1000 years in the past.... (4eish)

[Evilhalfling]

Help!

My players are stepping 1100-800 years into the past. Starting from a homebrew generic medival current day. They will prolly be jumping forward 300 years every few sessions, and will create a seperate timestream so the world they return to may be very different from the one they left.

I have some ideas of what life was like, but I could use more brainstorming.
Humanoids are virtually unknown. Elves and halflings are newcomers to human controlled lands. Dwarves have been around for a few hundred years. This is also pre-dragonborn & tiefling empires. (The party is 2 dragonborn, a tiefling and a human)

Two PCs have warlock pacts, one with an archfey that is currently still a normal low-epic fey lord, the other with a being that won't be worshiped for another 3-5 centuries. The God the paladin serves is also currently a mortal dragon (between cr 17-24)

What were the Gith doing?
What do I do with language?
What tech level is avalible for armor/weapons/magic items/magic?
What hints do I provide that they are in a different time?


I should really give my players less rope to hang me with.

 

[darjr]

Hmmm... you could go the way of Blackmoor and make the past a vast technological empire. I would absolutely have the warlocks deal with their pacts being defunct.

The amethyst setting has some good ideas about guns if you want to go the high tech route, or if you want to go steam punk you could look at the Scarport city of secrets setting.

I think I like the idea of moving towards the primitive. Lots more divine influence and less magic and technology. That might be easier to do by just stripping things out.

 

[Filcher]

A lot is going to depend on how you imagine your historical civilizations. Are they developed, like the Romans? Are they random tribes? What is the present like, and how did it get to be that way?

For instance:

Maybe elves introduced arcane magic. Before their arrival, everything else was divine magic. Similarly, maybe the dwarves brought metalworking advances, and that before that everyone had to make do with poor quality metal for their armor and weapons.

So maybe the only magical items are divine in nature, highly relative to the user's beliefs, and tend not to have much in the way of metal. So divine hide and leather armor, and divine spears and shortswords are the major magic movers for the time.