? In most D&D settings, it seems to me like you're picking over the bones of long abandoned, ancient cultural sites (dungeons). But in this neolithic setting, everything is new. There are no dungeons (okay, maybe a few ancient Yuan-ti structures or something) and maybe a lot of the staples we've grown accustomed to having just aren't there or are only just appearing. Undead? Never heard of 'em. But Uncle Roger seems to be doing now even after we buried him last week.

One hook that arises out of the agriculture/foraging dichotomy in the classes is the idea of the rise of civilization and the problems it causes.

You have things like:

• A strong law/chaos divide in the setting. Probably good and evil people on both sides.
• Devils and diabolical cults as encouragers of civilization (and who want the evils of civilization to thrive). Infernal machines tearing at the earth. Well-intentioned diabolists killing river fey and forest fey and seasonal fey to grow more grain.
• Demons in the darkness. Everything is fragile. Your favorite town can collapse in a season. The forest swallows your megaliths, the desert blows over your tombs.
• Ancient beings from the Before Times. Dragons and giants as gods or patrons of humanoid effort. You could have dragons as natural destruction (floods, droughts, volcanoes, blizzards, the forest) and giants as Promethean helpers of humanity (stone giants help you build magaliths, hill giants love when the small folk bring them food in the form of vast fields of grain). Elves worrying about the rise of other people, allying with the fey to keep the world primitive, but they are good-hearted, and so try and help the early civs thrive.
• The Stars and seasonal cycles are critical to understand. The rulers of these early civs desperately need to predict the future. But in D&D the stars also hold alien horrors. Shub-niggurath hides in the woods.
• Points of Light in the Darkness become Points of Civilization in the Wilderness. But the wilderness also has its defenders and protectors.
• Early civilizations foster despots and would-be-Emperors. Sudden droughts and die-offs are caused by literal evil supernatural beings, and cities fall regularly since they're not well-connected.
• The wilderness is poisoned. The rivers dry up. The rats. The plagues. The invention of sewers?
• The wilderness hides megafauna and monstrosities. Humbaba doesn't accept your authority. There's still dinosaurs and mammoths around. Maybe some people ride 'em.

 

[Reynard]

Most fantasy worlds don't bother much with the evolution of civilization. The god of Race X birthed them and taught them how to farm and build and that was it. The idea that the races struggles up through the paleolithic into the neolithic suggests that the gods are different in such a setting. they aren't creators, but just powerful spirits. maybe part of civilization is binding these gods into the megastructures that become the centers of civilization. They aren't patrons, they are prisoners.

 

[Alzrius]

You kids and all your "neolithic" games. The real fun is in playing retrolithic D&D!

 

[GuyBoy]

I’ve never played in a Neolithic campaign, though I’d love to, but I’m lucky enough to live close to some Neolithic sites, and I’ve gone out with friends a few times and played D&D on summer nights at Coldrum Long Barrow. It’s very atmospheric and can get pretty spooky in darkness.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Are you implying all the armor and weapons used in middle earth were stone?

 

[LordBP]

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