D&D General Neolithic D&D

[Ralif Redhammer]

To help give a stronger Neolithic feel, I would strictly track food and water resources. Obtaining food through hunting and gathering should be a part of adventuring. Shelter should also be very important. I might even go so far that if the PCs don't have either the benefit of a large gathering (a nomadic tribe, for example) or shelter, they gain no benefits from a long rest.

 

[LordBP]

To help give a stronger Neolithic feel, I would strictly track food and water resources. Obtaining food through hunting and gathering should be a part of adventuring. Shelter should also be very important. I might even go so far that if the PCs don't have either the benefit of a large gathering (a nomadic tribe, for example) or shelter, they gain no benefits from a long rest.

This. It's going to be more of a survival game than anything else.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

To help give a stronger Neolithic feel, I would strictly track food and water resources. Obtaining food through hunting and gathering should be a part of adventuring. Shelter should also be very important. I might even go so far that if the PCs don't have either the benefit of a large gathering (a nomadic tribe, for example) or shelter, they gain no benefits from a long rest.

I don't know. Sounds kind of boring. Maybe as an option so people can ignore it if they don't like it.

 

[Reynard]

This. It's going to be more of a survival game than anything else.

Not necessarily. "Survival" is a focus of play valid in any version of D&D set in any era, but lots of folks ignore it totally. You can handwave finding food and shelter in a neolithic game as easily as any other, if your goal is to focus on the war against the giants or the rise of the new gods or the development of arcane magic or whatever else.

 

[Aldarc]

To help give a stronger Neolithic feel, I would strictly track food and water resources. Obtaining food through hunting and gathering should be a part of adventuring. Shelter should also be very important. I might even go so far that if the PCs don't have either the benefit of a large gathering (a nomadic tribe, for example) or shelter, they gain no benefits from a long rest.

This. It's going to be more of a survival game than anything else.

While I understand that 5e can be played in a way where these things matter, I think that 5e on the whole is pretty indifferent to hostile to the survival mini-game. I don't necessarily think that a 5e neolithic game should particularly care about survival because I don't think that it is tone-appropriate to 5e as a system.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

While I understand that 5e can be played in a way where these things matter, I think that 5e on the whole is pretty indifferent to hostile to the survival mini-game. I don't necessarily think that a 5e neolithic game should particularly care about survival because I don't think that it is tone-appropriate to 5e as a system.

I would tend to agree, use a game more suited to the survival mode. There are plenty out there. Probably easier to bring in wanted elements if 5e to some of these games than to hack away bits of 5e.

 

[mellored]

Darksun is probably the closest setting to that.

Bone weapon and armor and such.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

This. It's going to be more of a survival game than anything else.

The fight for survival is a big part of the Neolithic world. Having visited Skara Brae, experienced the environment (more or less, considering it would've shifted over time) that they were contending with, that struggle is certainly evocative.

I don't know. Sounds kind of boring. Maybe as an option so people can ignore it if they don't like it.

Not if it's hunting monsters in place of elk and mastodon.

While I understand that 5e can be played in a way where these things matter, I think that 5e on the whole is pretty indifferent to hostile to the survival mini-game. I don't necessarily think that a 5e neolithic game should particularly care about survival because I don't think that it is tone-appropriate to 5e as a system.

While I agree that other systems might be a better fit, the premise of the OP is based on doing so using 5e. It would certainly require putting in some boundaries and house rules. As far as what is tone appropriate to 5e, that's a giant debate beyond this. People have been doing all sorts of wild tonal thing with D&D for decades. Heck, I remember when some of the first reports of 5e I read were someone running a Downton Abbey campaign using the playtest rules.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I have been nerding out a little over neolithic archaeology, from Gobekli tepe to Catalhoyuk and so on, and I was thinking about how you could do D&D in (a fantastical version of) that time period.

What classes would be important? What races? What equipment? What rules? What changes would you need from typical D&D set in its sort of if you squint Medieval-ish setting to one at the very dawn of civilization?

Have you ever run a neolithic D&D campaign, or other fantasy RPG? How did it go? What sorts of adventures and things did you focus on?

Let's get a little specific with it.

• Barbarian. Easy. No notes. The axes might be stone, but they work the same mechanically.
• Bard. Also easy. Oral histories and musical traditions are as old as people. Might be fewer stringed instruments, and I'd maybe lean into the idea of bards as history-keepers and story-tellers, for that good campfire exposition.
• Cleric. Not too hard. There's no organized temples or anything, but what if the cleric was kind of the vanguard of civilization? It is clerics who know and teach farming, who study the cycles of the seasons, who figure out how to preserve grain, how to nurture communities. Many might serve powerful leaders, or BE powerful leaders themselves. Clerics are the ones who know how to brew beer. Early neolithic farming is their jam.
• Druid. If the cleric serves civilization, druids are the mediators between people and the wild world around them. Shamans. Probably very important, but there might be some cleric/druid rivalry as the tensions between foraging and agriculture form a bit of a conflict line in the setting.
• Fighter. Also not too hard. If we keep this agriculture/foraging dichotomy, Fighters land on the agriculture side. Maybe they're organized into armies and have access to primitive metals (since full-time metallurgy should require the access to food that agriculture gives). This also works for the iconic cleric in heavy armor: yes, but only where the fields grow.
• Monk. Pretty simple. The idea of an organized ascetic group is a little anachronistic, but possible, and might work very similar to how fighters work - they require an agricultural community to sustain them. If clerics work with the people of the community, maybe monks are approaching the gods more directly, or trying to become them.
• Paladin. Okay, very medieval vibes, but if we riff on the idea of an oath, we can get something very neolithic. There's very little law, no real enforcers, no way to ensure that people will do what they promise to do. Enter the paladin, whose oath is unbreakable, who can be trusted when no one else can. Definitely part of the agricultural world.
• Ranger. Yeah, pretty simple. The best hunters, trackers, and scouts of the foragers are rangers.
• Rogue. Also simple. Probably connected to the agricultural world, but not exactly allied with it - rogues steal the grain, or are early traders and merchants.
• Sorcerer. Easy. Obvious. Magic is around and gives some people powers.
• Warlock. Also not too hard. It's a magical world filled with magical creatures, warlocks swear pacts with those creatures. They might be linked to the agricultural world - to a world of oaths and agreements. No one's ever seen a contract.
• Wizard. A little wrinkly with the spellbook, but we can lean into the idea of wizards as masters of the magic of writing. They are the only literate people in this world, definitely linked with the agriculturalists, and might carry around clay tablets or just draw with ochre or charcoal on the walls. Spellbooks are tattooed on your skin.

 

[Hriston]

Wait, what?

If you equate the Downfall of Númenor with the drowning of Atlantis c. 9,600 BC according to Plato, that puts it near the beginning of the Neolithic with the subsequent events of the LotR happening more towards the middle about 3,000 years later. Tolkien is on record as saying his stories are set in our world albeit in a "legendary" time period. I believe his intent was to place them far back enough into prehistory to give him a free hand to describe events on a fairly large scale. The fact that, in his novels, he describes a level of material culture matching more closely with AD 1100 is, I think, part of the "translation" element in his work.