D&D 5E Adventures in other eras?

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

Has anyone tried using the rules in 5E D&D for other time periods or era? The game nominally has a 10th or 11th century technology and social level, aside from various anachronisms. Has anyone tried something along the 15th century (limited guns, different society) or 19th century (lots of guns, very different society) and so forth? How did it go? What are your thoughts?

 

[feartheminotaur]

I am running a hexcrawl right now that is actually backwards in time. It's based on Classical Greece about 500BCE and the PCs are seafarers and explorers of the ancient world (putting that History degree to work, yo).

The rules work just fine. A fireball is a fireball and diplomacy is diplomacy and a noble is a noble in any era.

At first we discussed re-skinning everything to its historical analog, but that was a huge amount of work for very little reward. So, we kept the 5e names. For example, a breast plate should be a muscled cuirass and a short sword a xiphos - but we just call them a breast plate and short sword. All the fluff stuff is in the DM narration so that anyone can quickly reference their books without having to convert ("Wait, is a kopis a scimitar or a long sword? I forget")

I think it's going great because the unsettled unexplored wilderness being filled to the brim with monsters and magic fits the mold of what my players wanted instead of the default castle to castle Euro-centric murder hobo setting.

 

[jgsugden]

It works fine for any setting with humanoids at the center. Call of Cthulhu, Gamma World, Wild West, Cave Man - it all works with the basic core rules.

 

[Gnarl45]

Has anyone tried using the rules in 5E D&D for other time periods or era? The game nominally has a 10th or 11th century technology and social level, aside from various anachronisms. Has anyone tried something along the 15th century (limited guns, different society) or 19th century (lots of guns, very different society) and so forth? How did it go? What are your thoughts?

The game world is actually a lot more 14th-15th century than 10th-11th century (whatever right).

Anyways, the game works fine in other periods. As long as you don't mix technology levels too much, you can use the weapons and armors as written in the player's handbook. Guns would probably have the same stats as a crossbow with a longer range. What really changed over time was warfare but adventurers of the 19th century would still have armor, swords, axes, and even bows. They would look a bit different though.

You'll need to adapt the rules if you mix technology levels. Weapons got sharper and armor harder over time. If you play in a "new world" with a significant technology difference between the natives and the invaders, the weapons and armor of the natives might be a bit less efficient. A simple -1 to hit and to AC could probably work.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Did a Renaissance-era D&D campaign with it. Rules-wise, it worked pretty well, though for whatever reason, the PCs never really cottoned to using firearms. The social setting was a little troublesome,* and the campaign ended up tanking after year, in part due to that and in part due to other issues.

*I think part of the problem was that I wanted to focus on etiquette and intrigue, with social climbing and maneuvering, while a portion of my group wanted a more traditional D&D experience.

 

[jayoungr]

You might want to poke around at http://worldbuilderblog.me/ . The author is working on a setting called Exploration Age, which is loosely analogous to the Age of Discovery in Earth's history.

 

[delericho]

Has anyone tried using the rules in 5E D&D for other time periods or era? The game nominally has a 10th or 11th century technology and social level, aside from various anachronisms.

The trappings may be medieval, but I've found the baseline D&D actually resembles the Wild West during a gold rush more than anything else. And the societies presented have a considerably more modern sensibility than even that would imply.

But in answer to your question: no, I've not tried using 5e for other periods. In fact, I haven't used it for history at all. However, I would be rather interested in a Cyberpunk-style game built on the 5e engine... especially if such a game used a vision of the future projected from now, rather than the standard 80's derived vision we get in Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, and similar games.

 

[iserith]

I ran both Lost Mine of Phandelver and Hoard of the Dragon Queen in the theme of a spaghetti western with guns.

 

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I ran both Lost Mine of Phandelver and Hoard of the Dragon Queen in the theme of a spaghetti western with guns.

How did it go?

 

[iserith]

How did it go?

Lots of Tombstone references. Otherwise, pretty much just another fun game of D&D!