Historically Themed Campaigns/Settings

[S'mon]

Re: Re: Avalanche's Ragnarok supplement

Regarding Avalanche's Ragnarok supplement...

WORST COVER ART EVER

...and I'm usually a booster for Avalanche's cheesecake covers.

But I mean come on! The arrow in this chicks bow is pointing off into nowhere? She's standing like a stripper. If you put heels on the boots it might explain why her feet are like that.

My friend Jay laughed himself senseless at the picture, and he's a total hound for that "Sword and Sorcery Scantily Clad Chick" art

That's actually the cover of 'Doom of Odin', their follow-up to 'Ragnarok!" which has the chick with leather strips and a hammer on the cover. I'll have to consider getting 'Blood Prince', I'm looking at running a historical game starting with 'Greenland Saga'. Re Black Flags, not sure I'd want to run a 100% historical game, but the idea of a Highlander-style Immortals game set in different eras of history might be good.

 

[Desdichado]

I actually didn't want to delve too far into the Mycenaen age (and cultures) because its just too alien from the recognizably Greek. For example (I believe) that gods such as Zeus and Athena were not Mycenaen, but Hellanized imports from the Assyrians. Setting a game in historical Mycenae removes all the knowledge that I *want* my players to have of Greece.

Athena very likely wasn't Mycenean. But Zeus, since both his character and his name are easy to trace back to Proto-Indo-European *dyeus pater is almost certainly Mycenean.

Besides, who's to say that the Mycenean's are so alien? After all, the "Heroic" age depicted in the Iliad, for example, are all based on what may have been actual events in the Mycenean Age. A lot of scholars believe that the remains of Troy VI was the actual Troy sacked by the Greeks (whether or not the king at Mycenae was named Agamemnon or not is another issue.) There's a book (and associated BBC documentary series) called In Search of Troy by Michael Ward (I believe that's his name, anyway) with a lot more info here on how "likely" the Heroic Age actually was based on anthropological evidence.

 

[mmadsen]

Here's an experiment. Run a brief D&D game exactly out of the book. Then run a game set in, say, Rome. Then try to run a game set in King Arthur's Camelot, the Empire of Charlemagne, or any other version of Western Europe/the British Isles. I'm willing to bet that you have to do just as much tweaking to get the right feel and details of the Arthurian as you will the Roman.

Well said, mouseferatu.

Last year I started a thread on "Occidental Adventures". Here's how it started:

In recent discussions of arabic campaigns and oriental campaigns, it became clear that the rules and adventures for these settings try much harder to mimic the folktales of those lands than the D&D core rules try to reflect European folklore. (This also came up a bit on the House Rules forum, discussing Christian gaming.)

What changes would you recommend for an Arthurian Legend campaign? Or a Shakespearean campaign (e.g. Midsummer Night's Dream, Tempest, MacBeth)? Or even a Grimm's Fairy Tales campaign?

 

[qstor]

I have a lot of notes on a "A Mighty Fortress" second edtion historical campaign I never ran. It was set in the 16th century. I did run two adventures one was an exploration of a ruined Cathar fortress in the mountains of France. The other was a Faerie themed adventure with a Black Annis in Ireland at the end of the adventure the PC's ran into Spanish mercanaries who were fighting the English in Western Ireland. I used a book about English and Irish wars in the mid to late 16th century for background. I find the Ospery military books are great resources for fighter types I used those too.

I also wanted to run an adventure where the PC's are Knights of Malta or their allies fighting the Turks in 1565 at the seige. Both sides would have used wizards too. Its rumored that Madonna's husband wants to make a movie out of this.

One comment I have is that one benefit for these games is that the local libary makes a great resource. Esp a university library.

I used GURPS as the rule system for both actually since I felt it gave me more flexibilty. I think 3e would work well too if I ever did it again. I'd convert some of the material in A Mighty Fortress and use the doubled casting times for spells. I'm going to get the new Occultism D20 book

Mike

 

[Darklance]

I don't like the idea of "It's Greece, but with some rare magic that you can't use!" [/B]

He he...you just pinned my campaign on the head. My players are loving it.

 

[Darklance]

I have mine set in Classical Greece just after the end of the dark ages. I accelerated the time line so that Athens has throne off its king/nobles early so that I could be closer to the end of the dark ages.

Virtually no magic with a modified fighter and expert to choose from. The PCs are Athenians who, concerned about the expanding power of Sparta (they did invade and try to get rid of the democracy just a few months after they won their freedom after all) They've set off with the last surviving prince of Mycenae and 300 settlers to reestablish the great city of Mycenae as a friendly buffer state. There are thousands of unaligned tribesman that claim to be Mycenaeans. If the prince can bring them under his rule he will truly be a power to be reckoned with. And perhaps he can convince the feuding city states to unite if Sparta tries to expand again.

If we get through with that I'm thinking of setting them off to rediscover the lost sea route to Egypt.

 

[mmadsen]

Virtually no magic with a modified fighter and expert to choose from.

How did you modify the Fighter and Expert?

 

[Connorsrpg]

I too love historical-based campaigns.

A very long running one was set on our homebrewed world in the region of Nyaat, which is VERY Egyptian in feel. (The one mentioned on [MENTION=3586]MerricB[/MENTION]'s thread, that resumed after 800 years).

I created a whole Dark Age England setting I called 'The Summer Isle'. It was set with the Britons/Celts (humans) resisting the Saxon/Angle (half-orcs) invasions after the Romans (dragonborn) withdrew. I used various races for the Welsh, Picts and even the people of Lyonesse etc. Basically a heap of different races and very fantastical. (This site is linked to my main site in sig. I noticed someone else on here was doing the same and found a lot of interesting maps, sources etc they may find useful).

I have loved including African stuff in my campaigns, esp after Chris Dolunt's African Adventures for Atlas Games. I 'stole' from that a lot. In fact my first 4E campaign was African-based with medieval Euros moving in on their turf. (This setting of Kodo is also linked from main site in sig).

I also play "Deadlands" and would love to do a more fantasy-baed version of that one day. I know some people hate replacing cultures with fantasy races, but I love doing that.

 

[gamerprinter]

Being an amateur historian, lover of all kinds of folklore, having visited Japan twice, with relatives there, since I am half-Japanese are all considered below...

Well not that it has not been done many times in the past, but I both play and to a large extent am designing (still) the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror - a setting based on feudal Japan and Japanese horror tropes. As an imprint under Rite Publishing, I have 2 class faction guides, 3 racial guides, a haunts guide, 3 one-shot adventures, 1 mapped adventure site, and a trilogy of full modules called The Curse of the Golden Spear. Although not yet released, we are wrapping up both a hardbound print version of both a GM's Guide to Kaidan and a Player's Guide following a successful KS, 2 summers ago.

While I have played various iterations of Oriental Adventures since 1e, some of the oriental realms of Ravenloft, a bit of time spent in Rokugan, and even less time in Golarian's Minkai - all in all, some things are done right, while large chunks of it (cultural, historical, folklore, religion) is done wrong (IMO). The social castes seemed to hand-waved away in most RPG Japan analogs, the concept of samurai is never right, religion always seems to be limited to a faux Shinto with hardly a mention of Buddhism, and while Japan had a rich history of wizards and sorcery, OA had to borrow a Korean hedge wizard (wujen) instead of using onmyoji, jugondo and other distinctly Japanese arcane spellcasters.

So to some extent, I want to correct inconsistencies and actual mistakes from OA, through my various Kaidan releases. The lack of authencity in past iterations of Japan analogs is what I most want to fix. Plus, the Japanese has an extreme distrust of anything supernatural, where instead of wonder, to most Japanese the supernatural is equivalent to horror - and why the emphasis on horror in my published setting.

And though just a Japan analog, and no way 'historical Japan', the founding of the setting is based on actual historic events that occurred at the end of the Genpei War in Japan (1180 - 1185) between the Taira and Minomoto clans in determining who was the correct emperor. In history, the Minomoto won this war, while in Kaidan, the win went to the Taira, though the results of their win is using Kaidan, and not actual Japan.

For example for our Way of the Samurai (PFRPG) supplement for Kaidan, 2 of the reviewers consider this supplement the definitive source book for all things Samurai not just as it applies to the Pathfinder RPG, rather the entire concept of samurai is captured in this publication.

By the way, all Kaidan products are having huge discounts with the GM's day sale - just sayin'.

 

[Fairman Rogers]

I also enjoy the more historical side of things. I like it when the history is realistic, even if it is then mixed with something unrealistic. There are ways of doing that without losing either aspect, as in something like Realms of Cthulhu. But I see many "historical" settings that are cherry-picked for flavor without even acknowledging the full context of the real history. (Not going to give examples so as not to turn this into a rant.)

I can fully appreciate the fact that people enjoy some fantasy with their history, but I also have to say that there are times when I think this is overdone. One of the reasons I started developing Steamscapes a few years back is that I could not find a historical steampunk game that did NOT have magic or dwarves or flying rock worlds. Space 1889 was about as close as you could get, and that's more Victorian sci-fi than straight steampunk. So we came up with a game that was unique in being historical steampunk with NO fantasy. And this continues to be true. I watch announcements of future steampunk releases wondering, "Is this the one that's actually going to be similar to us?" and then I read the description and think, "Nope. Fairies." Even the upcoming Catalyst steampunk setting has magic. Ah well. At least we get to hold onto our niche.