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

[Azlan]

I'm creating a campaign world that is an alternate Earth, during the medieval/Renaissance times. Magic will exist in this world, but it will be less common than in typical high fantasy worlds such as the Forgotten Realms. This world will be historically accurate, though not strictly so, for much of myth, legends, and folklore will be made reality.

Now, ideas, suggestions, and rules for low-magic worlds have already been discussed in other threads, so there's no need for us to discuss that here. What I am asking for, here, is ideas and rules 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)

Question #1: Is this list of cultures all-enclusive, offering an ideal amount of variation that is historically accurate (with legend and fiction allowed for), while still being generic and minimal, as is the list of races in the D&D 3.5 PH?

Question #2: Given this list of cultures, what would you assign to them, i.e. what ability adjustments, favored classes, languages, free skills/feats, etc.? Above all, the cultures should be pretty much balanced with one another, just as the races are in the PH. Then again, perhaps certain cultures (particularly low noblity) should be +1 ECL, considering what all they give to a character?

Next up, I want to compile a list of languages that characters can speak. Again, I want a list that is all-enclusive and historical, while still being as generic and minimal as possible. For example, do I really need for Spanish and Portugese to be two, separate languages? (I dunno... do I? I know not enough about languages to know.)

So, question #3: What should be the list of languages, given the medieval/Renaissance setting, which includes all of Europe? And what should be added to that list if the following countries are (optionally) included in the campaign: northern Africa, all of the Middle East (including India), and the more prominent parts of Asia?

Question #4: If I decide to make language skills more realistic, making characters need more than 1 rank to know how to fully speak and write a different language, then what languages on the list should be related enough to where, if you have at least 5 ranks with one, you get a +2 synergy bonus with the other?

 

[morbiczer]

Re: Languages

I'll try to give some advice for the languages.

There were many more languages in medieval Europe than today. In France for example, people in the south spoke provancal (or occitan, I think this is the same kanguages), In Brittany breton and so on. People from different parts of the country would have had difficulty understanding each other. Same for Germany, someone from Bavaria would have had big difficulties understanding someone from the northern coast (well, maybe that hasn't changed even today .

In the Middle Ages there was for example no Spanish, well, there wasn't even Spain. People in Castily (sp?) spoke Castilian, in Aragon Catalonian and so on. People in Catalonia still don't speak Spanish (which is actually Castilian), but there own language (Catalonian), which surely resembles Spanish, but is a different languag of his own.

In Italy people from the south had serious problems understanding people from the north even in the second half of the 19th century

Since there was no radio or TV, no real print media, the large majority of people didn't travel, etc. local differences in languages could live on fo a very long time.

For your project I'd suggest to look into some Ars Magica product. There you surely will find a short list of languages in medieval Europe. If this isn't an option for you, simply take today's languages, the diferences aren't THAT great.

Sorry. To lazy to check for spelling.

 

[simmo]

This post is not really intended to answer your specific questions, but I would highly recommend looking in to Swashbuckling Adventures (d20 system) and 7th Sea (d10 system).

It is a comprehensive alternative Europe (and beyond) setting which deals with creating characters from different sections of society. Detailed society information for different countries, as well as languages, skills/feats for each country. It has rules on what languages people from one country are more likely to know. (Although we have implemented a house rule in our campaign that you need to spend an extra point to be able to read/write a non-native language or be fluent in it).

It also has secret societies, timelines that mimic European development and different forms of magic. Some more subtle than others, especially in the 7th Sea version.

 

[s/LaSH]

Q1: What level do career soldiers come in at? Merchants or commoners? Or their own stage? I'm not sure what background such people had... they say if you want a longbowman, train his grandfather, indicating some sort of martial lineage.

Q2: Personally, I'd do away with ECLing any culture. I'd find what makes that culture best - physical endurance and wild lore ranging across to broad education and abundant monetary resources as you ascend the social ladder. I certainly wouldn't be 'realistic' and demand that all commoners were shrunken, diseased waifs with a natural life expectency slightly longer than that of a distempered dog; the peasant types that go adventuring are likely to be the big, burly types who've survived the plague, ha ha me laddy etc. Aristocrats might have more weapons proficiency, but not be as tough.

Q3: Regionalised language cannot be overstated. If you live in your farming valley, leaving every 6 months to sell sheep in the next valley, you don't need to share much language with people 10 miles down the road beyond words for 'sheep', 'coin' and 'cheating bleeper'. I think that's why 'dead' languages such as Latin stuck around so long - they were established, fixed quantities that had large provenance. Further afield, I don't really know - I suspect some variety of Arabic would be very influential in the Middle East and Africa, but India and Asia would probably be hodgepodges of dialects, with the possible exception of coastal China - which would still have dialects, just one language group would be dominant, much like Latin in the West. It's possible that Japan, with its strictly phonetic alphabet and predominant noble literacy, had a regulatory factor necessary to bind their language together, but I don't know.

Regulatory factor, now that I mention it, is very important. A widespread empire is likely to regulate language towards its native tongue; widespread literacy and/or the printing press (thus mass-produced books) also regulate language. These things were in short supply in those days, especially in Europe. When they did become dominant... well, Shakespeare is still quite legible today, while go back a couple more centuries and blink confusedly. Printing is powerful.

Q4: I'm no linguist. But I'm sure googling around for 'language families' or the 'history of languages' wouldn't hurt. Most of 'em'll probably go back to an Indian religious language, if I remember correctly, but break up a few thousand years ago...

 

[Aethelstan]

A few thoughts about your campaign cultures. You might consider adding a culture named something like "urban outcast/lowlife." Renaissance cities positively teemed with a rootless underclass of beggers, thieves, wenches and the like. Unlike the "urban commoner," they had no proper employment and were outside the ties of family and kin, "la familia," which bound together much of Renaissance society.
For example, a PC urban commoner might be a printers apprentice who becomes a wizard whereas a urban outcast might be an orphan turned cutpurse.

Also, Renaissance Europe lacked a culture which would produce anything resembling the standard D&D barbarian (mabye Scottish Highlander or some other Celtic fringe loony, but that's pushing it). One of the distinct characteristics of the Renaissance is its urban focus. A true barabarian - say, historically speaking, a Russian Tartar - would be lucky to get past the city gates. Any PC who comported himself like a barbarian would find negotiating life in the big city a persistant hassle.

D&D Renaissance style can be quiet interesting, but in order to make it work, you have to change or remove some of the basic assumptions and sterotypes underlying a classic D&D campaign.

 

[Eosin the Red]

Ars Magica and 7th Sea are both good choices. Personally, 7th Sea is great cause it is just different enough that players don't automatically know the details better than you but it close enough that they get the broad strokes without working up a sweat.

The concept behind magic and stuff is fantastic.

Take a look at it. I would get one of the old Players and GM's Handbooks....they can likely be found on the cheap. If nothing else they are fantastic for ideas.

 

[Nightfall]

Sounds like the fan favorite for Homebrewers, Magical Medieval Society would be up your alley.

 

[Dogbrain]

I'll try to give some advice for the languages.

There were many more languages in medieval Europe than today. In France for example, people in the south spoke provancal (or occitan, I think this is the same kanguages), In Brittany breton and so on. People from different parts of the country would have had difficulty understanding each other.(

An example of this: Caxton wrote, in 1387, the following:

And specyally he axyed after eggys. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe but wold haue hadde egges and she vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstood hym wel

(Of amusing digression to me is that the alleged "street" pronunciation of "ax" is considered to be an appropriate alternate to "ask" by no less a literary light than Caxton at this time.)

 

[Dogbrain]

The first thing you will need to do is actually set a period. "Medieval/Renaissance" is so vast as to be meaningless. Pick a time, then I can help you. Here is a VERY ROUGH AND INACCURATE timeline to use as a guide:


Dark Age: AD400-AD700
Barbarian Empires: AD700-AD1000
High Chivalry: AD1000-AD1300
Fall of Chivalry: AD1300-AD1400
Early Renaissance: AD1400-AD1500
Late Renaissance: AD1500-AD1600
Early Modern: AD1600-AD1700

These are gross simplifications, of course.
Note that virtually ALL of what would be called "swashbuckling" is post-Renaissance.

 

[Dogbrain]

If this isn't an option for you, simply take today's languages, the diferences aren't THAT great.

Ande quen this Bretayn watz bigged bi this burn rych,
Bolde bredden therinne, baret that lofden,
In mony turned tyme tene that wroghten.
Mo feryles on this folde han fallen here oft
Then in any other that I wot, syn that ilk tyme.


Okay, what is that in modern English?