D&D General Neolithic D&D

[Tonguez]

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.

The neolithic is the age of the first City-States, so it is certainly 'points of light' but the common folk also lived in sedentary agrarian villages so they could be close to their grain fields, nomadic shepherd and merchant groups were also regularly encountered.

 

[Tonguez]

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 1,100 is, I think, part of the "translation" element in his work.

Tolkien is at least Iron Age, if you want to be indulgent that the Fall of Numenor might be Chalcolithic

 

[Hriston]

Are you implying all the armor and weapons used in middle earth were stone?

No, but it's an interesting question. Are you implying modern society knows for a fact all armor and weapons used in the Neolithic were made of stone, and do you think fantasy fiction about the period needs to conform to that notion?

 

[Chaltab]

Planegea is literally exactly what you're looking for. It does the majority of the work for you, especially with regards to the classes. Advance the setting by a few thousand centuries and you're there.

The only difference would be to move its focus from mobile clans to early city states, which is easy enough. Remove the challenges to agriculture (which are artificially imposed by a titan in the setting) and have the land shifting and expanding less.

 

[Tonguez]

I found this really interesting regarding the Uruk period 3000 BC

… in Girsu, for instance, 15,000 women were employed in the textile industry. One factory produced 1,100 tons of flour a year, but also bread, beer and linseed oil, as well as grindstones, woven reeds and clay pots. This factory employed 134 specialists, and 858 skilled workers, of which 669 were women, 86 were men, and 103 were teenagers of both genders. Since there was no currency at this time, workers were paid directly in food and other goods. The minimum ration of an unskilled factory worker consisted of twenty liters of barley a month, along with two liters of oil and two kilos of wool per year, while their supervisor might earn twice this ration. Poorer workers sometimes had to supplement their income by borrowing commodities—like silver, grain or wool—from lenders, always at crushing interest rates.

What the Epic of Gilgamesh Reveals About Sumerian Society

One Sumerian epic poem called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta gives the first known story about the invention of writing, by a king who has to send so many messages that his messenger can’t remembe…

lithub.com

the article mentions the Sumerian invention of writing too, and that in the time of Gilgamesh, Uruk had a population of 90000 and was the largest city in the world

 

[Hriston]

Tolkien is at least Iron Age, if you want to be indulgent that the Fall of Numenor might be Chalcolithic

I'm not sure what part of the legendarium you're referring to here as "Tolkien" considering the relatively detailed portion alone covers a period of about 6,500 years from the first sunrise to the final downfall of Sauron, a longer period of time than the historical Iron Age itself, but more to the point, what about the stories requires them to be set in the Iron Age in your opinion? What about the Downfall of Númenor suggests the Copper Age to you? Personally, I'd associate the Copper and Iron Ages with the Fifth and Sixth Ages in the legendarium.

Eta: If one accepts the premise that Professor Tolkien's stories are about our own world -- Midgard as it's called in Germanic cosmology -- as he is on record stating, it doesn't make much sense to say his stories are meant to depict events happening in the Iron Age the way a fantasy novel like House of the Wolfings definitely is because we as modern readers have a fairly coherent idea about the type of historical events that have taken place in the Iron Age and can be fairly certain that nothing like the War of the Ring, for example, was taking place in Southern Europe and Northern Africa at any time after 1200 BC. The closest thing is probably the Punic Wars. Such a tale set in the Iron Age beggars belief while the same tale, set in a more remote period the historical details of which we know next to nothing about, is far more palatable as having occurred in a "time of legend", at least to me. To sum up, the Meso- and Neolithic periods were a blank canvas for Tolkien on which he authored a "medievalistic" fantasy.

 

[Aldarc]

Is this talk of Tolkien and the ages of Middle-Earth really relevant to @Reynard's neolithic topic?

 

[Reynard]

Is this talk of Tolkien and the ages of Middle-Earth really relevant to @Reynard's neolithic topic?

No. No it is not.

 

[Reynard]

I found this really interesting regarding the Uruk period 3000 BC

What the Epic of Gilgamesh Reveals About Sumerian Society

One Sumerian epic poem called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta gives the first known story about the invention of writing, by a king who has to send so many messages that his messenger can’t remembe…

lithub.com

the article mentions the Sumerian invention of writing too, and that in the time of Gilgamesh, Uruk had a population of 90000 and was the largest city in the world

I am personally specifically thinking about 10000-8000 BCE (if we are measuring in the near east, of course; civilization sophistication happened at different times around the world). Specifically, that monument building, early town, pre-writing era of the neolithic when we were just beginning to form the ideas of Kings.

 

[aco175]

Not saying the movie was that good, but may give you ideas and a bit of how much you can flex the idea.