Help me design my medieval/Renaissance, alternate earth campaign world

[Azlan]

Okay, here is a rough list of most modern European languages:

Awesome. Thanks!

Now, for comparison's sake, could you take that same list of languages and modify it to fit the mid-12th Century, and then again, for the late 15th Century? Because, I guess what I'm really angling for here is a condensed, generic list of languages for use with the 12th-15th centuries. (See, that's why I used "medieval/Renaissance", because what I'm looking for here is the transitional periods between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, which is the period that best fits D&D.)

Also, could you provide the names of the countries, kingdoms, etc., where each of the langauges would be prodimantly spoken? Many of them are easy enough to figure out just by the name of the language, but some are a little obscure.

 

[Azlan]

I highly recommend the Chronicles of Ash. They are an extremely well researched alternative history with small amounts of impressive magic that take place in a period maybe a century after the one you have decided on.

I am currently reading the first book in the Chronicles of Ash. That book is giving me a good number of ideas for this campaign world.

Another inspiration for my campaign world is the movie, Flesh and Blood. In fact, I'm thinking of setting the campaign's timeline just after the apex of the Black Plague. That way, the PCs can be free to travel and adventure, because the population will have been decimated and society will be weakened, and there will be much for the PCs to explore and plunder, in the way that typical D&D adventuring parties -- independent and anarchistic -- are want to do.

 

[Turjan]

I forgot Latin in the list, the language of scholars .

D&D doesn't match the Middle Ages, and it has absolutely no resemblance to the Renaissance. I'd say, the closest match to D&D is late 19th century western North America with some swords, platemail and dragons thrown in .

Your question for countries is a bit more complicated, because they didn't match the language borders at all, except in a few cases. And, more important, the countries didn't match modern borders at all.

Let's take a snapshot of the year 1400.

- Portugal looked like today . Unfortunately, that's about it .
- In Spain you had the Kingdoms of Castilia, Aragon, and Navarra, and the Arabs still held the Kingdom of Granada.
- France was a bit smaller than today, and the Duke of Burgundy was a big rival of the King, growing in power. On the other hand, there were still parts of the country owned by the English King .
- England held Wales and Ireland, but Scotland was still an independent Kingdom.
- Denmark was larger and more powerful than today. It's borders went far into Sweden and Germany.
- Sweden held also Finland.
- Germany, or better the Holy Roman Empire , consisted of hundreds of independent states. Some of the more powerful countries were the lands of House Luxemburg (Luxemburg, Brabant, Brandenburg, Lusatia, Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia, and Greater Hungary) and House Habsburg (Austria, Carnitia, Tyrol and some territories at the upper Rhine), Bavaria (with the Palatinate), Savoy (Italy), Milan (Italy: the Visconti), Genoa (mostly dependent on France).
- Venice was an independent Republic. They had properties in modern day Yugoslavia, Albania, Crete and further into Greece.
- Genoa had also properties in Greece and owned Corsica.
- Hungary was quite large and spread into Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia; it became property of House Luxemburg.
- The Ottoman Empire was on its way to conquer most of southeastern Europe.
- Poland reached into modern Ukrainia and Romania. It was united with the large Byelorussian country called Lithuania. Together, this was one of the largest European countries.
- The Eastern Baltic (Prussia, Latvia, Estonia) was in hands of the Teutonic Order.
- Russia showed the mighty Republic of Novgorod, Moscow, several smaller countries like Tver, Jaroslav or Rostov, The Princes of Rjasan, and the vast lands of the Khans of the Golden Horde (Mongolians).
- Rome and much of middle Italy was property of the Pope.
- Southern Italy belonged to the House Anjou (French).
- Sicily and Sardinia belonged to the Spanish Kingdom of Aragon.
- Oh, and the East Roman Empire still existed, though hardly. It consisted of Konstantinopel, a small part of the Peleponnes and a small area around Thessalonike .

 

[Krieg]

for something else altogether.

First, for this world, players will not be able to choose from the standard D&D races, i.e. elves, half-elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes. Instead, all player characters will be human. (I may sometimes allow a player character who's human with fae blood, but that will be at least +1 ECL, and those player characters will be the exception, not the norm.) What players will be able to choose from is the initial culture of their characters, which will give ability adjustments, favored classes, languages, and so forth, in the same vein as those given in the PH for races. These cultures will include:

urban commoner
country commoner
barbarian
merchant/guild family
monkish/religious order
low nobility (but not high nobility -- that's strictly for NPCs)

BTW I just wanted to point out that this is an excellent way of avoiding "racial" modifiers & all of the baggage that would come along with it in reference to historical cultures.

 

[DrZombie]

Small word of advice : you can't mix fantasy and history without a lot of work. This may sound a little pedantic, but hear me out.

Take, for example, magic and warfare. You'd have to be a complete suicidal maniac to take gunpowder into battle when there's mages about.
The tactic wich the romans and greeks used in such an efficient way, the phalanx, is just screaming for a chain lightning or a fireball...
The simplest explenation would be to have both groups of combat wizards continuesly cancelling each others spells, but that sorta rubs me the wrong way.
The thing is, for most of these discrepancies the people who live in that age will have some tactic or some way of coping with it. The problem is that you'll be unable to truly foresee what the impact will be, and you'll run into trouble by making conceptual mistakes. These will stick out like a sore thumb to some players, thereby ruining the credibility of your setting.

Second thing : it seems easy to just say, we'll start in the year whatever and then try to make it as accurate as possible. You'll drown in the information overload as you try to mesh different history books and regional guides. Even worse, the players will start looking up things as well to make their characters, and you'll end up with conflicting sources, different opinions as to wich ruler did what for whatever reason... History isn't an exact science, it is an interpretation of different sources.

What I'm trying to say is : start small, in a small village, with characters who aren't really aware of what's going on in the wide world (wich is the next village for most peopl), so that both you and your players have some time to grow into it.

 

[morbiczer]

I basically agree with most what Turjan wrote. I just wanted to point out, that the Slavonic languages weren't so differenciated as now. Well, there were, but in a different way. The Poles called themselves Poles, and the Serbs Serbs and so on, but neither the Byelorussians, nor the Ukrainians or the Macedonians were developed as seperate people.

Macedonian is pretty much the same language as Bulgarian, someone who understands the one has no real problem understanding the other. As far as i know Rumanian and Moldavian is basically the same language. These things have a lot to do with present day politics. Some decades ago Serbo-Croatian was mostly considered the same language, but today both Serbs and especially Croats stressthat these are seperate languages. Most Rumanians would consider Moldavians as Rumanians and if Stalin wouldn't have taken away Moldavia from Rumania in 1940, than surely nooen living in present day Moldavia would argue against this.

I think it is worth noting that nations in a modern day sense evolved only beginning in the 16-17. century, and in Eastern Europe even later. Modern nationalism is more or less a child of the French Revolution.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

As a solution to the magic sparks new modes of evolution problem might I suggest a seperate 'secret' magical ecology.

That is that you can use magic with pretty much untrammeled adeptness but using it in certain situation attracts the attention of things which will work to destroy, inconvenience, and/or feed off of the magic user.

This is basically the Mage system of things except you wouldn't have to make it as conceptual. Instead you could DnD it up and replace paradox spirits with things like griffins and titans and other highly magical creatures which generally bother the outside edges of civilization and protect their own places but also pay special attention to magic users. And while they leave them alone generally will nearly always show up if a magic user tries to do something really outrageous like fireball a Swiss pike formation.

There are a lot of different ways to explain it, but going from some nice literary precedents I would argue that you should tie it to the Church and Imperial law. So that the church has its own magical powers which mostly revolve around protecting people from magical power and the magical creatures of the world are all either complicit in this scheme or reacting to it.

Similarly, certain set and massive rituals such as coronations and enoblings might give you the benefit of totemic patronage, thus the griffins and dragons in heraldry, and/or your own macro level magical powers so that a king on the field of battle can actively repress most magical spells and only things like the golems in Ash might be able to be active.

And that would be why titled nobles are generally so good or very bad and civil wars that disrupt the order of the various ceremonies really really screw up the nation.

Also why destroying churches in war is such a bad idea cause it weakens the general magical protections and can create areas where bad things and magic can occur freely and without regard to human delicateness.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

damn double posts

 

[Perun]

I basically agree with most what Turjan wrote. I just wanted to point out, that the Slavonic languages weren't so differenciated as now. Well, there were, but in a different way. The Poles called themselves Poles, and the Serbs Serbs and so on, but neither the Byelorussians, nor the Ukrainians or the Macedonians were developed as seperate people.

Macedonian is pretty much the same language as Bulgarian, someone who understands the one has no real problem understanding the other. As far as i know Rumanian and Moldavian is basically the same language. These things have a lot to do with present day politics. Some decades ago Serbo-Croatian was mostly considered the same language, but today both Serbs and especially Croats stressthat these are seperate languages. Most Rumanians would consider Moldavians as Rumanians and if Stalin wouldn't have taken away Moldavia from Rumania in 1940, than surely nooen living in present day Moldavia would argue against this.

I think it is worth noting that nations in a modern day sense evolved only beginning in the 16-17. century, and in Eastern Europe even later. Modern nationalism is more or less a child of the French Revolution.

Just to nit pick a bit

Even today, Slavic languages remain very closely related, and it's relatively easy to understand a speaker of another Slavic language.

The question whether Serbo-Croatian (or Croato-Serbian, both names are valid) is one language or two is somewhat difficult to answer, because there's no real, scientific line to draw between dialects and languages. Speakers of the two languages can easily understand one another, but there are still very obvious differences between the two.

If I were designing such a setting, I'd go with the main langage groups as the languages (i.e. there'd be the Germanic language, the Romance language, the Slavic language, etc.), with Latin (and perhaps Greek) as the common tongue(s). That seems the simplest way to do it, and it doesn't make the whole language thing complicated.

Regards.

 

[Turjan]

I basically agree with most what Turjan wrote. I just wanted to point out, that the Slavonic languages weren't so differenciated as now. Well, there were, but in a different way. The Poles called themselves Poles, and the Serbs Serbs and so on, but neither the Byelorussians, nor the Ukrainians or the Macedonians were developed as seperate people.

Macedonian is pretty much the same language as Bulgarian, someone who understands the one has no real problem understanding the other. As far as i know Rumanian and Moldavian is basically the same language. These things have a lot to do with present day politics. Some decades ago Serbo-Croatian was mostly considered the same language, but today both Serbs and especially Croats stressthat these are seperate languages. Most Rumanians would consider Moldavians as Rumanians and if Stalin wouldn't have taken away Moldavia from Rumania in 1940, than surely nooen living in present day Moldavia would argue against this.

I think it is worth noting that nations in a modern day sense evolved only beginning in the 16-17. century, and in Eastern Europe even later. Modern nationalism is more or less a child of the French Revolution.

I agree with your comments. As there were no national states in Europe, state on one side and language/culture on the other side were not related in most of the cases. In medieval Lithuania, most people were Ukrainians and Byelorussians, quite a few Russians, and a small minority of Baltic Lithuanians. The western border of the Holy Roman Empire lay clearly western of the language border between French and German. Even political borders were far from clear. Mighty countries like Burgundy lay half in France and half in the Holy Roman Empire (and all people there spoke French, except in Flanders where many spoke Dutch ), and also considerable parts of Denmark lay within its borders (but those people spoke German ).

The only pattern that is pretty clear is that the subgroups that I mentioned are definitely different languages. Within the groups, the borders are fluent and not fixed. I suspect, that a medieval equivalent of modern Low German was more similar to Danish than to Bavarian in many ways. One of the Norvegian languages is similar to Danish, the other one to Swedish. On the other hand, Danish and Swedish are both very similar to each other, anyway, so they don't have difficulties to understand each other. Though modern Dutch is clearly a separate language, I'm not sure whether this was right for the Middle Ages. I think, one of the modern criteria for a separate language is the existence of a separate scripture. In a time, where those people who knew to write wrote either Latin or in the way they liked to, this criteria falls flat.

Therefore, I don't see a problem with uniting the Russian languages to one, dropping Macedonian and Moldavian from the list because they were mere dialects of other languages (Galician might be counted as a Portuguese dialect spoken in NW Spain), and Sorbian because the language group is so small. Raeto-Romanic might be important if you plan on playing in the developping Switzerland, and so on.