Stone Age D&D Games?

[VirgilCaine]

Anyone ever done one of these?

IMO:
Obviously, Fighters, Wizards, Monks, Paladins are out as classes. Maybe Bards also.
Sorcerors, Barbarians, Rangers, Rogues, Druids, Clerics all fit in.

Only humans, orcs, half-orcs, dwarves...no elves or small races.

Lots of weapons and items out...

 

[Wombat]

Out of curiosity, why not fighters? They seem basic to every culture, even if heavy armour is not available.

 

[diaglo]

i've seen some games where the players were stoned.

 

[derelictjay]

I've always wanted to run a game like this (not the Stoned Age, gees, drugs are never ok, even over the counter ones ), but my players could never wrap their heads around having bone and wood equipment, and no such thing as plate mail, also the reason why I could never get a game of Dark Sun going.

 

[Henry]

How stone-age are we talking? "Ug the caveman, everybody's a neanderthal" stone age?

If so, I would eliminate even the sorcerers, rangers, rogues, etc. I would make everyone an Expert, Warrior, or Adept, to represent the Fighting men, the rudimentary craftsmen or scouts, and the Shamanistic-types.

Oh, actually, the small races like gnomes and halflings would fit too... after all, skill and cunning, and working in packs would be just as effective as physical power. Ask the egg-stealing and pack-hunting dinosaurs. I could see cavemen keeping guards out at night, watching nervously for the furtive little cannibalistic cave-halflings who take their food and weaker members...

 

[Vigwyn the Unruly]

Try Nyambe. It's set in Africa, but could be used with really any stone-age culture. Yes, there are fighters, along with all of the other main classes. The book has advice on how to use the standard classes in such a setting, along with some variant classes designed specifically for this kind of thing.

 

[Crothian]

When I got the book Stone and Steel some years back and saw they had great info on the stone age I thought about doing it. Of course my plans lead me to the once great game caveman olympics and I stopped there as it was getting silly.

 

[DarkMaster]

Bard and fighter should be in. Fighting and music are one of the first thing humans did.

If there is no bard and fighter. Why should all the fighter of the tribe be able to rage, and who will play the drum around the campfire at night and maintain the oral tradition by telling stories to the tribe members.

 

[DMH]

Frost and Fur from Monkey God has classes and races for Ice Age campaigns, but what I think you are looking for is Lost Prehistorica from Dark Quest (from rpgnow).

 

[SWBaxter]

Anyone ever done one of these?

Several different varieties. First time was using an old Dragon article on Ice Age campaigning, which was a lot of fun - "treasure" meant killing a mammoth and successfully getting the meat back to the tribe.

IMO:
Obviously, Fighters, Wizards, Monks, Paladins are out as classes. Maybe Bards also.
Sorcerors, Barbarians, Rangers, Rogues, Druids, Clerics all fit in.

Only humans, orcs, half-orcs, dwarves...no elves or small races.

Lots of weapons and items out...

Hmm, kinda depends on the type of stone age you're aiming for. The stone age is a technological category, not necessarily a cultural one - historically, societies have advanced from the stone age based largely on whether there were accessible surface metal deposits available to them. Babylon, Egypt, the South and North American aboriginal peoples... all of these had sophisticated civilizations before widespread metal use. So if you want a caveman bonks sabretooth campaign, you can do that, but you can also run a city-based campaign in the stone age if you want.

It seems to me that Paladins and Bards are very appropriate for even tribal-type games - Bards are an ancient archetype, and Paladins just need a god/spirit/whatever to gift them with powers for them to exist. Rangers, Rogues, and Clerics probably aren't - the first two are too specialized to arise in tribal cultures, while organized religion appears to have been one of the major driving forces of civilization so a sophisticated priesthood probably doesn't belong in a tribal game.

OTOH, if you're basing your game on a more civilized stone age model (be it Egypt or the Iroquois Confederacy or whatever), then clerics and wizards should be all over the place. For a really historical feel, they'd mostly be the same people - the divorce between religion and magic doesn't come until much later.