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

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I'd second that Ars Magica is worth looking at... an interesting take on magic + history. Possibly a little more mage centered than a D20 game would want to be be, suprisingly!

As far as it goes, I'd take the idealised features of each background and get them to balance rather than have ECL.

Perhaps low born backgrounds end up with more practical skills as opposed to the money/contacts of a nobleman.

The backgrounds look nice and inclusive. However, I'd probably add in some sort of military background - peasant levies, cheap mercenaries... and possibly outcast/criminal backgrounds.

 

[Guilberwood]

Just my 2 cents:

I speak both spanish and portuguese, and I can tell you that they're very different leanguages. They have things in comon, of course, but knowing one does not mean you know the other.

Everyone suggested great RPG books, well, I'm going to suggest you classics:

The hunchback of nothredam (is that how it's written in english?) from Vitor Hugo, it's a great book with a LOTS of details about renaissance, especially about the way of life, the people, poverty and politics

The 3 musketeers (Alexandre Dumas) is also a great book too

Hope it helps

 

[morbiczer]

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?

That's not what I meant. I meant that if in his game world all people in present day Spain would speak Spanish (and Catalonian) and all people in France would speak French and all people in Italy would speak Italian, than this wouldn't be historically accurate, but in my opinion would be okay for an RPG. After all it is impossible to complely reconstruct the real life of medieval Europe and he'll have to make compromises in any case.

 

[Nightfall]

Boy I make one non-SL suggestion and I STILL get ignored.

 

[Azlan]

More than one person here has recommened Ars Magica.

However, I already have most of the books for Ars Magica. I just searched through all of them, and I cannot find a list of languages in any of the books. Here are the books I searched through...

Ars Magica (both 3rd and 4th Editions)
Mythic Europe


I also have most of the books for Vampire: The Dark Ages and for Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade, and I cannot find a list of languages in any of those, either. I found tables that listed coins, units of measurements, noble titles, and so forth -- but not one that listed languages! Here are the books I searched through...

Vampire: The Dark Ages
Dark Ages Companion
Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade
Sorcerers Crusade Companion
Crusade Lore
Castles & Covenants

What gives? Are medieval/Renaissance languages too many and too complex for game developers to condense and standardize, for use with a roleplaying game?



Or did I overlook something, in my search through the books I listed... ?

What about GURPS: Middle Ages? Does anyone have that one; and if so, can they look through it to see if there's a list of languages?

 

[Turjan]

Are medieval/Renaissance languages too many and too complex for game developers to condense and standardize, for use with a roleplaying game?

Well, you want to stick to the term medieval/Renaissance then, this means, a period of 1,200 years with countless changes and vast cultural differences?
If you just want to stick to the end of the period, take a map of modern Europe and count the countries. That's about the number of languages you have, though the borders often don't fit the language borders. Some languages are spoken in several countries (e.g., French or German) and some countries have several languages (Belgium, Switzerland or Finland). That's obviously quite easy.

I'm aware of the fact that this is a vast simplification, but you certainly don't want to deal with hundreds of languages.

 

[Azlan]

Well, you want to stick to the term medieval/Renaissance then, this means, a period of 1,200 years with countless changes and vast cultural differences?

Okay, the 14th Century, then. That's pretty much the time period that most D&D worlds are equivalently set in (given the availability of plate armor and other Renaissance technologies), and it's is good enough for my purposes, here.

So, how about a list of languages for the 14th Century?

 

[Turjan]

Okay, the 14th Century, then. That's pretty much the time period that most D&D worlds are equivalently set in (given the availability of plate armor and other Renaissance technologies), and it's is good enough for my purposes, here.

Okay, that's clearly Middle Ages then (Renaissance started in the 15th century in Italy and in the 16th century in the rest of Europe). Although it's not completely correct, because the languages were not that unified by education as they are today, you could still use the suggested approach and take modern day languages as a basis. Approaches like, e.g., splitting German in its three language groups, will be a bit too much.

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

1. Indogermanic languages

1.1 Germanic Languages

Norwegian (this consists actually of two languages, but nevermind )
Swedish
Danish
Icelandic
English
Dutch
German
Jiddish

1.2 Romanic languages

Portuguese
Galician
Spanish
Katalan
French
Sardic
Italian
Raeto-Romanic
Romanian
Moldavian

1.3 Celtic languages

Breton
Gaelic
Welsh

1.4. Greek

Well, Greek

1.5 Baltic languages

Lithuanian
Latvian
Prussian (may already have been extinct)

1.6 Albanian

Well, Albanian

1.8 Slavonic languages

1.8.1 West-Slavonic languages

Polish
Czech
Slovak
Sorbian

1.8.2 East-Slavonic languages

Russian
Ukrainian
Byelorussian

1.8.3 South-Slavonic languages

Slovenic
Serbo-Croatian
Macedonian
Bulgarian

2. Basque (the oldest European language; no relatives)

3. Uralian languages

Hungarian
Finnish
Karelian
Estonian

4. Turk languages

Turkish
(some more in Russia, like Tartaric)

5. Semitic languages

Maltese


Okay, the list is not complete, but it will do . Of course, you can always split French or German or other languages in many different dialects, but this should do .

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

One thing to remember when you are casting about for language rules is that most people who travelled at all during this period, which is an if if a lot of common histories are to be believed, probably spoke many many more languages than the modern equivalent.

So my initial suggestion would be to either up the PCs ability to speak multiple languages or just assume that the standard rules are an abstraction of the many language groups a PC is proficient in.

Also, in terms of your cultures, you definitely want a courtly noble culture and a wilderness culture.

Wilderness characters are an important trope of the period in literature, religion, and histories. The thing to remember is that the wilderness is a lot closer than we think of it. People in most of the cultures of the period were extremely community bound and living outside of community boundaries certainly made you weird and probably made you supernatural. St. Francis of Assissi's monastary is good half-afternoon's walk from the town and that was considered tremendously rugged. There are also plenty of records of strange folks who practically consitute a barbarian culture and probably live no more than a day's travel from the local municipality. Those are the types yer barbarians, rangers, and druids come from.

Courtly nobles are just a very different breed from the sort of nobles at arms or on the land that we generally think of.

You might also consider a wandering men sort of culture to simulate the people who lived their whole lives in the merchants troops or mercenary bands that moved from market to market and never left camp.

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.

Really really fantastic books.

 

[Turjan]

Btw, there were languages that had a wider spread than others. I'm not sure whether it was already commonplace in the 14th century, but French became the language of Europe's nobility. Some of them even didn't know their country's language very well . Jiddisch was spoken within much of Europe's Jewish community, and German was a common trade language in most of Central Europe. Of course, the Ottoman Empire was still thriving, and Turkish was the way to go in the southeast .