Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Derro" data-source="post: 4006827" data-attributes="member: 51010">There are many things in 3e that are so far removed from a dark ages milieu that they'd need to be changed or outright scrapped to get that feeling. Presentation wise I'd think you'd have to change race relations and the face of religion radically. The tone of the game would probably be better altered from high adventure to just plain survival. The mystery would have to be put back in magic, and that is just from the perspective of presentation. I think magic would require a massive overhaul rules-wise. At the risk of sparking heated debate I'll say this. D&D magic in the RAW would alter and supplant so many aspects of technological evolution that I think the world would start to look very different from even a bronze age setting, never mind a few more jumps up the cultural ladder. And I also think that the economy of the game would require a serious reworking as well. Start by switching to the silver standard.Mechanically you'd need to address magic, hit points and recovery, disease and infection, some class builds (I'm thinking monk and paladin, specifically), and probably create some manner of social class system. Feudalism was pretty stratified in the manner of who got to do what and who told who what to do.This is all pretty much off the cuff. I know I've got more thoughts regarding this topic 'cuz it's one I've often considered myself.As an aside I think that Warhammer FRPG has a good dark ages feel to it. I can't speak for the current edition but I know the original rules were quite dark and gritty. The time period was more Late Medieval to Early Renaissance but it felt pretty damn dark.   Personally, if you wanted some more genuine feeling dark ages gaming I would suggest pitching baseline D&D altogether. While d20 would still work as a system I think D&D as a ruleset and genre just requires too much alteration. May as well start with something as simple as parts of the SRD that are suitable and build what you like from the ground up.As I finish up here another thought occurs to me. The Conan d20 RPG from Mongoose has a pretty dark ages feel to it. The classes are largely bereft of supernatural abilities. Magic is dangerous, time-consuming, and non-utilitarian. There's a pretty big distinction between barbaric races and classes and civilized ones. And, of course, no elves. Anyway, my thoughts on the matter.</blockquote>

Verification