Byzantine type Empire

[Asmodeus]

I'm wondering if any of you good people on this boards have ever used Byzantium and the city Constaninople in their games or replicas thereof?

I'm planning a campaign set aronud the city and the politics within. It could be either doing their zenith or maybe at the point of decline and eventual fall to the Ottomans. Do you have any ideas? Wha about links?

My initials thoughts for such a setting would be to drastically cut down on magic to give it a more gritty feel. So I axed the druid and sorcerer, reworked the bard and ranger and made paladins and clerics prestige classes.

Now the basics of Constantinople is the fact that it is the capital and holy city of the empire with an ancient history and so on. I'm thinking of having the emperor rule by divine might (represented by being a proxy from D&Dg) God is distant and those who cast spells are looked upon as saints. Of course there are the pagan gods still in existence like the Greek/Roman pantheon and the Germanics gods but they are only believed by pagans and savages beyond the empire.

Also maybe ahve an opposing vibrant religion with their own one god rising from South. I know some say to use the real world as my history but I would prefer to avoid seeing some of my players scramble for history books for metagaming reasons.

Any ideas?

Enjoy

 

[Old One]

Palaestra...

The best adaptation I have seen of this is Wayne Peacock's (et al) Palaestra.

Richly detailed, very well researched and documented. They had an excellent story hour sometime ago on the EN Boards but, sadly, one of the main players and her 2 young children were killed in a tragic car accident a couple of months ago.

My own Faded Glory campaign has many elements as well, but Wayne's work is the best I have seen.

~ Old One

 

[cthuluftaghn]

Avalanche press has some really cool historical products. I've looked at them a dozen times, but haven't picked one up yet, but they sure look good:

The Last Days of Constantinople: Role-Playing Adventure in the Byzantine Empire is the one I thought you'd be most interested in.

Kinda hits the nail on the head, if you ask me

 

[Asmodeus]

Thanks Old One for the links but your Faded Glory website seems to be down.

Very interesting ideas of the humans vs the fey. Maybe I might try something similiar with the Fey(Elfs) going on a crusade to let the world know their one true religion and being very successful at it till they meet the Empire and a standoff occurs.

Enjoy

 

[Asmodeus]

Well I hcecked out the book at my FLGS and was not too impressed. It is more adventure that setting. Also some of the uses of D20 rules are appalling.

Most of the historical info there can be found in most history books. Thanks for the help anyway.

Enjoy

 

[CleverName]

Palaestra

Thanks for the kind words, Old One. Check out some new Palaestra updates . here.

 

[Dirk Perfect]

historical campaign

I ran a historical campaign in Europe during the middle ages back in the old AD&D days before there was any material out.

As far as the Church goes, we made it an organized religion based on a collection of saints which were "gods in effect" granting spells. We created our own saints for certain orders within the church. This works for the eastern church, too. The Pagans existed and had their own gods and priests. I would keep the Druid since they are a historically-based character class that followed pagan gods. I would also keep the sorcerer since they seem to make more sense than even a wizard. I am not really familiar with historical or even a legendary college of mages. The church would try to close them down anyway.

The opposing religion would be obvious since the Turks are coming. I would change names and avoid offending anyone with strong beliefs. You could use Persian religions that predate islam and use those in its place. Zoasterism (sp?) was big in that area earlier in history.